by R.E. Rowe
Chapter 6
Jayden paddled effortlessly on a surfboard towards a perfect tropical wave fifty feet away. He glanced back over his shoulder and flexed. Nora blew him a kiss from a white sand beach with his dad’s red tablet in her hands.
A loud thump, then another, caused Jayden’s eyes to snap open, his surfing dream popping like a firecracker. He gazed around as his bedroom came into focus. His digital clock on his nightstand glowed three forty-two p.m. More thumping. The window rattled.
“Okay, okay! I’m coming!” Jayden stumbled out of bed and toward the noise, then pushed aside the blinds.
Parker pounded on the glass like a madman. He glanced back over one shoulder, then the other.
Jayden could tell by Parker’s puffy eyes that he’d been crying. His stomach sank. It was the first time he'd seen Parker cry. “What?” Jayden pushed up the window. “What’s wrong?”
“They took her!” Parker screamed as he climbed through the window. “They took my mom and dad too.” His eyes were moist and bloodshot. “I think they’re coming here next!”
Jayden stepped back and steadied himself. “What are you talking about?”
“Nora—they pulled us out of our bedrooms, and then they took her and forced my mom and dad to go with them.”
Jayden forced his eyes closed, and then opened them. He wasn’t dreaming. “Who did?”
“Guys in black masks with automatic rifles, that’s who! SECC printed on black shirts.” Parker was talking fast, his voice getting higher and higher with each word. He struggled to catch his breath as he paced in a circle, his fists clenching and unclenching. “These guys weren’t avatars, Jayden! It wasn’t a game. They raided my house with real assault rifles!”
“Slow down!” Jayden said, grabbing Parker’s arm. “Start over.”
Parker took a deep breath. “They said Nora was going away, and she’d be gone a long time. They yelled at my parents. The men told us it’d be better for Nora if we didn’t say a word to anyone. One man quoted the Patriot Act and a presidential directive to capture and detain terrorists. He claimed Nora was a terrorist. Oh my God! My sister?” Parker sucked in a short breath, then another. “Something about an SECC code. . . .”
“SECC code?” Jayden repeated. He snatched the flimsily covered document from his desk, and rapidly flipped through the pages.
Space Expeditionary Combat Command.
SECC must be an acronym, Jayden thought. But it’s a game! It had to be a game. He decided Parker must be seriously confused.
“Nora screamed,” Parker said, just above a whisper. “She told me to run, but a masked guy grabbed me.” His voice shook as he added, “He yelled, asking if I knew a gamer named Killgeek . . . They’re looking for you, Jayden!”
“What?” Jayden rubbed his face, trying to understand Parker. “Me? Why me?”
Parker shrugged, shaking his head.
Jayden’s stare fixated on his best friend. “How’d you get away?”
“The guy questioning me walked away to answer his cell.” Parker’s voice wavered. “I bolted.”
“Okay, okay, let’s think about this.” Jayden sat down on his bed and inspected the typed pages. “SECC Code 12.31.1.”
The phrase below the numbers caught Jayden’s eyes. “Immediate execution,” he muttered. World Corp had gone way too far promoting their new game, he thought. Jayden refused to believe it was anything other than a game. It made no sense. Who would take Nora and Parker’s parents?
Parker looked around, his eyes wide. “We need to get out of here!”
“Shhh, lower your voice. You'll freak out Rosa . . . What else did they tell you?”
Parker continued rambling a hundred miles an hour.
Jayden only understood every third word. He seized Parker’s arm and shook it. “Slow down!” he said through his teeth, forcing his voice to stay calm.
“Okay, okay.” Parker drew in a quick breath. “Another guy in a black mask asked my dad questions about hacking a top-secret website. A dude with a deep voice told us if we didn’t go with them peacefully to be debriefed, they’d toss us in a dark cell at Guantanamo until we turned ninety years old.”
Nora’s hide-the-babe bot didn’t work, Jayden thought. Someone must have tracked the babe. He knew he needed to do something, but at that moment, his brain had frozen.
“After I slipped away, I hid beside the garage and watched them throw my family into the back of a black van. Mom was screaming. It was chaos. I didn’t know what to do. One masked guy told my dad and mom that if they cooperated, the two of them could return home tonight. But Nora was going someplace else. She wouldn't be coming back, not for a long time, no matter what.” Parker sobbed. “What is happening?”
“Easy man,” Jayden said, trying to sound calm. “Take a breath and give me a second.” He didn’t have a clue what was going on, but these guys apparently knew about Nora’s hacking.
“What’d they say about me again?” Jayden asked.
“The masked guy said they were looking for a second terrorist hacker that went by the name Killgeek. They claimed to have narrowed the cable company’s IP address to our block. They’re going to check every house.”
“What did you tell him?”
Parker dropped his head. He looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry, Jayden. I couldn’t help it.”
“What do you mean?” Jayden asked.
“I told them your real name.” Parker covered his face with both hands. “They’ll be coming here soon.”
“Seriously, Parker?” Jayden groaned. “Are you kidding?”
“I thought they were going to kill me!” Parker whispered, his shoulders quaking.
“Did you give them my address?” Jayden asked.
“No, I took off. But they’ll figure it out once they ask around,” Parker said, making the most pathetic face Jayden had ever seen. Parker trembled as if the temperature in Jayden’s room had dropped below zero. “What do we do?”
Jayden inspected the pamphlet again. “They mentioned an SECC code. This paper does too.”
It still made no sense to him. SECC was an online game. It wasn’t supposed to be real. He scanned the schedule at the back of the document, showing times and locations.
Jayden continued. “You said the guy told you Nora was going away for a long time. Maybe they’re taking her to the place they took the observatory kids. I bet it’s all part of the new game marketing hype. Get the web buzzing, you know?”
“Yeah, and get parents suing them!” Parker took a deep breath and stood straighter.
Jayden went silent for a moment. It’d be a risky PR strategy for World Corp, he thought, and wondered if any company would do such a thing. They had to realize they’d get sued.
“Do you think Nora is in their weird helicopter?” Parker asked, his eyes bulging. “We need to get her back, Jayden!”
Rox barked from outside Jayden’s bedroom door.
“Parker, keep your voice down. You’re getting Rox all riled up,” Jayden said, and then glanced at the paper again.
“Rox? Seriously?” Parker bit his lip. “We have to do something quick.”
“We?” Jayden asked. “Rosa will talk to them when they show up. I’ll deny everything.”
“What are you saying?” Parker asked, his eyes full of tears. “Jayden?”
A long, awkward moment passed. Jayden inspected the paper again. That’s when he smelled jasmine. His stomach sank. Parker was his best friend. He knew he needed to do something. But it wasn’t because of Nora’s stupid perfume. It was the expression on his best friend’s face. It had shocked him to the core. Parker was in big trouble thanks to the stupid tablet.
Jayden felt a pang of guilt. He never should’ve used his dad’s one-of-a-kind, tricked-out tablet to get a game advantage. He lowered his voice. “Did they take the tablet?”
Parker nodded.
Jayden felt his stomach spin, and bile lodged in his throat. “Okay, okay. Let�
��s figure this out. We have rights, you know? They can’t just invade your house without a warrant and haul people away. If it is some crazy marketing scheme for a new game, our parents will call the real cops, right?”
Parker wiped his nose, looked around for tissue, but couldn’t find one. He wiped his hand on his pants. “So what do we do, Killgeek? What’s the plan?”
Jayden sighed. It was clear to him they weren’t playing an online game. The stakes were much too high. But Jayden wasn’t about to let World Corp keep his dad’s tablet or mess with his best friend’s sister. “We go find Nora.”
Parker’s eyes instantly lit up and shined brighter. He wiped his nose again. “You’d do that for me?”
“They’ll be sorry they messed with our clan.” Jayden opened and closed his fists. “Jerks.”
“Thanks,” Parker said, trembling as he gave Jayden a hug.
Jayden shoved him. “Get it together, dude. Tell me what they told you about your parents again?”
“The guy said my mom and dad would be home tonight if they cooperated,” Parker replied.
“Good,” Jayden said. “So Nora is the only one being sent away?”
He nodded. “That’s what the guy told us. How are we gonna get her back?”
Jayden held up one hand. He thought of the prompt on Nora’s computer screen. “Remember the info after the GPS coordinates? It read, ‘Recruit Pickup. Next Five.’”
“Yeah.” Parker frowned. “So?”
Jayden shot him a grin then continued. “What if it meant the pickups would continue for the next five nights or five mornings? You know what I mean? Five more pickups of kids at four a.m., just like the last one.”
“You mean we go back to Santa Cruz Observatory and try to get on their flying machine?” Parker asked, incredulously.
“Exactly.” Jayden nodded. “Got any better ideas?”
Parker put his hands on his hips. “Are you insane?”
“Probably,” Jayden replied. “But look, we don’t have a clue where they took her. It will at least get us to the place where they’re taking kids. I bet that’s where we’ll find her.”
“What about your dad?” Parker asked. “Do you think he’d help?”
Jayden eyed him, then said, “How? Make a call and have the guys in black masks pick him up too? Besides, he’s traveling with my mom.” He paused, thinking hard. “Nope, let’s sneak into their crazy flying machine. I bet it’s just some rocket engine stealth helicopter. Besides, no way they’ll be expecting two stowaways trying to rescue a girl they kidnapped.”
Parker rubbed his eyes. “Maybe.”
“Like your sister said, remember? If we own it, people will buy it. They’ll never suspect a thing. If we get lucky, they’ll take us where they took her.”
Jayden had no clue what they’d do after that, but he’d come up with a plan later. It was time to change the rules to whatever game World Corp was playing.
“Are we going to bike up to the observatory?” Parker asked.
“No. We’d be more legit if we took the bus with everyone else.” Jayden flipped through the documents in the flimsy black cover again, browsing the pages of street addresses, cross streets, dates, and times. “I bet these are bus stops and pickup times. It looks like there’s a stop at Vasona Park on University Avenue in an hour. That’s not far from here.”
Jayden remembered the permission forms in the back of the flimsy document and pulled out two. “Grab the pen on my desk. Let’s write in our information and scribble our parents’ signatures.”
They quickly filled out the forms and tucked them away in their back pockets.
Jayden never thought to change out of the hoody and jeans he had worn from the day before. “Let’s go,” he said, as he ran his fingers through his hair, grabbed his backpack, and stuffed the flimsy document into it. “It’s payback time.”
