It was six a.m. when Nigel got back to his hotel room. He had only gotten a few hours’ sleep, but was rested enough. Jet was stepping out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her.

“Are you hungry?” Jet asked.

“I can eat,” Nigel blurted.

Seeing Jet with just a towel to cover her stirred up something in Nigel. He didn’t want to do anything except be with her.

Snap out of it, Nige!

“Give me a few minutes to get ready,” he said.

“There is an interesting crepe place a few blocks from here. Let’s try it,” Jet told him.

Two hours later Nigel and Jet were finishing breakfast at a cafe near Bryant Park. Nigel had just finished paying when his phone chirped, and he looked down as his lock screen filled with dozens of texts. Most of the texts appeared to have nonsensical patterns of alphanumerical strings. Nigel recognized some information as part of a root certificate, and he recognized the format. He caught glimpses of other texts from some of his contacts, but they got obscured by the dump of other information.

What’s going on?

Nigel showed his phone to Jet. “Did you get any of these?”

Jet checked her phone, then shook her head.

“I don’t know what any of that is, but Melissa has been texting a lot. I had my phone on silent during breakfast,” he said.

Nigel sorted his texts and every message had the same timestamp. After a cursory check of the metadata for the messages Melissa sent, he noticed his phone seemed to have been lagging, since her last message was more than an hour ago.

“I got Melissa’s messages at the same time as these others, so perhaps my cell phone provider is having trouble?” Nigel asked no one in particular.

“Let’s get back to the hotel, I have a strange feeling about this,” Jet said.

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Nigel paid the bill, and then the teens ran the seven blocks back to the hotel; it took them longer than Nigel was expecting, due to the sheer amount of people on the street. He thought about going around some slow pedestrians, but that would require entering the street, and judging by the way these drivers were behaving, he didn’t want to risk getting run over.

“Let’s cut through here,” Jet urged.

Nigel followed Jet through a narrow alley. They dodged several cardboard boxes with sleeping bags and blankets strewn about. His legs shook as people crept out of boxes, crates, and dumpsters. He stared in stunned silence at the homeless hoard as it prepared for battle. The alley seemed to get smaller, and Nigel was beset by many hungry faces. Grimy hands extended toward Nigel, who reached into his pocket for spare change. They swarmed him as he attempted to give a homeless person some coins.

“Come on, Nige,” Jet said.

Nigel pushed through the crowd. Moments later they entered Seventh Avenue, just south of Times Square. He could see the hotel nearby. Despite being less than a block from the hotel, it took more than five minutes to reach the entrance. Melissa and George, her driver, greeted them at the hotel entrance.

“We have a situation—I’ll explain as we drive,” Melissa said.

“I need my stuff,” Nigel said.

“No need, my men packed for you.”

An enormous balding man that didn’t seem to have a neck held out Nigel’s suitcase and backpack.

If my newly crafted interface is damaged . . .

Nigel, Jet, and Melissa filed into the back of the limo as the man who resembled a Neanderthal dressed in a suit loaded their luggage into the trunk.

“Why the urgency?” Nigel asked.

“Something has happened to Brody,” Melissa said. “He’s been attacked.”

“Is he alright?” Jet said.

“I don’t know the full extent of the damage. Jensen did not give many details. But I do know is last night, after we left, our medical facility was raided. Brody was injured and Treeka is missing, along with her sister.”

“Just before we saw you, I received hundreds of text messages,” Nigel said.

“Like these?” Melissa said, handing her phone to Nigel. The messages looked similar to Nigel’s but were different.

“What about you, Jet, any messages?” Nigel asked.

“Nothing! What could it be?”

“I’m not sure, but it looks like a core dump.”

“A core dump?” Melissa said.

“When a server crashes, it creates diagnostic files and writes them to disk. The purpose is for programmers to analyze it to figure out what’s wrong,” Nigel explained.

“Will it help if you fetch the messages from my phone?” Melissa asked.

“Yes, but I’ll need to connect it to my laptop to retrieve them. I’ll need the phone and some time.”

“Let’s do that, but we need to secure our facility first.”

Moments later, the limo dropped them off at the rear entrance of Melissa’s new medical facility. It looked like the intruder kicked the door out from the inside. Blood was smeared on the walls, and it pooled in several areas on the floor. Brody was on the floor holding his stomach, bleeding from his wounds. A broken and bloody cellphone appeared nearby.

“What happened?” Jet asked as she hurried to Brody.

“Attacked by Meeka . . .” Brody trailed off as he lost consciousness.