Page 193 of Johnny

whatever the fuck I want with that filing system. Burn the whole thing down, maybe?

That would be a good wish.

Burn the whole thing down.

“There,” Megan says. “I wish for…”

I wait, but that wish doesn’t come. “For?”

“This is a bad idea.”

“Goddammit,” I say, starting to get angry. “Are you gonna play along with my third and final

romantic gesture or not? Because I feel like I’m trying to save the fucking world and you’re just lying

here telling me I’m a dumbass. And you know what? I might not be smart like you, but I’m not ready

to give up yet. I have a plan, OK? And it could work.”

“What plan?”

“Buy our way out.”

“What?”

“Buy our way out of the Way. Like how Logan bought his way out of the mob. My other not-sister-

in-law—” This actually elicits a chuckle from Megan and I feel a little bit of hope that I’m getting

through to her. “—she thinks we can use the Way money I collect every month to buy our way out. And

it makes sense because Logan did this. He bought his way out. Not with money, but a favor. And a

betrayal. And… well, my point is, we’re just basing it off that. OK? Not copying it. She thinks we can

gather up enough allies with the promise of returning their money and—”

“That’s the dumbest plan ever.”

“Well, I was counting on Charlotte to provide me with some kind of new information I could use to sweeten the deal, so to speak. I really thought she got out. I thought she got away. I thought she had

something on them and she bought her way out just like we were gonna do, but now it turns out she

was taken and used. And killed. For whatever it was they were doing in that lab. But we still have the

data, Megan. We can expose them.”

She looks over at me, shaking her head. “It won’t work.”

“How do you know? People will be pissed when they figure out that almost all of the shit that’s

wrong with humanity has been manufactured by the über-rich. There will be global unsettlement.

People will rise up and—”

“People will not rise up. They won’t even believe us. Remember that guy who owned that crazy

island down here? And it came out that that place was some sick sex club where the most atrocious