The sudden loss of BrainLink was like a limb hacked off.

Mom knelt on the carpet between me and the empty TV, Connection Lost centered on each half of the screen. She rubbed my shoulder with a fierce look of concern. “My God, are you okay?”

“I—I think so. My leg hurts.” I pushed away the pain, relishing being mothered despite all of my failings.

“I’m so sorry. It won’t hurt forever.” She held me at arm’s length, speaking evenly as if to a child. “Ko, you said earlier you screwed up. What exactly did you mean?”

I wanted to keep putting off telling her about our little investigation, to cling to that illusion of control. But something broke in me like a fuse being tripped—and it all came spilling out. “We took a tracker out of Garrett’s bot and I kinda lost it in that lady’s car when she was following me earlier and I know it was a bad idea but I … I needed to protect you.”

“Slow down.” Mom massaged her temples. “The car at the warehouse? What were you doing in it to begin with?”

My hoodie twisted in my fingers. I needed to make her understand I was going behind her back for a reason. “I assumed she was working with Laramee at first. She looked all law enforcementy. And I thought Otokotronics would follow the tracker to her when I brought it online, you know? Like they would keep her out of our hair so we could find the Talisman.” I couldn’t meet Mom’s incredulous gaze. “I know! I’m sorry. But Otokotronics did follow the tracker….”

“Only we happened to be there when they did,” Matt said with a small voice.

Mom looked between us. “But this lady—”

“I lost Dad’s watch, Mom.” There, I’d said it. “When I was running from the dude with the beard after I found the girl. Laramee said he’s a dangerous bot. That’s the other thing. Me and Matt snuck out Friday night and met Garrett at Mission Pizza—”

“Because of that napkin near the warehouse, Mrs. S,” Matt said. “We were looking for clues about the dead girl and—”

“I guess she went there when she was alive and sorta had a freak-out and stole some pizza. But we got this map card she dropped and then we followed it to some lab and Laramee was there! He took the fricking card. He made me give it to him. And … and …” The knot in my stomach sat heavy. What else could I say? If anything, I only felt worse now, like I was this terrible daughter who couldn’t be trusted.

Mom sat back on her haunches, a stony silence between us.

I steeled myself for the most epic grounding of all time. For yelling and fireworks. For being told if I’d actually listened, I’d never have gotten our bots EMPed—or the Iriguchi stolen.

But Mom’s frown broke and she brushed her eyes. “Oh, Ko.” She pulled me to her chest, her voice husky. “I wish you’d trusted me enough to share all this before now. And … I understand why you didn’t. I didn’t trust you with my own secrets.”

Surging emotion threatened to overwhelm me. The swell of relief at coming clean with Mom. The knife-edged guilt at having screwed everything up. The warmth of Mom’s embrace despite it all. Even, strangely, anger at her for not being upset with me. My leg still throbbed and my chin was one big ache. “Aren’t you mad at me?”

“Furious,” she said, not a hint showing. “But mostly, I’m glad you’re not too hurt. That you finally told me.”

Then, as if that wasn’t enough feeling for one afternoon, a deluge of foreign sensory input flooded into my own.

“Uh,” Matt said, “not to ruin the moment or anything, but I think we’re back online.”

I craned over Mom’s shoulder. The TV was lit with a split-screen view of the inside of a panel van, my bot piled on Matt’s beside a giant crate.

Ohhhh. Shit. My stomach balled back up. Our bots were intact. No sign of Garrett though. Hopefully he’d gotten away.

Mom sprung to her feet, her phone already dialing. “Laramee, we got EMPed. Back online now. In restraints in a panel van heading …” She squinted at the screen, sun piercing a windowed partition at the front of the van. “West.”

I strained to move, but plastic restraints dug into my bot’s wrists. The van cornered and I leaned into it, rolling off Matt’s bot onto cold steel. “Where’re they taking us?” I had to focus on speaking only in the living room without making my bot’s lips move. Switching between bodies was like making two fingers on the same hand move independently. It took effort, and I was always aware of both.

Mom didn’t respond, focused on her call.

Matt’s face was glossed with sweat. “Probably to Otokotronics’ secret lair to interrogate us about the Talisman. Why else would they keep our bots in one piece?”

So was Mom wrong about them wiping us out with our own Iriguchi? Or was that just … next? Hopefully Agent Summers was tailing the van somewhere.

Matt motioned at the TV. “Can you bring up the tracker?”

Mom paced to the hallway with her phone, keeping an eye on the screen.

I poked around the menus. Nothing. “I bet the EMP killed it.” The van accelerated and our bots slid back.

“Whoever threw that EMP has to be human,” Matt said, “or they’d’ve fried their own bot.”

One way to find out. I got my bot’s knees under it, sitting up and peeking through the window in the van’s partition.

Dia was at the wheel, her cross earrings swaying. She spoke in a low voice to the passenger beside her. “Are you hearing that?”

I froze. Fuck. But wait, no. It wasn’t us; there was a rumble from the roof of the van.

A man’s heavy voice—the passenger—drifted from the front seat. “It’s just the railroad tracks we went over. This world is riddled with ‘em and the roads are shit.”

“Who gives a care about roads,” Dia said. “You can breathe the air here, yes?”

My pulse settled. A noisy van could work to our advantage.

Matt wiggled his own bot, tugging at the restraints. “What about playing dead until they open the doors? They think we’re offline. We’d have the element of surprise.”

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“It’d be an even bigger surprise if we can bust out when they’re not ready,” I said. “They’re distracted with driving now.”

He glared at the screen. “And if that doesn’t work? We’ll be headed straight for robot waterboarding.”

“They’re not torturing anybody.” Mom paced back, her phone pressed to her shoulder. “Their techs will just power down your bots, saw your heads open, and extract whatever info they’re looking for.”

I gulped, a chill shooting down my spine—but not because of what Mom said. “Guys. Did you see that in the rear window? We just passed a church.”

“So?” Matt said. “There are a million churches in Las Yerbas.”

From my position on the carpet, I flung a finger in an easterly direction. “This was the church on Buena Vista, the one with the giant metal spire. You know, on the way to our apartment.”

Silence pressed down on us while that sunk in.

Matt pushed to his feet beside the futon, panic in his eyes. “They’re coming here? What, are they tracking our bots’ signals?”

Mom scrutinized the carpet. “Not possible. Our trackers aren’t open, and you can’t snoop on portal-based communication. They could be going anywhere.”

Panic kindled inside me, flushing my skin. This wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. “We need to get the bots out of these restraints. Like right fricking now.” They were fastened in front rather than behind our backs, but we still wouldn’t get far with them on.

She lifted her head. “Backup’s on its way. You just need to hang tight. But I have to get something from my room to … help us here. I’ll be right back. And lest you get any brilliant ideas, I’ll remind you this game session is being recorded.” She strode from the living room with her phone to her ear.

What if we didn’t make it until backup showed? Replay video or not, we needed a plan B.

Matt wet his lips. “I saw a screwdriver in my inventory earlier, but I can’t select it now. We could cut the restraints.”

My bot bounced against the floor as the van rumbled. I flopped over to Matt’s bot, my leg smarting, and patted around for the screwdriver. I found it in the last place I looked—his waistband. Otokotronics must’ve been in a real hurry.

Maybe we didn’t need to run. “A screwdriver isn’t gonna work on these restraints,” I said to Matt in the living room. “We just need something that will.” I wiggled past his redhead, my wrists still bound, and levered my bot onto its knees near the wooden crate. Apparently just like the one in that SUV from the gunfight.

I quietly pushed up its lid with a shoulder.

Inside, there stood a massive dog. Rounded snout, bristly fur—and stock-still. Not dead and not taxidermy. Because a thick cable was snaked into one ear, its eyes aglow with gently throbbing LEDs.

Matt cursed under his breath.

I shut the lid too quickly, my heart drumming. Why’d they have a giant robot dog? Had they planned to sic it on us in that alley? I shivered. “I, uh, have a better idea.” I knee-walked toward the double doors in the back of the van.

Thumps of Mom rummaging in the closet drifted from her bedroom. “You two stay put,” she called out, muffled. “You hear me?”

“That’s the plan?” Matt asked. “Jump from a speeding vehicle?”

No, Matt. I was simply making use of a speeding vehicle. I grunted, jamming the screwdriver around the door handle. Nothing budged. In a fit of desperation, I yanked the handle, timing it with the van thundering over a bump. Sure enough, it wasn’t even locked. Amateurs. One of the doors flapped open to reveal a blur of wet, fast-receding pavement, houses whipping past. We needed to hurry; it was just a matter of time till Dia glanced in her mirrors.

With the screwdriver set on the floor, I steeled my bot against the rushing wind. “Matt, hold my feet.”

“Um, what?”

“I’m gonna get these restraints off.” I dropped onto my belly in the van, dangling my arms out the back toward the blur of asphalt below.

There was another mumbled curse as Matt’s iron grip clamped onto my bot’s ankles, his own restraints pressing into his fake skin on screen.

I inched forward, lowering my trembling hands. A spray of sparks told me I’d scooched far enough; the burning in my wrists told me this was a bad idea. I set my teeth and powered through the pain anyway. Matt squeezed tighter to prevent the friction from yanking me out.

Something moved above my bot, and I wrenched around to look.

Garrett grinned down from atop the roof of the van, the wind whipping his hair.

I jerked back. What the hell, man? Had he been there the whole time?

Garrett held a finger to his lips and withdrew from sight.

“No way,” Matt whispered.

I shifted my focus back to the living room, pulling out my phone to fire off a text to Garrett. My bot remained dangling from the van.

me: what are you doing up there??

Garrett: this dia woman is the reason my father lost his job

Garrett: the reason he’s sick

me: I know but your dad’s bot is going to get real messed up

me: they could make a sudden stop

Garrett: I’m counting on it

My spine tingled. Garrett was going to do something stupid.

The passenger in the front of the van spoke again. “Hey boss, so I was gonna surprise Chelsea next month. Tram tickets to Cancún, the works. Assuming it’s okay with you.”

Dia let out a complex sigh from the driver’s seat. “You want to talk PTO to me now? We do not get the Talisman, there is no next month. What do I tell you, darling? Focus. The bosses have focus. That is why they work hard, work us hard. They know there is no life for them if they stay in our world …” She trailed off.

I turned toward the van’s partition, afraid of what I’d see. Garrett’s torso was draped upside down over the windshield. He pounded the glass with his fists, his shouts swallowed by the wind.

Dia jerked the wheel and swerved, tires screeching. The van crashed to a stop with a thundering boom and the rending of metal.

My heart just about gave out. The rear door flapped inward and I slid back into Matt’s bot, weightless before crunching into the steel partition.

I let out a broken scream, pain cascading through my neck, the gunshot wound in my leg aching anew. When I finally leveled out, I held up my bot’s hands. Shredded plastic restraints dangled from my wrists, the fake skin around them sheared right off.

“Ko!” Mom raced back to the living room, tucking a hand cannon into her jeans and slinging on a jacket.

On screen, Matt’s bot lay crumpled against the partition, a jumble of limbs. Beside me, he moaned on the carpet, his head in his hands.

Shit, what did we crash into?

There was a familiar muffled ticking from outside the van. Indistinct shouts drifted from Dia and her passenger—surprise, fear, consternation.

“Matt,” I whispered. “Are you okay? We need to get going. They’re—”

Staccato gunshots shattered glass in the front of the van and the shouting cut out, replaced by a damp, stomach-churning splatter against the steel barrier. One of the front doors hinged open, and I swear to God I heard two bodies thwack wetly into the blacktop—as if dragged there by the gunman.

“Jesus Christ,” I hissed, my heartbeat echoing in my ears. Where the hell was Garrett?

Matt’s enormous eyes were fixed on the glowing screen.

This was our chance. One of the rear doors still hung ajar. “Matt!”

Wet footsteps outside the van padded toward us. And as I raced to the door, a gloved hand clapped onto its edge.

I just about jumped out of my skin.

Matt let loose a primal shriek.

Mom stood dumbstruck, her lips parted.

The door swung open and I scrambled back toward the crate—shoving my uncuffed hands behind me.