“No. Not for the last one. For this one, I went to someone lateral to her. She approached me independently with these things, and told me to reach out to you if you didn’t reach out anytime soon. Because you would want to know.”

I wished I hadn’t thrown my lunch away. I would’ve liked to have something to violently toss into the wastebasket, as an outlet for what I was feeling. I shook my head a little.

“It’s relevant,” Natalie said. “And it’s important. I promise.”

I shook my head more. All around us, people were going to and from lunch. There was actually a city-like stream of cars on the road toward the center of the Megalopolis proper.

“Tell me then,” I said.

“There were two attempted breaches into our email server last night. It looked like it was directed at your mother. They put a moratorium on sending and receiving email for three hours while they did some backend stuff, and there was another attempted breach partway through that. Tech people are looking into it.”

I nodded. I looked at my laptop. Cedar Point, except I wasn’t aware of anyone who would be especially good at that stuff there. The Speedrunners were tinkers, but nothing suggested they were tinkers with talents that translated to hacking into the email servers in the Wardens’ headquarters. Bitter Pill was a full tinker, but her specialty put her even further from that kind of operation.

Houndstooth appears, adding to pressure, Sveta and I make our appearance, and a little while later, an attempted look at a close relation’s emails. I could see the thread.

Would Tattletale have succeeded? If she had the power to see weaknesses, it could extend to security systems. During the bank robbery, she’d done something to gain access, though I couldn’t remember particulars. It had been ambient noise around then. She’d also collected info on Empire Eighty-Eight.

Someone they hired? Was the fact that they didn’t go straight to Tattletale important? A sign of a schism?

“My mother thinks it has something to do with me,” I concluded.

“She was called in for confidential discussion this morning, she got out of the meeting, said she couldn’t get in touch with you, and told me to reach out. I think so, yeah.”

“I can’t have you being her messenger. It’d impact how this arrangment works,” I said.

“Even if it’s pertinent? Letting you know things like the possible breach into emails? That they’re looking into people close to you?”

“The problem is that it’s always going to sound like a good reason.”

“Could it sound like a good reason because it is one? Sometimes, even?”

I drew in a deep breath. I collected my laptop and put it into my bag.