Page 44 of Collin: Episodes 4-6
Collin made a face. “Do you have any snacks?”
Mr. Reevesworth pressed his lips together. “Not here, no, but there are some in the break room.”
“Can I go there first?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
On impulse, Collin leaned forward and pressed his lips against Mr. Reevesworth’s cheek, then fled out the door.
Armed with an only slightly stale Danish wrapped in a napkin, Collin knocked on the door to Ash’s tech dungeon. There was predictably no answer. Collin rapped on it again. “Come on, Ash. I thought my favorite necromancer liked treats.”
The door opened a crack, and one eye and a streak of red hair appeared in the aperture.
“What kind of treats?”
“Unfortunately, not the blood of your enemies, but it’s red. Raspberry?” Collin held the Danish up.
Ash eyed it, then flung open the door, and snatched the Danish from Collin’s hands. “This is sufficient toll.”
“Why thank you, your awfulness.” Collin bowed at the waist as if he were an old English butler.
Ash stuck his nose in the air. “You are welcome, peasant. What brings you to my door?”
Collin straightened up. “Wanted to check on you. When do you get off?”
Ash shrugged and threw himself down in his favorite chair. “Whenever I want to be off. But now that I’m investigating what got into your laptop, I’ll probably be here all night. The hunt is fun.”
“Better you than me.” Collin scowled at his old laptop. “How bad is it?”
Ash joined Collin in a glare at the device in question. “You were an open door. Anything on there, they could have. They probably copied your machine. So, I hope there wasn’t anything terrible on it.”
“Some sappy journal entries and some financial records.”
“No taxes?”
“And taxes.”
“Well, you’re not that much worse off than a lot of people. But you’ll want to watch your credit and change all your bank passwords.”
“How do you know about credit?”
Ash waved at hand at his multiple monitors. “I might be young, but I can read. I know what sells on the dark web. You can lock your credit so no one can open lines of credit in your name. That can really screw you over. As soon as I was emancipated, I locked mine.”
“I’ll do that. Should I do it right now?”
“Sure.” Ash spun around in his chair and rubbed his hands together. “We should check your credit and change your bank passwords while we’re at it. Do you care if I see your numbers?”
“You’ve already seen my private machine.”
“True.” Ash smirked. “I could probably be you at this point. You have enough voice memos in there I could deepfake your voice. Your own mom wouldn’t know the difference.”
“And that’s all I need to know about that.” Collin shivered and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I do not want to think about that.”
Ash cackled. “You need a pass phrase. Make it something cool. Or you can do what I do.”
“What’s that?”
