Elusion

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  As a beam of glorious sunshine filters through a lightning boltshaped crack in the capsule’s glass, I stop pacing and step behind Josh, peering over his shoulder as he tries to open every file, one by one. I’m really surprised by how fast the tablet-size quantum computer works—strings of infinite number-and-letter combinations blink on the screen in a rapid-fire succession that hurts my eyes. From the way Josh is squinting, I guess it’s affecting his vision too, but I don’t think that’s what’s bothering him the most.

  He leans back on the metal bench and lets out a huge groan as he runs his hands over the stubble that’s sprouting up on his chin.

  “Just like I suspected. They’re encrypted,” he mutters.

  “All of them?” I cross my arms in front of my chest and contract my leg muscles, like I’m bracing myself for a typhoon.

  “I’m only halfway through the QuTap directory, but I’m pretty sure that we’re screwed,” he says.

  I lean in and stare at the last file Josh pulled up. “It looks like a random selection of symbols, underscores, and slashes.”

  “I know, it sucks,” Josh replies. “Every time I click on a file, I find this mess. None of my algorithms are making a dent.”

  I don’t like the futility in his voice, so I have to convince him that giving up is not an option. “Can’t we just use some decryption software to crack it?”

  “Tried that already,” he says, irritated. Obviously, he doesn’t appreciate being second-guessed. “Orexis probably has a team of grunts policing the latest software so they can plug up any security holes. They’re ten steps ahead of us, Regan.”

  I walk to the front of the capsule, still hugging myself tightly. I gaze through the slight film of mildew covering the glass surface, looking out at Detroit’s industrial skyline on the other side of the channel. A sun-soaked day like this only comes a few times a month, so I can actually make out all the architectural details of the high-rises—the antiquated neo-Gothic and art deco designs mixed in with more modern cylinder-style layouts; the narrow spires and old Corinthian columns and pilasters. My favorite of them all is the Florapetro Foundation Building, which has a sixty-floor spiral tower that actually rotates at a speed so slow it’s hardly visible to the naked eye. And yet given how clear the conditions are right now, I feel like if I stand here, concentrating all my focus on the tower, I’ll be able to see it moving.

  I just have to be patient and wait for it to become real.

  So I steel myself and say to Josh, “Keep trying. Please.”

  He doesn’t answer, but I can hear him clicking away on his laptop, each stroke of his fingers hopefully bringing us closer to some kind of breakthrough. This goes on for about five to ten minutes, and my eyes never leave the tower. But with each heavy and frustrated sigh of his, my hopes begin to wither away. When thoughts of my run-in with Patrick begin to flood my head, I distract myself by tracing the concrete- and steel-infused horizon, the squeaking sound of my skin against the glass echoing inside the capsule.

  And then it happens.

  “I think I got something!” I hear him exclaim.

  I spin around, my hair almost whipping me in the face. I stumble over to Josh and squat down next to him, my hand on his arm. “What’d you find?”

  Josh redirects his eyes so they meet mine, and grins. “I only had a few files left when this one ruptured.”

  With my heart lodged in my throat, I tilt the laptop so I can get a better look at the screen. I watch as he scrolls through pages and pages of spreadsheets filled with hundreds of diagrams that look oddly like genealogical charts. There are lots of rectangular boxes filled with sequences of letters and symbols. Connecting them together are solid and dotted lines with arrows pointing in multiple directions.

  I’m not sure what to make of it.

  “These are parse trees,” Josh explains, pulling away from me to point at one of them. “They basically break down the source code of computer programming languages.”

  “It’s a map?”

  “Yes. The only problem is we have no idea what program it’s for.”

  I reach over Josh and slide two of my fingers across the screen so I can zoom in one of the trees, but enlarging the visual unfortunately doesn’t give me any deeper understanding of its meaning. “This could be source code for something my dad might have been working on before Elusion.”

  Josh narrows his eyes, studying the figures carefully. “There are at least twelve levels of syntax being deconstructed here. What other program would have code this complex?”

  “We need to know for sure, though,” I counter.

  “But we can’t figure that out until we make sense of these trees,” he says. “And this is way more complicated than what I’m used to.”

  “God, I wish my dad had taught me . . . then maybe I’d be able to help.” I stand up, and Josh instinctively moves over on the bench, giving me room to sit down. When I do, I bring my knees up to my chest and rest the heels of my sneakers against the metal. “He spent all his time training Patrick, who was a natural at it, of course. Like everything else.”

  I used to admire that trait in Patrick, but the pinched sound of resentment in my voice paints a different picture altogether.

  “Well, he’s the last person we can go to for advice,” Josh says, smirking.

  I smile back.

  “Listen, I might be able to get somewhere if I take the QuTap back to the person who gave it to me,” he suggests, ejecting the magnetic device in question out of the laptop’s side port.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We can’t risk someone finding out what we did to get the information that’s on there.”

  “I think I can get that point across.” He pushes up his sleeves, and I take a nice, long look at his toned forearms and large hands. I see what he’s getting at, but again, it’s hard to picture Josh as a threat, even after what he’s told me about his past.

  Maybe that’s because we’re getting to know each other while we’re most vulnerable.

  “So you take the QuTap back and then what?” I ask.

  “Haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  Just as he’s about to shut his laptop down, a chirping noise comes out of the speakers. I take a peek as he pulls up his personal message system, but glance away when he catches me in the act. Thankfully, he doesn’t tease me about it. Just one look at my flushed neck and he’ll notice I’m embarrassed enough as it is.

  “You need to see this,” I hear him say.

  When I shift my eyes back to Josh, his fair complexion has gone a little pale and his mouth is hanging open in shock.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He turns his laptop toward me, and a video clip is pulled up on the screen. It’s posted on the New Associated Press site, with the headline “Do You Know This Child?” Josh clicks on the Play button and the news story begins to roll. A young woman with a brunette bob and a microphone headset is standing outside a hospital’s emergency-room ambulance bay. She begins:

  “This afternoon, police found a comatose boy on the streets of Miami. He was rushed to the hospital, where he is being treated for severe malnourishment and possible head-related trauma.”

  “Turn it up,” I say, dropping my legs to the ground with a thud.

  Josh immediately increases the volume.

  “The young man had no picture ID or passcard, so he has been admitted as a John Doe. He appears to be fifteen years old, six feet tall, and about one hundred sixty-five pounds.”

  The image of the reporter dims and a photo suddenly appears in her place. It’s a snapshot of the boy in question. His eyes are closed and he’s in a hospital gown, so the picture must have been taken once the doctors stabilized him. His cheekbones are sharp and raised, and he has a narrow chin. His coppery hair is very greasy at the roots, and he has a bit of acne in a thin line across his brow.

  “If you recognize this person, please contact the Florida State Bureau of—”

  Jos
h hits the pause button, freezing the photo in front of us before the camera cuts away.

  “Notice anything strange about that kid’s face?” he asks me.

  I search the picture with a steady gaze, and at first I don’t see anything unusual, but then Josh expands the viewing window on the screen so the image is much larger. There seems to be a deep circular impression near his left temple. It doesn’t appear to be a scar, because it’s too perfectly shaped.

  “I saw those marks on Nora’s friends at the factory,” he explains. “I think they’re from the Equip visors.”

  As soon as he says that, my body reacts with a systemic tremble, like my blood sugar just dropped a thousand points.

  “So you think this kid is in a coma because he hijacked Elusion?” I brace myself for his answer by folding my hands in my lap and locking my fingers together so tightly my skin is turning white.

  “Only one way to know,” he says. “We have to check out that firewall again.”

  I want to get to the bottom of this confounding mystery as much as Josh does, but as much as it pains me to admit, when I look at this boy in the hospital and think of what happened in the Thai Beach Escape, a stroke of fear hits me.

  “What if it’s not safe?”

  As soon as I reflect on what my father said in Elusion, all I can think is:

  You have to find me.

  It packs a shot of resolve into my arm—I hope there’s more where that came from.

  “We have no choice,” Josh says, turning off his laptop. “We aren’t making enough headway with the clues we have in reality.”

  And in reality, time is running out.

  I force down the bubble of anxiety that’s lodged in my throat and rise to my feet.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Josh stands along with me, casting a tall shadow on the floor of the capsule. “Where to?”

  “My house,” I reply. “We should wait until my mom’s an hour or two into her shift, though, so we’re not interrupted like last time.”

  “What about when we’re inside Elusion? Should we go back to the beach where your dad—”

  “No, I already did that—and he wasn’t there. Patrick told me that the firewalls run through all the Escapes. They’re all connected. I’m not sure what Nora and her friends expect to find on the other side, but if Pat’s right, that means they’d just run into another Escape.”

  “So where should we go?”

  I smile. I have just the place in mind.

  A few hours later, my head buzzes and my palms tingle with thin strips of kinetic energy. I push back the fur-trimmed hood of my neon-green parka so that I can look up at the sky, which is a pumpkin orange, lit up by an electric blue sun. I no longer feel scared—about the boy I saw on the news bulletin, or the realization that the people closest to me might not be who I thought they were. Each molecule of hurt that lingered in my body is being soaked up by the spongelike hold trypnosis has on my emotions, and I feel absolutely protected here.

  Best of all, I have someone by my side. Someone who I really want to trust—and who looks amazing in a thick winter coat.

  Josh and I are now inside the Mount Arvon Escape, perched on a narrow plateau off the mountain, towering above patches of fluffy cinnamon clouds. Everything around us is covered in glittering cherry-blossom-pinkcolored snow, and the sun is giving off a magnificent spectrum of sheer rainbow-tinted light. Way, way down below are two rippling rivers of grape that wind their way through a valley that appears to be made out of layers of delicate eggshells. In the distance, the rivers fuse together into a glistening purple lake.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” I hear Josh say, his voice utterly breathless.

  I inhale the cool, crisp air and exhale a turquoise-colored mist. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”

  Josh smiles as he unzips his black down coat to reveal a worn-in red flannel shirt. He stares at the snowcovered trees, the tension from earlier completely gone from his eyes. “Why’d you pick this Escape again?”

  I bend down, running my gloved fingers through the pink, fluffy snow. “There was a reason,” I say. “I just have to think about it for a minute.”

  “Take your time,” Josh says, throwing a backpack on the ground. “I have to figure out what this is for.”

  As I watch Josh dig through the bag, setting out pieces of climbing gear, I concentrate hard on the sense of purpose that’s niggling at the back of my thoughts, which are still pretty gauzy at best. I try to grasp at my most recent memories, but it feels like my entire head is covered in layers of soft, delicate fur.

  Josh holds up a large, sharp, J-shaped ice tool and smirks. “Cool, huh?”

  Suddenly, a recollection is triggered. I’ve seen that object before, not more than a few months ago.

  “Ah, now I get it. I was here with my dad right before he died,” I say, rolling a handful of snow into a big gumdrop-looking ball.

  “So are you retracing his steps?” Josh asks.

  “That seems like the logical thing to do, right?”

  “Logic doesn’t matter here; that’s why everyone loves it.”

  I smile at him, the cold on my cheeks fading away when I do. “Hey, you should be thanking me for figuring out why we’re in these mountains.”

  Josh laughs, playfully throwing some snow in my direction. “Yeah, well, I wish I remembered what we’re supposed to do here. Other than climb something.”

  Believe it or not, that particular detail has stayed with me through our trip. I don’t know how, but maybe my last visit to Elusion solidified it in a dark corner of my mind.

  “That’s a no-brainer. Check out the firewall,” I brag, lightly throwing the ball I made at Josh’s chest.

  When it bursts, the snowflakes cling to his coat like a glittering flush-colored badge of honor. Once I realize he isn’t going to brush it away, my heart feels like it’s filling with helium, and for a moment I think I’m going to float away from him.

  “Okay, genius. We’ve got five miles to the firewall. Since we can’t really go left or right, would you prefer up or down?” he asks, smiling at me. I bet the warmth that smile generates inside me would melt real snow in seconds.

  “I’d prefer to go up, but I think down would be faster.”

  Josh’s smile expands even more, lifting up into his cheeks. Then he lets out another laugh, his breath creating another cloud of turquoise, which disappears in the blink of an eye.

  “What? Why are you laughing?” I say through a giddy grin.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “It’s just that . . . I don’t know a lot about you, but it’s obvious you’re a ‘go up’ kind of girl.”

  “You really think so?”

  Josh picks up a harness off the ground, tossing it to me gently. “Yeah. And I love that about you.”

  I jab the spiked steel plates attached to the bottom of my fire-engine-red boots into a rocky crevice. When my feet are secure, I let the rope out, rappelling a hundred feet or so before throwing my pickax against the wall of the mountain, causing a shower of pale pastel crystals to rain down on my knit hat. I pause a moment, pressing my gloved hands up against the mountain, and hold steady. I inhale and repeat the process over and over, yanking out my pickax, pushing off and rappelling downward, adrenaline flowing through my limbs. It’s as if I am flying, swooping in to land.

  The rush I am feeling is no longer just in my mind—I can feel it possessing every moment, every breath, every gesture. My legs are like channels of water surging toward a dam, but my arms are like ribbons tied to an old fence post, flickering in the breeze.

  I land smack against the side of the mountain and pause to breathe in a fresh, jasmine-scented Nordic wind that is billowing through the atmosphere. I take off my gloves so I can feel the cold particles land upon my fingers. The snow is refreshingly cool, and it leaves a light pink stain on my hand when it melts.

  “How’re you doing?” Josh calls out
from his perch above me.

  “Great,” I say, smiling up at him. “How much time do we have left?”

  Josh pushes his jacket sleeve up and glances at his wristband. “Thirty minutes.”

  “Wow, I feel like we’ve been at this for hours.” I look down below. When we arrived in Elusion, the ground beneath us was barely visible. And now? The trees are nothing more than tiny dark purple dots that match the lake. “Do you think we’ll make it?”

  “I hope so—we’ve gotten pretty far already.”

  I nod as I kick away from the mountain, bouncing back.

  And just like that, everything goes haywire.

  The rope slides out of my brake hand, causing me to lose my balance. It slips through my fingers as the anchor holding it lets loose. I begin to free-fall, yanking short as the rope connecting my harness to Josh pulls tight, tugging so violently against him he’s thrown against the mountain, his pickax flying out of his grasp. I dangle in the air beside the mountain, held up only by my harness.

  My left hand reaches for the mountain while my right continues to clutch the pickax as if my life depends on it. But it’s strange—I don’t feel the least bit terrified.

  In fact, I feel . . . incredible.

  I find a slight indentation, enough to dig my fingers in, and pull myself toward the sparkling rock, heaving my pickax so that it is wedged in place.

  “I’m okay, Josh! I’m okay!” I shout.

  “Regan!” he yells. “Stay still. I’m coming to get you.”

  Click.

  I glance down. The top snap of my harness is loosening, the safety straps unbuckling as if by invisible fingers.

  Click.

  Another snap is undone.

  “Josh!” I scream—not with terror, but delight. “My harness is giving way!”

  “Don’t move!” Josh quickly lowers the rope, practically diving toward me.

  Click.

  My free hand frantically tugs at my harness, vainly attempting to yank it closed as I dangle in midair. I kick the spiked boots into the mountain with all my might. But it’s as though the ice has turned into a sheet of pink-jeweled granite.