Page 94 of Poster Girl

“Easton Turner used to work for Beake and Bell, the pharmaceutical company, before the Delegation fell,” she says. “Periodically, he met with my father to provide him with Sol, the suicide drug. My father then used that drug to kill people who were inconvenient to the Delegation. On at least six occasions, those people were children.”

Whatever Rose Parker was expecting, it obviously wasn’t that. She stares up at Sonya, eyes wide.

“Grace Ward?” she says.

Sonya nods.

“What I’m trying to do here is to get Easton Turner’s location data, and then my father’s location data from the same time frame, to prove they had several meetings,” she says. “Combined with my Insight footage from the past few weeks, which Alexander Price has a copy of, it should be enough for you to expose Easton Turner as an accomplice to murder.”

“Not enough for a criminal case,” Rose says, softly.

“No, but he won’t be elected to public office again,” she says. “I’m hoping you can also use his location data to prove that he’s been working with the Analog Army, but I’m not as sure of that. Emily Knox went to the building they operate out of a couple days before she died. If we find out where it is, Easton Turner’s location data might show that he’s been there several times. Enough to arouse suspicion, at least.”

“This is...” Rose waves a hand over the keyboard. “An absurdly useful resource. And a terrifying one.”

“That’s why I only want to take what we need,” Sonya says. “Knox told me to finish up with Grace Ward, and this is how I’m doing it.”

“And after that?”

“After that, I wipe it all away,” Sonya says.

“You’re going todeleteit?” Rose says. “Do you have any idea how many crimes you could solve, how many people you could help, with all of this information at your fingertips?”

“She asked me to,” Sonya says, firmly. “So I’m doing it. What I need to know from you is whether you’re going to write this article or not. It’s a big risk, but I need someone to take it.”

Rose studies her for a moment.

“Of course I will,” she says. “I have to tell you, I’m kind of surprised that you’re willing to torch your father’s name like this just to burn down Easton Turner.”

She has it backward, Sonya thinks. It’s her father’s name she needs to burn.

Comprehension dawns on her as she thinks of what Alexander Price said to her, when she was just beginning this investigation—that he had helped the uprising destroy his childhood home. It had disgusted her then. Now she understands it. It’s not something to delight in, something to thirst for, something to relish. It’s just what needs to be done.

“These were his choices,” Sonya says. “But I’m the one who has to live with them.”

An hour later, Rose Parker leaves the apartment. They spent some time debating exactly what she would need to know in order to implicate Easton Turner fully, and then experimenting with the UIA database to export the data. Once Rose was satisfied, she tied her scarf more firmly around her head, gathered her things, and left Sonya alone in Knox’s apartment.

Sonya takes out Knox’s instructions for deleting the Delegation data. Scrawled along the top isdata purge protocol.The instructions are written like Knox is talking to a child. Condescending from beyond the grave, Sonya thinks, and she starts to type.

Once the process is set in motion, it takes time. There’s so much data that scouring it from Knox’s system—impressive though it is—is laborious, and all the machines in the room start to hum, as if the apartment is coming to life. A number in the lower left-hand corner of the terminal reports back the percentage of files deleted.

1%

2%

3%

Sonya swivels to face the windows, and waits. She falls asleep there, upright in Knox’s chair. When she wakes, it’s early afternoon, and rain dusts the windows. She turns to discover that the screen reads

100%

Thank You.

A sputtering sound startles her, and she looks under the desk to see a trail of smoke coming from the computer tower beneath it. She runs to the bathroom to get a towel and wet it in the sink, and by the time she returns, water dripping on her shoes, the entire computer is engulfed in a cloud of dark smoke. The screen above the desk flickers out, and instead of throwing the towel over it, she stands back and breathes in the smell of burned plastic and watches Knox’s system self-destruct.

Eventually the smoke dissipates. She hangs the wet towel over the back of the chair, takes one last look at the apartment: stark bedroom, wild tangles of cables, line of pink light around the desk. Then she props the door open—there’s no sense in the peace officers breaking it down, after all, since there’s nothing left for them to find that matters.

Twenty

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