When Daggert arrived, Wilkins took the recorded surveillance footage of Emily and Pepper back to the beginning.

“What’s going on?” Daggert asked.

Wilkins pointed to the screen, a frozen image of the girl and the dog, and handed Daggert his headset. Once Daggert had it on, Wilkins hit PLAY.

Daggert stared at the screen as he listened to Emily’s one-sided conversation with the dog. The girl certainly gave the appearance of listening to what the dog had to say.

Daggert whipped off the headset and threw it on to Wilkins’ keyboard. “It must be a trick.”

Wilkins shrugged an I’m not so sure gesture.

“What do you mean?” Daggert asked. “You mean because that dog once belonged to the Conroys?” Before Wilkins could offer another gesture, Daggert said, “I need to talk to the girl.”

Then, recalling his earlier request, he lowered his voice and asked, “What about that DNA thing?”

Wilkins opened another file on his screen. It was so dense with text Daggert waved a dismissive hand and said, “No time now. I’ll have a look at it later.”

Daggert left the control room and headed to a lower level of the building, into a maze of hallways, finally arriving at a sliding panel in the wall. There was a button on it, which he pressed, and the door slid open.

Emily and Pepper, who’d been doing some walking to stretch their legs, retreated to the far corner of the cell. Emily slid down, her back to the wall, and Pepper rested her head on her lap.

“You,” Daggert said, pointing to Emily. “I want to talk to you.”

Emily said, “Let me check my schedule and see if I have an opening.”

Daggert blinked. He did not like this kid.

“I think a spot just opened up,” he said.

“Well then, you picked a good time,” she said, running her hand over Pepper’s head.

“Tell me about this dog,” he said.

“Her name is Pepper,” Emily said.

“Tell me more.”

“If you don’t take her outside soon for a walk there’s going to be a mess in here. Actually, she might not be the only one making a mess. I thought cells were supposed to be equipped with bathroom facilities? This is all going in my TripAdvisor review, just so you know.”

Daggert sighed. Why, lately, was he having to deal with so many smart-alecky kids?

“We’ve been watching you,” he said.

“What?” She acted surprised.

Daggert pointed to the black dots in the corners of the ceiling. “We’ve been watching and listening.”

“Creepy,” Emily said, eyeing him disapprovingly. “That’s very inappropriate.”

“Why have you been talking to the dog?” he asked.

“There’s not exactly anyone else to talk to, is there? Now you’re here, but to be honest, I think I’d still rather talk to the dog.”

“You weren’t just talking to the dog. You appeared to be having a conversation.”

Emily slowly shook her head. “Uh, what?”

“Was the dog talking to you?”

Emily laughed. “Seriously? Uh, dogs can’t talk except in cartoons, genius.”

“Don’t play dumb. You already know about Chipper. You know what he can do. So you know it’s possible for a dog—a dog that has been modified—to communicate.”

“Yeah, well, not this one.”

“I guess we’ll just have to see about that.” Daggert moved towards the dog. Pepper jumped up, turned on Daggert and growled.

When Daggert went to reach for something in his pocket, Emily sprang to her feet and screamed, “I wouldn’t do that!”

Daggert paused. “And why wouldn’t you?”

“Just don’t shoot Pepper! Not with a real gun or one of your stun gun things! Don’t even get close to her! You’ll be sorry!”

Daggert grinned. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”

As he reached into his pocket again, Emily ran for the other corner, away from Pepper and dropped into a huddle, her face to the wall, arms over her head.

Daggert brought his hand back out of his pocket, empty. He gave the dog a long, lingering appraisal.

“Okay, kid, level with me. What’s going on here?”

Emily peered over her shoulder. When she saw nothing in Daggert’s hand, she slowly stood.

“She’ll blow up,” Emily said.

“Explain.”

“The Conroys realized they’d made a mistake with Chipper. If he ever fell into, like, enemy hands, they could take him apart and see what made him tick. They’d learn all The Institute’s secrets.”

Pepper had stopped growling and had sidestepped closer to Emily.

“It’s like, one time my dad was watching the news about one of the government’s planes crashing in a country we were fighting with? And instead of letting the enemy examine the plane, the government blew it up. So no one would learn how the plane worked. It’s like that with Pepper.”

“You’re making this up.”

Emily ignored that and continued. “It makes sense, actually. I’m surprised they didn’t do it with Chipper. Think about it. If you brainiacs here had installed something like that in Chipper, you wouldn’t have to be running all over the place trying to get him back. I mean, that’s why you’re trying to get him back, right? Because you don’t want anyone else to find out what makes him tick. But suppose you’d ordered the self-destruct option for him? And you could activate it from here? You press a button and boom! Problem solved.”

Daggert believed The Institute had actually been considering something like that at one time. He considered whether the girl could be telling the truth.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Let’s say I wanted to believe you. A lot of what you’re saying doesn’t add up. First, how is the dog communicating with you?’

Emily shrugged, like she didn’t care that she didn’t know the answer. “I guess whoever Pepper wants to talk to gets to hear her. I think she has this way of projecting her thoughts. We made a kind of mental connection when you put us together in that cage.”

Daggert shook his head. “I’m not buyin’ it. If she can blow herself up, why hasn’t she already done it?”

“Duh,” Emily said. “Because she likes me. And she didn’t want to blow up a little kid. That partner of yours, Timothy? But now that we’re here, there’s no telling what Pepper will do. In fact, you take one step closer to her, you try to grab her and find out what’s inside, and I think she’s gonna blow. I’ve told her to do what she has to do. Don’t worry about me.”

Daggert did not know how to call it.

Emily, seeing that she had the man’s attention, added, “Now let’s talk about you letting us walk out of here.”