“Yeah, well, I have a pretty impressive tardy record,” I reply.
“And a fight under your belt,” she adds. “Can’t forget that.”
“It wasn’t much of a fight,” I say with a shrug.
“But it was a major infraction, right?” Zoe touches my arm, her lips slowly slipping into a straight line. “Did Caldwell say it was going to show up on your transcript?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “He InstaCommed my mom, though. And gave me a thousand demerits.”
“That’s so unfair.” Zoe’s eyes narrow and she scowls. “Avery deserved every bit of what you gave her and more. I can’t believe all that shit she said about Elusion and the Simmons family. She couldn’t be more off base.”
And just like that, I feel queasy. When I confronted Avery in the cafeteria, I sounded just as confident as Zoe is right now. But that was before I went to Elusion and everything I thought was certain and irrefutable was chipped away in a matter of hours.
“I bet Patrick was glad you stood up for him.” Zoe rifles through her messenger bag and pulls out a bottle of pink watermelon-flavored protein water. She takes a long sip, and I’m reminded of how Patrick loves the artificial watermelon flavoring in that drink so much he has his personal driver stock the minifridge in his stretch town car with it.
“I guess,” I say, my thoughts tripping into last night, remembering Patrick’s reaction when I told him about my showdown with Avery.
All he seemed to care about was her video and the possible PR damage it could do. I cared about that, too, obviously, but when visions of my father came back to haunt me, for a moment I actually contemplated the idea that the Elusion app might have some real flaws. Maybe not the one Avery is suggesting, but something that could be just as frightening.
“Do you mind if I ask you something? About Patrick?” Zoe asks.
My attention snaps back to her. “Sure.”
“Does he . . . not like me or something?”
I give her a reassuring smile. “That’s ridiculous. Of course he likes you.”
From the way her forehead wrinkles with worry, I don’t think I’ve convinced her.
“It’s just that . . . Patrick and I were supposed to go out last night, but he canceled on me at the last minute. When he texted me, he didn’t even say why.”
My eyes shift away as I wring my hands together in my lap. Patrick was with me, but he didn’t tell Zoe where he was and why he had to cancel their plans. He also never mentioned to me that he was supposed to see her.
Why is he being secretive about this, too?
“It gets worse. I went to his office.” Zoe slouches in her seat, a shadow of embarrassment floating across her face. “I know. Totally lame stalker move, right? I just thought he was working late and I’d bring him some dinner. Cheer him up.”
“That’s really sweet,” I say.
It was also a move straight out of Patrick’s good-person playbook. I can think of a hundred things like that he has done for me, including a recent trip to the depository. Which begs the question: Why am I so hung up on the five or so minutes he wasn’t acting like himself? Why can’t I let it go?
“It was pathetic, Regan,” she continues. “There I was, holding a bag of curried chicken, standing in the lobby of Orexis, looking like a total . . . groupie.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure whatever reason he had for canceling has nothing to do with you,” I say, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. There’s no sense in telling Zoe he was with me instead. Even though it was sort of an emergency situation, it would still hurt.
But it seems like she’s already two steps ahead of me. “Listen, I don’t want to intrude, or interfere. I really like Patrick, and I thought you guys were just friends. But if I’m wrong and you’re more than that and he’d rather be with you, then . . .”
Before she can finish her thought, the recessed lights in the ceiling flicker and the sliding doors begin to open. Mr. Von Ziegelstein stands up and turns on the microphone pinned to his jacket.
“There’s an early dismissal due to American Education Night,” he says, his voice like sandpaper against wood. “Thank God for small miracles.”
The room buzzes with shouts of joy and celebration, everyone excited to get out of detention early.
“Are you going?” Zoe asks.
“To . . . American Education Night?” The only time I ever went to American Education Night was when Patrick, as the valedictorian of his class a couple of years ago, was asked to speak. And even then, my parents and I found an excuse to leave shortly after he was done.
She nods.
I hesitate. “Um—I would, if I didn’t already have plans . . .”
“Regan,” she says, smiling. “I’m just joking. No one would be caught dead there.”
I attempt a grin as we grab our bags and begin to file out of the lecture hall with our fellow delinquents. When we start to march down the steps together, she says, “You didn’t answer me.”
I look at her, confused.
“About Patrick,” she says.
“Patrick and I are friends,” I say resolutely.
At the bottom of the stairs, we’re separated briefly by a massive throng of people that’s clogging up the exits. I press my way through, heading toward the door, every now and then checking to make certain Zoe is okay. Once we make it into the hall, she grabs my arm, pulling me off to the side so she can talk to me privately.
“You’re sure there’s nothing going on between you guys?” she asks again.
On any other day, I would have said absolutely not. But if I denied it right now, that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? There is something going on between Patrick and me—something mysterious and unfamiliar and actually kind of scary. Still, I can’t avoid her follow-up question. That might give her the wrong idea entirely.
As soon as the words “We’re just friends, I swear” escape my lips, I look over Zoe’s shoulder and my gaze lands on my locker, which is about twenty-five feet away from us. Josh is there, waiting for me, leaning up against the wall. His hands are tucked in his pockets, and the sleeves of his gray sweater are bunched up around the elbows. He turns, staring directly at me.
I inhale sharply, my pulse accelerating. Zoe waves her hand in front of my face, breaking the spell.
She turns around to see who is vying for my attention. When she realizes that it’s Josh, her lips twist up into a smirk. “Looks like I don’t have to worry about competing with you for Patrick after all.”
I flinch a little bit, thinking about that moment Patrick tried to steal a kiss from me in Elusion, but when Josh smiles like he’s eager to talk to me, I tell myself that Patrick’s brief romantic overture was just my imagination.
“I think Buzz Cut has a thing for you,” Zoe says with excitement. “He asked me for your InstaComm info in calc, and if I thought you’d go to Elusion with him. He’s totally scoping for a hookup, right?”
I give her a look that’s covered in pessimism, but I can’t deny the fluttering in my chest. “I doubt it, Zoe.”
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, then!” she says, practically pushing me in Josh’s direction.
I stumble forward a little, cursing under my breath at Zoe for making me look ungraceful. But then I steady myself and take a step and then another, moving toward him as I unzip the front compartment of my bag and pull out my passcard. But the closer I get, the more I detect this nervous energy coming from him, and not the good, happy kind. In fact, his eyes are kind of bleary, and his forehead is creased with worry.
“Hey,” he says, stepping to the right just enough so that I can swipe my card and open my locker.
I grab my school blazer off an inside hook and say hello, hoping he doesn’t hear the happy, nervous lilt in my voice. I don’t usually wear my emotions on my sleeve with just anyone, but he’s beginning to turn into an exception.
Josh crosses his arms in front of his chest and leans in toward me, like h
e’s about to conspire with me. “Do you have plans this afternoon?” he whispers.
“Not really. Why?”
“I need to take you somewhere,” he says.
I close my locker door, my heart skipping beats. Zoe was right. Josh is here to ask me out. I try to think of some witty, flirty reply as I turn back toward him. But when I see how his lips are pressed together in a tense, straight line and how his chest is rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths, all I can say is, “What’s wrong?”
Josh looks down at the floor, almost like he can’t bear to respond, but after swallowing hard, he does.
“Everything,” he says.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
EIGHT
“MIND DOING SOMETHING ILLEGAL?” Josh asks.
We’re outside an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the Steel Sector, our O2 shields working at maximum levels. The helmets were too heavy, so we swapped them out as soon as we arrived. There aren’t air meters out here, but it doesn’t matter. Everyone in Detroit knows that the toxins in this area are worse than anywhere else in the city because the wind barrels through here like a dust storm, carrying all the pollutants from the refineries. As I glance up at the oil clouds that block all traces of the sun, and see tiny, gray particles flitting around, I’m reminded that one unfiltered breath in a red zone could lead to burns on the inside of my throat and cysts on my lungs.
“I don’t know,” I say, eyeing the eight-foot chain-link fence surrounding the old abandoned building and the looming sign warning trespassers to keep out. “How illegal is it?”
“We have to hop this so we can look around,” he says, his voice totally audible through the clear breathing shield covering his nose and mouth. “There’s something inside you need to see.”
I can’t imagine what he means by that. My dad’s HyperSoar hangar wasn’t too far from here, and I’m familiar with this neighborhood, which isn’t all that impressive. When Patrick and I were kids, Dad would take us up for sonic flights across the Great Lakes, and when we came in for a landing, we’d descend over the large industrial fields made up of nondescript rectangular structures that housed the assembly-line workers who helped piece together everything from Florapetro-fueled cars to eighteen-wheel semis. I had heard the place had gone downhill in the past few months, and judging by the broken windows and the boarded-up entryways, the rumors are true.
But before I can agree to commit the unlawful act of trespassing, Josh grabs hold of the fence with his fingers, pulling himself up. Then he climbs over, jumping down on the other side and landing firmly on his feet. The whole maneuver takes seconds, and from the smile that appears on his face, I can tell he’s proud of his accomplishment.
“Did you learn that at the academy?”
“Ninja movies,” he jokes. His expression turns serious, his amber eyes staring at me through the chain-link fence. “Your turn.”
I shake my head.
“I’ll help you,” he offers.
“I’m not worried about that,” I say abruptly. “I can make it over—no problem.” I nod toward my skirt. “I’m just . . . not dressed for fence climbing.”
He moves toward the fence, closer to me. “Oh,” he says, smiling.
He takes his left hand and covers his eyes.
I roll my eyes and scan the fence. Even though my gut is telling me that climbing a chain-link fence in a skirt and sneaking into an abandoned building with a guy I don’t know that well is not the greatest decision I’ve ever made, I cast my reservations aside.
After adjusting the tightness on my O2 shield, I walk over to the fence and place the toe of my shoe in a hole in the wiring. My hands latch on as high as I can reach, and I pull my body up, flexing every muscle, including ones I didn’t know I had.
“Good, now just lift your other leg and push up,” Josh instructs.
“I thought you weren’t looking!” I say, repeating my actions as I continue. It’s definitely not as easy as he made it look a moment ago. I feel my face heating up, and my fingers are already sore from gripping the cold metal wire.
“Okay, all you have to do is throw one leg over and you’ve got it,” he says. The frosty wind prickles my legs, but I no longer care about modesty. I just want to make it to the other side.
I slip a bit, but then I manage to scale the rest of the fence, and I jump to the ground with an unsteady thud. I trip over my own feet and wobble into Josh, who catches me before I can fall. His hands grasp me firmly at the waist; the acrylic shield covering my nose and mouth is pressed against his neck. I can’t help but remember how he smelled at Patrick’s party—cedar with a hint of soap.
“You good?” he asks, concerned.
“Fine,” I say, looking up at him.
Josh lets me go and takes a couple of steps back. “Nice job.”
“Thanks.”
He gestures to a door with a few slabs of wood nailed to the outside of the frame. “This way.”
I follow him as he ducks underneath the planks, dodging jagged edges that threaten to rip through my jacket. Josh points to some clover-colored glass splattered across the floor and guides me around it. Then he leads me toward a stairwell marked EXIT.
“It’s up a couple of floors,” Josh explains.
“What is?”
Josh doesn’t reply—he just starts climbing. We stop on the third landing, and I trail behind him as he pads down a long, empty hall that has strands of electric cords dangling from the ceiling. At the end, he pushes his weight against a large metal door that squeals like a trapped mouse when its hinges move, and holds it open for me.
“Proof,” Josh finally answers.
The air seems clear in here, so I pull off my O2 shield and hook it to my skirt with a quick snap of a metal belt loop. Josh does the same. I look around the room, confused by the scene before me. There are tools scattered across the tops of makeshift worktables, and heaps of computer hardware fragments are practically everywhere. There are also several old, dirty mattresses, piles of MealFreeze containers, IV bags, and pill bottles littering the floor.
“Proof of what exactly?” I ask.
“That we’re being lied to about Elusion.”
I walk over to one of the worktables and pick up a plastic fragment that is sitting next to a broken compact drill. I hold it up to the faint light that’s streaming through one of the smudged windows and study it closely. It’s definitely a part of the Equip wristband—I can still see a small part of the Orexis company seal.
“Where are we?”
“An E-fiend hideout,” he says, and I wince at his use of that Avery-coined term. “People come here and Escape inside Elusion for days.”
“Impossible,” I say, taking a step away from him. “Equips automatically shut down when your time in Elusion is up.”
“What if there was a way to interfere with the communication between the Equip components and the cloud that hosts the app?”
“You mean hijack the wireless signals?”
Josh nods. “Once that happens, someone could instruct the operating system to do whatever they want.”
“Like disable the safety settings,” I say breathlessly. “But they’d have to know how to get past the Elusion server. Who would know how to do all that?”
“My sister,” he murmurs.
It feels like all the air has been sucked out of my lungs. “But . . . aren’t you the computer science master?”
“Nora fell in with this group—they’re ultra tech geeks like Patrick, much better than me. They spend all their time trying to break the signal down so they can stay inside their Escapes longer and stretch out the trypnosis high,” he continues, his voice hard as stone. “Thought they were harmless at first, but when I came back for a visit a few weeks ago, I saw Nora and she looked like hell. Malnourished, bloodshot eyes, shaking hands. I followed her here last night.
A bunch of her friends were attached to their Equips, supposedly for over twenty-four hours. Some were strung out and hooked up to IVs, desperate to Escape again as soon as they could. They were like—”
“Addicts?” Just like Avery said.
“Yes,” Josh agrees.
“So what did you do?”
“When she told me they were hijacking the signal, I told her to tell me how, but she wouldn’t,” he went on. “Nora and her crew had hit some kind of wall in the Escapes and they wanted to get behind it. Too see what was there and how it would feel.”
I know exactly what wall he’s talking about, and that all it does is block hackers and act as a boundary within the Escape network. But instead of interrupting, I just listen to him closely, hoping the anxiety building inside me will stop.
“We got into this huge fight; then her friends ganged up on me and kicked me out.”
“Is she okay?”
“No idea.” He bows his head and rubs at the base of his neck. “I stayed outside for a couple hours, waiting for her to leave. When she didn’t, I went back in and everyone was gone. Must have slipped out the back door. Haven’t seen or heard from her since. I knew I couldn’t return to school . . .”
“Until you find her?” I ask.
He nods. “The only thing she left behind was this.”
Josh hands me a piece of scrap paper with a strange phrase written on it at least fifty times.
Hate Our New Land
Scrawled over and over, as if done by a crazy person.
“How do you know this was Nora’s?” I ask, concerned. This doesn’t bode well for the mental health of his sister.
“It’s her handwriting.”
“What does it mean?” I ask him.
“I don’t know.” Josh takes a few steps away from me and sits down on the closest mattress. He covers his face with his hands for a second and then begins to rub his temples. “At first I thought it might be some kind of message, but maybe I’m just losing it.”
I walk over to Josh and take a seat next to him, handing him the paper. Once he takes it, he wraps his fingers gently around my wrist. I understand how he’s feeling—the shock, the confusion, everything—because I’ve felt it too. I want to tell Josh about my insane experience with Elusion and my father and the firewall, but I keep hearing Patrick’s voice, ringing in my ears, and I hesitate.
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