Aiden said the power draw came from the tippy top, so I clutched his little dome and limped up another stairwell, my gut clenched the whole way.

We emerged onto a gloomy top-floor hallway where a runway of industrial carpet stretched past rows of darkened offices. Even with the building empty for the weekend, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, that my luck at evading capture was running out.

“We find Mama?” Aiden said, too loud.

“After we get out of here,” I whispered, tensing. “You need to lower your voice. Quiet time, okay?”

“Okay,” he said in a piercing whisper. “Quiet time.” The overheads flicked off one by one, plunging us into darkness.

I stared up, incredulous. Was this kid for real—hacking the building’s lighting system? Or had he already infiltrated it days ago? “Aiden, please don’t turn off the lights!”

The fluorescents flickered on again. “Quiet time over?” he said at full volume.

Jesus, someone was going to hear him. “Quiet time is not over.”

The lights went off.

I steadied myself beside a potted plant. “Can you go to sleep and keep the lights on?” Or was I going to have to resort to infrared?

“Okay. I sleep.”

I shook my head, tucking him into my backpack. Leaving Aiden behind in AI time-out hadn’t really been an option, but right now he was kind of a liability. Either this was complete foolishness—or my only chance to find the Talisman and save Mom.

The stairs to the roof beckoned at the far end of the hallway. I crept up them with an elephant on my chest, my metal fingers clicking against the railing. When I reached the top, I steeled myself and cracked open the door to the roof.

Beyond an empty helipad, a cluster of HVAC machines were arrayed like tombstones against the glittering lights of Las Yerbas and the remains of the bridge. Agent Summers’ silver sedan, exhaust puffing, idled on the street below.

Maybe a dozen paces from the door, a man in shadow crouched between a crate and an HVAC unit with wires spilling out, his hands in the guts of the machine.

He leapt to his feet, slipping behind the HVAC machine—only to emerge from a closer one faster than I could blink. Then he unholstered a weapon with an economy of motion like he’d done this many times before, the tell-tale glow of a hand cannon splitting the night.

Shit! I scrambled back behind the door, my heart thumping wildly. What did I think I’d find here? The Talisman unguarded on a silver platter?

“Ko!” the man called out.

What? Laramee’s voice. I pushed open the door again, my mind swirling. He was the last person I expected here.

Laramee holstered his Iriguchi, stepping past the crate into the light spilling from the stairwell. He had on his LYPD uniform and a tool belt on one hip, his hands blackened with grime. “You gave me a scare.”

I frowned, my belly roiling. Something wasn’t right. “What the hell are you doing here, Laramee?”

He gave me a severe look. “You recall that project we discussed—getting back to my family? I have to put in the work after hours. LYPD used to have an administrative office on the third floor where we still store equipment.”

Convenient. “Does Agent Summers know you’re here?”

He snorted. “Building tenants come and go as they please. What are you doing here? Did you follow me from the safe house?”

I let the door close behind me, the night air cutting through my hoodie. “I was chasing a lead on those nonsense texts I’ve been getting, hopefully something to help my mom. I couldn’t just sit around. But why is your project so important now? Shouldn’t you be hunting down Beard Bot?” The specter of Stanton and Athleisure teaming up loomed larger than any worries I had about Dia right now.

He wiped his hands on a rag, regarding me.

"Laramee," I said. "What is going on here?"

It was an eon before he answered. “When I helped your mother flee to this world years ago, I didn’t just lose my family. I’m losing myself without them. Backsliding. Becoming who I was before Janice gave me that chance to redeem myself.” His voice grew husky. “And if that happens, the sacrifices I’ve made by coming here, by trying to better myself—they’ll have been for nothing.”

“So, in summary, you were too busy re-redeeming yourself to answer my calls?”

He pulled out his phone, aghast. “No reception. That would explain why I haven’t heard from Stanton.”

“On that topic … I just found out he was in Executive Guard. Beard Bot was cloned from someone there, right? Laramee, I think they’re working together.” If he knew anything about Stanton, suspected anything, I had to know.

He gave me a quizzical look. “Stanton had the opportunity to join the Guard and decided against it. He said he needed to be able to look his boys in the eye when he logged out of his bot and came home at night.” A shadow passed over his face. “Tell me about these texts.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

So if Stanton wasn’t Executive Guard, was Dia spewing lies? She’d said he was outside the safe house, right? “I’ve been getting the messages for a while. Nonsense, nursery rhymes, strong non-native speaker vibes. I followed them to this building. And you’ll never guess what I found.”

Laramee’s distracted gaze swept the roof behind me. “What’s that?”

I tugged my backpack’s straps, my pulse throbbing in my ears. “An AI named Aiden. He claims he’s my brother.”

“I is,” Aiden said from my pack, his voice muffled.

The cop's eyes bugged out. “Where did you find this AI?”

“In this weird vacuum-gapped chamber,” I said. “He says the FBI put him there. But that’s not the crazy part. Turns out, he’s the dead girl from the dumpster.”

Laramee cocked his head, his eyes hard.

I lowered my voice, even though it was just us and the city lights. “I think he started out in another bot in an Otokotronics lab. But he jumped from his bot into the girl, a bio model like me. Then he kinda stole it and came here looking for his mother.”

“How do you know this AI is telling the truth?”

“I is!” Aiden said.

“Aiden, quiet time. Go to sleep until I say…. He also insists he never had the Talisman, that he doesn’t even know what it is. So much for your reliable source, huh?”

Laramee looked like he was about to be sick. “That’s … not possible.”

Why was I the one who’d figured all this out instead of LYPD’s finest? “Did your source actually say Aiden’s stolen bot had the Talisman?”

Laramee balled the rag in his hand. “They said there were off-books design irregularities in that bot—locations where the Talisman could be embedded and smuggled out. So fast forward to last week. The portal cycle is near its peak and this bot shows up matching the altered design down to the sub-model. Everyone assumes it’s being used to finally smuggle the Talisman out of Otokotronics after your father hid it years ago. All the data lined up.”

That sounded like wishful thinking. “Except for the whole having the Talisman thing. I saw Garrett’s video of her—uh, him—from the alley. Aiden’s bot was sitting there looking just like me, disastrous hair notwithstanding. He handed Garrett a flower, not a Talisman. Aiden swears he never had it.”

“Garrett mentioned that encounter when we talked in your apartment. But that doesn’t prove—” Laramee suddenly froze, the words dying on his lips. “What did you just say?”

My skin prickled in the breeze. “It was a flower. Some sorta creepy star thing.”

“No.” He took a heavy step, his eyes boring into me. “You said she looked like you.”

My cheeks grew hot. Crap. I’d kind of spilled Mom’s little secret. But there was no going back now. “Right down to my weirdly shaped ear. That’s what I’m saying. If Otokotronics had the tech to make two of us, they could’ve made a bunch of the same bots. And whoever was sitting on the Talisman all these years could’ve stuffed it into one of them to smuggle it out, right? What makes you so sure it was Aiden’s bot?” My pulse quickened at Laramee’s stiff silence. Was he upset we’d never looped him in? “My mom was worried you’d blab to Stanton if we told you Aiden’s bot was my twin.”

A cascade of emotions rippled over Laramee’s face—confusion, realization, wonder. He folded a hand over his mouth, his wide eyes regarding me as if for the first time. “He only said you were similar—not that you looked exactly like her. I knew his eyes were going, but …” Laramee went pale, the rag slipping from his hand.

What the hell was he talking about? “Who?” I motioned wildly at the shadows pooling between the HVAC machines. “Who said we’re similar?”

A profound sadness clouded his eyes. “We had the wrong bot. Everyone had the wrong bot. The Talisman wasn’t transited last week. Your father must have sent it fifteen years ago—right under our noses.”

Blood crashed in my ears. “So that’s good, isn’t it? You know where the Talisman might be…. Right?”

Laramee’s gaze finally slunk up to meet mine, his voice stretched thin. “You should never have gone to the basement.”

A chill swept through me, an icicle through my heart. He wasn’t making sense. “Why … Wait a minute. I never said I went to the basement.”

His tensed neck stood out against the city lights, the night air thick between us.

The realization crashed down on me like a pallet of bricks, my throat going dry. Laramee already knew Aiden was locked up there.

“I’m truly sorry you had to be part of this, Ko.”

My breath was shallow, my chest tight. I believed him. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

He stood stock-still, his jaw hewn from stone. “You of all people know how important family is.” The breeze stirred his hair. “I can’t have left them for nothing.”

I stiffened, acutely aware of how vulnerable I was up here, the stairs just steps away. No security guard would be coming to my rescue from the first floor. Agent Summers wasn’t even in the building. “What have you done, Laramee?”

His voice was the barest whisper, his face lined with anguish. “I need to get back to them.” He stepped over the rag.

My heart raced. “W-What’re you doing?”

He kept coming, each footstep deliberate, his hands raised as if trying not to spook a wild animal. “I’m going to need your help here.”

I stepped back, panic rising. “Get away from me!”

But he drew close, his teeth clenched—and lunged.

I loosed a throaty cry, my pulse redlining. Fuck! My backpack was in my hands, ready to swing in defense. But he was too fast, and I went sprawling back. My head smacked the roof with an explosion of pain.

Laramee scrambled astride me, determination and sorrow fixed on his face, his thighs like anvils. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”

I cried out again, the pain flaring behind my eyes, a faint ticking in my ears. No! He smelled of machine lubricant, his breath fit to peel paint. I squirmed against the roof, beat at his chest, my robot hand biting into him.

Wait, electro fingers. The metal clacked against his badge and I somehow found that hidden switch in my brain again, pushing a torrent of energy through my fingertips into a retina-searing crackle of electricity between us.

Laramee vibrated atop me, his eyes rolling back, spittle foaming around his mouth.

My heart leapt—I fricking got him—until the throbbing brilliance guttered out. Oh no. Had I used all the juice? I shoved him off with a broken shout, a foul odor in the air.

He levered up, unsteady, his forehead glistening. Anger blazed in his eyes.

I scrambled back, my pulse trilling. This was crazy. He was acting crazy. “Laramee, what the fuck is your—”

“Get her arms,” he said, his voice like razors—his flinty gaze focused behind me.