Jacked

by Kirk Dougal

  “She gave it to me and ran away,” Jahn continued. “By then it was almost 10:30. I was scared. I hadn’t found Polly and I knew I couldn’t stop Father Eli’s plan against the Mind. I didn’t know how to work the machine, so I read the first name and address off the list on the tech and yanked out the battery to save it from whatever this Polly was doing to the Mind.

  “It was your name, Tar. That’s how I found you. That’s how I made it to your parent’s apartment three days later. And that’s how I found your father, dead at his desk, and your mother gone zom, still staring at the buzzing white screen on the TV. And I found you, dirty and hungry and crying. So I picked you up and carried you away from all of it.

  “No, Tar. I don’t regret anything, even hitting that girl. I’d do it all again because it kept you alive.”

  Tar opened his mouth three times before he finally managed to croak out, “Why?”

  Jahn tried to smile but it looked more like a grimace.

  “Why? I wanted you to know about the other kids and your parents and everything that happened. Before I left to find you I set fire to the building and destroyed all the records. I ran away as Ned and the other Black Shirts stood on the other side of the fire and screamed at me to stop.

  “I did it because I wanted you to know you weren’t alone. I wanted you to know you were important. I wanted you to have a chance for a life.”

  Tar couldn’t take any more. He gave up. He lurched off the box and half-ran, half-crawled until he leaned against the far wall and retched up the contents of his stomach. He did not stop, continued bringing up bile, heaving until his muscles quivered and his gut ached. At some point Toby helped him to the benches. Tar cried himself to sleep and the man he had known as Uncle Jahn never said another word.

  Chapter 15

  Jahn died about sunset.

  He never spoke again, almost as if he had used up the last of his words to get out what he had wanted to say for so many years. As the day wore on Jahn’s breathing stopped and started, each break longer and longer. Finally, as the last fingers of light slipped between the cracks of boards on the store window, the man Tar had called Uncle Jahn took a final, shallow breath, exhaled slowly, and did not move again.

  After it was over the boys slumped down by the far wall and Tar told Toby everything Jahn had said. He cried a little more but it did not last long and soon they were quietly sitting on the benches, leaning against the wall as the black settled deep into the building. When it got too dark Toby turned on the dim flashlight and navigated across the room to take the app from Jahn’s hands.

  He handed it to Tar.

  “Do you suppose it’s brick?”

  Tar shrugged.

  “I don’t know. Maybe not, if he got the battery out in time but I don’t know what kind of juice makes it work.”

  “This was in Jahn’s other hand.” Toby held up a piece of paper, folded over against itself several times, with a piece of tape over the end. “I think it might’ve been sticking to the app.”

  Tar took the little package and opened it in his lap. Inside was a small round battery. He looked up at Toby.

  “It looks like Uncle Jah…it looks like he thought of everything.”

  “Only if it still has juice,” Toby said with a shrug. “Give it a try.”

  Tar put the battery down beside him and used the flashlight to examine the little machine. One side of the plastic was flattened with three inset buttons on the smooth face. The unfolded screen was like nothing he had ever seen before and he marveled at its thin design. After a few minutes he turned his attention to looking for the battery holder and found it on one end after pushing in a small rectangle that sprang out with an empty slot.

  Tar slipped the battery in and pushed the button with the circle and straight line, something he had long ago recognized as the On/Off switch on this kind of app. The screen glowed for half a second, then went blank, its silver surface reflecting his face in the low light.

  “Is it fragged?” asked Toby.

  Tar turned the app over in his hand, looking at it from several angles.

  “I thought it was going to turn on but…” He glanced up at Toby. “The battery might have just gone dry. I’ll try to fix it, though.”

  Tar placed the small machine on his lap. He pushed in the power button and grabbed the plastic part with his hand.

  It wasn’t like the locks or everyday stuff he normally fixed. He could run a lock through his mind in a couple of seconds. Music machines and math apps took him a few minutes to fix, and the show box he had grepped for Mr. Keisler had taken most of a half an hour before he made his way through the maze in his mind—going forward what felt like several miles, turning here, backtracking there, sometimes even reversing his path—before he connected all the tunnels and made the light shine all the way through.

  But those had been like little puzzles on paper, the ones parents gave to their kids in the common room to keep them busy. This was different. Not only did the maze go forward and back, side to side, it also went up and down. Layers stacked on layers, rising as far he could see in his mind, Tar felt small and lost in the twists and turns.

  Despite the overwhelming number of paths his mind flew faster and faster down the app’s hallways. He had found large sections like this in Mr. Keisler’s machine, parts of it that felt whole and complete with every trail linking to the next. Now as Tar moved as fast as his thoughts could take him he wondered what actually needed fixed.

  He rounded a corner in his thoughts and there it was: the blockage. Tangles of paths and dead ends twisted around each other like a poorly wound ball of string. He attacked the darkened paths, lighting each one as it connected to the next section.

  Turn, push. Bring an end up. Drag a section back. Turn again. Connect four paths into one street crossing.

  The tangle began to smooth out as Tar moved faster, sensing the end of the maze just out of sight. One last link and he moved on, flying down perfect boulevards not snarled and tangled streets. Up ahead was the end, the entire board lighting behind him…

  Tar opened his eyes. At least he thought he opened them. He could see nothing, peering into a black void with no light to show him the way.

  “Where am I?” he breathed.

  Something rustled beside him on the bench.

  “You’re still in the store,” said Toby. “You were 404 for so long, I turned off the flashlight to save some juice. I might have taken a quick nap, too.”

  “How long was I fixing?”

  “I don’t know. Three, four hours maybe.”

  Toby turned on the flashlight.

  “So, did you get it to work?”

  Tar reached down and pushed the on/off button. The glow began in the middle of the screen but this time widened into a photo of about twenty-five men and women laughing and smiling on a grassy area in front of a brick building, obviously in the middle of a good time when they posed for the photo.

  “Who are they?” asked Toby.

  “I…I don’t know…” Tar barely heard his friend’s question; he was focused on the Japanese woman on the right side of the image, a taller man with a beard and short-cropped hair behind her with his hand on her shoulder. She was leaning back into him, a comfortable touch.

  “Tar?” Toby leaned in and looked at the image. “What is it?”

  “The…this…her.” Tar didn’t have to indicate the woman.

  Toby was quiet a moment, then said, “Tar, you look like her.” He pointed, but as soon as his finger made contact with the screen another image opened, unrolling over top of the other. A symbol in the middle with the words “Stanford University” spread out over rows of little pictures.

  “Chilly,” Toby said. “You ever seen anything like this before?”

  Tar nodded.

  “I fixed an app for a girl at the school that had things like this on it when I got it running.” He touched a small photo of a shiny box and up popped
several colored bars and lots of numbers. It was the big, blinking red bar across the top of the screen that caught both boys’ attention, however.

  “WWM host not found,” read Toby. “In school, Mr. Perez taught us about hosts in biology but I don’t know what that would have to do with an app.”

  “I think the host is the Mind,” Tar said. “It just means it’s not there anymore.”

  “Makes sense. How do you go back to the other stuff?”

  Tar slid his finger across the screen, flipping his hand out as if he was throwing something away. The bars disappeared and the shiny box was small again on the screen. They touched several other pictures. Some opened boxes with pages of text while others opened more photos and diagrams. Tar was beginning to wonder if Jahn had been wrong about this app being important.

  “What about that one?” asked Toby. He pointed to the smiling face of a dark-haired boy. Underneath it was the word, “Atreyu.”

  Tar touched the photo and another box with text filled the screen. In large letters across the top of the screen it read “Project Atreyu.” Directly underneath it was a header with the word “Subjects,” followed by a list with nine names and addresses.

  “Tar,” Toby said, his voice falling to a whisper, almost as if he would frighten off what he had just seen. “Look at the first name.”

  Tar read the name. A name he had never heard before early that morning when Jahn had said it.

  Taro Hutchins.

  Chapter 16

  Ludler hit the man in the chair again.

  Blood splattered on the wall beside where the man was tied, adding to the pattern already there. He had lost consciousness several blows earlier but Ludler continued to pummel him, the smack of his knuckles against flesh and bone doing little to quench his anger.

  “Captain?”

  Ludler stopped from taking another strike. He turned to see Martinez just inside the door of the apartment.

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “I have the report on the other apartment building.”

  After one last look at the man slumped over in the chair Ludler straightened and walked to the kitchen table. He grabbed a towel and wiped blood off his hands and arms.

  “Well, what did you find?”

  Martinez shook his head.

  “Nearly everyone admitted they knew the fixer named Tar but very few have ever seen the other boy. My guess is that he did not visit there much. We found a lot of apps in the building that should not have been working. Close to half the people had something illegal. The family that lived on the top floor had a lot of tech but it looks to me like someone mainly fixed them with regular tools. They had wires stuck inside and the backs were off some of the machines so that you could see what was inside. Not like the app we found in the boy’s bed, looking like it had just come out of some store before The Crash.”

  “Wasn’t there a man who went to work? What’d you find in his apartment?”

  Martinez checked a pad of paper in his hand.

  “Darrell Lionel. No working apps in his apartment and none in his truck when we searched it. His daughter goes to Lynbrook but she was in class today.”

  Ludler threw the towel down on the table, his lips pinched tight in a straight line. He had hoped the man might provide a lead to the boys.

  “Does anyone have any idea where the boys or Ferguson were going?”

  Martinez shuffled back and forth on his feet.

  “No, sir.”

  Ludler glared at Martinez for a full minute, each second filled with only the ticking of the clock on the wall. Finally, the man in the chair moaned, drawing Ludler’s attention and easing the tension.

  “So…you’re saying no one will tell us where a teenage boy and an old man who lived there for years might run to if they were scared. They never mentioned a friend, a cousin, someone in another city.” He gestured at the man in the chair. “I at least understand why this fool won’t sell out his own son but the same story holds true for the people in this apartment, as well. No one will tell us anything. Is that what you’re saying, Lieutenant?”

  “There’s always the chance they just didn’t tell anyone.” Martinez was sweating heavily now.

  Ludler sat down at the table, sliding his fingers across its top in little designs.

  “I find your conclusion…unacceptable, Lieutenant.”

  The room was quiet for a few seconds.

  “We found nothing at the dead boy’s home and the parents say they never met the fixer. That boy might have known where they would go…”

  Ludler winced. It had not been smart of him to kill the boy in the schoolyard, not before he had his information, but he had stood up to the punishment from his men surprisingly well. Most people did not last more than two or three times through the lines before they were telling Ludler everything he wanted to hear. The boy had made eight trips through before the fixer suddenly appeared in the store window. Ludler had acted on instinct when the boy charged him. When he pulled the trigger, shooting the boy in the chest, the choice had felt…righteous.

  “Well, that opportunity has passed us now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Martinez cleared his throat. “Your orders, Captain?”

  Ludler glanced out the apartment window. It appeared to be about noon. He had not slept in nearly two days and he needed a chance to rest and think, but the thought of the fixer escaping flared and sent wrathful flames coursing through him. He would rest only when those sacrilegious boys were purified.

  “Expand the search area. Contact the local Faithful and use them to help patrol the areas downtown. We will work outward in circles from Ferguson’s apartment. We know they were there last night.” He paused and stared at Toby’s father, blood soaking into the man’s shirt and saturating the carpet. “Leave small patrols at each apartment building, just in case they somehow get around us and double back.”

  “What about everyone with illegal apps?” Martinez asked.

  Ludler sighed.

  “We don’t have time to purify them properly. Before sunset this evening every person found with apps in the fixer’s building will be executed in the street. I want everyone to see what happens to those who blaspheme.”

  Chapter 17

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  They had stayed another night in the store. Tar had been too shocked by everything he had seen and heard the day before to do anything but stare off into the dark corners. Now, to his ears, his voice sounded exactly like he felt—small and out of place.

  “We don’t have any way to put him in the ground,” Toby said. “I suppose we could burn his body but that’ll bring everybody running…”

  “No, not about Uncle Jahn.” Tar could not quite bring himself to think of the old man as anything but his uncle even though he knew different now. “I suppose we’ll just have to leave his body here.”

  “What then?”

  Tar picked up the app Jahn had kept since The Crash. It was turned off to save the battery’s power.

  “He always wanted to keep me safe. Told me not to trust anybody when it came to what I could do with apps. My guess is that if he was still here he would’ve had us get out of San Jose, maybe head east out of the area where Father Eli and the Black Shirts are in charge.” He held the app out in front of him. “But he kept this for years knowing what was on it. Why? What did he want me to do with it?”

  Toby took the app and turned it over in his hands.

  “Dad was with Mom when she went hard boot. They were just sitting there, watching television, and she just fell over. My sister was a few years older than me and it was a Saturday night and she was sleeping over at a friend’s house. They were on their way back from getting ice cream when The Crash hit. The girl’s mom didn’t go hard boot but another driver did and plowed right into them did. Killed Franny and everyone else in the car.”

  Tar had heard most of the story before so he just nodded and kept quiet.
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  “Dad told me later, just a couple of years ago, that he was scheduled to be jacked into the Mind two weeks after The Crash. He had got some promotion at work and they wanted him to have it.” Toby looked up. “I was pretty little when it happened but, for a long time, we didn’t do anything. He went out to work and came right back home. I never left the building. I was either in our apartment or with Mrs. MacGruder who watched me when he worked. That was it.

  “I hated him for it. All the other kids got to go outside and play, do things. I think Mrs. MacGruder was the one to talk him into letting me go to school when I was old enough. But I finally understood because he knew I almost lost everyone all at once. Like you. Only I didn’t have an uncle or someone like that to take care of me. I probably would have died in that apartment before someone found me. He was just trying to protect me.

  “And that’s what Jahn was doing for you, protecting you for as long as he could. But I think he knew he was dying and wouldn’t be around anymore to take care of you anymore.” Toby held up the app. “These people, the ones like you, are your family now. I think Jahn wanted you to find them.”

  Tar leaned against the wall. He tried to replay that final conversation with Jahn in his mind, tried to see what the old man had wanted him to do. When Toby said it the whole thing made sense but now something was holding him back.

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “But I’m scared.” He looked away from Toby and stared at the far wall. “I don’t think I can do it alone.”

  “Who says you have to do it alone?”

  “I can’t ask you to come with me. Your own dad told you the Black Shirts may never give up pinging for me. It’s too dangerous.”

  Toby laughed.

  “Where am I going to go? I can’t go home now, maybe never. They have already been to my apartment and I’ll bet they weren’t happy when they didn’t find us there. If Dad…if Dad’s still there hopefully Mr. Keisler can get a message to him. But the best thing I can do for him right now is to stay away.” He stood up. “I’m going with you.”