“Yes. Go to your settings and scroll down to the bottom of the page. There will be a black icon underneath all of your other apps, with the title ‘Mavis Services’ beside it.”
I sigh as I pull out my iPhone, reboot it, and follow Mavis’s instructions. Mavis Services is definitely here. I tap on it. How am I just now noticing all this? Suddenly the app opens, and the same four options along with a few extras and a virtual blue button pop up.
“I am going to unlock the escape door and turn off this screen now, but you have equal access to me on your cell phone, and so does Joanna.” Mavis says, and I hear a faint click come from the knobless door, and the screen on the door goes black.
Joanna stirs then, and wakes up. She sees me standing in front of the door and furrows her eyebrows. “Do you know where that leads to?” she asks.
“A jet.” I reply. Jo looks at me like she doesn’t believe me. She rolls her eyes. “I’m serious,” I add. “let me see your phone.” Joanna hands me her cell phone. We have our thumbprints in each other’s phones, so I unlock Jo’s phone in seconds. I go to Mavis Services and hand it back to her.
“What did you do to my phone?” Joanna says, an edge in her voice.
“Nothing! Just tap a button, you’ll see.” She taps the Talk To Mavis button.
“Greetings, Joanna Lyra Cambridge.” Mavis says cheerfully. Jo jumps with a shriek, her phone nearly slipping out of her hand. “My name is Mavis. I am here to help you and your sister in any situation. What is your request?”
“Harper, are you serious?” Jo hisses.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I retort.
“It’s quite alright.” Mavis says. “Harper and I have become acquainted. I am merely a computerized voice with many functions and connections with the guidance of artificial intelligence.”
“You say we have a jet,” Jo begins. “Is that true?”
“Yes.” Mavis replies. “An Embraer Phenom 300. Your mother purchased it from Genesis’s warehouse. It is complete with a bedroom, bathroom, and a fridge and microwave, and is equipped with autopilot. It’s purpose is to fly you to safety and tend to your needs for long periods of time.”
“Well, can we get on it and get out of here?” I ask. Maybe we can stay in the jet until we know exactly what’s going on.
“Yes. I am also programmed into the jet’s system, so I can guide you to anywhere you’d like. However, you need the key to activate it.”
“Where’s the key?” Jo asks.
“I can detect its tracking chip by taking a 3D scan of the house and scanning its blueprint…It’s location is the master bedroom.”
“Okay.” I help Jo stand up and we walk to the panic room door. I put my phone in my pocket and slowly open the door.
The house isn’t as messy as I thought it would be from when the fake cops were here just minutes ago, and we head upstairs to our mother’s bedroom. The door is wide open, a few drawers have been left open, and the closet door is broken off its hinges.
“I’ll text D and tell him we have a plan to leave. He said he wants to meet us soon.” I tell Jo as I start searching the room.
“D? You mean the one who sent the letter?” she says.
“Yeah.”
Our mother’s bedroom is elegant and expensive. She has a king size bed with a comforter that looks like it’s made of gold and silk, with a pile of fluffy long pillows on top. The dresser drawer has tiny gold wire mannequins that display Mom’s designer jewelry, but half of them are gone—stolen. The flat screen TV is gone too, along with the box of intense workout equipment that I saw Mom use regularly.
I go to the nightstand on the right side of the bed and open it. The only thing that’s in here is a small black box. I swipe it and open it. It’s the key. The letters EP are carved into the black leather. Embraer Phenom . I take out my phone and text D.
Me : Can you still come over so we can discuss a plan? My mom has a small jet—an Embraer Phenom 300. We can definitely use that.
D answers about five minutes later: Impressive. Embraer is one of the best private aircraft companies in the world. I’m coming today with Skye, she’s the one who’s going to help you get in touch with your mother. How about 4:00 tomorrow?
Me : Sounds good. Is Skye a friend of yours or something?
D : She will explain herself when we arrive.
“I guess we don’t have to stay in the panic room anymore, but I don’t want you leaving my side, Jo. Okay?”
“I’m not dumb, Harper. I can take care of myself.” Joanna retorts. At that, she walks down the hall to her bedroom, and closes the door behind her. Sighing, I go to my own room but leave the door slightly ajar.
* * *
I jolt awake to see my twin sister standing at my bedside, watching me.
“Jeez, I hate it when you do that.” I mutter, pushing the blankets off of myself and sitting up. My bedroom is colorfully lit by my lava lamp collection in one corner of the room, although my magenta and neon green ones are gone, and my orange one is cracked. The magenta one was my favorite. I sigh.
“You’ve been asleep all last night and all day today...and I think they’re here.” Joanna says.
“Who’s here? Mom?” I say. It takes a moment to figure out who exactly she’s talking about. “…What time is it?”
“Four-thirty.”
“Ugh.” I get out of bed and walk over to my full-length mirror that rests against the wall. It has a new crack in the top corner. My outfit isn’t too wrinkled. Jo hasn’t changed clothes, either. I go to my window and ever so slowly peek out the thick green curtains. There in the driveway stands a man in all black, and a girl with jet-black hair. An old white pickup truck sits in the driveway. I grab my phone from its charger on my nightstand and turn it on. I have one new notification, a text message:
20 minutes ago
D: Skye and I are here.
“Come on. D’s here.” I say, and Joanna follows me downstairs to the foyer. I cautiously unlock the front door and open it slowly. “Sorry we kept you out here. We were, uh, sleeping…Come inside?” I say, but it sounds more like a question than a greeting.
“Thank you for trusting me, Harper,” D says sincerely. His voice is low and gravelly, like he’s smoked for decades. He and the girl step into the foyer, and I hurry to shut and lock the door. “This is Skye, an ex-trainee from the Genesis Project—your family’s business. She’s going to help us.”
“Help us with what? Getting my mom back?” I say as we all sit in the living room. The girl, Skye, looks around in awe, as if she’s never stepped foot into an estate before. Well, I guess not a lot of people have. She and D sit across from my sister and me, and she gazes at the large family portrait on the wall, which looks like it came out of the Entrepreneur Weekly magazine. She’s pretty, with long raven-black hair, tons of freckles along her face and arms, and blue eyes. D wears all black, his hood secure on his head.
“About your mother...” D says, rubbing his hands together. He sounds worried. “I don’t think we can save her—I don’t think she even needs saving.”
“W-What do you mean?” Jo asks. She sounds worried.
“You are familiar with Scorpion now? They’re the ones that came into your home?” D says. Joanna and I nod. “Well, I was at an emergency meeting yesterday, Boss needed to reanalyze some things, and…your mother was there. She’s helping him make the final changes of Phase 1 in Operation Zero—the plan to destroy the Genesis Project for good. She’s betraying the entire project and your grandfather in two weeks...”
I stop listening. D isn’t making any sense. “That’s impossible.” I say angrily. “My mom is missing . She’s been missing for days. You must have confused her with someone else.”
D takes out his cell phone and turns it on. He shows me a picture, sighing matter-of-factly. Skye looks down at her shoes. It’s Mom. I snatch the phone from him, taking a closer look. Mom and a few others are in a dim, brown paneled room. My mother and another woman are pointing at
what looks to be a blueprint, talking.
“Who’s he?” I say, pointing to the man standing next to my mother.
“Boss.” D replies simply.
“And who’s that ?”
“Edward Bowser III. An ex-undercover cop from your grandfather’s FBI projects. He’s currently a crooked cop and the leader of the other rebelling ex-Scorpion agents.”
“This is…this is fake .” I retort. “My mom would never be a part of something like this. I want to see her as soon as possible, she can explain what’s really going on.”
“Harper, let’s—” D starts, but I don’t bother listening to what he has to say anymore. I stand from the couch and storm off.
6 .
Harper
I’m sitting in the screened-in porch overlooking the backyard, thinking.
Can I still trust D? Are all the things he said about my mother really true? Is she really going to betray everyone like this? Why?
There’s a creak in the wooden floor behind me, and I whip around in my seat. Skye stands in the doorway. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” she says. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I reply tiredly. She steps onto the porch and sits in the outdoor loveseat across from me. “So, who are you, really?”
She hesitates. “Skye.”
“Why do you sound like you don’t know your own name?”
“Well, since your grandfather is Chief, do you know about the Elite Training Program?”
“No. I don’t know anything about my family or their supposed top-secret business.”
“Hm. Hey, how old are you?” Skye asks.
“Sixteen.”
“Me too. I’m glad there’s someone my age around here.” she says. “Well, the Elite Training Program, or just the ETP, recruits orphans when they turn thirteen to train at the Genesis Project. When I was thirteen, they came to my orphanage and took me and nine others. They gave us numbers instead of names, mine was Nine. They began training us to become spies, undercover cops, special agents, or assassins. I was the only assassin trainee in my group. It didn’t matter if we weren’t healthy enough, smart enough, strong enough, they forced us to get better...I never felt right in that place. I spent the past three years of my life training to become an elite assassin, but I didn’t know what would happen to me after that. After you graduate from training, the outside world will still never know about you. You either die during your first mission or are always undercover. It’s like you don’t even exist. And, I didn’t want to spend my life killing people. So I escaped.”
“Well, do you know why the ETP is doing those things?”
Skye sighs. “I wish I knew. Look, I’m sorry about your mom, but D is telling the truth. Something weird is going on at Genesis, and the ex-agents from the Scorpion project are going to destroy everything. It’s best if we get far away from here and get help—”
“What about D? Is he one of them, too?” I question.
“The rebelling ex-agents thinks he’s on their side, but he’s actually been trying to escape from them for a while.”
“I still want to see my mom. I don’t know what’s going on, but I still miss her regardless. Can’t we just go spy on them or something? You know how to spy, right?”
“I don’t know where Scorpion’s secret headquarters are, but D does.” Skye says. “I know he won’t let us go over there, though, it’s too dangerous—they’re one of the most feared underground organizations in the east coast.”
I huff. “I still don’t know what I’m going to do about my sister. She needs to be hospitalized before something else happens to her, at least for one night. But without our mom, I don’t know how that’s going to happen.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She has multiple sclerosis.”
“Ouch. It must be hard for her—for both of you.”
I shake my head. “I have to get Jo out of here. I can deal with my mom later, she’s is more important to me.” I stand up. “Is D still in the living room?”
“Yeah.” Skye stands up also. “We can all come up with a plan to leave town. D told me Scorpion’s attempt to destroy Genesis is on Saturday, November seventeenth—that’s less than two weeks.” She follows me back into the living room, and we’re all sitting down together again.
* * *
It only takes fifteen minutes to create a plan to leave town. It’s fairly simple, and I write it down on a piece of notebook paper. Today is November third, a Saturday. We plan to leave tomorrow or the next day.
1. Pack a week’s supply (maybe two?) of food, water, clothes, etc. into the jet—basic survival stuff. Most supplies are already in the panic room.
2. Have Mavis check the jet’s systems and address any concerns.
3. Fly to ?? @ 2:00 a.m., when it’s dark and there’s the least amount of civilization outside.
“Why did you write us a letter instead of seeing us in person, anyway?” I ask D.
“I was scared to reveal my identity,” D replies simply. “I delivered the letter before I’d convinced Boss to pull me from Operation Zero.”
“Where are we going to fly to?” Jo asks.
“I don’t know yet.” I say.
“Can I see the jet we’ll be using?” D asks.
“Yeah. Follow me.” D, Skye, and Joanna follow me down to the basement, or what I call the den. The panic room door has been left open, and I pick up my and Jo’s backpacks that we hastily packed last night. The escape door is now ajar, and I push it open some more.
Past the escape door is like an underground warehouse. The ceiling is low, but there are steep stairs that lead down to the floor that’s now multiple feet below us. The floor is bare concrete, but the walls are a bright white, and there are rows and rows of things that I need to get a closer look at to fully see. The room seems to go on forever. This all must be under the two acres of land behind our house, and the reason why we live in the middle of nowhere.
And there, sitting just a few feet away, is the jet.
* * *
At nine-thirty, D proclaims that he wants to sleep. Skye agrees.
“D, you can have the main floor guest room. Skye, you can have the last room upstairs.” I say.
“Actually, I’m going to take D’s truck back to the motel we came from.” Skye says, not looking at me.
“A motel ? Why?” I ask, following her into the foyer.
“Genesis is searching for me. Since your grandfather is Chief, he might send people here to ask about me before searching town, and probably even the entire country.”
“There aren’t any motels here in Reddings Mill,” I state.
“There’s one in the next town over, but it’s not on any maps. It’s where people like me go to hide.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ex-agents, escapees and whatnot...I’ll see you tomorrow, Harper.” Skye opens the front door and steps outside. She gets into D’s rusted white pickup and starts the engine. I barely see her in the darkness of the night.
“Do you even know how to drive?” I call out, but I don’t think she hears me. But she does.
“I think I figured it out,” Skye replies, her voice sounding far away. She slowly backs out of the driveway, and in just seconds, she’s gone. The last thing I hear are tires screeching on pavement.
* * *
The next day, I wake up feeling energized, and oddly prepared. I slept in until almost noon.
I find Joanna in the kitchen, eating a plain waffle. Prescribed multivitamins sit unopened in front of her. Her face is drained, pajamas wrinkled, hair messy. “Sleep well?” I ask as I open the fridge. Empty. I walk over to the pantry instead.
“No.” Jo grumbles.
“Oh.” I check the time on my phone. 11:52 a.m. I check to see if I have any new notifications, but there are none. Part of me wants to desperately call Mom, beg her to tell me everything. But the better part of me knows to wait, to get my sister and I to safety first. Who knows what Scorpion
is up to this very minute—what Mom is supposedly up to this very minute? It was odd when Scorpion scrambled out of here two nights ago, and from the way D described them and their agendas, they couldn’t possibly run away from the only opportunity to get me and Joanna like that. That’s probably part of their plan, to seem stupid under pressure when they’re really not, or something like that.
We wash up and get dressed in similar comfortable clothes, leggings and extremely soft flannels, and I tell Jo to bring a suitcase to my room. The first part of our plan is to pack a week’s worth of stuff into the jet. We’ll start with clothes. We shouldn’t need much, but we still need to be prepared.
“So, are D and Skye are coming with us?” Jo asks, letting her white suitcase fall on the ground beside my red one.
“They should. We need to learn everything we can about Mom and our family.” I reply, starting to pack, but am abruptly cut off by the doorbell. I groan and walk over to the window and slowly peel back the curtain. A Suburban similar to Scorpion’s sits in the driveway, but this one is gray. I can’t see who’s at the door, so I pull out my phone and go to Mavis Services. I tap the blue speaker. “Mavis,” I talk into it. “Bring up any cameras that show the front yard, and zoom in on the best one.”
“Would you like to see who is at the front door?” Mavis says. “There is a camera in the peephole.”
“Yes.” I say, my heartbeat quickening with worry. My cell phone screen shows me the peephole’s camera, and I nearly drop my phone, stunned.
“Joanna— look .” I whisper-shout. “It’s Mom!”
“ What ?” Jo exclaims, already standing beside me.
“Mavis, doesn’t Mom have access to you too?” I ask Mavis. “Can’t she just take the house off lockdown and come inside?”
“I am afraid not. I am only programmed into your and Joanna’s devices.”
Rogue (The Genesis Files Book 1) Page 4
