Page 86 of Sloth
Flint’s spectacles rested halfway down the bridge of his nose. He handed her a small Philips-Head screwdriver and then went back to collecting a pile of errant bolts and nuts that had spilled when she’d first arrived and knocked them over with her laptop.
After working diligently with him for the following two hours, she’d felt herself calm and submerge in the task at hand. So far, they’d pulled it apart, and tried hacking the sim. What finally worked was sourcing a new charger to fit the old battery. Such a simple thing to do, but neither of them had thought of it for hours, and then it took a few minutes for the battery to retain enough power for the cell screen to come alight and make a ping sound.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She thumbed through the contents.
“Just as we suspected,” Flint rumbled, clapping Sloan on the back. “The cell wasn’t backed up to the sim, but there’s history in there. Good thinking, squirt.”
“It’s basic,” Sloan replied. “Not much inside. A few numbers in the call history.” Simple social media accounts set up to act as a cover for Sara’s false identity—but Sloan knew about those. Messages between her and Wyatt—but she knew about those as well.
“Here.” Flint offered her a USB cable. “Let’s try the file recovery software again.”
She plugged it into the port on the cell, with little hope. She was out of ideas. She’d tried everything.
Evan waltzed in at that moment and came over to their bench. He flicked a stray screw out of the way so he could lean on his elbow to watch her. Flint scowled at him, made a point of picking up the rolling screw and put it back in the collection container.
“Sorry,” Evan mumbled, noticing his mistake.
Flint grumbled in response and took his container to a supply shelf on the wall.
Evan turned to Sloan. “Shouldn’t you be in your room keeping an eye on the monitors?”
Giving him the side-eye, she continued running the program on her attached laptop. “Shouldn’t you be covering some poor soul in permanent ink?”
“Nah. Shop’s closed.”
“It’s that late?”
“He nodded. Only just gone five.”
“Wow. I’ve been immersed in this, then training with Tony, then this. We shared a beer at Heaven, then I left him to come here. Some fan recognized him and he decided to hang.”
It was funny when Sloan thought about Tony and his acting success. When Tony had announced Gluttony’s alter-ego would be a movie star, no one really thought he’d be successful. A forever auditioning actor was a decent cover for being a vigilante. But then Sara came along and ruined their team. All the Deadly Seven had scattered to the wind and become immersed in their day lives to get away from the fact that they may have been responsible for the death of over forty innocents—or at least the public thought they were. When Tony got cast in a starring role, it took him by surprise. It took them all by surprise.
Parker had been on his case to find a new career for months. His rigid hours weren’t easy to work around and fighting the Syndicate came first. She knew that better than anyone.
“So what you doing?” Evan asked again.
“I’m searching the cell Sara left at Wyatt’s.”
“Why?”
“Are you kidding me?” She turned to him. Had his electric power fried his brain?
“What?” He looked offended.
“Well, bras, maybe if you’d actually had a psychic vision or something about Max, we’d be able to find him and I wouldn’t need to do this.”
“No need to get snippy. I can’t control them, you know that. I’ve only had weird random dreams about Daisy and gardening.”
She slumped. Flint, who was closing up a draw on his shelf, glanced over with a look that told her to settle down.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m still on edge.”
“S’cool. Besides,” Evan said as he poked at the cell. “It looks different.”
“What do you mean?”
