Free Warcross by Marie Lu Page B

second starts to play a preview of a Memory that I had stored. There are Memories of Keira and me celebrating our first night in the little studio we’d rented, and of me holding out my first check after my first successful bounty hunt. Then there are my Shared Favorites, Memories created by others that anyone can enjoy—like being in Frankie Dena’s shoes as she performs at the Super Bowl, or standing in the place of a little boy being swarmed by a pile of puppies, a Memory that has been shared over a billion times.
    Finally, I go to my most treasured subset—my oldest Memories, stored in a separate Favorites category. These are old videos that I recorded on a phone before the NeuroLink even came out, videos that I later downloaded into my account. They are of my father. I scroll through them until I settle on one. It’s my tenth birthday, and Dad’s hands are covering my eyes. Even though it’s an old, grainy phone video, it fills my view through my glasses like a giant screen. I feel the same anticipation that I’d felt that day, get the same surge of joy as Dad’s hands opened to reveal a painting he’d made of us, walking through a world of colorful paint strokes that looks like Central Park at twilight. I jump up and down, twirl the painting around, and get up on a chair to hold it aloft. My father smiles up at me, then reaches his arms out to help me hop down. It plays until it runs out and automaticallygoes to the next Memory in my storage. Dad in a black peacoat and bright red scarf, guiding me down the halls of the Museum of Modern Art. Dad teaching me how to paint. Dad and me picking out peonies in the Flower District while rain pours down outside. Dad shouting
Happy New Year!
with me on a rooftop overlooking Times Square.
    The Memories play over and over, until I can’t tell whether or not they’ve started again from the beginning, and gradually, I drift off into sleep, surrounded by ghosts.
    •   •   •   •   •
    I N MY DREAMS, I’m back in high school, revisiting what led to my criminal record.
    Annie Pattridge was an awkward, shy girl in my high school, a kid with gentle eyes who kept to herself and ate her lunches in a corner of the school’s little library. Sometimes I ran across her in there. I wasn’t her friend, exactly, but we were
friendly
—we’d chatted a couple of times about our shared love of Harry Potter and Warcross and
League of Legends
and computers. Other times, I’d see her picking her books off the ground after someone had knocked them out of her arms, or catch her backed up against the lockers while a bunch of kids stuck gum in her hair, or glimpse her stumbling out of the girls’ bathroom with a crack in her glasses.
    But then, one day, a boy working on a group project with Annie managed to snap a photo of her showering in the privacy of her own home. The next morning, Annie’s naked photo had been sent to every student in school, shared on the school’s homework forums, and posted online. Then came the taunts. The printouts of the photo, all cruelly drawn on. The death threats.
    Annie dropped out a week later.
    On the day she did, I got the data of every student (and a few teachers) who’d shared the photo. School admin systems? As much a joke to break as a PC with the password
Password
. From there, I hacked into every single one of their phones. I downloaded all of their personal info—their parents’ credit card data, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, all the hateful emails and texts they’d sent anonymously to Annie, and, of course, most incriminating, their private photos. I took extra care to get everything from the boy who had taken the original picture. Then I posted all of it online, titling it: “Trolls in the Dungeon.”
    Imagine the uproar the next day. Crying students, furious parents, school-wide assembly, snippets in the local papers. Then, the police. Then, me expelled. Then, me sitting in court.
    Accessing computer systems without