Latifa digs around in the Keyboard Oracle, pulls out a handful and scatters them on the mouse pad. “ctrl L O S T @/2,” they read.

“Whose control?” she asks.

N E !/1 “/’ S.

Her heart begins to pound like a spacebar. “Somebody summoned something wild, didn’t they?” she mutters. “And it got loose. Am I going to have to debug things, or firewall, or wipe it…” She shakes the little plastic container and upends it.

“ESC,” say the keys, all of them. “ESC ESC ESC ESC.”

She makes for the window, and the virals are already splintering her front door.