“People still live in places like this?” asked Maggie. This was a neighborhood where half the houses burned years ago and were never rebuilt, and where the remaining homes were surrounded by the kind of ludicrous fencing that was popular immediately after the Rising, when people were frantically trying to protect themselves from the next attack. This was a million miles from the cultivated opulence of the Agora, or even from the reasonably well-maintained Berkeley streets where I grew up. Whatever test we’d been taking, we’d apparently passed, because the directions sent us along a straightforward series of increasingly smaller streets, until we were driving down a poorly maintained residential road in one of the oldest parts of Seattle. “At the end of the bridge, turn right,” said Mahir. “Maggie, please don’t antagonize him he’s had a hard week, and he’s liable to bite.” “Before you start killing people with joyous abandon, you might like to know that the next batch of directions has arrived,” said Mahir dryly. “We’re off to see the Wizard,” chanted Maggie, in a gleeful singsong voice.

“This guy must think he’s the goddamn Wizard of Oz,” I muttered. If the Monkey knew we had the jammer, he would probably have been pissed if we’d killed it. We’d settled for checking it for obvious bugs and removing the battery pack before heading into the hotel. I hadn’t wanted us to kill the jammer in the Agora parking garage-no matter how upper-crust they were, there were bound to be some things that would upset them. “On it, Boss,” Becks called, and put down her gun. “Put the jammer’s batteries back in and turn it on, will you? The text-based adventure wants us to get scrambled.”

She turned, the reflection of her eyes meeting mine. “Actually, funny story-hey, Becks!” I looked at the rearview mirror. Tune it to channel eight, or these instructions will cease.’ We don’t have a jamming unit, do we?” The directions…” He cleared his throat, looked at the screen, and read, “ ‘Turn on your jamming unit. We were crossing a bridge that actually floated on the surface of a lake-thankfully, the Monkey hadn’t requested we do anything stupid, like drive into the lake I would have refused, and then I might have had a mutiny on my hands-when Mahir looked up, eyes wide.

Blackout grant novel