“You’re gonna go after Half Adder?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. What is wrong with going after the information broker pulling the underworld’s strings?”

“That’s just a rumor.”

“She made your phone.”

“Not her, personally. There’s a bunch of factories churning these out. She’s too busy doing philanthropy and making decisions.”

“Don’t forget controlling access to the largest archive of personal and corporate information ever assembled.”

“That counts as making decisions if it’s real. Nobody’s that organized.”

“She has her employees recreate that OK Go video with the umbrellas every year. Way after that sort of thing stopped making the segment on the TV news where they show viral videos from three years ago. That’s the kind of obsessive dedication and commitment to detail we’re talking about. There’s five years of that video online. It’s in their ads.”

“You still watch TV news?”

“You still want to want to fight a lady who wears an electric blue snake tail just so she’s on brand when she inspects her lab where her scarily organized drones build superweapons from stolen blueprints?”

“Seems like it’d make her easier to fight. The superweapons just bring it back to even.”

“Did you forget about the office buildings full of people you’d have to fight through just to get to her?”

“She has to let her guard down eventually.”

“She doesn’t have to let her personal force field down eventually.”

“What, are you writing her biography?”

“More like reading what happens to people who decide they’re gonna go after the biggest guy in the prison yard on their first day. We only know about some of these because the police released their deposition after they vanished.”

“Maybe they’re in witness protection.”

“‘Golly gee, I sure am enjoying my first day in witness protection. Better turn on my new Adder Industries phone and check my email.’ GPS phones home, special agents dispatched, and all that paperwork done for nothing.”

“So you’re not gonna help me?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said you had to be smart about it. It’s like how you can’t just decide to write a modern operating system or go from nothing to a Tesla. Big projects have to evolve. Start with little steps and build your way to pushing a crime boss into a volcano.”

“And what is the first step on this journey?”

“Hand me your phone.”