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H is fingers itch to get out the transponder he thinks he’s cleverly hidden in his pocket. He still thinks there’s a chance I’ll just walk away and let him play the big-boy games.

“Hey, kid, do you know Jane—” I start.

“Don’t fucking try to recruit me to some weak-ass group not willing to do what it really takes to make change,” he snarls.

Okay, touched a sore spot there. I level him with a look. “Nothing I can do to stop you, huh?”

His grin is smug. That’s a no , then.

I tap the stone step with my fingernail, thinking. “Let me tell you how to run a con.”

He stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind, the smirk melting away in his confusion at my non sequitur.

“You want to steal something? You could be a ghost, but that’ll only work for so long. Eventually, you’re going to find someone who sees you.”

Someone with razor eyes.

“And when you’re seen,” I continue, “you have to change tactics. You have to do it all in front of everyone.”

The kid’s smirk twitches up again. I was right. He’s desperate to not be invisible. But he doesn’t get it, not yet.

I lean in closer. “Part one. Distract.” I waggle my fingers in front of his face with my left hand, reach for his pocket with my right.

He grabs my wrist, fingers hard, digging into the soft space over my veins, pressing into the tiny, thin bones. “I’m not that dumb.”

“Doubt that,” I say, yanking my hand free. “Besides, part two. You can steal anything in the galaxy if you make people think it’s their idea to give it to you in the first place.”

He rakes his eyes over me, not trying to hide his disgust. “You don’t talk like one of them.”

One of the elite, he means.

“Because I’m not, moron.” But he’s wrong. I may not be used to wearing silk and gems, but I learned how to steal from people like those in the crowd below. This kid just doesn’t realize that people like Fetor get what they want because they’ve convinced people like him it’s their right. “I’m from Earth,” I say. “Like you.”

“Why do you even care what I’m doing, then?” Sullen and petulant; what a charmer.

I shrug. “Not a big fan of things going boom.” At least, not when I’m not the one holding the detonator.

“I’m not doing anything like that,” he says, shaking his head so much, his hair flops around.

I lift an eyebrow so high, Rian would be proud.

That thought sends a chill down my spine. If Rian strolls up these steps, he’s going to think I’m working with the kid.

“Wait,” I say, shaking my head and refocusing. If the transponder’s not linked to explosives—the usual Jarra MO...“What’s the transponder for?”

He finally pulls it out, done pretending. “I’m just messing with the holo display.”

Aw, that’s cute. I got started the same way, hacking digi screens to send a message.

The chimes clang again, a little louder. Time to take your seats, they say. The show is starting soon.

It’s just . . .

The kid’s definitely working with the Jarra. This plan has got their bloody fingerprints all over it. “If you’re just hacking the show, let me see the transponder,” I say.

His holo specs whirr. By now, I bet they’ve pulled up a file on me, and this kid is hearing about my stunt a few years back, the messed-up ad sys.

Who better to appreciate his stunt than someone who knows code?

He shrugs like he doesn’t care about what’s going to happen next. The kid shoves the black box into my waiting hands. There’s a lift to his chin.

He’s proud of this, of himself. That’s how the Jarra get ones like him. Find the kids who are mad, make them feel important. Promise them recognition only when the job is done. This kid’s desperate for someone— anyone —to see him, really see him. He wants to light a spark just so someone will see him in the dark.

But it’s not safe to play with fire, not when you don’t know how deep the burns can go.

“Where you from?” I ask, flipping the box over.

“Austral— Wait, don’t do that!”

I flick open the back with my fingernail and look at the circuitry inside. Kid didn’t make this transponder; it’s too neat. Every part here was bought with purpose, not scrapped together.

I tap my cuff against the receiver, activating the wireless programming I keep ready. This wouldn’t work for anything much more complicated, but scanning code isn’t hard.

“Here, hold this,” I say, tossing the black lid of the transponder to the kid as I reach inside my reticule and pull out my small data pad, linking it through my cuff to the transponder. In moments, info flashes on the screen.

“What are you—” he starts, leaning closer.

It’s just code, and my eyes skim over the illuminated series of commands. For all the advancements in the universe, it’s kind of amazing how simple code can be, how we can cross the galaxy at light speed with binary, using the same string of commands that made that clunky red telephone upstairs.

This is a light show. Linked up to the holos that are going to be on display.

Downstairs, I hear a female voice call for attention over the loudspeakers. She’s thanking the gala attendees and announcing how much has been raised for Sol-Earth. I can almost visualize her on the acrylic stage, gesturing grandly behind the clear podium, the black curtain behind her just waiting to part.

“Give that back,” the kid demands.

“You’re not activating shit until Fetor starts talking,” I say, still reading the code. It’s all linked to the display Fetor’s going to give—holo projections of Earth.

And—

There it is.

Right after the display announces Fetor’s saved Earth with his nanobots, which will be released soon.

“You code this?” I ask the kid.

“Yeah.” He’s all chuffed.

I tilt the screen to him. “You code all this?”

His eyes scan the screen. He pauses. I watch his lenses contract to pinpricks. He points to where the code starts to go awry. “What’s—”

“That’s the part where things go boom.”

He snatches the screen on my data pad, scrolling through it. My grip is tight around the transponder, even though he doesn’t reach for it again.

It’s clever coding, I’ll give them that. It starts off with nothing more than a prank—that’s the kid’s writing; I can see the clunky style of it. The holos were going to showcase the nanobots, and the code is linked to make them display a mockery, swarming the holo representations of the bots into an obscene body part pointed at Fetor’s head. I can honestly appreciate that bit.

Seamlessly wrapped around that code, though, is something more insidious.

Every single element of tonight’s event has had to go past security, through scanners, and beyond the careful eye of Rian and his people. Any physical bomb would have been caught.

With all the live feeds that will surely be pointed at the “glitching” holos, that’s going to be a lot of eyes when the hover stage Strom Fetor is on explodes.

“That was a smart touch,” I say. Credit where it’s due.

“What?” The kid’s voice is all hollow. He’s starting to realize how deep he’s in the shit.

“There’s no bomb, no explosives. You just programmed the hover to overload and ignore the failsafes.” Nothing to smuggle in except a transponder—that’s how they got past all the security. The transponder’s innocuous on its own; if anyone did bother to check the kid’s pockets, it wouldn’t have triggered anything or shown up on any scanner. And there’s nothing to detect on the stage itself. I’m certain Rian had it examined a million times. There was nothing for him to find except some override code in a kid’s pocket.

We had to take Fetor’s tech offline, Phoebe said before. They needed the kid on site to activate with a transponder; the Jarra couldn’t hack into a system not on the network. Slip in the code to make the stage itself fail, and bam. Fireworks. The deaths of Strom Fetor and anyone who happened to be beneath the stage caught on live feed, broadcast to trillions of people across all four worlds.

“I...” The kid’s voice trails off.

And I get it. I do. Fetor blowing up on stage in front of a lot of live feeds is . . .

Kind of appealing; not gonna lie.

But it’ll fuck up all my plans.

The kid’s hacking means the whole stage will overheat to catastrophic levels soon after Fetor starts speaking, and the stage will literally crash and burn—which, again, is a chef’s-kiss level of awesome if only it didn’t mean that (a) some innocents below would get hurt too, and (b) I have bigger metaphorical fish to metaphorically fry than literally frying Strom Fetor.

I sigh. I’m going to have to stop this from happening. “Murdering the richest man in the galaxy on live feeds? You’ll never escape.”

His eyes go wide. “I’ve gotta get out of here now,” he says. “I have a family—my mom...” His voice cracks, and that cracks at my own little shriveled heart. Boys always want their mommas when they realize they fucked up.

I grab the back of the transponder and put it back on the box, careful not to push the big red button that will emit the transmission that will overwrite the failsafes of the hover stage. I keep a tight grip on the box, though; no way am I letting the kid have it back. “It’s fine,” I say, placating him. “Just don’t start the sequence. Go down, steal some good food, go home, and quit working for assholes who think you’re disposable.”

He shakes his head, hair whipping around his face. “You don’t understand,” he says all in a rush, eyes wide. “I already pushed the button. The sequence is already timed and programmed. I heard your shoes on the steps—I pushed the button then, before you got up to me. It’s already overwritten the code in the stage. As soon as Fetor starts speaking, the holos are going to change, and then...”

And then boom.