by Driza, Debra
I wasn’t sure what type of lies to expect next, so I braced myself.
“You’ve knocked out an old man who fed us and gave us beds. We’re running from the cops—possibly wanted for some kind of crime? What the hell is going on?”
His posture, his tone—he had the I’m-the-injured-party thing down to an art. The doubt rose again, but anger rose higher, smothering it with a hot black haze. Liar. Beautiful, deceitful, heartbreaking liar.
I swallowed once, twice, and wrestled my anger into submission. “I told you. Ashleigh thought she saw my picture on a news report and called the police.”
“And was it?” he demanded, his volume rising like a crescendo.
“Was it what?”
His jaw dropped, his eyes widened incredulously. “Jesus, Mila, are you kidding me? The picture she saw. Was it you?”
I flinched at his tone. If he was acting, he was damned good at it. He’d pegged the reactions of a normal boy thrust into this situation perfectly. Freaked out and angry and, yes, scared, all rolled into one.
Of course he had. But why? What were they after? Why the elaborate ruse?
I could only think of two viable reasons. One, they wanted me to lead them to whatever information was in my pocket. Or two, they were conducting an elaborate, up-close-and-personal study. Trusting Hunter to figure out what made me tick, how I reacted, exactly what my android functions were. Basically, a variation of one of Holland’s experiments. Test the android’s capacity for human emotions, before exploiting her for their own twisted purposes.
“We look very similar,” I hedged, the words forced through clenched teeth.
“So it wasn’t you.” He leaned toward me, and I was assaulted with dual reactions. Recoil from his nearness, battling out the urge to lean in and meet him halfway. I sat still, ignoring them both. “If it wasn’t you, why did you run?” he asked.
I gave what I hoped was a helpless shrug. “I ran because I’m scared, Hunter! There’s a picture out there of a girl who looks like me, who’s wanted for a crime. Do you think the cops would believe anything I had to say? I’m sixteen—as far as they’re concerned, I’m a runaway! If they pick me up, it’d be a huge mess—no one to bail me out, and forget about finding my dad,” I said, my words tumbling out faster and faster.
He wasn’t the only one who could act.
I inhaled an exaggerated breath, then said, “I know, I probably chose wrong, but I panicked. I’m sorry that you got caught in the middle. I was afraid if you stayed behind, they’d arrest you.” I forced myself to reach out and touch his arm, prepared to combat disgust at the contact. Instead, tingling spread across my skin like wildfire. Even now.
If only this could be an act, too.
“Okay,” he said slowly, rubbing two fingers over his temple. “But what about Grady, and Ashleigh? How did you take them down?”
God. Would he ever stop with the questions? “My mom thought it was important that I learn self-defense—just in case. And they jumped me first.”
I didn’t add that I’d actually protected him from Grady, because even now, I couldn’t produce a single logical reason why. The thought of a bullet entering Hunter’s heart made my own feel like it was breaking again. Stupid, I admonished. He doesn’t care about you at all.
As it turned out, apparently that didn’t matter. Despite the blistering rage that I barely had a handle on, despite the stab of pain every time I pictured the GPS tucked safely away under the wheel, my heart refused to yield.
But at least I knew better than to trust it now. This was all on me for not realizing that I wasn’t the only one who could lie.
His brows shot up. “They jumped you first.”
“Yeah.”
I saw him shake his head and move his lips wordlessly, like he still had a difficult time comprehending.
“Okay,” he finally said. “I thought something was off with that old guy. I mean, really, who defends their flowers. But Ashleigh—”
“She thought she’d get a huge reward.”
“So their friendliness, their interest in us was just a lie—to get something from us.”
“Exactly.”
“I wish you’d yelled or something so I could have come to help you.”
He was buying my lies, wanting to support me. Why did I feel guilty? He was lying, too, pretending he didn’t know what was going on.
“It all happened too fast,” I told him.
Threat detected: 2.8 mi.
My hands clenched the wheel.
Military helicopter: UH-1N, headed southeast.
The 3-D visual overtook my visual field, rotating a large white vehicle with red, white, and blue stripes across the side.
Armed.
Holland, it had to be. Headed directly toward Grady’s house.
I pressed the gas a little harder, praying that I’d put enough road between us and Grady’s house to avoid detection, and that Holland was still keeping the details of my escape somewhat guarded, to save his own hide.
But I needed the information Grady had given me, and I needed it fast. Pretty soon, I’d be surrounded by enemies, and without Mom’s help I was floundering in the dark.
A ball settled in my throat, strangling my airway until swallowing felt like a monumental task. Mom. I missed her now more than ever.
Hunter’s yawn snagged my attention. He wiggled and repositioned his feet to get comfortable. “Maybe we should just find a place to stay for the night—you’ve got to be tired, too.”
Suspicion bloomed, filling my head like a toxic cloud. “I’m fine.” No way I was stopping on his count and walking into a trap.
I kept the speed just under the limit, obeyed all the traffic laws, and shoved the hat I’d stashed under the seat low on my head. The scenery had lost all of its appeal. Any sense of wonder, of expectation—gone. It was duty that drove me onward. The sooner I solved that puzzle, the sooner I could disappear. Leave Holland, the V.O., and Hunter behind me.
When another hour had passed without a return of the helicopter or a sighting of a cop, I pulled the car onto a stretch of grass by the road, just in front of a copse of trees. There’d been nothing around for miles, but it wasn’t like I could just pop the hardware into my wrist with Hunter there.
For a second, I pictured his face filled with horror, the same horror I’d experienced the first time Mom had shown me the deviant nature of my wrist. Then I shook off the ridiculous thought. More like greed. He’d want to know every little bit he could about my functions, so he could report back.
“Why are we stopping?” These were the first words Hunter had uttered in the last thirty minutes. Ever since our last talk, his mood had been distant.
“I have to . . . you know,” I said, waving a few crumpled-up napkins in my hand. Despite everything, my cheeks burned. But I needed a way to ensure my privacy, and this was all I had.
“Ah,” he said, his tense expression finally easing when his lips twitched. “Watch out for poison ivy.”
“Please.”
Cheeks burning even brighter now—seriously, manufactured embarrassment? Get over yourself—I jumped out of the Jeep and darted around back, heading for the trees.
My legs crunched through vines and ivy while I kept plowing a path away from the road. Finally satisfied that I was well out of view of the car, I ducked behind the biggest tree I could find. Through the branches, I could still make out the car, but this was the best cover I could muster. It would have to do.
Night vision: Activated.
The trees illuminated with that familiar reddish glow, making it easy for me to see. Hunter wouldn’t have the same advantage. Combined with the fact that I could see if he tried to follow, I should be safe enough here.
I groped in my pocket and extracted the card, closing my eyes for a brief moment while clutching it tightly in my fist. Nerves and excitement battled in my stomach, waging a war that resulted in a weird, jittery sensation, like I could barely stand still. This was it. Here, in m
y hand, was potentially the only avenue left open to discovering the truth. If this didn’t pan out, that road might be blocked in a permanent dead end. Unless I wanted to risk my luck sneaking back into Holland’s compound to see what secrets I could find.
A shudder passed over me, and then I opened my eyes, willed myself to take the plunge. I pulled apart the skin on the inside of my wrist, revealing the thin slot. A perfect rectangle, just waiting for someone to insert a card like this one. I waited for the old slithery twist of revulsion to sweep over me. Feet planted, spine rigid, I braced myself. But there was nothing beyond a slight twinge. More of a wistfulness than anything, for realities come and gone and no longer within my grasp. Instead, my body tingled with a kind of heady excitement, and my wrist actually throbbed with a desperate urge. As if encouraging me to insert the disc. Now.
No more deluding myself that I could will myself into a real human girl. That time was over.
I willed my hand to steady, this time, refusing to avert my eyes from the dark recess into my arm that shouldn’t exist. With pinched fingers, I fed the card into the waiting chasm, hope building that finally, whatever truths Mom had hidden from me would start to unfold. Anticipation tingled through my waiting wrist as I watched the card slide in.
Heat first. Then, the familiar buzz of electricity crackled up, up, up my arm.
I put my other palm against the tree, bracing for the overwhelming slam of information that I’d experienced before, that had almost brought me to my knees. But it never came. This time, my mind was prepared for the energy that rushed into my head, opening wide to receive the streams. Not only that, but the more information that entered, the more my entire body felt energized. Almost like my cells were feeding off the data as a source of power.
I threw my head back and outstretched my arms, catching sight of glittering stars that suddenly didn’t feel quite as distant as they once had.
I embraced the exhilaration, anticipating when the illegible nonsense would transform into recognizable language. Like the power of alchemizing metal into gold.
Virus scan complete.
Copying data.
Scanning metadata.
A whoosh of information, like a flash flood roaring through a dry riverbed. And then—files. Lots and lots of files.
I latched on to the nearest one, the blinking square a beacon in a sea of chaos.
Open file.
Symbols burst out from the square and I paused, waiting for the frenetic activity to slow, for the gibberish to vanish as the symbols realigned. They pulsed, wavering and merging, like glittering hieroglyphics. Flickering into new rows, assuming new shapes.
Every single one of them, utterly unreadable.
I frowned, waiting for them to move again. But they didn’t. The information refused to budge, sticking firmly to its illegible formation.
Why would my mom go to all this trouble to lead me to a file full of complete nonsense?
Encryption override: Rejected.
The words blinked in my head, answering my question. Encrypted. That’s right. The files Mom had left were encrypted.
The sinking pit in my stomach vanished. If Mom had encrypted the files, then it meant I possessed the ability to open them. I just had to figure out how.
I focused on the first file. I’d broken codes before—surely I could do it again.
Override encryption.
I waited and . . . nothing.
My fingers curled into rough tree bark as I took a deep breath and tried again.
It was no use. Not even a faint blip, or the slightest sense of unraveling. The data strands moved around, only to form a new nonsensical pattern.
Encryption pattern: Unrecognized.
What did that mean? Why would Mom give me files that I couldn’t decode? Had she messed up somehow? Had she used an encryption system that was too new for me to break?
I pictured Mom, her capable, long fingers, her grace under pressure, and the answer was clear. She wouldn’t. Somehow, someway, I possessed the ability to open the file. I had to keep trying.
Anxiety uprooted somewhere in my gut, but I didn’t allow it to build. I had to approach this logically. Maybe I was just starting in the wrong place.
I shoved the first file aside and grabbed at another flashing beacon. But every time I tried to get a firm grip, it changed shape, morphing into something insubstantial, before popping back up in another part of my head.
Encryption code: Unrecognized.
Each attempt met the same result. The moment I thought I caught the code within my grip, it wriggled away, too slippery to hold down for long. My hands clenched harder, and I felt the bark crumble beneath my fingers like dried leaves. All this way, just to hit a dead end. Now what did I do?
Methodically, I went through the process, over and over again, a growing numbness deadening my last bit of hope. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
I slumped forward. What was I missing? Why was this so difficult? And if Mom had wanted me to open these, why hadn’t she left me a clue?
A clue.
Suddenly, Grady’s voice rang through my head. “Nicole wanted me to tell you that the answer is always close to your heart.”
Could that be my clue? If so, what did it mean? Did it allude to some knowledge I possessed, deep inside, knowledge I kept close to my heart? Like what? The knowledge that I was human? That Mom had loved me? I pondered those ideas briefly before discarding them. That all seemed a little too touchy-feely for her.
I straightened when another idea occurred. Maybe she’d mean literally, like I had another secret slot or drive, somewhere near my heart? My fingers flew under my shirt, prodding and poking over my skin, my ribcage, anywhere remotely in the vicinity. They fell away in defeat a few moments later.
I banged my head against the tree. “Damn it!”
Something had to be there. I’d given up too quickly.
My hands returned to search more thoroughly, brushing the pendant necklace away in annoyance.
The pendant swung and I went still. My fingers found the emerald again, pressed it into my palm. The necklace Mom used to wear. The one that she’d fiercely protected while she was alive. The one she’d handed to me, before the life drained from her eyes.
“. . . close to your heart . . .”
I raised the gemstone, rotating it carefully as I inspected it with both my eyes and fingers, scrutinizing every facet for even the tiniest hint that the necklace was more than simple jewelry.
Intact, intact—wait. On one end, I felt the tiniest hint of an imperfection. A tiny crevice, so thin I’d almost missed it.
I tried to tame my rising excitement. It could be nothing. Just a flaw. But, as if a puppeteer pulled my strings, my hand lifted and without hesitation forced my index nail into the groove.
The bottom of the gem slid open, exposing a thin strip of metal. As I stared, something clicked in a dim corner of my mind.
A key. The pendant wasn’t just a necklace, but a key.
Letting my instincts guide me, I rotated the pendant until the metal part faced my skin, then pushed it down, hard. Right into the crease of my elbow, and immediately upstream from the flowing data.
The instant the cool metal touched my skin, my entire body jerked. The strands suddenly pulsed brighter, hotter. They grew thicker and thicker and started flashing: huge, forceful flashes, that I felt all the way from my head to my toes.
I held perfectly still—terrified that any movement would send the data spiraling beyond my reach again, possibly for good—and pushed through all the chaos to zero in on the file.
Come on. Come on.
The symbols flickered and disappeared. No. Not again.
But then something extraordinary happened. The glittery strands exploded back into existence, sending all the incomprehensible gibberish flying in every direction. Like a firework sending off millions of sparks.
The next moment, the sparks flew back together, but this time, they rearranged themselves int
o something readable.
Encryption: Decoded.
And just like that, I was in.
The first file title pulsed into view.
FDP Witness Protection Program
Under that ominous listing, there was a single entry.
Birth name: Daniel Lusk.
Alias: Steven John Jensen.
Last known residence: 2310 Forest Ln, Denver, CO.
Location of new residence (as of August 2012): 2849 S. Highwater, Glen Ellyn, IL. xxx
That was it. The extent of the information in that particular file. Which I guess made the next part of my search a no-brainer. Looked like I was heading to Illinois.
All that subterfuge, just to lead me to another name. I rolled them both around in my head, feeling for any familiarity. At the name Daniel Lusk, something sparked in my memory. It vanished too quickly to grasp. Nothing at all at Steven Jensen.
I couldn’t help but think it was overkill, somehow. But Mom had to have known what she was doing. Clearly, the guy she wanted me to find was in hiding, and it was imperative he not be found.
Feeling a little deflated, I shifted over to the next glowing box.
Open file.
This file burst open in a kaleidoscope of colors, all of them scattering throughout my mind like dust before the pieces flew back together, rearranging themselves into pixels. A photo this time.
And then the pieces formed the whole, and I could barely think at all. Because I recognized the face of the man in the photo. The brown hair. The eyes that squinted a little when he smiled. The Phillies shirt.
My entire body went frigid, and my hand shot out toward the tree, to support my suddenly shaky legs.
This man, I knew. Even though I’d been told he never existed. I’d mourned his death before I’d discovered the darkest of truths and had all my pretenses of normality ripped away. That he wasn’t really my father at all, but an implant. A phony memory installed by my mom to protect me from Holland.
Now, I had no idea where the truth resided. Because clearly the man from my memories was, indeed, real.
