The car sent Jasper flying into the air.
Grace screamed. She fumbled to press the unmute button on her comm. “Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
“Is something wrong?” Thea asked.
“Jasper got hit by a car!”
Holly groaned. “Again?”
“Again?” Grace frowned, her alarm put on pause by Holly’s response.
Jasper climbed to her feet, smoothed out her coat, and flipped off the car that hit her. The driver honked angrily. Jasper ignored them as she stalked back toward Grace.
The driver’s window slid down, and a man leaned out. “Hey lady, you wanna call an ambulance or something?”
“I’m fine!” Jasper snapped.
“Watch where you’re going next time!”
“No, you!”
The car sped off. Grace stared at Jasper. “How are you walking?”
“It’s no big deal. Just a few bruises and scrapes. Nothing Dax can’t handle.” As Jasper adjusted her coat, Grace caught a glimpse of torn skin where her sleeve had ripped.
“What’s that?” Grace leaned in. Blood trickled from the wound. Yet, underneath the skin, circuitry and wires glinted in the light. Part of her was disturbed by just how much she could see inside, but the rush of adrenaline from seeing Jasper get hit still lingered, overriding most other feelings. “Is that—are you—?”
Jasper held up her hands. “All right, yeah. I’m a cyborg.”
“How much?”
Jasper adjusted her sleeve to hide the wound and gestured for Grace to follow her. They set off down the sidewalk in the general direction of Starchatter. “My right arm and left leg were entirely replaced with cybernetic limbs,” Jasper explained.
“Really?” Grace asked. “Your arm looks pretty real, other than the wires.”
Jasper’s pace was much slower than it had been earlier, and she occasionally winced in pain, but Grace decided against saying anything. Any response would undoubtedly be snarky.
“They did a great job of covering it up. It even bleeds, like you saw,” Jasper said. “And feels pain. I think they just wanted to see if that was possible. Lucky me.”
“Who—?”
“Some of my organs were replaced with artificial ones, too. And there’s-basically a computer in my brain. Not super advanced, but it’s there.” Jasper appeared oblivious to Grace’s attempt to ask a question, but Grace had a feeling she just didn’t want to answer it. “I’ve got heat vision, X-ray vision, night vision, a low-quality camera, and I can connect to Mia and transfer files.”
“But brain modifications are illegal,” Grace pointed out.
“Yeah, weird, it’s almost as if people break the law.”
“I meant—” Grace sighed. “Who did it for you?”
“Not for me. To me.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
Grace pressed her mouth into a thin line. If Jasper didn’t want to talk about it, she wasn’t going to push it. She’d made it this long without getting on the villain’s bad side. No sense in starting now.
It took twenty minutes for them to return to Starchatter. It would have been closer to ten, but Jasper took them by a shop to change into clothes that weren’t smoky and torn. As they walked the last stretch to the offices, Grace fidgeted with her new jacket, while Jasper dictated an article about their fake altercation to her smartsphere.
Holly waited for them in the lobby, arms crossed. “Seriously?” she hissed. “You couldn’t have found an easier way to get Attom’s attention?”
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” Jasper walked past Holly into the cluttered main office. “Wait, did it? I don’t know if he’s seen it yet.”
Holly followed. “Oh, he saw it all right,” she said. “He’s—”
“Is Sethany Galax here?” Attom’s voice carried across the office floor, silencing scattered conversations. Grace’s heart quickened.
“Mm, sounds like someone’s in trouble,” Thea said over comms.
“Dream on.” Jasper strolled up to Attom, waving a hand. “I’m here.”
“Galax here wrote me an article on a Van Terra incident minutes after it occurred.” Attom gestured to Jasper. “The rest of you should demonstrate that level of initiative.”
“How is that even possible?” a woman at a nearby desk asked.
“It’s called being good at my job,” Jasper told her. When the woman’s eyes narrowed, Jasper stuck her tongue out at her.
“Van Terra and Grace Alvarez are hot topics, everyone,” Attom continued. “The public wants to know what happened after they broke out of jail. Put out headlines on them that will make people click.” He turned around and started toward his private office. “Now, get back to work!”
Grace leaned toward Holly. “Did you see the article?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Holly answered. “You?”
Grace shook her head. Holly pulled out a red smartsphere and tapped the top. The Starchatter netsite opened on the holoscreen.
“You won’t believe what crazy stunt Van Terra pulled ten minutes ago,” Grace read.
Jasper appeared at Grace’s right. “Pretty good, right?”
A Nova Cora ad popped up in the center of the screen as Holly scrolled, blocking the text. She groaned. “Look at this. They post garbage headlines like, ‘Did Sarena Trench really go on a date with so-and-so?’ And then they take five ad-littered pages to tell me that no, no she didn’t, and I just wasted my time.”
“Holly, that’s brilliant,” Jasper said. “I’m going to start a rumor that Sarena Trench went on a date with Van Terra.”
“You’re Van Terra, idiot!”
Jasper put her hands on her hips. “Well, the hospital just called with the results of your IQ test. They were negative.”
“Why would I go to a hospital to take an IQ test?”
“I hate to interrupt. Really,” Thea chimed in over comms. “But I took new readings and found some hardware above us that’s been sending and receiving messages. I tried intercepting them, but the signal’s too heavily encrypted. I’ll need physical access to get anything useful.”
“What’s the plan, then?” Holly asked. “If we don’t have a solid—”
“You worry too much,” Jasper told her. “I’m putting together a plan. Now, someone turn on the news. I want to see if Starr has anything to say yet about our little skirmish.”
“Governor’s channel,” Thea said. “If he says anything, it’ll air there first.”
Jasper held up her smartsphere. “Mia. Channel zero.”
While an ad for some sitcom broadcast played on the holoscreen, Grace’s comm crackled slightly in her ear. Quietly, she heard Dax say, “IQ tests can’t even be negative.”
The ad ended and the screen cut to Starr, who was in the middle of addressing a crowd of reporters. “Rewind to the start of the broadcast,” Jasper commanded. The footage jumped back to Starr stepping up to his podium. Jasper laughed. “Oh yeah. He’s upset.”
Grace’s brow furrowed. “He doesn’t look upset to me.”
“Trust me. He’s good at hiding his emotions, but I know—well, if you pay close attention to his facial expressions, his movements, it’s obvious.” Jasper grinned. “And the fact that he’s addressing it so quickly means he’s concerned.”
The Starr on the holoscreen began to speak. “As many of you already know, an incident involving Grace Alvarez and the villain Van Terra occurred less than an hour ago,” he said. “While many have found it upsetting that Alvarez was taken into police custody in the first place, I must remind you that she did escape her cell of her own free will, with the assistance of Van Terra. Her motivations and plans are still unknown.”
“Has he said publicly why I was arrested?” Grace asked quietly.
“He’s kept it vague,” Jasper replied. “Said that the authorities can’t disclose why you were arrested, but that you are a threat and should be treated as such.”
Grace wanted to believe that no one would listen to Starr, but why shouldn’t they? He’d kept her hidden away for years. The fourteen-year-old girl they’d seen save his life was long gone.
“Ha. He really thinks he can turn everyone against you.” Jasper turned the broadcast off and slid the sphere back into her pocket. “You’re not his puppet anymore. He has no control over your actions, or what people think of them.”
Puppet. Was that all Grace had been? A puppet being called a hero?
“Hey, you should come up with a name,” Jasper said.
Grace blinked. “What?”
“A hero name.”
“Why?” Grace asked. “I’m not a hero. Besides, everyone knows my identity already. What would be the point?”
Jasper shrugged. “It sounds cool. We could throw together an outfit, too.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“Okay, soft maybe. Sounds good.” Jasper wandered over to the nearest cluster of desks and started poking around. “All right, everyone get back to work.”
Holly leaned toward Grace. “She’s a criminal mastermind, but she’s also a dumbass teenager,” Holly muttered. “She likes to see how far she can take jokes without getting caught, she wings everything because she can’t be bothered to plan ahead, and she’s impulsive. And god knows what kind of damage she’s done to her brain over the years.”
Grace frowned. “Why do you still work for—with her, then?”
“I ask myself that every day.”