Page 54 of From the Noblest Motives
The older girl closest to the door—that would be Hillary—turned. "What are you…? Oh. Mr. McKenzie."
"Hello!" For the kids, Shudder didn't have to fake a smile, though their awed expressions made him want to hide behind Damien. "Just Shudder, please. Cyril said I could come in and see what you're working on."
Maia, the last one had to be her, looked up at him with a serious frown. "We're infiltrating."
"That sounds daring. What are you infiltrating?" Shudder glanced around, careful not to look to the grownups in the room.
"We do a lot of different things. Forums. Websites. Security." Hillary waved a hand at her own screens, where several things appeared to be running at once. "It depends on the day. Mostly, as Cyril puts it, wesow judicious chaos."
"Oooh, I like chaos." Shudder pulled up a chair, his momentary discomfort with people seeing him forgotten. "What sorts of chaos?"
"Well, most of what we do concentrates on the Big Five," Hillary explained. She didn't have to go into whom that meant—every variant activist knew it referred to variaphobe Senators Anderson, Lawson, Miller, Martin, and Taylor. "But sometimes we start rumors in forums. Things like that."
Shudder scooted closer, unable to help being excited about a bit of techno disruption. "What are you working on today?"
She nodded to the boys on the other side of the room. "The twins infiltrated the Human Firsters forum on Patch. They're inciting the mob to call for variant concentration camps."
"Wait… what?" Shudder reared back in shock. He felt like he'd fallen into some parallel space and also wondered how many of Hillary's words—likeinciting the mob—were actually Cyril's. "Isn't that what they're already calling for? And, you know, quite theoppositeof what we want?"
"We're looking at a bigger picture here, Shudder." Cyril held up a hand in a self-deprecating way. "But I'll let Hillary explain."
The smile Hillary flashed him was bright enough to light a stadium. "Okay, so yeah. The way-out-there crazies are saying we should be in camps or just rounded up and massacred, and people don't pay much attention. But if we start getting people who are supposed to benormalto say this stuff, there's a reaction. People start backing away. The variant activists go into overdrive. Public opinionshifts."
"That makes sense. We've seen it happen." Damien spoke up from where he still leaned in the doorway. "But doesn't it backfire? The Horace Act?"
"Yes and no." Cyril took up the narrative, and though he still smiled, Shudder had the feeling the question displeased him. "That particular act has been kicking around the legislature for two decades in one form or another. Yes, the calls for the execution of Myles Staples stirred the pot. A serial killer who happened to be a variant was a windfall for them. But the Anderson cabal had the votes already for what they positioned as a morehumanesolution."
How do you know that? Shudder kept that to himself, though. From what he'd heard, Cyril's network was old and far reaching. He probably had moles in the conservative camp. Listening devices planted. Lots of spy stuff going on.
"Humane. Ha. Yes." Shudder ran his fingers over the just-growing stubble atop his head and jerked his hand away when he realized what he was doing.Subject change before that lump in your chest explodes. He waved toward Hillary's displays. "But you're not in a forum. What fun vandalism are you up to?"
Her grin was just short of manic. "I'm working on the other half of what we do today. Discrediting."
"I'm more familiar with this one. People do that to me all the time."
"It's horrible." Maia scowled without looking up from her screens. "I hate what they say about you."
What a fierce defender I have. Shudder managed to find his smile again. "I've heard all of it. Up to and including being a cold-blooded murderer. So I think I'm immune by now."
"Wedon't frame people for murder," Danilo said with a disgusted snort.
"We don't. And most of the time, it just takes some digging." Hillary went back to tapping at her board as she nodded at the numbers scrolling by. "This is Senator Miller's bank account. His European bank account. Deshaun found it—sometimes his talent is weird. But he doesn't know what he's looking at."
And you do? Good gravy boats, what are they teaching in school these days? Or maybe a parent. Or maybe Cyril. But Hillary didn't explain, and Shudder told himself firmly not to pry.
"It would probably be boring for you, right? If I explained all the things." Hillary steamed right ahead before Shudder could even say whether he'd be bored or not. Probably. Finance wasn't an interest or an aptitude of his. "But these deposits?"
Shudder's gaze followed to where she pointed out various sums on three different screens. To be polite and encouraging, he nodded.
"These trace right back to a charity the senator's involved with. On the board and stuff of this thing that's supposed to help poor kids. Scholarships. Food. Job training. Whole bunch of things. Only, most of the money ends up in Miller's accounts."
"What a bastard," Shudder spat out. "Sorry."
"No troubs." Deshaun flapped a hand at him. "We've all heard worse. We're notlittlekids, Mr. McKenzie."
"Right. Of course. And the plan is to hand over the money trail to enforcement?"
Hillary's chaos goblin grin returned. "Oh no. Much worse. We're handing it all over to the press."
