Prefect straightened one of his suit cuffs. “How has your assignment been going?”
I gave him a flat look. Prefect hadn’t told me anything about my assignment. He said it was to keep me on my toes. I thought he enjoyed his secrets the way other men savored fine wines. “It’s fine. I’ve been at school for two days. I befriended Becca, like you told me to. And today, she invited me back to her place.”
“Good,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, silver lighter. “You need to get back into that town house. And while you’re there, you will use this.” He flicked open the lighter. Inside were two buttons. “Press them at the same time. Hold down for five seconds.” He held it out. I went to take it, but then he pulled his hand back.
“Do not,” he said, putting emphasis on every word, “use this anywhere but the town house. Do not use it here. And do not use it near traffic unless you wish to add several more murder charges to your list.”
He held it out a second time.
I didn’t take it. Suddenly that lighter looked rather ominous.
“Prefect,” I said slowly, “is that a bomb?”
He wrinkled his nose. “No, of course not. Well, not in the usual sense.”
“Not in the usual sense?” I crossed my arms. “I am not touching that until you tell me what it is. And I’m definitely not setting it off around Becca and her dad until I know it’s not going to hurt them.”
“It’s not going to hurt them,” said Prefect. “Ipromise.” He held out the lighter again. “It’s an EMP device. A small one—its range will extend about two thousand square feet.”
An EMP device. I’d heard of them but never seen one in real life. “It’ll blow out every piece of tech they own,” I said. “Phones, cars, computers, virtual assistants—all of it.”
“Exactly,” said Prefect. “There will probably be some spillover in the neighboring town houses, depending on where you set it off. But we’ve arranged a power outage to take place on that block tomorrow afternoon. A truck will back into a pole. No one will notice the EMP. Not at first.”
“Not until they go to turn stuff on and it doesn’t work,” I said.
“And they’ll blame the outage,” said Prefect. “Power surges, that sort of thing. You will not be held responsible.”
This tiny device was the deadliest weapon I’d ever held. It could absolutely kill, even if indirectly. Prefect had been right about not setting it off near traffic; with a press of two buttons, I could cause a huge pileup. “Why?” I asked quietly. “Why are you trusting me with something this powerful?”
Prefect looked as though he would’ve preferred not to answer. He had all the paternal warmth of a shark, and I still didn’t know how he’d ended up as the handler for the only underage wraith. Maybe he had drawn the short straw.
“Because we need someone no one will suspect,” said Prefect. “Someone has to set off the EMP.”
“And I’ve been invited in,” I said, holding up the lighter. “So I’m a Trojan horse and this is the Greek army.”
“An imperfect metaphor, but not incorrect.” Prefect straightened his shoulders. “Mr. Bergvall is a programmer and engineer. But he is also an information broker, and a very powerful one.”
“Does he sell engineering secrets?” I raised my brows.
Prefect’s mouth tightened. “He sells spybots to private individuals and corporations.”
“That’s not illegal,” I pointed out.
“No,” said Prefect. “But his newest design contains a sentient AI.”
At once, mental images from a thousand different films ran through my mind: robot invasions, killer bots, swarms of intelligent technology murdering their creators. I swallowed. “Sentient AI doesn’t exist.”
Prefect’s expression soured. “It’s outlawed by the Pevek Convention, but that isn’t the same as not existing. This spybot is incredibly dangerous, Augusta. We cannot allow it to fall into the wrong hands.”
I thought of Mr. Bergvall. He had seemed nice enough—I couldn’t imagine him designing a robot that might end humanity. So of course that meant he was the most likely person to do it. “I’m going to kill the spybot with this,” I said, holding up the lighter.“Along with the computers he used to build it, any virtual backups, etc.” My thumb stroked the lighter. “Tomorrow afternoon, then?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Prefect agreed. He walked to the door, then hesitated with his hand above the doorknob. “This is your first assignment, Augusta,” he said, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear. “There are those in ISD who believe an underage wraith is a liability. If you do not prove them wrong, I cannot protect you.”
I swallowed. Translation:Get this mission done or else.
“I understand,” I said.
It was easy to convince Becca to let me come over again.
