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“
Are you getting this?” Nadia said, seemingly at random.
“Yeah, I’m getting it,” Margaret answered next to her.
“Oh, you bet,” Taina said in Nadia’s ear at the exact same time. “Priya and Ying are hitting A.I.M. agents near the servers, Shay’s reporting more outside. They’re gonna need an assist.”
“Then let’s do this,” Nadia said, balling her hands into fists. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Margaret do the same. In perfect sync, they leapt from the ground—and disappeared.
“You allowed them to do this!” Nadia shouted as she and Margaret pushed an A.I.M agent down the spiral staircase together. He toppled backward, his idiotic bucket hat popping off as it hit the ground. Pretty useless as a helmet, then, huh?
“I didn’t know they were going to brainwash my entire client base!” Margaret waved her hands and vines shot through the air, wrapping the other two A.I.M. agents up and tossing them out of the girls’ way. Nadia and Margaret leapt down the center of the staircase, using their wings to slow their fall.
“What did you expect from A.I.M.?!” Nadia shouted up at her former mentor. “They literally want to overthrow all governments!”
“Most governments are terrible!” Margaret landed next to Nadia and began sprinting through the office. “Servers this way!”
“More agents incoming,” Shay’s voice warned Nadia.
“Monica’s on the comms, searching for you,” added Taina.
“Got it,” she confirmed. Nadia sprinted after the older woman. “That still doesn’t mean you should take money from techno-anarchists, Margaret!” They were running through Margaret’s aesthetically bland white-and-birch cubicles, right toward another wall of A.I.M. agents.
“I know!” Margaret’s voice cut off as she shrank. “I know,” she said again, popping back to full size and using her momentum to clothesline two of the agents. They dropped like bricks. “As soon as we started working together—talking about your lists and Hank and your dreams—I knew I’d made a mistake!”
Nadia hit her button and shrank. She waited a moment and Margaret appeared next to her. Nadia grasped Margaret’s hands in hers and used her wings to spin the two of them in a circle, faster and faster and faster, until—
“Now!” she yelled over the rushing air. Both Nadia and Margaret hit their buttons and sprang back to full size, a devastating pas de deux whirlwind in the middle of the office. Plants went flying. Files and phones were upended. A.I.M. agents went crashing through floor-to-ceiling windows. Not too bad, if Nadia did say so herself.
“Down one more floor!” Margaret yelled, bolting for the emergency exit. Nadia followed, and Margaret sealed the door behind them with plants—just like Priya.
She stopped inside the door and grabbed Nadia by the shoulder. Nadia stopped to look Margaret in the eye, through their helmets. “I’m sorry, Nadia,” Margaret said. She sounded sincere. “I tried to get too big too fast and do too much at once, and I think you know how that feels.”
Nadia didn’t move. She didn’t want to admit it, even though they both knew it was true. “You were still using VERA to trick people into buying things they didn’t need. You still partnered with A.I.M.” Nadia shrugged off Margaret’s hand.
“I know.” Margaret retracted her helmet. “I left the door wide open for Bain.” Someone started pounding on the emergency exit behind them, but Margaret’s plants held true. “I just wanted to tell you that I know I screwed up.”
Nadia looked at the straining plants and back at Margaret. The truth was that she wasn’t entirely certain that Margaret was apologizing for the right reasons. Sure, Margaret was obviously upset that A.I.M. used an exploit in her own code to gain access to her system. But she didn’t seem that remorseful about including the subliminal messaging in the first place. VERA could do a lot of good, it was true; but nothing was worth robbing people of their free will. Nothing.
Nadia grew up in a place where freedom was a joke, a story Americans told themselves so they could sleep at night. And she knew this country wasn’t perfect. But the people here had provided her with a second chance. No matter how much she wanted to change the world, she would never ever ever sacrifice her values or the free will of those around her in order to effect that change. That would make her just as bad as A.I.M.
Or the Krasnaya Komnata.
Margaret wanted so badly to prove to Hank, and to her father, and even to Robert Bain that she knew what she was doing. That she didn’t need their approval. That she was going to change the world. But, for once, it looked like Hank’s instincts were right. Margaret’s motives were suspect. You couldn’t prove anything to the people who’d doubted you in your past; they would never be able to give you the validation you were searching for. You could never know how someone long-gone would feel about Attack of the Clones.
And it didn’t really matter. Your past was your past. The only thing you could control was how you reacted to it, and what you did next. But Margaret hadn’t realized that; she had been so focused on the big picture that she’d lost sight of the people she was going to have to step on in order to make it. She had been willing to hurt people on her way to the top. And that was unacceptable.
The slamming was getting louder. They had to go. Now.
“You did screw up,” Nadia agreed. “You can start making up for it now, by destroying VERA’s servers and helping me save my friends.”
Margaret was already running down the stairs.
“Next left!” shouted Margaret, taking the corner at breakneck speed. She and Nadia were almost at the server room—almost able to shut VERA down once and for all. They were running out of time; only fifteen minutes stood between them and A.I.M.’s brainwashing signal. It was now or never.
Nadia skidded around the corner and immediately shot two Stings into the ceiling. Drywall rained down around them, clouding the air with dust. It bought Nadia just enough time to hit her trusty button, shrink to Wasp size, and assess the situation. She flew forward through the dust and scanned the area.
The door to the server room was open in front of her, cold air pouring out of it and chilling the hall. Inside, Monica and her A.I.M. agents were trying desperately to keep the system running, despite interference from Ying and Priya. Vines spilled in tangles over the entire corridor, stemming from Priya’s two pots and backlit by a chorus of blinking red lights that caught the dust and made for a deeply eerie haze. The vines held the door open, pinning several A.I.M. agents to the walls.
