“Hey!” The girl turned, her response eerily like she was greeting a friend she hadn’t seen for a while. She wasn’t wearing her helmet, but the frizz of her hair stuck to her head with light sweat. She had a smile on her face and moist eyes. “Hey, can you tell Parian to leave me alone for five seconds? I made a mistake, and every second counts.”

“There’s been a death,” Chicken Little said. He held his mask, and his birds were sticking closer to him. Some stuck close to Kenzie and her now-vacant chair, and she barely seemed aware of them.

“Teeny-tiny bit of a death,” Lookout said. “And I’ve been so zeroed-in on things that I didn’t even see it. Not like me, right? Ha ha, and it’s actually kind of important that I missed stuff, because if I’m going to do anything about it, I need to have been tracking the data’s movements through the crystals since fifteen minutes ago.”

“You’re a camera tinker, Lookout. What are you planning to do?” Parian asked.

“I’m a camera tinker and a box tinker, and if I build a big enough box, if I have the right materials and the right data… emphasis on the right data, I might be able to do something. If there’s anything left of him in his brother…”

Brother. Aisha looked back at Grue. She looked at the screen, showing Breakthrough looking stricken. People moved out of frame and the cameras didn’t follow them.

“What do you need?” Aisha asked. “How much time?”

“Time? Haha. I don’t know, days? I can skip sleeping, so data doesn’t bleed away. There’s a small chance that all incoming data gets stored in a kind of processing center until it can get sent where it’s going, and since he comes in a big, pre-loaded chunk of data, maybe, five percent chance, or three percent chance…”

“It’s Capricorn,” Darlene supplied.

“I figured,” Aisha said. “Lookout, how long do you need to confirm if there’s still a bit of him in his brother?”

“A tether? Or anything that gives me a starting point? I don’t know. Minutes?”

“Go. Do that. Darlene, will you help her?”

“I can,” Darlene said.

“Juliette, clear out. No, stay in the front hall. Stand watch. If Tattletale wakes up or if anyone comes back, fill them in, but let’s keep everyone but Tattletale out of here, so there’s elbow room to work. Chastity?”

“Yes?” Chastity asked. She and Juliette stood in the side hallway at the other end of the room, leading to the back offices.

“Go to the cafeteria. Tell them there’s a minor crisis, and they should stay put until we get in touch.”

Chastity nodded.

“What do I do?” Candy asked.