By the time the autocab rolls past the Stomp, my tears have turned to rage.

Which really isn’t helpful.

I storm into an alley half a block from the club and vent my anger on the crumbling brick wall. Ancient bits break free, shook loose by my steel-toed boots and the just-short-of-breakage pounding of my fists. My frustration is loud enough to release my need to destroy something but not loud enough to bring people running. When I run out of steam, I sag against the wall, forehead pressed to the cool, unforgiving brick, and try to pull myself together.

I dig out the film of five microdot trackers Scott gave me. I only need to get one on Navarro, anywhere on his clothes, but I’m not going to get close enough for that if I look like I’m ready to kill. I scrub the emotions off my face, smack my cheeks a few times to sharpen up, and then press one of the dots to the underside of my thumb. It looks like a speck of dirt, but it should transfer well enough with one good brush against Navarro’s clothes.

I tuck the rest in my pocket, in case I mess this up, too.

As I stride with determination down the sidewalk toward the club, I jack into my phone, also safely tucked in my pocket, and open a scrit to Wright’s alias, Shadow. Checking in. At the Stomp. By the time I cross the threshold at the entrance, I feel somewhat in control.

“Hey.” Sasha looks up from a layout drawing on a flexiscreen. “Glad you made it.”

It’s mid-morning, a lot later than I normally show. “Had some business to take care of.”

He holds up the screen so I can see. “I could use your help laying the new carpet. What do you think?”

“Sure. But I need to speak to Navarro first.” My thumb itches, but I ignore it. Sasha cocks an eyebrow at me. I’m screwing this up already. “Julian. Senator What’s His Name. Is he here?”

Sasha grins and lifts his chin to point over my shoulder.

“I was hoping you’d show,” Navarro says behind me.

I turn to face him. “Yeah?” I gauge if I’m close enough to accidentally brush him, but no dice. It’s not like jackers get that close unless they’re a lot friendlier than Navarro and I will ever be. “I want to take you up on your offer,” I say. My hands twitch, and the movement catches Navarro’s eye.

“You all right?” he asks with a frown.

My heart lurches, and I drop my gaze to where he’s staring—my hands are scuffed and bleeding from assaulting the wall.

I force them to hold still at my sides. “I’m fine.” In my urgent need to get this over with, all my careful planning from before has vaporized from my brain. “You want to know what I can do, right?” I ask Navarro, point-blank.

He looks a little nonplussed then says, “Yes.”

“I lock and unlock minds.” I hold his gaze steady, waiting for him to ask for more.

Instead, he just stares at me, like he’s reading something in the heat of my skin and the twitch of my eyelid. “You’re a key?” he asks, and somehow it’s leading. Like he knows that’s not right, but he’s softballing me.

“I’m a locksmith.” The words tumble out, cold and hard, like I know what they mean—breaking and entering, stealing, violation—and I embrace all of it.

Navarro’s tone hardens a little. No more messing around. “How does it work?”

His question prods the part of my brain that remembers my plan. Tech talk first. Then an insistence about the inhibitors. I skip ahead. “First, I need to know about the inhibitors.”

His face opens in genuine surprise. He and Sasha exchange a look, and Sasha sets down the flexiscreen. I don’t know if he has a weapon stashed somewhere, or if he’s just backing up Navarro, but I’ve seen that empty-handed stance before. He’s ready for whatever I bring.

“What about them?” Navarro asks, his voice measured and cool.

“I hear the rumors,” I say, having no idea if the rumors are in anyone’s head but Wright’s. “About the JFA putting more inhibitors in the water. About how you’re making more jackers down here and everywhere. How you’re building the numbers up, creating super jackers, more and more every day.” My voice is rising and angry, and every head in the place is turning my way. Absolutely all work has ceased. I sense this from the silence and the heaviness of the air, but my gaze never wavers from Navarro’s stare. “Is it true?” I demand.

“No.” He says it simply. No heated denial. No explanation. Just… no.

“None of it?”

A tiny frown creases his forehead. “This matters a great deal to you.”

“Yes.” It’s practically a gasp. “I need to know.” I realize my body’s still strung out from my time with Livvy, and it’s bleeding intensity into this. “I just… I just need to know you’re not making new jackers.” I’m back-pedaling now, mostly to rein in the tangle of anger in my head.

“I’m not making new jackers.” Then that gleam of curiosity shines in his eyes. “But it sounds like you can.”

“What?” I lean back, shaking my head. I scan what I’ve said, but… where on earth did he get that? “What are you talking about?”

Sasha lets out a short huff of a laugh, which I find inexplicable. He runs a hand through his hair. “I need to get some work done, Julian.” Apparently, he’s completely unconcerned about me now—whatever tension there was suddenly dissipated.

Navarro waves him off. Sasha chuckles and picks up his flexiscreen again. Then Navarro’s by my side, hand on my shoulder, guiding me off the half-finished flooring and out of the way. Just before he releases me, I realize with a jolt that this is my chance. I shove his arm away, making sure I scrape the inside of my thumb on his sleeve. He lifts his hands in a sign of peace and takes a step back. I drop my gaze, pretending to examine my bloodied hands.

The microdot is gone.

The relief is instant. A cool wash of sensation that, no matter what, I’ve done what Wright’s asked for. I take a moment longer, fussing with my hands while jacking a message on my phone. Navarro at the Stomp. Tracker delivered.

I look up at Navarro’s expectant face. If he somehow confiscates my phone, I’m done for. But that’s not going to happen. I just have to play out this charade and be done.

“Someone you know was affected,” he says softly. “By the inhibitors, I mean.”

I frown, but that would make sense—a lot more than my lie about being morally outraged by the whole thing. And for all I know, he’s right. Maybe that’s what they’ve been injecting into Olivia. “Yeah,” I say. “My sister.”

He nods, face pinched. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, we’re tracking the new instances of readers being turned, and you’re right. It’s happening more frequently. And we don’t know why. But I can assure you, it’s nothing the JFA or anyone I know is involved with. Trust me, I’d know. And Kira would take them out.” He says that last part with a slight smile.

“I thought she was a jacker doctor now,” I say with a frown. But I actually believe him about the inhibitors. From what little I’ve seen of Kira at the clinic, Sasha at the Stomp, Hinckley before that, bringing me in, and even Navarro himself—none of these people are killers. None of them is the kind that goes out and intentionally hurts people. I’ve met plenty who are, and I know the difference. If someone’s putting inhibitors in the water in Jackertown, I’d bet money that Navarro doesn’t know who it is. But he’s got the tracker now—Wright can sort out what he’s really up to.

“Kira is many things.” Navarro’s smile turns up at the corner, and it’s a little too knowing. I didn’t catch it before, but there has to be something between them. “However, I can barely tear her away from the clinic these days. She’s bent on reversing the effects of the inhibitors, so trust me—if someone was putting more in the water, she’d hunt them down.” Then he gets that curious look again. “She’s got an impenetrable mindbarrier, like you. Could you ‘unlock’ a mind like hers?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “It’s not related to how strong the barrier is.”

He nods, tapping his finger against his lips again. “I’ve never heard of this ability before. Is it new? Since the inhibitors?”

“No. I was in Wisconsin when they dropped. Besides, I’ve been this way since I was thirteen.”

He nods again. “You’re doing something fundamentally different.”

“I suppose.” I wasn’t going to share too much, but somehow, having the tracker on Navarro makes me relax. “Each mind has a unique signature. I can change it.”

His eyes widen. “You’re kidding.”

“Um… no?” Maybe sharing wasn’t such a great idea.

The fervor on his face amps up. “You said you lock and unlock. So, you’re taking the signature from one state to another state. Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you’re rewiring. Changing the capabilities of the mind, not just changing the memories or thought patterns or current emotional state. It’s almost like you’re doing what Kira’s doing at the individual neuron level… only for the entire brain at once.” He’s freaking himself out.

And me too. “Hey, look, it’s not that crazy. I mean, I’m only making mindbarriers hard or not hard, okay? That’s it.” Holy crap, what have I done here?

But he’s off and running. “You lock and unlock. So you can put the mind back to its original state?”

“Yeah.” This feels a little safer. “It’s not permanent or anything. Well, it is, unless I change it back. But that’s not a problem.”

He’s wagging his finger in the air, like he’s indexing thoughts there, one at a time. “But it must be incredibly complex,” he muses, brow furrowed. “How do you keep track of all the nuances of each unique signature?”

Well, he’s right that the mindmaps are complicated. “I don’t know. I just have a feel for it, I guess.” Which is about right. And part of why it freaked me so badly when something different happened with that one girl—because I don’t actually know what I’m doing. Like at all. It’s all by feel, and if it gets away from me, the truth that I’m messing with people’s minds comes into high and frightening relief.

Navarro’s nodding to himself. Then he stops and nails me with his feverish stare. “Since the inhibitors dropped, I’ve been thinking that readers and jackers are not fundamentally different. Not like I originally envisioned. How could we be? With all the changes triggered by a mere mix of chemicals in the water, even with those who have been demens for a long time—that speaks to a genetic expression, not a genetic evolution. And if readers can be changed into jackers, and jackers could be rendered essentially into readers again by exposure to the inhibitors, then we’re really talking a spectrum of possibilities. And if you, my friend, are the locksmith who can unlock the key to the change…”

The hairs rise up on the back of my neck, and my hands go up. “Hold on. I’m not saying anything like that.”

Navarro barrels on, not listening at all. “Zeph MacCay.” He’s shaking his head with an unsettling grin on his face. “You have a very important part to play in all this.”

“No, I don’t,” I say reflexively, taking a step back.

Navarro straightens. “I want you to lock my mind.”

“What?” I gape at him.

Sasha, who’s been lingering nearby and pretending to work, comes to life. “Wait… what? No. Julian, what the hell?”

Navarro waves him off. “Zeph does this all the time, right? And we’ve already established that he can access my mind like no one else.” His eyes are laser-focused on mine.

“And he’ll be messing with your head!” Sasha steps over from the game board and snaps his fingers in front of Navarro’s face. “Stop being an idiot.”

Navarro frowns. “I’m not going to ask someone else to try it.”

Sasha scowls. “You don’t have to.” He turns to me. “Do it to me.”

“Sasha—” Navarro objects.

“Shut up,” Sasha says without looking at him. His eyes are fixed on me. “You can do this without scrambling my brain, right?”

I swallow. This wasn’t how I was picturing this going down. “Yeah. But it’ll hurt like hell.”

Sasha grimaces. “Of course it will.” He lets out a sigh. “Well, I’m worthless these days as a jacker anyway. Might be nice to have one of those impenetrable minds.” He shakes out his arms. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

I look to Navarro, but it appears he’s not going to object. So I reach out with my mind and take a quick survey of Sasha’s mindmap. He’s right that it’s a mess. There are the usual hills and valleys, sharp peaks and jagged canyons, but there’s also these random spots of utter smoothness. Like parts have been blanked out or rendered into static. It’s weird, but I recognize it as the effect of the inhibitors. Kira’s patients at the clinic had a similar feature.

I go ahead and spin his mindmap. Sasha growls, clutches his head, and falls to his knees. The growl ramps up, louder and louder, finally breaking out into a scream. I’m surprised he can hold it in for that long. I reset his mindmap into a locked position as quickly as I can.

The screaming stops.

Sasha stays down, panting on the ground, still holding his head.

Navarro is wide-eyed, frozen in place. Just like everyone else who came to help fix up the Stomp today. I visually scan the room to make sure I haven’t panicked anyone into coming after me. My scan crashes to a stop at the door—Tessa is standing on the threshold, mouth hanging open, a look of horror on her face.

Dammit.

I drop my gaze then step forward, hand out to help Sasha off the floor. “I’m sorry, man.”

He takes my hand and staggers to his feet. “Okay… that… that was no fun.” He peers at Navarro, who’s staring intensely at him. I feel a lightweight brushing of Navarro’s mindfield against Sasha’s. He has to feel that Sasha’s mindbarrier is rock-hard now.

I step back from them both. “The headache will last about an hour,” I tell Sasha, “but you’ll be impervious to any normal jack.” I glance at Navarro. “I could fine-tune it so that he’s blocked to your instinct jacking as well. And there are a few other types that I could configure him for. But this will work in most normal cases.”

Navarro looks even more impressed. “You’ve designed your own configuration.”

I grimace. This guy is way too sharp. “Defensive measure,” I admit.

He’s back to stroking his chin and looking like a professor entranced with his own ideas. “I need to give this some thought.”

“No more demonstrations, if you don’t mind,” Sasha says, rubbing at his temples with both hands.

“No. Absolutely not.” But Navarro is back to tapping his finger to his lips.

“I can unlock it, if you like,” I say to Sasha.

He puts up his hands. “No thanks.” Then he staggers back to his flexiscreen and the rolls of carpet he was working on. Tessa has worked her way from the door to the newly refinished game board. I look away from the pinched concern on her face back to Navarro.

“Zeph, we need to talk some more,” he says. “But later. I have some things to do, and I need to think this over. I’ll be back tomorrow. We’re going to have a grand reopening for the club. I’ll be giving a speech, and I want you there. We’re moving into a new era with all this, and you’re going to be an important part of it.”

“Yeah, um…” I grimace, figuring if the senator is giving a speech, I need to make myself scarce. “I’m not too keen about being on camera.”

He smiles. “Very well. I’ll let you stay in the background. But be there tomorrow. You and I need to talk.”

“Okay.” In theory, I still need to keep contact with Navarro until Wright gets what she needs. The tracker is only good until he changes his clothes, so… tomorrow’s a new day in the spying business. “I’ll be there.”

“Good.” He gives me a broad smile and claps me on the shoulder before he heads over to check on Sasha.

I drop my gaze to avoid having to see Tessa worry about someone I jacked into screaming just a minute ago. I mentally reach into my pocket and scrit a message to Wright. Navarro giving speech at Stomp tomorrow. I’ll attend. I debate the merits of diving into Sasha’s carpet-laying work or simply sneaking out the back and avoiding Tessa. Before I can decide, her bright-red sneakers show up next to me.

I look up.

“You okay?” Her dark brown eyes are roaming my face, like she wants to read my thoughts in the microexpressions there even if she can’t access them directly in my head.

Am I okay? No, I’m messed up five ways to Sunday. “I’m not a monster, Tessa.” I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince her or myself.

She frowns, confused. “I know that.” But she glances back at Sasha.

I decide I don’t have it in me to lie to her today… and I can’t afford the truth. “I gotta go.” I brush past while her head is turned.

She makes a small noise of objection but doesn’t tag after me. I stride out of the Stomp, hoping all this is enough for Wright—it’s all I can stand for today.