The money transferred within seconds of Ewan authorizing it. Jordie’s viddy kept playing with the kid ranting on and on about things, but the moment the transfer was approved, the screen went blank.

The comm pinged with an incoming call.

“Hey, Mr. Donahue,” Jordie said with a grin, acting for all the world as though nothing was wrong. “Thanks for the credits.”

“Jordie, I’m so disappointed in you,” Ewan said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “What are you thinking? Blackmail? What’s going on? This can’t just be about me not approving your work proposal.”

Jordie’s expression turned serious. “It is, though.”

“Why?” Frustrated, Ewan tapped the screen off to the side, trying to send a message to his security team so they could track Jordie’s location.

“Because you’re the only one with the pieces I need, Mr. Donahue. See, it’s like this.” Jordie shifted around in his seat. He wore the same clothes from the viddy message, and the background looked the same. Either he hadn’t changed his clothes in a while, entirely possible if he was on the candy, or he’d made the viddy today. “I have this amazing plan, a truly terrific idea, really great. It’s going to be huge. Just huge. Make me a lot of money, you a lot of money, it will make the investors a lot of money—”

“Investors?” Ewan sent the message, but so far, the team wasn’t responding.

“Yeah, yeah, of course, I need investors. What I did with you in the lab was great and all, a real apprenticeship. I learned a lot, so much. I’ll always be grateful, like my mother said I should be. Did I tell you she always told me to be grateful?”

“You did.” Ewan tapped another message to the team, urging them to try harder.

Jordie’s gaze flicked toward the lower corner of the screen. “What are you doing, Mr. Donahue? Calling the cops?”

“No. Of course not.” Ewan sat back.

“It won’t matter if you do, not really. The investors are really interested in what I have for them, Mr. Donahue. They’ve set me up in a terrific work space, really amazing, I mean no offense to the lab you gave us to use, it was top-notch, but you put limits on it. I guess you felt you had to, right? Like, teach us responsibility and stuff? This new space, I have everything I need to do what I want. There’s a problem though, Mr. Donahue, and I’m sure you’ll understand it, even if you’re not sympathetic.” Jordie patted the pocket of his shirt as though reassuring himself something was inside it. His fingers circled the fabric before it looked like he had to force himself to put his hand back down.

“How long have you been off the candy?” Ewan asked him.

Jordie frowned. “I don’t need candy, Mr. Donahue. I’m perfectly fine without it.”

“Of course you are. Everyone is,” Ewan told him. “But how long has it been since you had any?”

Jordie’s frown turned into a curl of his lip, a true scowl, his brow furrowed and eyes gone narrow and mean. “You haven’t even asked me why you should understand, why you should care about this as much as I do.”

A tiny, silent ping alerted Ewan that the security team had locked a trace on the source of Jordie’s original transmission, but that they couldn’t get a handle on the current one. He’s in the same place, he typed. Wearing same clothes and same background. Check all known locations.

“Shiny fine, Jordie. Tell me, why should I care?” Ewan asked as he finished typing.

“Because my tech is going to literally change the way the world works, at least for people who can afford it.” Jordie snorted a hard burst of laughter. “I mean, that’s the way it always works, huh? Rich people get things. I’m not complaining, I mean, look how I grew up.”

Ewan kept his voice calm and expression neutral. “We’ve gone over this already. The tech you’re talking about is unethical, Jordie. There are complications far beyond what you’ve appeared to think about. This tech . . . it isn’t just an experience enhancer, it’s not the equivalent of an upgraded adventure VR. You’re talking about completely rewiring people’s memories. Permanently. The far-reaching repercussions of that are horrific, not to mention the applications of tech like that when used against someone’s will. Jordie, listen to me . . .”

Ewan took a breath, trying to make sure he waited until the kid focused on him, but Jordie didn’t seem capable of it. “Tech like that never falls into the right hands. It never stays safe from people who want to use it for bad reasons. Never.”

Jordie’s fingers crept up again to stroke his shirt pocket. He shook his head. “They’re going to pay me a lot of money not to care about that, Mr. Donahue. Let’s face it, you did the same thing. You got paid a lot of money not to care.”

“That’s not true. I thought the tech I invented would be used to help people, Jordie. When I found out that it could be used to cause more harm than good, I did everything I could to stop the use of it. I lobbied against it. You know that.” Ewan looked again at the small ping coming in from his security team. They’d locked into a location. Did he want to take action?

Not yet, he sent, along with another command to find out where Nina was.

“Then you turned around and changed your mind. You and my mother.” Jordie burst into barking laughter that bit off abruptly as he leaned in to stare once more directly into the camera. “You and my mother, what a joke, Mr. Donahue. She’ll sign her name to anything that will make it seem like she cares about something other than herself. Really, she wants her name in all the gossip viddies, and she wants to get invited to all the parties, and most of all, Mr. Donahue, she wants to snag herself another rich husband. A guy like you, probably. It must’ve burned her a lot when she found out you and Ms. Bronson were a thing.”

Ewan had never had the impression that Katrinka Dev had been interested in him romantically. In his experience, women like her had no problem letting him know if he was the target of their affections. Her personal reasons for supporting him in changing the laws they’d worked so hard for weren’t any of his business.

“I don’t much like my mother most of the time, Mr. Donahue,” Jordie said now, before Ewan could reply. “But I guess this time, I did something she’d like.”

Ewan paused in watching for a response from the security team. “What did you do?”

“Here’s the thing, Mr. Donahue. The thing. Is.” Jordie shuddered, eyes closing, and reached for the small package in his pocket. He slipped out a few of the brightly colored tablets and held them up to the camera. “I like candy, Mr. Donahue. It’s so good, isn’t it? Makes you feel like you can do anything. But I don’t need it. Right? Because it’s not really addictive, they’ve done all the studies, they’ve proven over and over again that any kind of addiction is all psychological. Not physical. You only feel like you need it, Mr. Donahue. Right?”

Ewan’s guts twisted again. “Jordie, why don’t you let me help you? Tell me where you are. I can send someone—”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Donahue. I’m not sure where I am. They brought me here sedated, so I couldn’t know. They set me up in this lab and stuff.” He jerked his chin to the side. Then he put the tablets on his tongue, holding it out for Ewan to see as the candy rapidly dissolved into a multicolored mess. “They want me to do my work. But of course, there’s something I need from you that isn’t credits.”

“What is it that you need from me, Jordie?” Ewan’s patience had run out. He was no longer able to make any pretense that he wasn’t typing messages while he spoke to the kid.

“The freaking passwords, Mr. Donahue. I thought I could crack them, but you sure do know how to encrypt stuff hard.”

“The passwords for what?”

“For the upgrade tech. I can get the specs, but I can’t start working on my tech without yours as the base. I tried, Mr. Donahue.” Jordie shook his head. “I tried with the base-level tech, the enhancement stuff, but you know, you can’t update an operating system by skipping the interim updates. I need those passwords.”

“There is no upgrade tech. It was only theoretical,” Ewan said even as the sourness on his tongue reminded him he was lying.

Jordie laughed cruelly. “Not according to Wanda Crosson.”

“Wanda went to prison because of her obsession with that tech, Jordie.”

“I know.” Jordie shrugged. “Where do you think I learned about where it was hidden?”

“So you’re the one who burned down the lab,” Ewan said.

Jordie nodded. “Sure. But you don’t keep the information there, huh? Just in case someone like me came along, I guess.”

“I never anticipated someone like you.” That was the truth and not a compliment, although Jordie appeared to take it that way.

“I need that upgrade tech, Mr. Donahue. I can’t finish mine without it. You wouldn’t give it to me. I tried a few times to get at it, but I couldn’t manage, got interrupted. And it was harder than I thought it would be. So I had to go to some people who’d have the ability to get it. To steal it, yes, it’s true. I had to, Mr. Donahue.” Jordie’s expression twisted into a semblance of sincerity and righteous smugness. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I think you know I’d be lying.”

Ewan ran cold. A stream of responses from his security team had started scrolling up his screen. All negatives.

“What do you mean, Jordie, that you stole it? How can you steal something that doesn’t exist?”

Jordie laughed so loud and hard that Ewan caught a glimpse of his candy-stained tongue. He stopped abruptly, looking fiercely into the camera’s eye. “It exists. Wanda Crosson told me where to find it, and I did.”

“How did you steal it, Jordie?” Ewan was already tapping another series of orders to his security team, ordering them to find this kid’s location along with any other information they had on him.

“Well,” Jordie said with a shrug. “I stole Nina. And that’s really the same thing, isn’t it?”