She’d learned to manage; deep-breathing exercises usually helped with the fatigue, and she was careful not to gorge when the others were around. They seemed to sense that there was something different about her, though. That was probably part of the reason they followed her.
Unconsciously, Noa’s hand drifted to her chest. A little over four months ago, P&D had transplanted an extra thymus in her chest, which partly explained why she’d undergone all these strange changes. But she was no closer to finding out exactly what that meant. All she knew for certain was that their experiments were continuing. And that the same people who had used her as a guinea pig were still determined to find her.
There was a muffled noise from the backseat. Noa watched in the rearview mirror as the guy struggled, trying to shift up to sitting. Her eyes narrowed; better make sure he was still tightly secured—the last thing she needed was for him to escape. She slipped into the back and checked the zip ties on his wrists and ankles. Out of curiosity, she lifted a corner of the pillowcase to get a look at him.
She immediately shied back in horror. Noa knew this guy; he’d chased her through Brookline high school last fall. Nearly caught her, too.
His eyes also widened in recognition, then narrowed to slits. He tried to say something, but the duct tape on his mouth muffled it.
She collected herself, trying to repress the sudden flash of panic. He’s tied up, she reminded herself. He couldn’t hurt her now. “Nice to see you again, too,” Noa said. “You’re not getting out of here, so you might as well chill.”
The guy glared at her. Noa dropped the pillowcase and said, “Behave yourself, and we might even feed you. Chili tonight. Should be pretty good.”
She climbed out of the van. In front of her, a plain wooden door led into the kitchen. They were hunkered down in a foreclosed house in Oakland. It was in a seriously sketchy neighborhood, on a street where half the residents had been forced out when they couldn’t pay their mortgages. So far, no one appeared to have noticed the group of scraggly kids squatting there. But it had been a few days, and staying in the same place for too long increased the chances that they’d be discovered by the cops, or worse. They’d need to move on soon.
But first things first. Noa squared her shoulders, girding herself. Time to face the troops.
Can’t talk 4 long.
Yeah I know, Peter typed. U ok?
Having a blast, got a new gold ring u’d like. Plus a silver one.
Peter Gregory frowned at his laptop screen. “Crap,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Amanda asked, coming to peer over his shoulder.
Peter resisted the urge to close the laptop so she couldn’t see. He’d been surprised to find Amanda hanging out in his room when he got home; surprised, and a little frustrated, since it meant he’d have wait to see if his device was working. She’d been acting weird and edgy, though, so he hadn’t had the heart to turn her away.
But then Noa had logged onto The Quad to chat about her latest operation. The Quad was a virtual message board that only the best hackers in the world were privy to. Theoretically, only he and Noa had access to the private chat rooms they established there with password-authenticated key codes. Still, they were careful to converse in cipher.
And now his ex-girlfriend was squinting over his shoulder while he tried to find out how everything had gone. Peter shifted slightly to block her view.
“Is anything wrong?” Amanda asked.
“Not really.” Peter debated how much to tell her. Amanda knew a bit about what Noa was doing on the West Coast, but he stopped short of sharing details. Not that he didn’t trust her, but it would have felt like a betrayal of Noa’s confidence. “They stopped another abduction. But they took a prisoner.”
“That was stupid,” Amanda said disapprovingly. “One of the commandos?”
“I think so. Noa said she might, but I thought I’d talked her out of it.”
More words flooded on-screen: Deciding where 2 go next, you still vote 4 the canyon?
Peter got a flash of Noa hunched over a keyboard, choppy black hair swinging forward to curtain her face. It had been four months since he’d seen her, but he still thought about her almost constantly. Although it was getting harder and harder to remember the exact shade of green her eyes were, or how her voice sounded. . . .
“What’s the canyon?” Amanda asked, shaking him out of his reverie.
“What? Nothing,” he muttered. “Listen, can you give me a minute?”
“Oh, sure,” Amanda said, clearly miffed. “Wouldn’t want to get in your way.”
“You’re not,” Peter said defensively. “I just hate people reading over my shoulder.”
“You never used to,” Amanda grumbled as she flopped back down on his bed.
Peter rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Even though they’d broken up months ago, Amanda still had a knack for making him feel like a bad boyfriend. He bit back a retort and focused on his keyboard.
Still there? Noa typed.
Yeah, Peter wrote back hurriedly. Sorry. Canyon is a go.
Gr8, thx. 2 days?
2 days. He hesitated, then added, b safe.
But she’d already logged off.
Repressing an inexplicable sense of loss, Peter closed the laptop. It felt like more than a virtual link had been severed. Even though they never stayed online for more than a few minutes, it helped him feel connected to her and what they were doing. Which was important, because sometimes Peter felt like he was watching a kid who looked and sounded like him living his life on the other side of a pane of glass.
He’d first met Noa in person four months ago. Before that, she’d been an occasional participant in the hacktivist group /ALLIANCE/ that he’d established to punish internet bullies, child and animal abusers, and anyone else who took advantage of the weak and powerless.
Through a fluke of fate, the two of them had stumbled across P&D’s secret research project, Project Persephone. The goal was to find a cure for PEMA, a disease that afflicted tens of thousands of teenagers. Peter’s own brother had died from it; it was always fatal. And sure, a cure would be great—but kidnapping former foster kids and treating them like lab rats wasn’t the way to go about finding one. Noa had been one of P&D’s test subjects, until she escaped. Luckily, they hadn’t infected her with PEMA. But she hadn’t emerged unscathed, either.
And even though the two of them had managed to lure the FBI to a lab filled with victims of those experiments—in pieces—none of it had come to light. Which meant that someone powerful enough to call off the FBI was involved.
And that scared the hell out of him.
“So she has a hostage now,” Amanda commented. Peter turned to find her flipping through a back issue of World Soccer Magazine.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Peter said with a frown.
“No? What would you call it, then?” she challenged, eyeing him.
Peter shrugged. “She just wants to get some information. The last few labs they raided, the kids inside were already dead. She wants to know why.”
“And she thinks this guy will actually tell her?” Amanda snorted. “What’s Noa going to do, torture him?”
“Of course not,” Peter said, although privately he wondered. While he’d been going through the motions of being a normal high school senior, Noa had been living on the streets again, facing off against armed thugs in raids on top- secret labs. Maybe nonviolent retaliation just wasn’t viable for her anymore.
Peter couldn’t repress the sense that his life was unbearably dull in comparison.
Which was why he’d risked infiltrating that server room. Hopefully it was already funneling mass amounts of information to him via a remote server in Hungary.
Somewhere in there he was hoping to find concrete proof of what Pike & Dolan was up to, including locations of all their secret labs, names of kids they were targeting, and what their experiments actually entailed. Maybe he’d even discover why Noa had dev
eloped such weird symptoms after they gave her an extra thymus.
He should have told her about the packet sniffer. If she’d known he was close to accessing all that information, she might not have taken a prisoner.
The fact that she’d put her group in more danger, especially when it could have been avoided, just added to his discomfort.
“Well, I think she’s wasting her time,” Amanda declared.
Peter shifted uncomfortably. If Amanda hadn’t been the one to initiate their breakup, he would have suspected that she was jealous. Even though Amanda had made it pretty clear that she only wanted to be friends, her mouth always got tight whenever he talked about Noa.
“So what’s the canyon?” she asked again.
Peter cracked his knuckles, trying to figure out a way to say that it was none of her business without setting her off. “Nothing, really.”
“Phoenix.” Amanda tossed a wave of honey-blond hair over her shoulder as she continued, “That’s where she’s headed next, right? You found another lab there?”
Peter tried not to react—sometimes Amanda was too damn smart for her own good. “I’m not supposed to say.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and flipped onto her back, scooping up the magazine again as she said, “Right. The canyon. Brilliant code you two came up with. You should tell her to just let the guy go.”
Peter chose not to respond. Noa was going to do whatever she wanted, no matter what he said.
It was frustrating, just sitting here waiting for news all the time. And he never got to hear much about the raids, thanks to their security protocols. All Noa usually sent were coded numbers of saved kids (gold rings) along with veiled questions about future targets. Amanda was right: Phoenix was next; the last time he’d hopped P&D’s firewall, he’d found indicators of a major lab there. With any luck, his sniffer would provide specifics, and he wouldn’t have to waste any more valuable time circumnavigating the increasingly sophisticated firewalls.
And this time, maybe there would still be kids left to save.
Peter sighed. All this cloak and dagger stuff was exhausting.
“You want to go to a movie tonight?” Amanda asked abruptly.
“What?” he said, startled.
Amanda frowned at him. The gesture created a little crinkle between her brows that he’d always secretly loved. “A movie. You know, where you get popcorn and watch things on a giant screen.”
“I’ve kind of got a lot to do here,” he said, gesturing to the computer.
“Fine.” Amanda got to her feet and started pulling on her jacket. “I just thought maybe we could both use a little fun.”
Peter watched her, perplexed. “Fun?”
“Yeah, something besides school and huge corporate conspiracies.” Angrily, she tugged a scarf around her neck. “Forget it.”
Now that she mentioned it, it had been a long time since he’d done anything that qualified as fun. It wasn’t a terrible idea. “We could go tomorrow,” he offered.
Amanda paused at the threshold, her hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”
“Sure,” he said. “But I’m not reading subtitles.”
“I figured.” She beamed at him. “Okay, then. It’s a date.”
“Let’s rip out his fingernails,” Turk snarled.
“No one is ripping out any fingernails,” Noa said forcefully. She eyed the guy who was tied to a chair in the middle of the garage; he stared back at her balefully. The room was soundproofed—the previous owner had probably had a kid in a band, so they’d caught a lucky break there. The van had been moved to the driveway to make room for the interrogation. The rest of her group sat or stood in a circle around him.
There was a strange energy in the room—keyed-up excitement combined with bloodlust. If she allowed it, they’d probably rip this guy to shreds. Hell, they might do it anyway. He represented all the bad things that had ever happened to them, and despite their different backgrounds, the one thing they had in common was a consuming need for retribution and revenge.
Observing that now, Noa was forced to admit that taking a hostage might’ve been a mistake. Peter had basically said as much, but by then, it had been too late. Not for the first time, she wished he was here. Sometimes Noa felt like she was fumbling through the dark on her own, struggling to find her way without a compass. Peter had been that for her, briefly; she hadn’t realized how much she’d come to rely on him until he was abruptly gone.
But this was how things were now, she reminded herself. And she had Zeke.
He caught her eye from across the room and cocked an eyebrow. She could tell that he was worried, too.
“So, what? We just stand here and stare at him?” Turk spat. “This is bullshit.”
Before Noa could answer, Zeke spoke up. “We’ve got the Tasers, right? We could use those.”
Noa shifted uncomfortably. It was the middle of the night, and she still hadn’t slept. The fatigue was starting to become overwhelming, to the point where she felt like she might keel over midsentence. But she’d decided that it would be better to deal with their captive sooner rather than later. They needed to get as much out of him as possible; keeping him any longer than necessary was too dangerous.
“What are we waiting for?” Crystal said impatiently. “Make him talk!”
The rest of the group murmured in assent.
Noa was tempted to call the whole thing off, but nine kids were staring at her expectantly. If she backed down now, she’d lose their respect. And the minute that happened, they’d turn on her.
She felt a hand on her elbow. In a low voice, Zeke said, “Whatever you want to do, I’ll back you.”
Noa nodded briskly, feeling a wave of gratitude. Zeke was the one person she could always count on. Knowing that gave her the strength to say, “Take off the duct tape.”
The charge in the room kicked up another notch as Turk ripped away the tape covering the guy’s mouth.
The commando glared at Noa. “Stupid little bitch,” he growled. “You’ve made a big mistake.”
“Says the guy tied to the chair,” Zeke muttered.
Noa bent over to look him in the eye. “Where were you taking Teo?”
“To the ballpark,” the guy said with a snort. “Looked like the kid could use a hot dog.”
“We left your buddy Jimmy for the others to find,” Zeke chimed in. “Bet he’s not laughing right now.”
“He’s not my buddy,” the guy muttered, but his eyes shifted to the floor.
“They probably killed him, right, Noa?” Zeke added. “That’s what happened to the last one.”
There hadn’t been a last one, actually; but maybe the guy wouldn’t know that. She had no idea whether or not P&D’s mercenaries communicated with one another. That was just one of the things it would be helpful to find out. “We could always take you back there,” she said, watching him closely. “See if they might want to have some fun with you, too.”
The guy didn’t appear concerned, or maybe he was just good at hiding it. “You’re going to kill me anyway,” he snorted. “You have to.”
“No,” Noa said. “I don’t. I can leave you at the ballpark, if you want. All you have to do is answer a few questions.”
The guy tilted his head back and laughed. “You don’t get it, do you? If you don’t kill me, they will. They’ll know I told you something. Hell, they’ll kill me anyway, just for screwing up.”
“So you’re already dead,” Noa pointed out. “Then why not talk?”
“Why should I?” The guy tried to shrug, but his arms were bound too tightly to the chair.
“They’re killing kids,” Noa said, fighting back a sudden swell of rage—she could practically feel the cold metal table beneath her again. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“I never killed anyone,” the guy protested. “My job was just to grab ’em. They were mostly trash, anyway.”
At that, a few of the kids shifted. Noa could sense their anger growing, and she didn’t blame t
hem. They’d all probably been called trash at one point or another. And whether or not they acknowledged it, it always hurt.
“You’re a dead man,” Turk said, shoving his way into the circle.
“Turk, step off,” Noa ordered.
“Screw that.” He punched the guy in the chest hard, and the chair tipped back and slammed into the ground. Turk planted a Timberland boot squarely on the guy’s throat.
Noa snapped, “Off him, Turk!”
Turk glowered at her. She met his gaze, chin raised. She’d been afraid of this moment from the beginning, knew that at some point one of them would challenge her. The fact that it was Turk was hardly surprising. She wasn’t suited for this, had never been good with people to start with. The house of cards she’d constructed by forming her little “army” had always felt like it was on the verge of collapsing. A bead of sweat trickled down her spine as she stared into Turk’s eyes. They were light blue, and too pretty for a boy, she thought nonsensically; funny she’d never noticed before.
After a beat, Turk stepped back. Without a word, Zeke righted the chair; the front legs landed back on the concrete floor with a thump.
“Give me a Taser,” Noa said.
Zeke met her eyes questioningly. Then he stepped forward and handed her one.
“How’d you like this today?” Noa asked, waving it in a slow circle. “Did it hurt?”
The guy shrugged, though for the first time she caught a glimmer of fear in his eyes. “It tickled.”
“Yeah? Guess I should crank up the power, then.” As she turned the knob, he swallowed hard. Noa continued, “You don’t have a heart condition, do you? Because there was a warning on the box. . . . What did it say again?”
“Maximum of five milliamps on people,” Zeke chimed in. “We had it set for three today. I think you’re only supposed to go above that for large animals.”
Don't Look Now Page 3
