In this episode, we find out that Inazagi, the corporation in direct competition with SPIGA, is about to visit in some sort of delegation.
And let’s talk about Inazagi. WOW. They apparently indoctrinate their kids to spy on their parents, to tattle on anything that sounds seditious. Creepy.
This sets up the reason why one of the Inazagi higher ups wants to defect to SPIGA–she’s pregnant, and really doesn’t want her kid brainwashed. This gives our Ben an opportunity to make himself known–he suggests a plan that allows the woman to defect cleanly, and sets up a plan to get Inazagi to turn off some sort of horrible kill switch implanted in her, designed to kill her if she ever tried to defect. They decide to fake her death, using the body of a dead sex worker. Ben is afraid the body might be Elena, but he doesn’t get a chance to find out.
And we thought SPIGA and their Non Disclosure agreements were harsh. #RememberSadChad
We also get to see how Aaron/Ben found Elena when they got a little older. Apparently, the education system in the Red Zone uses tech to cram all the data into kids heads they can, and then the corporations can pluck the smart ones from the crowd. With Elena, it goes a little…wrong. She has repeated seizures, trying to cram all the data in her head that she can. She wants to better herself and her family, but it obviously doesn’t go quite the way she imagines.
The enterprising Roger (Ben’s direct competition) is the one who grabbed his stealth tech–the keyhole–and he tries to find out what’s on it, triggering the self destruct in the process. He ends up going into the Red Zone to ask a hacker to get him something to get the data off, and she ends up toying with Roger. She wants the spoiled little corporate brat to know how the Red Zone people suffer. She gives him the means to hack the keyhole, but films his humiliation to blackmail him with into never coming back.
During some weird ritualistic thing where it looks like they’re killing some dude (are they experiencing something through him?) they poison the defector, to make it look like she died. Since it stops her heart, clever Ben gets the Inazagi head to disarm the kill switch so he can shock her heart into working. We know how that’s going to go. Ben has to actively hack the kill switch into the body they’re giving back to Inazagi in seconds, kind of tipping his hand as to his skills. Julian isn’t stupid. This could be a really bad thing. He gets the kudos, but at what price?
Laura gets to know a little bit more about the misery of the Red Zone when her domestic help tries to steal from her to help pay for medical care for a neighbor’s daughter. She tells her to bring the kid in so she can treat her, and when the neighborhood finds out, every sick person shows up at the gate. Soft hearted Laura wants to treat them all, but instead it causes a riot. I think she’s starting to understand the world a little better.
Ben mistakenly thinks the body of the sex worker was Elena, but when he brings her ring (which he took from the body) to Theo, it triggers a recording. One of Elena’s friends was to smuggle the ring out when she tried to escape.
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JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.