Don't Turn Around

by Michelle Gagnon

  “Doing what?”

  “Helping me,” she said.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Peter sounded perplexed.

  “I don’t know. It’s just—you don’t know me and … I guess I’m not used to it.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “Honestly, for me part of this isn’t even about you. It’s the whole reason I set up /ALLIANCE/. When we find out that some jerks are doing something terrible, we punish them for it.”

  “Yeah, but you already did that by bricking AMRF’s system.”

  “They can probably get it back online. And that doesn’t even begin to make up for what they did to you.” His voice grew heated as he continued, “Plus they’ll probably keep doing it. They might be experimenting on other kids right now.”

  “I’d thought of that,” Noa admitted. “There were a lot of warehouses in that complex.”

  “Well, they know you know where that is. So unless they’re total morons, they probably cleared those out,” Peter mused. “Still …”

  When he didn’t continue, Noa finally asked, “Still?”

  “I was just thinking, all of their files have probably downloaded by now. I can’t help with the science stuff, but there should be a way for me to dig through and find out who’s running this entire thing.”

  “I thought it was that Mason guy.”

  “I don’t know,” Peter said. “The way he and my parents talked … I got the sense Mason reported to someone else. He didn’t seem to be in charge of everything. The real boss probably wouldn’t be running around handling stuff like me, right?”

  “Probably not,” Noa acquiesced. “So you find out who’s really in charge. Then what?”

  “Then we go after them.” Peter’s voice was grim as he said, “It’ll make everything else we did with /ALLIANCE/ look like nothing. We’ll expose them to the world.”

  Noa wasn’t entirely certain she liked the sound of that. Exposing AMRF to the world would basically expose her to the world, too, and she’d expended a lot of time and energy digging a hole deep enough to hide in. Still, she said, “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Yup. Well, we should get some sleep.” Peter’s voice dissolved into a yawn as he said, “Night.”

  Noa lay there, thinking.

  “Peter?”

  “Yeah?”

  She paused, then said, “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  The sound of his breathing gradually evened out. An occasional car passed by, but other than that the night was still and silent. Sleep wouldn’t come for her, though. Her body felt exhausted—it had been nearly twenty-four hours since she’d slept a wink. Still, her mind wouldn’t stop churning over the events of the past few days, a steady stream of people and places. And underlying it all, that constant pulsing beat in her chest.

  Finally Noa got up, grabbed her laptop off the table, and went to the window. Shivering, she sat in the window seat overlooking the street. No cushioning, just bare wood, so it felt like the cold was pushing through the oversized sweatpants Cody had loaned her.

  She didn’t have the energy to keep working on the files—the mere thought of it made her head hurt. So instead she went to her email.

  There was a new message from A6M0. Nothing in the body of the email, but the subject header read, You okay?

  She sent a chat request and a second later, his handle popped up in the chat window.

  Was starting to worry about u, he wrote.

  I’m fine.

  Good.

  Noa’s fingers hesitated over the keyboard. It was an odd thing—her gut told her that whoever this person was, he or she had the answers she was looking for. But she had so many questions, she hardly knew where to begin. Who r u? she finally typed.

  Not important. Re: AMRF bricking. Was that u?

  A friend, Noa wrote, thinking that he was wrong. It was important for her to know, especially since he seemed to know so much about her. But pushing the issue might close that channel, and she needed answers to more pressing questions.

  Did u get their files?

  Noa hesitated again. She might be talking to someone from AMRF. She had no idea if she was even chatting with the same person. Finally she wrote, Yes.

  A longer pause this time, then the words streamed on-screen. Then you have the only copies of the Project’s files. They’ll keep coming after them. If you found a safe place to hide, stay there.

  I need answers, she wrote back, feeling a flash of anger. What did they do to me?

  You can’t let them get you again, he wrote. It’s critical.

  So if I give the data back, they’ll leave me alone? Noa asked. Maybe some sort of exchange would get them all off the hook. If the data was so important, and she and Peter had sole access to it, this might be a way out. She could set up a fail-safe system that would kick in if something happened to either of them. Make sure that AMRF knew about it so they’d leave them alone for good....

  She was already planning it out in her head when his reply popped up. They’ll never leave you alone, he wrote. You’re the key. And you can’t give the data back. They’ll just use it to hurt more of us.

  What does that mean? she typed, aggravated. It was like trying to have a conversation with Yoda: completely maddening. When a minute passed without a reply, she added, Who is us?

  No response. Looking over what she’d just written, Noa couldn’t help but think, Great. Now he’s got me talking like that, too.

  Then A6M0 abruptly logged out of the chat, and she had to restrain herself from flinging the laptop across the room.

  She slammed the lid shut, powering off the computer. A sleepy voice asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered, feeling badly for waking him. “Go back to sleep.”

  “’Kay. Love you, Amanda,” Peter said dreamily.

  Noa stiffened. It was odd to hear those words again, even if they weren’t really intended for her. It had been almost a decade since anyone said they loved her. She still remembered the last time. Her mother had buckled her into the car seat, kissed her on the forehead, and whispered it into Noa’s hair.

  Noa tucked her chin on her knees and stared out the window. She rubbed her left wrist. Even though her bracelet was gone, the motion calmed her.

  Amanda pulled the hood of her sweater over her head and tugged her scarf closer to her neck. It was freezing, far colder than the end of October should be. Thank you, global warming, she thought. It drove her nuts when pundits used cold weather as an excuse to bolster claims that climate change was an imaginary phenomenon created by scientists. How did people not understand that global warming didn’t literally mean the planet would be hotter, just that every weather pattern would become more intense? Amanda found it horribly frustrating.

  She and Drew had just been discussing that earlier over coffee at the student center. It was amazing how much they saw eye to eye on everything. She’d never felt so perfectly in sync with someone before. Peter—well, Peter was Peter, and she loved him for that. He was funny and charming, and brought out a lighter side of her. But sometimes she got frustrated by the way he laughed everything off. Life was just one big joke to him. Nothing wrong with that, she reminded herself—as her psych professor said the other day, everyone developed their own worldview. The problem was that Amanda had discovered that theirs didn’t mesh so well anymore. Her attention would drift when Peter launched into a long discourse on internet freedom or hacktivism. It was all just so … virtual. She preferred to focus on problems that were right there in front of you. And she preferred to handle them in person, not through a network of anonymity.

  Drew totally got that. And he grasped what she was saying about kids like her brother, who slipped through the social safety net. Once her brother fell off the grid, there was no one actively invested in trying to save him. Organizations like the Runaway Coalition were few and far between, and mainly designed to send teens back to the streets in slightly better condition.

  Drew loved
her idea to develop more intensive centers that addressed the problem. Way stations for teens that were more than glorified halfway houses. Places where they could actually get a GED, have a safe place to sleep, and receive help overcoming everything life had burdened them with. Once Drew finished law school, he was planning on taking a job with a grassroots community organization, learning the ropes. And then maybe, he’d hinted, they could tackle the problem together.

  Amanda flushed at the thought. Drew was the one, she was sure of it. But she felt badly about Peter. She hadn’t handled it well; she really should have talked to him weeks ago. She’d called his cell all day, trying to apologize, but it kept going straight to voice mail. Which was just like him, she thought, rolling her eyes. Avoiding tough conversations. The fact that he and his parents never even mentioned his brother’s name had always struck her as astonishing. It was like Jeremy had never existed, the way they’d gone about systematically eliminating every sign of him from their lives.

  It was a shame. But not her problem anymore, she reminded herself.

  Amanda quickened her pace. The quad was empty, most of the windows dark. It was later than she’d thought. Even though she’d been wiped out after volunteering, Drew persuaded her to meet him for coffee and they’d lost track of time. She should really have paid more attention.

  She flashed back to the wounded expression on Peter’s face when he stormed out, and felt a pang. She shook it off. This was for the best. And Peter would be fine. Girls loved him; he’d probably be dating again within a week.

  Still, Amanda wished he’d answer his phone. If nothing else, she’d like to give him some closure.

  Amanda was almost at her dorm. There was a guy there on crutches, struggling to swipe his card across the keypad to release the latch. His backpack slipped from his shoulder, and he swore.

  “Here,” she said, hurrying forward. “Let me get it for you.”

  She drew her student ID card from her pocket and swiped it. The door clicked open. Amanda bent to pick up the backpack and handed it to him with a smile.

  Which quickly faded when she saw his face. The guy was at least thirty, far too old to be living in a freshman dorm. He’d dropped the crutches and was standing on both feet now.

  His eyes were hard as he stared down at her.

  Amanda turned to run. But a shadow separated from the bushes at the base of the stairs to her left, and another to her right. They started to close in.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over it from behind, muffling the sound. There was a sharp jab in her neck. Amanda struggled for another few seconds, then her muscles suddenly refused to respond. Her whole body went limp, and she fell back into his arms.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Noa awoke to the smell of burning toast. Her whole body ached. Something hard was digging into her back. She blinked and straightened. She’d fallen asleep in the window seat. Someone—probably Peter—had draped a wool blanket over her. Still, her back was cold where it touched the bare wall.

  She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and made her way down the hall to the kitchen. On the other side of a narrow doorframe, Peter stood in front of a tiny two-burner range. The counter was a wreck of eggshells and dirty bowls, and smoke poured out the top of a toaster oven.

  Hearing her, Peter turned and smiled weakly. He was juggling a blackened piece of toast in one hand. “Morning,” he said.

  The smoke alarm started to blare.

  Noa moved past him to the window and struggled with the bolts. She finally twisted the last one and wrenched it open, shivering against the blast of cold air that raced past her into the flat. She drew the blanket more firmly around her shoulders with one hand. As the smoke dissipated and the room cleared, the alarm fell still.

  Noa turned back to find Peter giving her that lopsided grin. “Sorry,” he said meekly. “I was cooking.”

  Noa eyed the toast. “I’m pretty sure that doesn’t qualify as cooking. I thought you were supposed to be some sort of great chef.”

  He frowned. “I never said that.”

  “Cody did.”

  “Yeah, well … it’s a crap toaster oven.” He tossed the ruined slices into a trash can beneath the sink.

  A voice called through the light shaft, “Everything okay up there?”

  “Yes, Pam. Sorry,” Peter called back.

  He looked at Noa and rolled his eyes. Something about the whole situation suddenly struck her as unbearably funny—precisely what, she couldn’t pinpoint, but Noa was hit by a rare and extreme case of the giggles.

  “What?” Peter demanded as she doubled over with laughter. “I don’t get it.”

  “Is something else burning?” Noa managed. She was laughing so hard it was a struggle to breathe.

  “Oh, crap.” Peter dashed to the stove and lifted the lid off a sauté pan. More smoke poured off a blackened omelet.

  Noa’s laughter redoubled and she dropped to the ground, howling.

  “It’s really not funny,” Peter said, frowning as he grabbed the saucepan handle and headed for the window. He held it outside, waving away smoke. “I think I might have ruined the pan,” he said ruefully. “And that was the last of the eggs.”

  “Last of the toast, too?” Noa said between giggles.

  Peter nodded glumly.

  Noa couldn’t help it—she snorted. Maybe because she still wasn’t hungry, the lack of breakfast didn’t have much of an impact. And the whole situation still seemed hilarious—the expression on Peter’s face as he stood there holding a pan full of ruined food …

  She lost it again.

  Peter finally cracked a grin. “All right, maybe it’s a little funny,” he acknowledged.

  “Way to keep a low profile,” she choked out. “Think the fire department is on the way?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Noa suddenly flashed back to clinging on to the fire truck as it drove through the warehouse complex gates. That knocked the laughter right out of her. She looked up to find Peter examining her with a look of concern.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, collecting herself. “Where’s Cody?”

  “He had to go to work. We were going to wake you up to do the blood draw, but—well, you’re a hell of a sleeper,” Peter replied. “Cody has a break before he has to go in for hospital rounds. He said he’d come back then.”

  “Okay,” Noa said, even though she was already dreading the thought of a needle puncturing her skin, the pulse of blood into a vial … bile rose in her throat, and her hand went to her chest.

  “So … I guess I’ll see if I can salvage any of this,” Peter said, looking around the kitchen dubiously. “Maybe Cody has hot sauce.”

  “It’s okay.” Noa waved a hand. “I’m not hungry.”

  He nodded as if that was normal, even though she hadn’t eaten at all last night. “Great. More for me.”

  Noa hated the forced cheer in his voice, but resisted the inclination to snap at him about it. Peter was just trying to make her feel better. It wasn’t his fault she was suddenly a freak of human nature.

  “I’m gonna get back to work on those files,” Noa muttered, standing up.

  “Yeah, great.” He perked up. “After breakfast, I’ll check the upload status. All the files should be on the remote server by now.”

  As she went back toward the living room, Noa heard the hiss of water hitting a hot pan. The living room was smoky, too. Despite the cold, she cracked one of the windows to let it out, then plopped down on a floor pillow, powered up her laptop, and checked email. Nothing new from her annoyingly mysterious pen pal. Out of curiosity, she did a web search for A6M0. Like her, most hackers chose an online identity with some sort of personal connection. Maybe he had, too.

  A Google search only elicited a bunch of links to the Australian stock exchange and pages composed entirely in what looked like Japanese. She dug through three pages of results and was about to give up in frust
ration when she stumbled across a Wikipedia link.

  “Ha!” she said out loud. “Got you.”

  “What?”

  Noa turned. Peter was standing in the doorway rubbing the pan with a dishcloth. “Nothing. I just found something.”

  “About Project Persephone?” he asked, stepping into the room.

  “No. Something different.” Noa shifted the screen slightly so that it faced away from him. When she’d told Cody and him about the past few days, she’d neglected to mention her guardian angel. She wasn’t quite sure why—it had just been an instinct.

  “Oh.” Peter looked confused. “I’ll be in the other room using Cody’s computer if you need anything.”

  “Okay.” Noa repressed a twinge of annoyance. It had been a while since she’d spent such an intensive amount of time with other people, but she didn’t remember this level of small talk being the norm. It was exhausting. Yet Peter seemed reluctant to leave the room.

  “Good luck,” she said finally, turning back to her computer.

  “Yeah, okay,” he mumbled.

  Noa puffed out air, annoyed. She turned back to her laptop and dug a bit deeper to confirm the Wikipedia entry—now she had a potential name for her guardian angel. An A6M0 was a WWII Japanese fighter plane—which explained all the entries in Japanese. Allied forces nicknamed it the “Zeke.” So if she was right, her guardian angel was a guy named Zeke. Or he just had a thing for old planes.

  None of which got her closer to any answers, she reminded herself.

  A minute later Noa heard a string of curses. A pause, then more.

  “What’s wrong?” she finally called out, exasperated.

  “I can’t use this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Come see.”

  She walked into the bedroom. Peter was sitting on a plastic chair that looked like patio furniture facing an ancient computer monitor. Noa’s eyebrows shot up at the sight of the enormous tower by his feet. “Is that a Gateway?” she asked. “Really?”

  “Really,” Peter replied, sounding pained. “It has to be at least a decade old.” He turned back to it.