Not squirrel bones: raccoon. To be continued, except when another episode started a minute later, it wasn’t the second part, but a new one with what looked like an exciting setup: the backyard held a decrepit family cemetery.
He clicked off the television before he got drawn in, and turned what little attention he had to the woman in front of him. “Got it. FreerMind. Lana Robinson. How can I help you?”
“How are you doing? We were very worried about you.”
An odd thing for a stranger to say, and maybe she realized it, too, because she added, “Sophie’s family is family to us, too.”
“I’m okay, all things considered.”
“We heard you had your Pilot removed. Is that true?”
He turned his head to give her a better look. “Turned off, not removed.”
“Good, good. Listen, David, I don’t want to waste your time while you’re here resting and recovering, but we had a question we wanted to ask you.”
He didn’t point out she’d asked at least three questions already. Those had been small talk. Whatever came next was the reason she was visiting, not some fake talk about family.
“David, FreerMind has been impressed with you for a long time. BNL must have known they had a good thing in you. Your charisma, and the way you convey seriousness and intelligence, like you put careful consideration into your choice, and everyone would be happy if they made your choice, too. Your ads made it very difficult for us to convince people not to get Pilots.”
That still wasn’t a question, so David waited politely.
“We wondered if—when you’re recovered—we might convince you to run for office.”
That wasn’t anything he’d expected, and he wasn’t sure how to respond. He settled on “What office?”
“There’s a contestable House seat in the state. Harry Andress hasn’t been polling well recently.”
“House like the US House of Representatives?” He’d expected her to say city council or something in state government. This was a whole different order of magnitude.
“Yes. Like I said, Andress has been polling poorly, and we think we can oust him.”
“I don’t know the laws, but is this something a nonprofit is supposed to do?”
“Not exactly. We wouldn’t be involved, beyond arranging a meeting between you and some party officials. They’d take it from there, help you form a team, all that.”
“And you’re offering this to me because I got hit by a train?”
“We’re offering because we heard you’d had your Pilot out—”
“Off.”
“—Your Pilot turned off. We’re arranging this because it would be a coup for anti-Pilot activism if someone of your stature entered the race. People like you and trust you. If you said you’d gotten your Pilot out—”
“Off.”
“—Off because you’d come to realize the problems inherent, you could turn the tide.”
“And what if my opponent pointed out I was dumb enough to get hit by a train?”
“A freak accident. Maybe it was the train company’s fault, or whoever maintains the tracks. Have you considered suing? Or maybe you were trying to save a kitten. People would eat that up.”
“They would,” he agreed. He was fading, whether from concentration or this weirdly intense woman or the pain starting to creep along his leg. “Look, I’m getting tired. Can I say I’ll think on it?”
She pressed a card into his hand. “Call me when you want to get the ball rolling. I think you’d have fun with this. All the good parts of your old job, like talking with people about things that matter to them and to you, without the parts where you’re convincing them to install a dubious technology in their heads.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled and waved at her, hoping it was a wave that conveyed good-bye.
He dropped the card beside the telephone and closed his eyes. The funny thing was, he didn’t entirely hate the idea. He liked talking with people about things that mattered to them; his favorite part of the BNL job had been figuring out how and why a given person would benefit from the Pilot, in order to sell it to them. Public office would mean he wouldn’t have to prove to another interviewer that he was as good as a Piloted worker; he’d just have to convince voters he could get as much done as a Piloted politician.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
SOPHIE
As she ran upstairs, Sophie texted Gabe. Coffee. Now. Big hugs!
Big hugs, the highest priority in their silly system that had never mattered more, because it meant she could meet Gabe away from the meeting space, away from the office and phone.
Before she’d gotten to the counter, Gabe stood beside her. “Is your brother okay?”
“Yes! I mean, they amputated his foot, which is awful, but he’s alive and he didn’t mess up his head or anything, which they said is pretty amazing.” She realized Gabe must have thought she’d contacted him because of David. “But that’s not why I texted you.”
She filled her mug and paid. She started talking the second they were out the door. “I’ve been thinking for a while now that maybe our phone is bugged.”
“Yeah,” said Gabe. “Or the office. That’s why we do this walk-and-talk thing.”
“Right. I still don’t know who might have done that, but I’ve also been thinking: somebody is feeding information to BNL.” There had been one terrible moment where she’d thought it was Julie, but Julie was spying on Sophie, not on the group. She wasn’t passing along what she learned, just using it to keep tabs.
“And?”
No point holding out for the sake of drama. “It’s Dominic.”
“That kid? Isn’t he like fifteen?”
“He says seventeen, but he could be older and look like a kid, like me. He’s always hanging around, and I know lots of people do that, but he’s like freakishly always around, offering me rides places, all that. I was thinking, we know from my brother that you can get a Pilot turned off but the light left on, so why couldn’t you be
