Page 16 of Forge the Blade

Ellisandre narrowed their eyes, their spoon pausing halfway to their mouth, full of stewed apples. “What do you think?”

“I think you killed someone.”

Ellisandre shrugged.

“You’re a real bitch sometimes,” Ash muttered. “Yes, I can break in. It’ll be easier if I’m in the building. Do you want me to replace the footage with anything?”

“Just empty hallways would be good. Go back and grab something that they’ve already recorded.”

“Sure.”

“How long will it take you?”

Ash grimaced.

Ellisandre studied the teenager. He was flushing and his toes were pointing inward.

“You’ve already hacked them.”

“Maybe. Fine, yes. I hacked that building like two years ago. And . . I . . . might have left myself a back door. It was part of my Reevesworth project. I was hacking everything Reevesworth back then.”

“And you just happened to not turn that one over when you cut the deal.”

“I forgot. Do you know how many systems I hacked?”

“Just how many did you forget?” Ellisandre made air quotes with their fingers.

Ash twisted himself into pretzel shapes, his elbows wrapping around each other as he gripped his hands between his knees. “You mean ones I left backdoors into?”

“I guess those are the only ones that matter.”

“A few.”

“Like what?”

Ace rattled off the names of a couple of buildings and finished off by whispering the name of a major government agency.

“Ash.” Ellisandre stared at the teen. They’d known he was good. They hadn’t realized how good.

“I thought if I confessed to that one, they’d never let me out of prison. So I just . . . didn’t mention it. They didn’t find it. I haven’t done anything with it. Been too scared to. And it’s not open for anyone else.”

“What did you even do in there?”

“Read emails.” Ash shrugged. “Most of it was boring. There was one user watching porn at work. So I infected his computer.”

Ellisandre’s lips twitched towards a smile. “Ever hacked foreign governments?”

Ash curled up in a ball. “Of course. Those are the ones I practiced on. I didn’t want to get arrested.”

“My former boss would have loved to have gotten his hands on you.”

“So you did kill someone, and you want me to cover it up.”

Ellisandre glared at the teen. “The less you know, the less you can repeat.”

Ash hunched up his shoulders. “I can’t delete what I’m not looking for.”

“Fair point. But none of the murders are on tape.”