“Drew said you might?—”
“Already done.” He didn’t move as screens filled the room. We were getting dangerously close to Connor outing our secret. Thankfully, Booker seemed more impressed with the technology than the person using it. His finger poked through one of the blue holograms hovering in the middle of the room.
“It wasn’t the cameras.”
“Nothing is simple with this,” I said.
“For you,” Connor said. From anybody else, it’d bearrogance. Or maybe itwasarrogance. I couldn’t tell as his humanity expanded. “I found code I thought we destroyed.”
My eyes widened. “No.”
“Apex?”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“99.9%, yes.”
“What am I missing?” asked Booker.
Connor and I turned to him. How did I explain that Connor’s ex-boyfriend had been a sentient artificial intelligence that had almost destroyed Vanguard? If not for Connor, Janet, and Orion, we’d all be enslaved under his programming.
“Jealous ex,” Connor said. “I am… surprised.”
Understatement of the century, not just at the return of Apex, but also at Connor admitting shock.
How the hell did we dance around the subject without giving away our identities? “Is he back in Vanguard?” Hopefully, Connor erred on the side of discretion.
“No,” he said. “But somebody has access to his programming.”
“Who has clearance for that?” I asked.
Connor’s face shifted slightly, brow furrowing ever so slightly. “Nobody. We destroyed it. This is… older. While in development, somebody must have stolen fragments of his programming.” Connor sat, his hands neatly folded on his desk. “I’ve texted you every person with access.”
I let Booker assume Connor’s ex hadmadethe program and not that hewasthe program. Though if somebody had gone through the trouble to use any version of him, we had bigger problems to deal with. “This isn’t about espionage.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not about stealing secrets or making a buck,” I said.
The screens vanished as Connor stared into space. “At best, somebody at Synergy wants to rule the world.”
“At worst?”
Connor’s eyes softened. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he appeared worried. “They want to destroy it.”
The threat of global domination didn’t seem to concern Booker. If anything, he appeared… relaxed? I knew he liked the chase, but did this somehow scratch an office-worker-turned-hero itch? I wasn’t thrilled that Connor’s ex had come into the equation. It meant the stakes had been raised. This wasn’t about saving a company a few bucks; it was about saving Vanguard, and I couldn’t waltz in and punch my way to victory.
“What now?” I asked.
“We go to work.” All our heads turned to the doorway to see Janet with a grin stretching from ear to ear.Thiswas the real Janet. “Didn’t think we’d let you and your lover have all the fun, did you?”
Lover?
They knew. My powers couldn’t keep up with the heat in my cheeks. The moment he left the room, they’d wantall the details. If he left, I did too. I’d rather face a supervillain than Janet asking me about my sex life.
Booker’s smirk eased the anxiety, but didn’t erase it.
He bumped his shoulder against mine. “I guess we’ve got some investigating to do.”
