Chapter 48
“YOU THINK Absolute stole our software?” Brandi said. “Absolute owns the whole damn world. Why would he be here?”
I pulled in a deep, clammy breath through my nose. “You’ve been with Legacy most of your time, haven’t you?”
“So?”
Ceren said, “Aw, shit.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“What?” Alice said, head flicking between the three of us.
“Go a few miles south of here, and you hit the edge,” I said. “We’re—the whole town—we’re surrounded with burned-out ash. Everything burned but Frayville. All the way to the horizon, there’s no sign of anything but ashes and dust.”
My words turned Brandi’s face even paler. “But the lake. That mess is alive.”
“You can’t burn the lake,” I said. “If Absolute is here…”
Ceren said, “Maybe there’s no place else to be.”
“It couldn’t burn the whole wo
