Billy, however, claimed he would provide the world all the proof in a live documentary called Finding Claus. The live stream was expected to break downloading records.
There were photos of Billy trekking the Arctic ice with icicles clinging to his beard and eyebrows. The credited date was twenty years old. Oddly, he looked exactly like BG did now.
Ryder scrolled down to a section titled “Fountain of Youth.” Billy, it stated, credited his agelessness to his private research. His claims were widely criticized as misleading and fraudulent, yet his skeptics could not explain his physical appearance given his age. Ryder glanced at his birthdate and did the math.
He’s seventy-five?
The man on the Wikipedia page looked fifty years old and exactly how Billy looked now. Whatever he was doing, his avid supporters said, was beyond doubt since he streamed everything to the public.
His net worth was estimated to be in the billions. If his claims to agelessness were ever patented and released, he would easily become the wealthiest man in the world. William continued to refine his aging technology, claiming it would be made available when the general public was ready.
Cherry was still sitting with her eyes cast down, hands folded over her belly. “What did you see?”
“We’re test subjects.”
She nodded along. “Yeah.”
“Why is he streaming?” Ryder said. “If he wants all of this to be private, why put it out there?”
“Ego. Money. What else did you see?”
“That was it.”
“What about his dad?”
“What about him?”
“Scroll to the top. What do you see?”
Ryder went back to the beginning and read the bio three times. He wasn’t seeing something, but it was right in front of him. His dad would be ninety-five years old.
“He’s dead.”
“Both his parents,” Cherry said, “died when he was working at Avocado. That’s about the time he moved back to the ranch.”
“It doesn’t say anything about an older brother.”
“There’s ways to keep that off Wikipedia.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s his brother.”
“Have you seen the old man up close? There’s a resemblance. Maybe he’s a cousin, I don’t know. All I know is they look like twins separated by about twenty years.”
Ryder had seen him up close when Kraig caught him at the barn. He had been too nervous to notice any resemblance between the old man and BG. There was something strange about that.
“Someone brought you here for a reason,” she said. “It wasn’t to score touchdowns.”
“They brought you here, too.”
It was difficult to tell if she was smiling or if the dim light was playing tricks. Ryder lay back on the bed and stared at the bottom of the bunk, expecting some words of wisdom carved into it. There was none. He folded his hands and focused on his breath. They stayed quiet till he had to go back. She told him to be careful and not to talk to her.
The next night, he learned how to meditate.
***
“Where you been?” Soup asked.
It was late morning when Ryder came back from wandering around the trees. Soup and Arf were still coming back after midnight and hadn’t showered since the game room opened. The room smelled like a den of wolves. Soup didn’t ask where he was hiking or why.
“The trek is over,” he said. “Arf was the first person to the Pole, but then we went into these ice tunnels to find where the elven were hiding. It was cool but nothing like the A-bomb.”
“A-bomb?”
“A giant snowman,” Arf said from his pillow.
Soup had been sleeping in the same clothes for days. He stripped the blankets off Arf and bombed him with socks until he was up.
Ryder went to the showers.
When he got back, they were gone. He took a short nap then hiked out to the barn to watch the horses. Cherry would sometimes be somewhere on the fence, but they rarely came within shouting distance. He huddled against the barn overlooking the mountains. He looked bored. Bradley Cooper wouldn’t know the difference.
No footage here.
A stream of smoke was coming out of the trees. He planned to hike that way and see what was out there. It wouldn’t take long. Halfway across the horseshoe, he reached into his coat for a second pair of gloves.
He was missing one of them.
A horse was saddled in the barn. He saw the glove. Sweeping it up, he hustled through the breezeway—
The old man stepped out of the tack room.
They nearly collided. The old man reared back with a frown and dropped his gloves. Barehanded, he bent with a groan and snatched them off the concrete. Ryder took a step back.
The old man was missing two fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Ryder said.
He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to see his fingers, or his face. The old man pulled his gloves on and spit on the floor. He smelled like evergreen boughs that were on fire.
Ryder moved out of the way. The old man led a horse that was loaded down with packed gear out of one of the stalls. He put a boot in one of the stirrups and threw his leg over the saddle. The leather stretched and buckles rang. He clicked his tongue. The horse clopped over the hard ground.
Not a word.
Ryder stood as frozen as the ground. The old man’s beard was a white shrub covering his face. His cheeks were leathery and his eyes hidden beneath bushy red eyebrows. Maybe Cherry was right, but it was hard to tell if he looked like BG. That was the thing with Kringletown.
It was hard to know what was true.
12
Ryder rolled over.
Barefoot, he hurried down the hall. It was ten minutes past four o’clock. There was so much to talk about. There was a lot of noise inside Cherry’s room. The door yanked open. A frigid breeze blew past him.
“Where have you been?” she hissed.
“Sorry. I—”
She shoved the phone in his face. He flinched and squinted. A map.
“Get dressed,” she said.
Ryder ran back to the room and came back in winter gear, his laces dancing around his boots. Cherry was at the window, the phone lighting up her face.
“Wait.” He grabbed it from her. “We can’t turn this on when we’re out there.”
He studied the map. One of the dots was Cherry’s room. The other one was in the forest, north of the trees. It was labeled HO-HO-HO.
“What’s that mean?” he said.
“We’ll find out when we get there.”
Snowy specks flew through the window. They left it cracked open for their return. The snow was thin outside her room. They were going to need it to snow to cover their tracks.
They took a long route into the trees, sprinting at full speed and stopping only once to check the phone. Subzero air was burning his chest. He struggled to breathe, snot running down his chin. There wasn’t much snow beneath the trees, but it was still difficult to run.
She suddenly stopped. He rested his hands on his knees. Cherry held the phone inside her coat and checked the map. It was so dark that even the light leaking from her collar lit her face.
“That’s it.”
Ryder couldn’t see the dark building at first. There was a porch and chimney. The windows were black. This wasn’t the barn they were exploring. Somebody lived there.
The old man.
Maybe he was the one sending the notes and was calling them for a chat, but he wasn’t on the front porch, and the lights weren’t on. He’d had the horse loaded up with packing gear the other day like he was heading out.
He’s not home.
Cherry was already on the porch. There was no snow leading up to it and the ground was frozen. There were plenty of tracks leading in and out, so anything they left behind wouldn’t be noticed.
“Kick your boots,” she whispered.
He knocked bits of snow off. She was
cupping her hands to one of the windows. There was no light inside or fire.
No green eyes.
She crept to the door. Ryder’s heart was beating louder than her footsteps. She slipped her boots off. He was still trying to calm his breath when she turned the doorknob. The hinges creaked.
We’re doing this.
He wanted to know the truth, but doubt had nailed him down. He liked it better when they were meditating in a warm and safe room with nature music.
“Come on.”
It was cold inside. The cabin was simple. There was a bed and a table and a small kitchen area. The fireplace was filled with ashes and a blackened log. An elk head was staring from above the mantel.
“What are we supposed to do?” he whispered.
She shrugged. “Look around.”
They crept around in their socks. There wasn’t a single item of technology in the cabin. No tiny lights, no television or laptop. No phone. A desk was in the corner with pads of paper and notes taped to the wall. Candles were on a shelf. There was a picture of an Avocado, Inc., factory. Another photo on the wall, this one a silhouette of a man on a horse.
Cherry almost kicked over a spittoon. “Gross.”
There was a bathroom next to the desk, hardly big enough to be a closet. The curtain was pulled aside and a composting toilet in the corner. The kitchen had a wood-burning stove that could be used for cooking. But there was a refrigerator softly humming, so there was electricity. That, however, seemed to be it.
“Where is he?” she said.
He told her about the other day when he had taken the horse with all the packed gear.
“Why would he bring us,” she said, “if he’s not here?”
So she was thinking the same thing. Ryder looked closely at the floor. If they were wrong and the old man found one of their footprints, they might never find the truth. They’d have another home.
The cabin was suddenly filled with light.
“What are you doing?” Ryder said.
The phone was lit. “We need to get going.”
It was only on for a second, but the woods were dark enough that a single flash would look like a lighthouse. However, that moment of light revealed a narrow door next to the refrigerator. It was a small pantry with canned goods. There was no light.
“Let me see the phone.”
He stepped inside and closed the door. He lit up the phone. The shelves were dusty and so were most of the cans. The bathroom closet would be on the other side.
He opened the map again.
They were exactly where it told them to go. Maybe they were just supposed to see where the old man lived and that was it. That wasn’t much.
HO-HO-HO.
Maybe it was just more Santa Claus conspiracy, but there were no candy canes in the cabin or Christmas trees or one single wreath. It could be any day of the year.
The floorboards were heavily worn, the wood a lighter color where someone had frequently walked. Who would spend this much time in a pantry? The traffic pattern went up to a blank wall. If someone came inside to get something off the shelf, they wouldn’t walk against the wall.
He tapped on it.
“What are you doing?” she said.
He noticed a can of green beans. It was by itself. The label was clean, but the top of the can was covered in dust. The shelf was dusty, too. The can hadn’t been moved.
So why the clean label?
A green giant was on the label. Ryder had lived with a family that ate green beans straight from the can, didn’t even heat them up. Rick, the foster dad, would imitate the commercial when he opened it. Ho-ho-ho wasn’t about Santa Claus.
Ryder reached to spin it or lift it. All it took was tipping it slightly. White light leaked from a seam along the floor. Ryder pushed the wall with his fingertip.
Light flooded the pantry.
He turned off the phone and pulled Cherry inside. A black staircase spiraled down. Electric light flickered from below.
“Ho-ho-ho,” he said. “Green Giant.”
Ryder peeked through the steps. The room below was larger than the cabin and fully lit. And nothing about it was woodsy. There were multiple computers and several desks surrounded by electrical cabinets and strange equipment.
A circular platform was in the center of the room. It was silver and shining, just like the one in the library where BG appeared. A hologram hovered above it, a figure with the arms out. There were no details, just a mesh outline of a human body matrix.
The wall was covered with monitors.
There were dozens of them. Most were gray images of bedrooms with bunkbeds. Some had moving images from a point of view above the ground—above Kringletown, above the barn. Above the trees.
“Drones.” Ryder stepped closer. “Look.”
He found the one he was looking for. Someone was curled up on the top bunk. The person below him was hanging halfway off the bed. The other bunkbed was empty, but there was someone sleeping on the bottom.
It’s me.
“He’s looping the feed,” Cherry said. “That’s how we get away with it. Once four o’clock gets here, it shows you sleeping.”
“No, look.” He pointed at Soup. His lips were moving. He was grinding his jaws. “The drones are supposed to be off when we’re sleeping.”
Cherry found her drone. The monitor showed her underneath the covers, her pillows stacked on the floor.
The phone started buzzing.
The map illuminated. “We got to go,” he said.
Cherry was first up the staircase. Ryder stopped halfway up to take a picture. He took the time to make sure everything looked normal in the pantry, but there wasn’t time to look for footprints. They didn’t even tie their boots. Snow packed against their socks as they sprinted through the trees.
They fell through her window and crashed on the floor.
Ryder didn’t check the hall before charging out. He jumped into bed fully clothed, throwing the covers over his head. He huffed beneath the blankets, his breath masked by Arf’s breathing. He stayed that way until the sun was up. He was still wide awake.
The old man is watching, he thought. Who exactly is he?
13
The phone was still in his pocket.
Soup had jumped out of bed half an hour ago. Ryder had pretended to be asleep. When he grabbed a towel and left, Ryder ducked beneath the covers.
He swiped the photo.
The lab beneath the cabin was well lit. He zoomed in on the equipment and recognized centrifuges that looked like the ones from school, but the rest of it was rocket science. There was a cabinet with shelves and transparent doors. A dozen or more drones were inside. The computers were running foreign interfaces with strange data.
The body matrix was faded and blurred.
It was the size of a boy. The legs were apart and the arms out. It reminded him of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, only there wasn’t a circle or superimposed figure over it. The form was an empty matrix of contour lines, but the details were very specific.
Definitely a boy.
There were fifty monitors on the wall. Five rows of ten. The majority were monitoring bedrooms. One monitor showed someone at a bathroom mirror brushing their teeth. He hadn’t noticed that when they were down there. Ryder zoomed in to see the bushy beard in the reflection.
Even BG was being watched.
The bottom row was feeds from outside—trees and buildings and horses. The drones were still scanning the woods. Did they see us? he wondered coldly. There was no way to know unless someone told him.
Or when the old man gets home.
The last monitor wasn’t a bedroom. Ryder zoomed until it was pixelated almost beyond recognition. It looked like the lab below the cabin. If that was true, they were definitely busted. However, there were slight variations, as far as he could tell—more cabinets and no da Vinci man. This was a different lab.
And much bigger.
“Busted!” Soup shouted.
&nb
sp; Ryder swallowed his tongue. His heart rate doubled. He slid the phone under the pillow.
“Check the board, bo.”
Ryder’s voice quivered. “What’s it say?”
“Hey, stinky.” Soup shook Arf’s bunk. “Get up and shower. It smells like a dead dog in here. We’re hitting the game room. Ryder’s coming with us.”
Arf smacked his lips and sat up limply. Soup threw a towel over his head and pushed him out the door. Arf shuffled down the hall.
Check the board. Ryder was frozen. He kicked his boots off before getting out of bed, leaving them under the covers. He was still dressed.
Soup was arguing with someone across the hall. The board was lit up. It had changed since he’d gone to Cherry’s only a few hours ago. Maybe it had been like that when he ran back. There wasn’t much to read, but he stood in front of it, trying to decide if he should be worried.
Everyone report to game room at nine o’clock. This is not optional.
Cherry opened her door. Her ink-spotted drone swung out behind her.
“What do you think this means?” he whispered.
“Guess we’re playing a game.”
He remained at the board, partially petrified. She strolled down to take a shower. He needed to meditate more.
He was anything but relaxed.
***
“We give Evan the boot,” Soup said, “and put Ryder on the team.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Arf said.
“He sucks. And Ryder’s our boy.”
They boarded the elevator, dressed for winter, wearing coveralls and boots, scarves, gloves and stocking caps. There was snow on the floor. His stomach dropped as they descended.
“Wrap up.” Soup pulled a cap on.
The doors opened before Ryder could do the same. A bitter wind threw his coat open. Snow swirled inside the elevator. He hid behind Arf as they leaned into the Arctic. Soup led them up a short flight of stairs toward an observation room. A few naughties were already inside hiding from the weather.
“So stupid,” Soup complained. “You get frostbite just trying to get there.”
The game room had changed. There were only three game domes. The one on the left was the Arctic trek. The dome on the right was the helicopter simulation. The reindeer game was gone. It was replaced by one twice the size. The surface was opaque and frosty. A line of people was scattered around the perimeter with their hands to the sides.
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