It wasn’t Jasper talking loudly in the kitchen that woke Grace, nor was it the pots banging together. Despite crashing hard her first day in the apartment, she’d struggled to sleep through her second night and found herself lying awake long before Jasper’s team began to move around the apartment.
Still, by the time she mustered the energy to get dressed and enter the kitchen, the others had already made good progress on preparing for their second day at Starchatter. Thea had two smartspheres and a tablet on the counter in front of her, and she alternated between typing on the tablet, reading text on the first smartsphere, and watching a video on the second. Holly had some over-ear headphones on, blasting technopunk music loud enough for everyone else to hear. Dax sifted through a pile of clothes while taking occasional bites of a nutrient bar.
“—and that’s why I’m banned from the diner on Quartz Way,” Jasper was saying. “And I still haven’t figured out their secret sauce recipe.”
Grace slid onto the stool next to Thea. “What’s she talking about?”
Thea shrugged. Dax glanced up from the clothes. “Sorry,” he said. “I was listening for a minute, but I got distracted trying to find a work shirt.”
Holly slid off her headphones. “Probably drank too much Nova Cora. She’s running purely on sugar and caffeine and whatever other garbage she’s managed to cram into her body since waking up.”
Jasper paused and leaned toward them. Grace froze, wondering if she’d be upset at Holly’s comment.
“Coffee, Angel?” Jasper asked.
“I’ll just have water, thanks,” Grace told her. “Were you saying something?”
“Was I? I think I was just going through the plan for today.” Jasper chugged the rest of her drink and slammed the mug down on the counter. “All right, I want everyone in the car in ten minutes!”
“She’ll level out in about five,” Dax assured Grace.
Chaos followed, a hurried mix of cleaning and throwing on shoes and tossing things into bags. Grace somehow wound up with a piece of toast in her hand. Dax put makeup on her face before darting off to the back of the apartment. Someone’s smartsphere blasted a news station that was repeating Governor Starr’s statement from the day before. Thea juggled more devices every time Grace glanced her way.
Finally, Jasper gave Grace a push toward the door, and then they were all leaving. Today’s drive to Starchatter was less terrifying, though at this point Grace was starting to think she’d become desensitized to near death experiences.
“I’ll try to scan Attom’s messages and put together a list of everyone who’s invited to the party,” Thea said as they walked into the office.
“Great,” Jasper told her. “Holly, Dax, keep an eye out for anyone suspicious.”
“Besides us, you mean?” Holly asked.
“Duh. Angel, stick with me. We’re going to—”
“Galax!” Attom shouted from the other side of the office. “Come here! I want to talk to you.”
“Ha, someone’s in trouble,” Jasper sang.
Holly rolled her eyes. “Jasper, you’re Galax.”
“I know that!” With an indignant huff, Jasper left to meet Attom at the edge of the room.
Holly sighed. “Either she’s in trouble, which means the whole job is in trouble, or Attom has taken a legitimate interest in her work.”
“That would be good, right?” Grace asked. “He might give her an invitation to the party.”
“Anyone who likes Jasper has something seriously wrong with them,” Holly muttered. She headed for an aisle of cubicles. Dax and Thea dispersed as well, leaving Grace to stand awkwardly by herself. In a panic, she ran to catch up to Jasper.
Before she could get Jasper’s attention, Jasper disappeared into Attom’s office, and the door clicked shut. Grace paused outside. Should she go in? She settled for waiting. Hoping to appear casual, she leaned against the wall by the door.
The conversation on the other side was just loud enough to reach her through the door. “Your article got us more views than everything else published yesterday combined,” Attom said.
Thea had helped with that. She’d spent the prior afternoon pushing the article on as many social media pages and netsites as she could manage. But the article was enticing enough that it had gained a fair bit of momentum on its own, too.
Attom continued. “I have a new project I want to test, and I think you could make it work. And if it doesn’t, you’re just an intern, so I don’t have to take any responsibility.”
“Gladly,” Jasper replied. “What is it?”
“People today don’t want to read long articles. They’re scrolling through their feeds waiting for something to catch their eye, and they want to see videos. Something they can watch mindlessly. We already have videos on our site—hacks, tips, product reviews—but I’d like to branch into more video journalism.”
“And what do you want me to report on?”
“Whatever. Just make it informative. And entertaining. And concise. By journalism, I mean anything that people will spread around.”
Jasper agreed to the task, and that seemed to be the end of the conversation. Grace took a step back from the door.
It swung open a heartbeat later. “I’ve been promoted,” Jasper bragged. “I need you to be my camera person. We’re making a video for Starchatter, and I’m going to use it as a cover to get supplies for the party.”
“Supplies?”
“Yep.” Jasper set off toward the exit.
No sense in asking for an explanation. Grace jogged to Jasper’s side. “I don’t have any filming experience though.”
“All you have to do is hold the camera.” Jasper grabbed a coat off the rack by the entrance. One she definitely hadn’t been wearing when they arrived. Seeing Grace’s look, she said, “Hey, it’s not like they’ll need it until the end of the day.”
Shaking her head, Grace backtracked to the main conversation. “I think there’s more to camera work than just holding the thing.”
“We aren’t trying to win any awards here. Don’t worry about the cinematography.” As they stepped onto the skywalk outside, Jasper added, “We’re not going far. If I remember right, the Mota Mart is about a three-minute walk from here. We’ll grab a camera there.”
“Steal one, you mean?” Grace asked.
“You catch on quick.”
They reached a set of stairs at the corner of the building and headed down. Every few seconds, Jasper cast Grace an unreadable glance. Was she concerned? Suspicious? Whatever it was, it wasn’t helping Grace’s nerves.
Finally, Jasper said, “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve robbed this Mota Mart before. A legitimate break-in-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-take-expensive-stuff robbery.”
Grace’s brow furrowed. “Why would that make me feel better?”
“I learned something,” Jasper explained. “The manager is using the store as a front. His incoming shipments are used to smuggle illegal weapons into the city. Like the high tech blasters you might see some of the gangs using.”
“Are you trying to justify shoplifting?”
Jasper shrugged. “Is it such a bad thing if we take some from a guy like that? I doubt he’ll even notice. It’s pretty small compared to his other income sources.”
They left the staircase and headed down a slanted skywalk. Grace considered for a moment. “I guess I don’t really care about that. It’s not going to fix the problem, though. He’ll keep selling weapons,” she pointed out as the walkway leveled beneath them.
“I’d love to shut his operation down at some point. But there are countless more just like him all over Kronos. I only have so much time on my hands.”
Ahead of them, the walkway widened. An open-air parking lot jutted out to their right. To their left, the wide entrance to the Mota Mart let faint music and chatter spill out into the city. People moved in and out with shopping carts.
By the time it occurred to Grace to ask why Jasper cared about shutting down illegal smuggling operations in the first place, they were walking into the Mota Mart, and the colors and sounds quickly distracted her. Crammed shelves and towering displays formed a colorful maze of products that looked worryingly easy to get lost in. There were miniature flashing billboards over some of the aisles advertising specific products, while screens built into the sides of shelves played commercials that were hard to hear over the music. Grace didn’t recognize the song that was playing, but she caught Jasper mouthing a few words.
Jasper grabbed a box off an electronics display and popped it open. She handed the camera to Grace and set the empty box on a shelf as they passed.
“What if someone—?” Grace started.
Jasper cut her off. “Cameras aren’t monitored. We’re dressed nice. Security’s focused on the exits,” she said. “Can you figure that thing out?”
Grace fumbled with the camera and found the power button. The battery was charged to halfway. “I got it. What are you doing, exactly?”
“Top seven secrets you didn’t know your local Mota Mart was hiding,” Jasper said. “We need to hit the pet department, electronics—oh, and here’s the snack aisle.” She veered to the right and stopped in front of a wall of packaged foods, all covered in bright labels written in various Janus System languages. The universal translator that had been given to Grace at some point before her memory began gave her access to an overwhelming amount of information.
Grace tore her gaze from the shelves and pressed the camera’s record button. “Ready when you are.”
Jasper launched into an explanation of how the store was changing dates on packaging instead of replacing expired products. Grace thought she was making it up at first, but Jasper pointed out that the wrapper colors were slightly off around the numbers and demonstrated that the right chemicals—Grace wasn’t sure why she happened to be carrying vials of them in her pockets—could take off the fake dates.
Jasper examined the label on a bag of candies. While Grace momentarily had the camera pointed away from her, she shoved them into her coat.
Next was electronics. Jasper gave a brief overview of the store’s scammy credit program—secret number two—followed by a demonstration of their poor quality “better value” electronics—secret number four. Yes, four. The demonstration resulted in smoke pouring out the side of a gaming console.
Jasper also picked up a smartsphere box. Only the box. She abandoned the device on a random shelf. Then, she swiped a candle and some matches.
This was followed by a trip to the pet department.
“Number seven, your local Mota Mart manager doesn’t keep track of their fish,” Jasper said to the camera as the entered the dim aisle, illuminated only by the neon lights in the aquariums. She gestured for Grace to film the fish tanks.
Grace focused on the floating bodies of fish that were dead or close to it, internally grimacing. Maybe instead of shutting down the smuggling operation, she could persuade Jasper to help her rescue the poor things.
Jasper, meanwhile, moved to the other side of the aisle, to the cages that contained a variety of crawlers. “It’s cheaper not to worry about health problems unless someone points them out.” She lifted a cage lid and reached her hand in. Grace’s eyes widened in horror. She was pretty sure some of those were venomous.
When Jasper pulled her arm back out, a fluorescent green armored tarantula was perched on the back of her hand. “What’s this guy a fan of?” she murmured. She examined the tag next to the cage. “Ooh, meat-eater.”
She held up the empty smartsphere box and nudged the arachnid inside. The box went into her coat. Jasper straightened up. “Next stop, the back rooms.”
Grace lowered the camera and turned away from the fish tanks. “What if they catch us?”
Jasper laughed. “I can handle them. All we need is footage of the weapons and then we’ll get out.”
“Also, you skipped some numbers.”
“Doesn’t matter. The whole point of the video is exposing the manager’s smuggling operation. Everything else is a bonus.”
Grace eyed Jasper’s coat as she followed her out of the aisle. The only sign of the stolen merchandise was a couple of slight bulges, and Grace didn’t think she would have noticed if she weren’t looking for them. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what the spider or the candy is for?”
“You’ll see.”
Grace and Jasper walked to the back of the store, through a door marked “Employees Only,” and into the back rooms. Jasper grabbed a clipboard off a table they passed. Holding it up, she waved and smiled to a group of employees standing near the entrance to the break room. A few returned the gesture. None appeared alarmed by her and Grace’s intrusion.
“What was that for?” Grace whispered.
“Act like you belong. Makes people think you do,” Jasper answered under her breath.
The two entered a stockroom filled with shelves that reached the ceiling far above, all packed tight with unopened boxes. Jasper tipped her head back to scan them. “Now we just have to figure out what’s real product, and what’s illegal inventory.” Her gaze stopped on a box to her left, about fifteen feet up. “Here we are.”
“How can you tell?” Grace asked as she lifted the camera.
Jasper tapped the side of her head and started toward a rolling ladder that sat farther down the aisle. “X-ray vision,” she said as she pulled the ladder into position. Once up the ladder, she pulled the box off the shelf, drew a pocketknife from her coat, and sliced the top open in one swift motion. “You filming?”
Grace nodded.
Jasper removed a sleek black blaster from the box and held it up. “Oh, this one’s nice. Lotta firepower. Probably made in a factory on Hatu. See, this would ordinarily never get through a spaceport checkpoint. Illegal all over the star system.”
The barrel on the weapon was longer than on any other blaster Grace had seen. Granted, she hadn’t seen very many in real life—yet—but all the ones she’d seen in broadcasts hadn’t looked like this illegal one, either.
Footsteps sounded in the aisle on the other side of the shelf. Grace struggled to keep the camera steady in her shaking hands. “Are we going now?”
The blaster dropped back into the box with a thud. “Hang on, I want to see if I can find drugs.”
“What if we get caught?”
“Relax.” Jasper pushed the box back onto the shelf and hopped off the ladder. “We may need to go down a few rows.”
Grace followed Jasper to another shelf, where she showed off a box filled with bags of glittering blue powder to the camera. Grace had no idea what it was, but Jasper made it sound like serious stuff.
More footsteps sounded nearby, louder this time, as Jasper closed the box. Seeing the panic on Grace’s face, she said, “Okay, we’re going now. I’ll put the camera in my coat if it’ll make you feel better.”
Grace handed her the camera, but she didn’t feel any sort of relief until they were out of the back rooms.
“See, we’re home free,” Jasper said. “We got everything we needed, and—oh, wait.”
Grace’s heart sank as Jasper grabbed a giant bottle of Nova Cora off a display and shoved it under her arm. “There’s no way someone won’t notice that,” Grace said.
“I’ve done this millions of times. Trust me, no one’s going to stop us from strolling out—”
“Excuse me, miss?” An employee in the store’s red shirt and dark blue pants approached, waving his hand. “Could you come with me?”