“No,” Hamza said. “We haven’t talked—really talked—in a little while. Just some housekeeping stuff, about the money. He tookthe riots really hard. It seemed like he just wanted some distance from all of this.”
Miko’s face twisted, her mouth turning up and one eye scrunching a bit—her version of a shrug.
“Apparently he’s over it,” she said. “Okay. Take a step back. Tell me what this means.”
“What it means? I’ll show you what it means.”
He held up his phone, pointing at one of the red lines of text.
“This could be worth a hundred million,” he said. He moved his finger down slightly. “This one, maybe a billion. These predictionsare literally the most valuable things in the world, and he’s just . . . giving them away!”
“Relax,” Miko said, putting her hand on Hamza’s forearm, pulling his hand down. “If they’re that important, why did he doit? He must have had a reason.”
“I have no idea, Miko!” Hamza said, his voice rising. “I don’t even know where he is. I call him all the time, text, whatever—hewon’t get back to me.”
Miko frowned. She plucked the phone from Hamza’s hand and stared at the screen.
“You know,” she said. “These new predictions. They’re different from the first set.”
“I know,” Hamza said, his voice flat. “The first group was supposed to be worthless, or as near as we could get. The lotteryticket in Colorado, the chocolate milk thing, that crappy actor in Uruguay. They wouldn’t even make the news, if they hadn’tbeen on the Site. Why give it away for free, you know?”
“Right. But that’s not what I mean,” Miko said. “I don’t think Will was thinking about money here.”
She read from the screen.
“A bridge is going to collapse in Milwaukee. A car factory will catch fire in Pusan. A ship’s going to run aground near Rotterdam.”
She looked up at him.
“Hamza, these are warnings. These are all awful things—people could die. But none of the new predictions talk about that.Will doesn’t say how many people will die. Because maybe now no one will.”
Hamza took his phone back and read through the list again.
“The predictions can’t be changed. None of these things can be stopped.”
“They don’t have to be,” Miko said. “If people know what’s coming, they can, you know, just get out of the way.”
“Okay, even if that’s what this is—and I’ll grant that could be a good thing, even a great thing—Will promised me he wouldn’tput up more predictions without talking to me first. He’s not alone in this, Miko.”
Miko raised an eyebrow.
“He thinks he is, Hamza, or he would have talked to you first.”
Hamza glanced down, at the slight curve that had only recently become visible above Miko’s waist.
“This is about the riots,” Miko said. “And every other bad thing that’s happened because the Oracle showed up. He feels guilty, or responsible.”
“He’s not,” Hamza said. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve gone over it with him a hundred times. What other people do isn’t his—”
Miko put her hand over his mouth, gently.
“He’s obviously not convinced,” she said. “I know you’re frustrated, sweetheart. You’re a control freak. This is your worstnightmare. But the Site, the Oracle . . . they aren’t yours. They belong to Will. They always did, even though he broughtyou into it. The weight of it . . . the weight of what he knows—we can’t even imagine. If this is how he wants to deal withit, well, it’s his call. And are you really saying he shouldn’t try to save lives? Honestly, I can’t believe you guys didn’tpost these in the first place.”
Hamza looked at his wife’s face, her good, earnest expression, a few wisps of dark hair spilling down over her cheek. He breathedin the scent of her skin from her hand covering his mouth.
People try to break into the Site constantly, he thought. Every day. The Florida Ladies send us reports. And this isn’t teenagers in their basements. Japan, Israel, corporations—they’re relentless. The Ladies tell us we can’t be hacked, and that there’s nothing to find even if someone broke through the security . . . but yeah. Sure.
Every time Will does something outside the plan, he gives those hackers more data to crunch—more ways to get a foothold. I don’t know what’s going to sink us—maybe the Ladies are right, and nothing can or will—but why is he taking chances with it?
If it gets out that Will’s the Oracle . . . then . . . everyone would sue him. And then they’d sue me, the minute they figured out I’m involved, and how much money we made from all this. And then maybe some D.A. somewhere would try to prosecute us for breaking some law or other. Every penny we have would be gone, just from trying to stay ahead of it.
Assuming some fanatic doesn’t just shoot all three of us in the head. Or . . . all four of us.
Hamza reached up and gently removed his wife’s hand from his face. He kissed Miko’s palm, and smiled at her.
“I just don’t like it when Will goes off the reservation,” he said. “You’re right about the weight of all this. He’s too deepin his own head. He doesn’t think about the consequences of what he does.”
“I don’t know,” Miko said. “He just posted predictions that will save hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. I think he’s onlythinking about consequences.”
Hamza nodded.
“Yeah. But there’s you, and the kid. The stakes are high, you know?”
Miko did her face-twisting shrug maneuver again.
“Of course. That makes sense. Hey, here’s a question: Have you told Will that?”
Hamza rubbed his hand down the side of his face, then shook his head.
“No. It would be an awkward conversation, because in order to get him to really understand why I get so worried about thisstuff, I might have to tell him that I brought you into all this.”
Miko raised an eyebrow.
“So each of you is just building up lists of things you’re not talking to each other about. Seems like a sound strategy.”
Hamza looked at Miko for a little while. He lifted his cell, thumbed it on, and dialed.
“You’re right,”
