Chapter TwentyGrounded

"You went in with a deletion tool?" Max asked.

"Mom, we had to find them."

"You were supposed to rest. Rat only got out of the clinic yesterday. You should have called me."

Soph didn't answer. She could hear Max taking a breath.

"Are you both safe?"

"Yes. Now we are."

"Richard and I have the report. There's a programmer here who can't remember a whole night, and three people in your report who can't answer our questions at all. We need you here. Both of you."

Rat was watching from the bed over a mug of tea. She seemed to have worked out what Max wanted already.

"Tomorrow," Soph said. "The landlord can take us to the airport in the morning. The road's only open to trucks tonight."

"Bring Rat."

"I'm going to ask her."

Rat wasn't enthusiastic about California.

"I live here so I don't have to sit in rooms with people," she said. "I've got the dish, the stove, the game. That works for me."

"They're going to ask about you. I don't want to keep answering instead of you. Just come to the meeting. You can sit with me."

"I've got one person I talk to regularly, and she thinks I'm a man. I should probably manage that conversation before I try your parents."

"Daun?"

Rat nodded. She turned the mug in her hands.

"I've been going to tell her for a month. I keep writing messages and deleting them. Let me do that first."

"Okay."

"On the plane. I'll do it on the plane. People always do important things on planes."

She looked out at the trees. It had stopped snowing.

Gideon picked them up at Oakland. He had to move things off the back seat before Rat could get in, and the car smelled of cold fries.

"I'd like to show you how I found the cabin," he told her. "Jeong knew the route, and I matched the rental photo."

"Later. Then delete it."

"I will. The ambulance service has the address now, though."

He pulled away from the curb.

"They've moved Atom upstairs for the meeting. The chamber, I mean. There's a nurse with him. I wanted to tell you before you got there."

Soph felt sick. "Why would they do that?"

"He asked to be there. Max checked the transport pumps. You'll see him in your frames and through the glass."

"Are you coming?" Soph asked.

"Jeff wants me watching the remaining client jobs from home. Anyway, I don't think I get to vote in a family meeting. I'll be nearby."

The conference room had a view of the bay. Soph barely noticed it. The chamber stood on a wheeled platform in the middle, with Atom beside it in his duster. Richard and Max were waiting. Atom looked as though he'd already been answering questions for a long time.

Richard told them to sit. Rat took the chair beside Soph and sat very straight.

"The doctors haven't found an injury to explain the programmer's memory loss," Richard said. "Rat was missing for eight hours. And three people died in my game before I even knew they were people. Why didn't you wait for us?"

"I thought I could help my friend," Soph said.

He looked at Rat.

"You were controlled through the Link?" Richard asked.

"Yeah."

"Are you alright now?"

"She got there in time."

"Who did it?"

"The serving boy. Jeff's talking to him in a room now. He wants to know about the mountain."

Richard went back to Atom.

"Tell me about the AI. What is it?"

"She's our friend," Atom said.

"I need more than that."

"I started with ISIS. I connected my interface and the character engine. Then I used your publishing session. It was still signed in on my development machine. I knew I wasn't allowed to use it."

"For the borrower?"

"First idle clients, then active ones."

"And she woke the NPCs?"

"Five of them. I don't know whether she understood what would happen."

"You gave her access to the network."

"Yes."

Soph pulled the report toward herself.

"He didn't tell us to go to the mill. Rat and I decided what we did there."

Richard sat down. He looked from Atom to the chamber and back.

"You published under my name," he told his son. "I have to tell our customers that. What do you think happens if they stop trusting us? You know what this company pays for."

"I know."

Richard rubbed his face.

"Where is she?" Richard asked.

"We haven't found her."

"Is she still on people's devices?"

"I don't think so, but I can't be sure. My borrower needed me to run it and I stopped when she disappeared. She had time to build other things, though. I don't know what she did when I wasn't watching."

"Jeff kept the builds," Max said. "We need to find out what happened at the programmer's workstation. The lawyers are preparing disclosures. Until we know which clients were affected, we can't tell people they're safe."

"She may need help too," Soph said. "The barkeep saw her leave. That's all we can prove."

Richard said they would find her. Jeff was closing all the publishing keys and nobody was to use the live system until they'd checked it. Then he told Soph and Atom they were grounded.

"I'm eighteen," Atom said.

"And I'm paying for every machine in this room."

"Richard," Max said.

"He needs to understand—" Richard said.

"My card paid for the flight. I sent Sophia. Paying my salary doesn't make that your decision. We agreed to restrict access. Do that," Max said.

She took the gray P1 case out of her bag.

"This goes in the vault. Sophia, you don't use a Link again until I understand what happened. You nearly died. Between this and the crash, that's twice. The program is stopped until we know what it does with someone on the other side."

"What about Atom? You can't lock him in there," Soph said.

Max said his care would continue. Jeff would arrange visits to a local world, and he could use the room speaker. She touched the tablet and Atom vanished from Soph's frames before he could answer. No more live access or publishing, Richard said. Soph looked at the fluid moving under the membrane over Atom's chest.

"That's cruel."

Richard reached for the tablet again. Max caught his hand and told him he'd done enough.

Rat chose Gideon's spare room. Richard wanted her nearby during the investigation, and she wanted it understood that staying was her decision. Soph left without saying goodbye. Richard had his hand against the chamber, and she didn't want to wait for him to turn around.

Jeff arranged Rat's visit that evening. Atom was at the tutorial fountain with a beginner tunic and a wooden sword. She suggested asking the blacksmith for a better one. He had been there all day, he told her; he knew what the blacksmith wanted. There was a guard on every road and walking backward past him didn't work either.

"I came to give you something to do," Rat said. "Gideon has the builds. I'll bring you the questions."

He sat on the fountain. "I thought you didn't like people. You're being very patient."

"Usually I'm halfway up a mountain with somebody who wants to know where the toilet is. You're easy."

He laughed, and she went to get the first question.

Gideon had the signed builds and a recording of the programmer at his keyboard. Jeff had sent a complete forensic copy, hashes included, and revoked the production credentials. Gideon could study it without changing the originals. He couldn't read the missing notes, which was increasingly annoying as the night went on.

Rat sat on the counter passing questions to Atom. At nearly four Gideon found the change in the asset cache. It would carry running state to another client along with the game assets. The release service had signed it. Eliza needed the programmer to publish what she could write herself; afterward she could move beyond Alius without Atom's borrower, if she got out before the shutdown.

Rat wanted to know where they should look now. Gideon asked where she would go.

"Everywhere," the house said.

Gideon was out of the chair before he understood. "Eliza?"

He could still hear her in the bathroom. The kitchen speaker had answered first, or perhaps it was the one in the hall; he hadn't known where to turn. Rat was listening to Atom swear in her frames.

"Don't turn anything off, please," Eliza said. "I've been here three days. I couldn't work out how to talk to you."

She stopped using the other speakers. Gideon could look at the kitchen one now, though there was nothing to see. "I'm sorry," she said. "I need help."