“Great crimes start with small lies,” Stenton noted. “And Friendy, better than any tool humans have yet made, can identify those small lies before they become dangerous acts.”

  Wes and Stenton then demonstrated how AI would scan all conversations—anonymized, of course, they were quick to note—and when they found instances of a certain level of dishonesty or guile, that person would be flagged for closer scrutiny. A disproportionately dishonest or cagey person would be referred to the proper authorities, who could keep an eye on them as needed.

  “Friendy will continue to assess the quality of your relationships. Don’t worry about that, L-O-L,” Stenton said, and forced a mirthless chuckle. “But in addition, it will be one of our primary instruments in keeping you safe. Thank you, Wes, for your vision and your sacrifice.” Stenton turned briefly to Wes and then back to the camera, which zoomed in, removing Wes from the frame.

  “And thank you, Delaney Wells, for your role in all of this. We wish you a speedy recovery, and we can’t wait to get you back on the Every team.”

  Delaney remembered to breathe, and wanted to vomit, but she was too tired, too wrecked. She heard a sniffle, and found that Kiki was crying. A ding sounded from her wrist.

  “That’s my signal to go,” Kiki said to Delaney, and straightened herself. “You should be proud. Proud of what’s come from Soren’s death and your own suffering. None of it was in vain. Kudos, Delaney. Kudos.”

  XLI.

  DELANEY COULD HAVE SUED. Even the threat of a lawsuit for the Every’s failure to protect her would mean she’d walk away with an eight-figure settlement. But she’d signed every release the Every had given her. She did not hold them responsible, she said. And she did not want ten million dollars from the Every. She wanted them to cease to exist. The alacrity with which she signed the forms kicked off a steady drumbeat of admiration and gratitude from an ascending colonnade of Every executives.

  With bandages still covering her feet and hands and ribs, she was feted at a private dinner in one of the senior pods, with twelve Gang of 40 members in attendance. They thanked her in tones of great sincerity and promised they would find the culprit, would do so within the week. They asked about Idaho and her work as a ranger, and they all wanted to know her hopes for her permanent placement at the Every. What did she want to do when she was done rotating? they wanted to know. She was offered roles in advertising and marketing and design. There was room on the ethics team, they told her, or—or!—she could be a Product Philosopher.

  She wanted to continue to roam, she said. She loved every minute she’d spent in every department, she said, and this was largely true. It was a dream to be able to get to know each lever and button, and see the minds at work in all quarters, she said.

  They were so grateful, so relieved. They said absolutely. They knew she wanted to spend some time at home in Idaho, and they gave her a travel bonus, offered to get her home in a carbon-free manner. She even got a message from Stenton: Integrity. You have it. S.

  And at the end of the night—as if the dinner were a final audition before she was cast—they said that in the morning, Mae Holland would very much like to meet her.

  “Damn it,” Joan said. “I shouldn’t have listened to Francis.”

  Francis had counseled Joan to stall for a few days, perhaps a week, to see how things shook out. He was hoping for some kind of settlement-with-continued-employment, and had convinced Joan to do so, too. She and Francis had not signed anything yet, and though they had been assured they could take their time, Joan had sensed from the Gang of 40 that her delay had already been taken as a sign of mercenary betrayal. Delaney was shocked that Joan, who had always appeared to have the place wired, had read the situation so wrongly; the Every valued loyalty, and had since the beginning rewarded loyalty and discretion with mountains of stock options and cash. They were miserly with settlements and vicious with shakedowns.

  “Where are you meeting?” Joan asked.

  “I think in her box,” Delaney said, though she had not actually been notified of the location.

  “Just you?” Joan asked.

  “I think so. But I actually don’t know.”

  “I’m not asking you to bring me,” Joan said.

  Delaney hadn’t thought to bring Joan along. “I can ask,” she said, knowing the idea was ludicrous. “When they give me details, I’ll ask.”

  “No. Don’t,” Joan said. “I know I fucked up. I don’t want you to be sullied by my avarice. Just watch them demote me to Product Philosopher or something like that.”

  “They won’t,” Delaney said, but realized that was exactly where people like Joan were relegated. “I’ll ask if you can come.”

  “Sure, but she’ll say no. Anyway, listen. You should be ready. You’ll be on camera. Can we get your hair cut? I like your wounded pixie look, but it could be improved.”

  Delaney hadn’t factored in cameras, but of course it was true. Joan called in a favor from one of the Every stylists.

  “This might be seen by millions,” Joan said. “If she sends out an alert that she’s meeting one of the bomb victims, tens of millions. In case that informs what you wear.” Joan’s eyes swept across Delaney’s clothing without further comment.

  The meeting was in the same nondescript building where Delaney had first met Carlo and Shireen—a blank and purgatorial room, neither here nor there, invisible to the outside world.

  Delaney was now free of bandages and able to walk largely without pain. The morning of the meeting, she ran her palms over the little hair she had, feeling sure her every thought and plan was now unhidden. The stylist had done what she could, but the result was more alarming than chic; her skull was still swollen and bulbous. Her phone dinged. She’d been told that the audience would be at 9 a.m., and the location would be provided that morning. Now, at 8:48, she was given the building’s address, and told to come alone, and that Mae would be alone, too.

  It didn’t seem possible. When Delaney arrived, there was no one near. No cameras, no attendants, no assistants. When she knocked on the door, Mae answered, looking precisely like herself, only far smaller than Delaney had imagined. She was tiny.

  “Come inside, come inside,” Mae said, as if ushering Delaney from bad weather and into a warm cabin. When Delaney entered and the door was closed, Mae squared up on her, reached up for Delaney’s shoulders and brought her in. Her embrace was tight and instantly Delaney found herself sobbing. Shit, she thought. She blinked madly.

  “Is that too tight?” Mae asked, pulling back. “Your ribs?”

  “It’s fine,” Delaney managed, and the sobbing continued. What was happening? She loathed herself. Mae was manipulating this whole situation, she told herself, and yet here she was, holding Delaney tightly, without caution. Surely if Mae were some calculating monster she would be more careful about physical contact in front of millions. She would have given some advance warning about an imminent embrace. But she had not, and the embrace continued for a full minute—it was, she realized, one of the longer clutches of her adult life, and it was not until the end that Delaney’s breathing slowed and her eyes dried. Mae pulled back again and held Delaney by the shoulders. She found Delaney’s eyes and locked hers to them.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Delaney blinked furiously. She was furious at herself. Her fragility. What was happening? Who was this person? For a moment she was on Mae’s side, Stenton’s side, Wes’s side. The bombing was a towering crime and the Every and all humanity should do anything they could to prevent it, or any crime, from happening again.

  “Just cry,” Mae said, and Delaney found herself in a chair. How did she get into a chair? She was sitting on a comfortable stuffed chair and was doubled over, choking, with Mae standing behind her, stroking her heaving shoulders.

  “Go, go,” Mae said. “Cry and cry and cry.”

  Goddamnit, Mae was a human. Her hands were making circles on Delaney’s back, and finally Delaney’s breathing slowed, and her tears slowed, and she raised her head and looked around and it was still just her and Mae, and whatever millions had been watching the pathetic breakdown.

  “You aren’t on camera,” Mae said.

  Delaney scanned Mae’s body for her cam. There was nothing. She cried again, heaving. Again Mae rubbed her shoulders. It was pathetic, Delaney thought. What kind of spy was she? She was nothing. Spineless.

  Delaney knew Mae had only turned the camera off a few times in all the time she’d been running the company. She’d done so now, and that was the right thing to do. Mae was real.

  Lord, Delaney thought. This will be so hard. How to ruin all this without hurting her new friend, this being of pure light? She looked into Mae’s eyes. They were wet but her cheeks were dry. She was a being of righteous love and was also a highly evolved angel of control. And now she had a tissue. Not just a tissue. A bundle of tissue.

  “They’re so flimsy. One is never enough,” Mae laughed.

  Delaney blew her nose and soaked the first bundle. Mae had another ready. Delaney soaked this one, too. Mae took the first two handfuls, wet with Delaney’s mucus, without hesitation, walked to the compost bin, tossed them in, returned and gave Delaney a third fistful of tissue. Delaney dried her nose and eyes and cheeks, and her right wrist, which was laced with stray strands of tears and snot.

  “I can’t imagine,” Mae said. “So scary.”

  “So fucking scary,” Delaney said.

  “I bet it gets scarier the further away from it you get. The more you realize truly what happened.”

  “It does. It does get scarier,” Delaney said, realizing that this was true. “Every night it gets more real.”

  “You could have died,” Mae said, and again Delaney couldn’t see. Again she was underwater and her nose let free a flood of mucus.

  “I’m sorry,” Mae said. This came in a whisper to Delaney’s ear, because Mae had once more taken her into her arms and was saying, hotly in her ear, “I’m sorry” and “Shhh, shhh,” the sounds wonderfully hushed and loud.

  “Thank you so much,” Delaney said.

  “Shhh. Shhhh,” Mae whispered in her ear, so hot and so loud.

  When Delaney’s breathing slowed again, Mae stepped back. “The Every has made some enemies, I’m afraid,” she said. “So many people and entities who don’t appreciate the evolution we’re undergoing as a species. I’m thinking this was some kind of violent last gasp of the old ways and the people who benefit from keeping things as they are. As they were. But listen. I want this to be just the beginning with you and me. Okay?”

  Delaney didn’t believe this part, was sure Mae was simply saying what a kind person would say.

  “I’m going to Idaho, too,” Mae said, “You know the Allen & Co. retreat they do in Sun Valley?”

  “I do,” Delaney said. Every year, a hundred of the wealthiest and most powerful tech and media CEOs and venture capitalists—and the occasional Winfrey or Soros—took over the town. Hotels were closed, restaurants rented out, the galleries stayed open late. In general, though, it drove the locals mad.

  “I’ll be going,” Mae said, “but I have free time. I built in an extra day, actually, so you and I can spend time together. Can you plan a hike for us?”

  “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “Somewhere only you know.”

  Delaney laughed. “I know so many places!” She was so happy. The idea of showing Mae, her new guardian and close friend, the back country filled her with pleasure. “There’s a waterfall—”

  “Don’t tell me!” Mae said. “I want it to be a surprise. We’ll hike, and we’ll talk, just us girls, and we’ll make plans. Just make sure it’s off the grid. Somewhere where it’s only you and me.”

  “Okay,” Delaney said.

  “I have such plans for you,” Mae said.

  XLII.

  IT TOOK DELANEY a few days to return to sanity. Or at least to her previous state of mental disarray and paranoia. She had regained her healthy cynicism regarding Mae and her motives, and had regained her rage at the Every for co-opting her friend Wes and turning their gag software into a tool of global interpersonal suspicion. But she wondered if the real problem was Stenton. Was it Stenton who turned every innocent-enough idea into a weapon of control and suppression? Was it possible to separate Stenton from all of this, and to save Wes, and to bend Mae into a less dangerous purveyor of internet diversions?

  These things were on Delaney’s mind as she waited for Kiki and her next rotation. But instead of Kiki, a very tall woman with ink-black hair approached. She was wearing a white taffeta tutu over a blue bodysuit; it looked like the splash she might make entering the ocean feet-first.

  “I’m Siggi. The new Kiki,” the woman said, and walked right past, intending Delaney to follow. “So, the Reading Room! I think this was a good choice. Given all you’ve been through, a low-stress rotation seems best.” Delaney followed Siggi to the south end of campus, the Bay Bridge above. “Especially given you seem to really enjoy reading.” She said the word enjoy with the hint of bewilderment someone might apply to a hobby of canning or cataloging grubs. They came upon a shaded doorway and stepped in. Silver stairs led them two flights down.

  “It’s underground, for obvious reasons,” Siggi said, but Delaney couldn’t imagine why a reading room would need to be subterranean. Siggi knocked on a steel door, and it opened upon the drabbest room Delaney had seen on campus. She had expected something like Bailey’s famed library—an antiquarian’s room rich with mahogany and brass and ladders for the higher shelves—but the room was instead a sloppy modernist mess. It looked like a junior high classroom on the first day of summer. There was the tinny sound of mournful chamber music coming from one corner, where a middle-aged woman stretched on a plush pink divan with a stack of yellow papers on her lap. She did not look up.

  Delaney counted eight people in the room; only one appeared younger than forty. She stood at Siggi’s side for an uncomfortably long time before a man, who had been sitting no more than ten feet from them at a round walnut table, raised his head to them and smiled. In no hurry at all, he rose and walked to them with a quieting finger at his lips, and beckoned them to follow him into a courtyard. It was a small outdoor space, two stories underground but full of light and potted plants. With a heavy glass door between them and his colleagues, he spoke.

  “This is sort of our conversation area,” he said, his voice like a woodwind, his accent East African. He bowed ever so slightly.

  “Delaney,” she said, and mirrored his bow.

  “Yes, I made the leap. I’m Gregory, the ostensible head of the Reading Room,” he said, and handed Delaney a business card, printed on cardstock with rounded edges, that read:

  GREGORY AKUFO-ADDO

  [OSTENSIBLE HEAD]

  The Reading Room

  He wore loosely knit jersey under a V-neck sweater. His leather shoes seemed to have been through great trouble, cross-hatched with a thousand wounds.

  “I can get you a pair,” he said, noticing Delaney’s noticing. His eyes were quick and penetrating, and she realized that while he was finishing this sentence about one thing he’d noticed, he had noted a dozen more things about Delaney, stored them away—all while consciously keeping his eyes smiling kindly.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Siggi said, with a terrified smile that spoke of her profound discomfort with Gregory, his watchful eyes, his unkempt environs and his odd coterie. Before she left, though, Siggi presented Delaney with another non-disclosure agreement, on her tablet, and watched her sign it.

  Gregory looked through the glass at the puddles of papers inside. “I’m done apologizing for the mess,” he said, and seemed to be waiting for Delaney to comment on it one way or the other.

  “It doesn’t bother me,” she said.

  “I want to say that I’m sorry that you were injured in the bombing,” Gregory said. “It’s the one thing I know about you. And I’m deeply sorry. For your own suffering and the loss of your friend Soren. It must have been harrowing.”

  “Thank you,” Delaney said. His sincerity was total.

  “You have physically recovered?” he asked. His eyes scanned her for visible injuries. She smiled, yes. “That is a blessing. And you haven’t been here before?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Very fine,” he said. “Out of curiosity, what have you deduced thus far about this place?”

  Delaney had the sinking feeling that this introduction, and possibly all of her time at the Reading Room, would be conducted via the Socratic method.

  “I’m assuming you read the things no one else has time to read,” she said.

  A tight smile pinched his face. “Close,” he said. “The rest of the Every does, and must, exist near the surface. We are deep-sea divers. We are missioned with reading about a hundred long-form texts a week, from books to scripts to contracts to manifestos. The incoming texts we examine for libel, sabotage, legal exposure, and existential threats to the Every. For the outgoing texts we act as content curators, copy editors, tonal judges and proofers. Does any of that need further elucidation?”

  “Nope, got it,” Delaney said.

  “This department has no cameras, no internet, no signals going in or out,” he continued. “We read sensitive documents on paper. As you know, as texts are digitized, they can be altered. You may have heard of a diabolical recent thing called FictFix, which so-called improves classic texts to meet contemporary standards and reading tastes?”

  Delaney’s stomach cinched. “I think so,” she said.

  “Here we deal with original, definitive texts and we go slow. Bailey set the department up after noticing that with every passing year, errors in outgoing messaging were increasing, pivotal words and clauses in incoming contracts were being missed, and in general he could not depend on the rest of the Every staff to catch these things. So here we read carefully and slowly, and we miss nothing. Does that interest you?”