by Dan Rix
He chuckled darkly. “That’s not what you said last time.”
Then I did remember, and my body went rigid in his arms. His arms.
“No, I can’t . . .” I pulled away roughly, feeling dirty for letting him touch me, dirty for all the blown chances I’d had to confess, where I’d let him in closer instead.
“Hot and cold,” he said, his expression grim. “Tough to beat that. You want me crawling on hands and knees, is that it?”
“Stop, that’s not what I’m trying to do. I . . . I got to go.” I backed away, begging for permission to leave with my eyes. His icy stare held me captive. I was his prisoner.
And the tiny arch in his eyebrow meant he’d figured that out.
I tore my gaze off him before I gave away anything else and fled in the opposite direction.
“Let’s have a look, shall we?” said the young doctor, wheeling his chair over to the exam table, where Megan sat on crinkly paper. I fidgeted in the corner, feeling sick over Emory. My thudding heart pulled in two different directions, sinking me deeper and deeper into despair. It would be so much easier to confess if I hated him. But like an idiot, I was beginning to fall for him.
The doctor took Megan’s arm by the elbow and wrist and tilted it forward. “Hmm . . . did you have ink done recently?”
“No,” said Megan softly. “They just showed up.”
He brushed her arm. “Yeah, it’s under the skin alright . . . in the dermis, it looks like.”
“Some of them are moving,” she said. “Like it’s alive.”
Their conversation pulled me back to the present, and I leaned forward to get a look.
“Mm-hmm.” The doctor continued to rotate her arm and prod the changing symbols. “That’s a neat effect. Could be electronic ink. I’m not feeling a subdermal display or anything like that. I’d suggest laser tattoo removal. I can refer you to a specialist, if you’d like.”
My eyes flicked to the door. Still closed, to my relief.
Megan nodded. “Do my parents have to know?”
“Well, they will have to sign the consent forms.” He rolled back to the desk and clicked open a pen. “Since you don’t . . . ah . . . remember getting the ink, you could try that same story with them.”
Megan’s mouth fell open. “You think I’m lying? I have no idea how these got here, I swear to God.”
Oh, Megan. We were lying.
He shrugged. “I’ll write you the referral. That’s the best I can do.”
I cleared my throat. “Doctor, uh—”
“Fletcher.”
“Yeah, Doctor Fletcher,” I said, sitting forward, “do you have any idea what the symbols might mean?”
He ignored me, his pen scraping as he scribbled out the referral form. I caught Megan’s eye, and she pointed at him and mouthed, What’s his deal?
I don’t know, I mouthed back.
“Uh, Doctor Fletcher?” I tried again.
He finished writing and rolled back to Megan, gesturing for her to hold up her arm, which he examined again.
“I’d say they look mathematical . . . some kind of code,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said.
He swiveled Megan’s arm to get a better look. “These two symbols here,” he pointed to her wrist and her elbow, “they’re identical. So are these two.” He pointed to two more.
“You think they’re letters?” I suggested.
“Or numbers,” he said.
“What if we told you it was an alien language?” I said.
He smirked, but said nothing. After a long moment, he announced, “It repeats.”
“It repeats?” said Megan.
“It’s the same seven symbols repeated over and over again.” As he studied it, his eyebrows pinched together. “This one’s changing so fast it’s almost a blur. Let me take a closer look—” He dragged over a magnifying light fixed to a hinged arm, clicked it on, and trained it on Megan’s skin. Peering through it, the furrows in his brow only deepened.
“What? What is it?” said Megan.
He held up a finger to shut her up, then tapped out time on his slacks. “It’s a regular interval. The second-to-last symbol changes every couple seconds . . . the one next to it changes much slower, once every thirty seconds or so—Oh, now that’s interesting.”
“What?” I rose to stand next to him.
“Three symbols just changed. Now the pattern’s repeating.” He rolled back to the desk and dug out a yellow pad. “Hang on, I think I can figure this out.”
He came back and started sketching out each of the symbols that flashed on Megan’s arm, then drew arrows between them. “This one changes to this one . . . which changes to this one . . .”
I caught on quick and tried to do the same thing in my head. There was a strange logic to the progression I hadn’t noticed before. Each alien symbol seemed to signify a smaller quantity than the one before. They looked like numbers. I soon lost track.
“Twelve different symbols,” said Dr. Fletcher. “Then the one next to it changes and it resets and goes through the exact same sequence again. It’s a numbering system, base twelve. I’d bet my life on it.”
“What? What is that?” said Megan, glancing between us. As if I knew.
“Base twelve,” said the doctor. “Twelve digits. We have ten digits—zero through nine. This system has twelve. This symbol here,” he pointed to a scribble on his pad, “that’s a zero. After that, it resets.”
“Why does it reset?” said Megan.
“Because it’s a timer,” he said. “You have a timer in your arm . . . it’s counting down.”
A chill went down my spine. I caught Megan’s eye again. Like me, she didn’t like the sound of that.
“A . . . a timer?” she stuttered. “Counting down to what?”
“Maybe you should ask whoever gave you this,” he said.
“I don’t know who gave it to me,” she protested.
“How much time is left?” I said. “On the timer?”
“I can figure it out. We’re saying that last digit cycles roughly every two point five seconds, so using base twelve . . .” He worked through a series of rough calculations. A minute later, he had the answer. “It’s going to reach zero in a little under seven weeks.”
“So am I going to blow up?” said Megan, driving us back to my house after the appointment. “Am I going to drop dead?”
“Maybe he was wrong,” I said. “He’s a dermatologist, not a mathematician.”
She took her eyes off the road to look at her arm, but said nothing.
Now it was obvious the symbols on her arm were counting down.
The question was, to what?
She pulled in front of my house and put the car in park.
“No, pull into the driveway,” I said. “So we’re closer to the door.”
“Like it’s going to make a difference,” she muttered, putting it back in gear and turning up the driveway.
I leapt out of the car and sprinted to the front door. I fumbled with my keys—which I’d collected from Mrs. Holbrooke’s class between periods—while Megan came up behind me to watch.
The deadbolt retracted, and I ushered her inside and locked the door behind us. A spark of adrenaline lingered in my fingertips. “I think we’re good,” I panted, glancing around the empty foyer.
The house had been locked all day. We were safe.
“She’s not going to attack in broad daylight,” said Megan.
“Why not? She’s invisible.”
“She’s going to attack you at night when you’re asleep. That’s what I would do. You have to fall asleep sometime, and she doesn’t sleep. Easy peasy.”
My gaze slid to the spare key hangin
g on the hook.
“I’m going to take this down,” I said, unhooking the key and pocketing it. “That’s how you snuck in that one time.”
“You sure that’s the only extra key?” she said.
“No, there’s another key, but it’s hidden.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, unless she saw me . . .” I bit my lower lip, suddenly uneasy. “You don’t . . . you don’t think she . . . ?”
Megan shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I peeked out the windows at the front lawn, the flagstone. Undisturbed. I should check. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and reached for the door again. “Be right back.”
While Megan watched from the window, I darted out into the garden, looked both ways, and hoisted the flagstone on its end. An earthworm wriggled down in the moist soil, and a pack of earwigs scattered and vanished into crevices. One came to rest in a key-shaped indentation in the dirt.
Where it had been.
Gone.
The hidden key was gone.
Chapter 12
“Dad, can we change the locks?” I leaned into the living room, where he was watching a football game. “Please?”
“You want to change the locks, sweetheart?” he said, distracted.
“Yeah . . . please?” I spoke in a scared whisper, fighting the shiver that tried to invade my body. Ashley had taken the hidden key. She must have been watching from the street when I grabbed it.
My dad waited until the play ended, grimacing in the process, before he paused it and looked up. “Why? What’s the matter?”
“Can we change the locks?”
At the moment, Megan was busy checking my bedroom for intruders.
“Is there a particular reason you want to change the locks?” he said.
I lowered my eyes, wondering if I should just admit to everything—finding the dark matter, using it to be invisible, murdering Ashley Lacroix. Maybe I would someday, but not yet.
“I lost my keys,” I said, “and, uh, I think this really creepy guy found them and followed me home.”
“Ah.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands together, nodding grimly. “Where’d you lose them?”
“At school . . . in the bushes.”
He peered at me. “You lost them in the bushes?”
I nodded vigorously. “They fell out of my backpack.”
“Why didn’t you just pick them up?”
“I didn’t hear them fall out.”
“Then how’d you know you lost them in the bushes?” he said, eyebrow raised.
Heat rushed to my face. I’d just been cross-examined like a sucker. “I mean, I’m not positive that’s where I lost them,” I mumbled, trying to recover, “but I was standing near some bushes, and when I checked my backpack later, they were gone and the zipper was open, so I assumed they fell out.”
Now he did look concerned. “Did you check the lost and found?”
“They weren’t there.”
“And you think someone followed you home?”
I nodded, unable to look him in the eye. I hated lying to my dad.
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know . . . he was creepy.”
“A student or an adult?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said, thinking my shame came from losing my keys. “We’ll get you some replacements. Why don’t you take the spare key for now.”
“I already got it.” I showed him the spare key in my pocket. “Dad, please can we change the locks? I don’t ask you for anything ever, do I?”
“Is everything okay, sweetheart?”
“I’m just scared, Dad.”
He studied me, concern tight in his eyebrows. “You want me to call the cops on this guy?”
“No, no, it’s . . . it’s not like that. I would just feel safer if we changed the locks, that’s all.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s not that hard to do. I can pick up some new locks from Home Depot this weekend. How’s that?”
“No, now . . . can we change them now? I’ll help you.”
“Okay. Now. We’ll change them now. Can I finish the game? I’m going to be right here, okay? No one’s going to break in while I’m here.”
“Yeah . . . I guess,” I croaked.
“Okay, what do we know?” I said, propping a cork board up on my dad’s workbench in the garage—Megan’s and my temporary refuge while he changed the locks to the house. “What do we know about dark matter and about Ashley Lacroix? You have a timer tattooed into your skin and I have an invisible girl hunting me. We need to figure this out.”
Megan chewed the packaging off a stack of colored index cards and magic markers. “First off, who’s involved?” she said, getting down to business. “Who are the key players?”
“You and me, obviously . . . and Ashley. Then there’s Major Connor, Emory’s dad, and Emory too, I guess.” I counted the names off on my fingers.
“Don’t forget Sarah,” said Megan, writing each of the names in loopy bubble letters on pink index cards. “And Salamander.”
“Don’t put Salamander,” I said.
“She’s involved, isn’t she?”
“She’s a snake.”
“I’m putting Salamander.” She wrote Salamander on an index card and handed me the names, which I pinned up on the cork board, mine right next to Emory . . . so our cards were touching.
Megan rolled her eyes. “What about organizations?”
“Rod Connor’s people,” I said. “Air Force Space . . . whatever it was.”
“Air Force Space Command,” she said, writing on blue index cards now, “and Rincon Systems, their defense contractor.” She handed me the two cards so I could pin them up next to their corresponding players. “Now what do we know about Rincon Systems?” She pulled out her phone.
I snapped my fingers. “That thing, that book, that document Emory’s dad wrote . . .”
“Defending Earth in the Worst-Case Scenario,” she said. “Efficacy of Modern Weaponry against an Extra-Terrestrial Threat.”
“How do you remember all that?” I said.
“I pay attention.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I’m kidding. The tab’s still open on my phone. Now let me see what else I can find on Rincon Systems.”
While she looked them up, I studied our corkboard. Reluctantly, I pulled Emory’s name away from my own and pinned it next to his dad and his sister. It made more sense to group their family. Like this, you could easily trace the path of dark matter from Rincon Systems to Mr. Lacroix and then to Ashley, hopping from host to host like a virus. I shuddered. Finally, I took Emory’s card off entirely. He wasn’t really a player.
“Nothing else on Rincon Systems,” Megan announced behind me. “What was that place called where Rod Connor was stationed?”
I tried to remember. “Missile Systems or something, it was in LA—”
“Space and Missile Systems Center,” she said. “Thank you, Google. I’m looking that up. Okay, it took me to Los Angeles Air Force Base, now I’m clicking on the news tab . . .”
Her play by play trailed off, and I went back to the cork board.
Emory’s family was one group. Megan and I formed the second group. Through us, dark matter had reached Sarah Erskine and Salamander the snake. Rod Connor had come to us on his own, also because of dark matter. On the corkboard, there was no connection between the two groups other than the fact that John Lacroix and Rod Connor both reported to Air Force Space Command.
No connection at all.
Well, no connection aside from the obvious one: the fact that Megan and I had killed Ashley.
I felt my
eyebrows pinch together, on the verge of a realization.
“Aww, that’s sad,” said Megan.
I blinked, coming out of a daze. I’d lost it. “What’s sad?”
“They’re no longer displaying Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center. It says here that NASA, jointly with AFSPC, moved it to a new, more secure location.”
“That’s weird. Where’d they move it?”
“Let me see.” She scrolled down on her touchscreen. “Looks like . . . Vandenberg.”
I whirled around. “Wait . . . Vandenberg?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Vandenberg Air Force Base,” I said excitedly, “Emory’s dad, Rincon Systems, I saw in his office that’s where they were sending a bunch of equipment . . . to Vandenberg.”
She gave me a strange look. “What are they going to do with a space shuttle?”
“I don’t know, Megan. Maybe go into space. Isn’t that where dark matter comes from?”
Her eyes widened. “Leona, Sarah’s journal . . . she said they were building a ship, remember? Maybe this was what she meant.”
“See what else you can find,” I said, turning back to the cork board to figure out what had been nagging me.
Something about the connections . . .
I found a spool of string on my dad’s workbench and connected my pin to Ashley’s pin. Murder. Next I pinned up another index card, labeled dark matter, which I also connected to Ashley’s pin. I stared at the diagram, my pulse suddenly booming in my ears, and put up the last piece of string. This one from dark matter to my pin.
A triangle.
On the corkboard, the connections couldn’t have been more obvious. At once, everything seemed to fall into place.
Dark matter had found Ashley.
Dark matter had found me.
I had killed Ashley.
“Megan, Megan!” I gasped. “I solved it, I figured it out!”
“What?” she said, running over.
“Look—” My finger shook from excitement. “Other than the fact that we killed Ashley, dark matter is the only thing that connects the two groups. First it found her, then it found us . . . separately. There’s no way that’s a coincidence. Which means us killing her can’t be a coincidence either. Look at that!” I grabbed her hands. “Megan, dark matter made us do it. It made us kill her. That’s the only way to explain it. Megan, we’re not guilty!” My words echoed into silence.
