When they met up in the galley after a couple of hours of study, Tori thought that the others seemed hopeful. Lu smiled, Brian practically bounced in, and Gabe was whistling. Even Mr. Yi stood a bit straighter than usual.

“This was crazy hard work, but I’ve got it,” Brian said. “We access the software control panel, take the neural processing offline, and—”

Lu’s smile dropped. “No, we’ve got to disable the chemical processing instructions before the neural processing units.”

“Mine said we had to shut down sensory processing before neural, so people didn’t get the sensation of going blind or deaf,” Gabe said.

“How could our armbands have messed with our eyes that much?” Lu asked. “It’s like we’re loo...

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