I eye the bags of cash lying on the living room floor. “I’m putting some things in place. I’ll be there soon.”
“Hai.” Ren hangs up.
Zane gets up and stretches his back. “If we’re going to do this more often, we should probably invest in a money counter.”
I tilt my head. “You mean those automatic counting machines from the movies?”
“Those are just to double check. A human being still has to count the money,” Sol mutters, wiping his eyes. “Gangs have accountants too.”
“How do you know so much about street gangs?” Zane yawns.
“I almost joined one.” Sol shrugs.
Zane and I freeze.
Sol laughs at our faces. “Don’t worry. I didn’t get too deep. My abuela would chop my head off with herchanclasif I ever didsomething that stupid.” He smirks. “Have you seen her slippers? They’re made of leather and they’re hefty, man. I don’t play those games.”
I file that information about Sol away for later.
Dutch enters the room. His jaw tightens when he sees the bags of cash. “This seems familiar. Why do I feel like I’ve done something like this before?”
“We paid off that security guard so we could sneak in when Sol was locked up last year,” Zane explains.
Sol starts scratching the mauled skin at his wrist.
Footsteps patter upstairs, and we all look up as J scrambles into sight.
“I did it! I’m ready!” She waves a hand in the air. She’s still wearing the hospital gown from last night, and her hair is in a messy bun, piled up on top of her head. The bun flops forward and backward as she dashes to the stairs.
“Slow down,” I bark at her.
She skids to a stop, her eyes narrowing on me. However, she listens and changes her frantic pace.
I notice Zane and Dutch exchanging looks.
“It’s done,” J announces.
“What’s done?” I ask, approaching the foot of the stairs.
J grabs the railing and steps down. She’s breathing hard from fast-walking the short distance between my bedroom and the banister.
“The connection is in place. Once I have the phones, I can mirror them to the cloud.”
“How?” I saw what she was working on just a few short hours ago. The infrastructure was unique, but it was also half-baked and riddled with holes. There’s no way she could have solved all the variables on her own in such a short time.
“I used AI.”
That throws up a million other questions for me, but my brothers start mumbling amongst themselves.
“Is AI that evolved?” Zane asks.
Sol grunts. “Zane, come on. AI can write a song in seconds.”
“AI can’t replace a human soul,” Dutch says. “No matter how much it tries.”
I tune my brothers out and focus on J. By this time, a normal person would have descended the stairs already, but she’s not even halfway down.
My boots thud as I stomp up the stairs to her.
