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Of course, her mom started it. Her mom heard her get up at like four a.m. to pull their scam with the ad-bot. Her mom crawled out of bed to confront her before Dante could get out the door. Her mom knew she was up to no good, like she always seemed to know.

That damned sixth sense mother thing.

She knew she was going out with Pip and Mavis to do something stupid, something illegal, and she tried to stop Dante from leaving.

She yelled about how Dante already got picked up by the Feds once for her “computer crap.” That she nearly destroyed her future and any chance of getting a job.

Dante derailed everything her mom threw at her.

She called her a “middle-aged, has-been hootch” who thought she was being so sly, coming in at 2 a.m. from “dates” with losers she met in shitty neighborhood bars.

Thinking about that now, Dante felt her stomach wrench in smaller and tighter knots, until she could barely breathe.

Of course, she couldn’t hide forever.

They found her, just like she knew they would.

She got hit with bucketloads of shitty “concern” when she wouldn’t come upstairs, and later, when she wouldn’t come out of the head or answer anyone who tried to talk to her through the door. They tried sweet-talking her, tough-talking her, reasoning with her.

They tried sending light things that screwed with her head and her mood.

They tried guilting her about how bad her mom wanted to see her.

Her mom never came, though.

Vik never came, either.

Tenzi came. Mika came. Neela, Anale, and Illeg came. Jax came later, when Dante could tell it was getting dark out and her stomach was starting to hurt. She just wanted them all to go away. She was embarrassed and pissed off and just wanted them to leave her alone.

Not long after she thought that loudly enough, they did.

The hallway outside got really quiet.

Another hour or so after that, Dante couldn’t stand it anymore.

She was hungry, and it was slowly sinking in that she couldn’t stay in there forever, and her mom really wasn’t coming for her.

She wished she was an icer and could yell at her mom in her head.

Anale told her that her mom really wanted to see her, but that started to feel like bullshit, too. So Dante left the head, and when she saw no one in the hall, she shoved her hands in her pockets and thought loudly at the Vik-man, knowing somehow he was probably still around, since he was the only one who didn’t come knock on the door.

Where is she, Vik?she thought loudly.

When no one answered, she hooked her link around her ear.

She opened the channel and pinged him that way.

He sounded strange when he picked up.

Almost like, stern.

Very unlike the Vik-man, even apart from the colorless avatar he showed her, a bare stick figure drawn with white light over a black background. Dante knew icers were weird about family and respect to elders so maybe it was something like that. Maybe she’d actually managed to get the Vik-man pissed off at her.

“What is it you need from me, cousin?” Vikram asked.

“Where’s my mom?”

There was a silence.