Jasper eyed the two android bodies propped against the wall on either side of Thea as she approached her table. “That’s a lot of typing you’ve got going on there. Is breaking into the sphere really that intense?”
“Huh? Oh, no, this is something else. I finished with the sphere a while ago.” Thea pointed to where it sat at the edge of her table. Her eyes stayed on the laptop screen in front of her.
“Well, what was on it?”
“Give me three seconds.” Thea tapped something on the screen.
“What are you doing?” Jasper’s gaze moved to the androids. “And why are there two robot bodies instead of one?”
“I’m making another A.I.” Thea turned the laptop to face Jasper. “But you wanted to hear about Aymes, right?”
“Why would you—okay, sure, tell me what you found.”
“It starts a few months ago.” Thea pointed to a spot on the screen. The start of a message log. “Here. Ringmaster sends Aymes a message saying he knows about his powers and is willing to train him if Aymes helps him out.”
“How did he know about Aymes’s powers?” Jasper asked.
“Aymes asked the same thing. Ringmaster said something vague about being able to sense people with his same power.”
“Which begs the question: where did their powers come from?” Ringmaster was so determined to get his hands on the lab records that Jasper thought it could be related, but Aymes couldn’t be a lab experiment, if he’d been with his mother since his birth.
“Oh, and we were right about this race being for Aymes’s sake,” Thea said, scrolling through the log. “He sent Ringmaster a message saying he had a math test and the science fair and whatnot, and that he needed to be here for a few days. Ringmaster actually tried to convince him to drop out.”
Jasper’s eyes narrowed. She scanned the screen. “He did?”
“Ringmaster told Aymes that he wouldn’t need school if he stuck with him. But Aymes insisted. He said the only reason he was helping Ringmaster anyway was because Ringmaster agreed to get Aymes money for college. In fact, that was one of the first things Aymes asked about.”
“Eh, can’t fault him there.” Jasper said. “University’s expensive. Becoming a supervillain to pay for it is understandable.”
Thea shrugged. “Anyway, Aymes’s software isn’t modified the way Ringmaster’s stuff is, so I was able to sneak in a tracker we can use to read his future messages without triggering any alarms. It’s unlikely he’ll ever notice it.”
“Great.” Jasper looked up. “Oh look, here he comes now.”
“Before you go, could I have Mia’s chip?” Thea asked. “I’m ready to put her in the android.”
“Promise you’ll be careful with her.” Jasper pulled out her sphere and ejected the A.I. chip. “And the new A.I., whatever you’re calling it.”
“Chloe,” Thea said. “And yes, I’ll be careful with them. Even though they’re A.I., not living things that can feel emotion.”
“They might not be able to feel bad, but I can and would if anything happened to them.”
Aymes reached his table. Thea waved her hand to catch his attention, then pointed at the sphere. “This was on the floor by your chair. Is it yours?”
“Yeah, it is. Thanks.” Aymes took it and frowned. “Weird, I thought I had it with me.”
“Thea, are you going to come help me with the ramp thing?” Jasper asked after Aymes turned away.
“I’m already putting the flyers everywhere I possibly can on local net pages,” Thea told her. “And do you really need more than two or three people for the job?”
“No, but I thought I’d invite you so you could spend some quality time with your family.”
“Right. Quality time stealing a carrier vehicle with a ramp. That I will set up for you to control remotely so that only you can use it, in order to win a race that you really don’t need to win, but insist on winning anyway because you have the desire to prove yourself to a bunch of criminals?”
Jasper blinked. “Okay. Have fun with your robots.”