Doomed

by Tracy Deebs

  “In ten minutes? No way. I just figured that even though he crashed everything else, your dad had to have left a pathway open to the game, one that probably connects to those government controls. I don’t know that for sure, though. I’m just guessing. Anyway, why go through the trouble of setting up this elaborate game if no one can access it?”

  “You found the pathway?”

  “I did. It’s disguised, but not so hidden that someone who knows what he’s doing can’t access it. You probably won’t have the average person who knows nothing about computers beyond Facebook and e-mail accessing it and playing the game. But gamers, hackers, programmers—anyone with a little know-how should be able to find it.”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to find it,” I tell him.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Well, then it’s a good thing you’ve got me, isn’t it?”

  In more ways than one, it seems. I look at the laptop again, fight the disgust welling up inside me. The little voice that tells me to get as far away from the game as possible. But in the end, I only sigh and give in to the inevitable.

  I enter the game right where I left off, in Zilker Park. Except now I’m alone and dressed in a pink tank top that looks remarkably like the one I’m wearing. And my hair is muddy brown.

  “Which way is the Capitol?” I ask Theo, my voice a little pissy despite myself. I don’t want to do this.

  “You have to turn to the right.” His voice is as calm as ever, and I find myself wondering if anything frazzles him. Even back at the gas station, when I was scared to death, he took everything in stride.

  I do as he says, keeping my finger on the arrow key so that my avatar is running through the streets as fast as she can. More than once, some creature jumps out and I have to fight it while Eli and Theo give me pointers.

  I finally make it to the Capitol, but when I get there I’m not sure where I need to go. So I look for a few minutes, checking out the gardens, the hallways, all to no avail.

  “See,” I tell them, feeling an odd kind of triumph. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Yes, there is. You just have to find it.” Eli’s voice is firm, resolute, and I’m annoyed all over again. Every step I take is a reminder of what my father did and of how stupidly gullible I am. He hasn’t made any effort to see me in ten years, yet the second he e-mails me I jump through his hoops … and end up here. It’s humiliating.

  “Where in the Capitol was that picture taken?” Eli finally asks, as I continue to bumble around.

  “The rotunda,” I answer with the surety of someone who has been forced to walk the Capitol many times. “See the statue of Sam Houston?”

  He stares at me blankly, and Theo explains, “Eli’s from California. He moved to Austin when our parents got married.” He says the last word like it tastes bad. It sets off a warning bell in my head, one I want to listen to and explore a little, but there’s no time.

  I glance behind me, for the first time wondering if we’re attracting attention sitting here on the side of the road. Everything looks okay, but right now, that doesn’t mean much.

  Theo must read my mind, because he throws the van into gear and pulls back onto the highway. “Keep playing the game while I drive.”

  I turn left, head toward the rotunda that is the very center of the Capitol building. Walk up to the Sam Houston statue, but nothing strikes me as different. There’s no task I missed, no creature to battle. It’s a total waste of time.

  I start to put the computer down, but Eli urges, “Trust me. It’s there.”

  “How do you know?”

  He shrugs, grins. “A feeling.”

  I groan, but keep the computer on my lap. “What’s the most important part of the rotunda?” I ask Theo abruptly. “The pictures of the governors? Or the statues of Austin and Houston?”

  He shrugs. “I like looking at the ceiling, myself. I’ve even taken that tiny staircase all the way to the top.”

  “No way. Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  So have I, but in all my time going to the Capitol, I’ve never met another person who has. Small and white, the staircase shoots up from the top floor in a tight spiral all the way to the top of the dome and intimidates almost everyone. Even I, who have no fear of heights at all, was a little nervous as I climbed the tiny, narrow steps. But it was totally worth it when I got to the top—the view was amazing, and if I reached my arm up, I could touch the ceiling.

  I wonder …

  I move to the staircase, take the first flight of stairs. Then the second, then the third. Up and up my avatar goes until I’m right there, on the bottom step of the last narrow staircase. I start to climb it, too, when I realize I don’t have to.

  “Look!” I point to the very pinnacle of the rotunda, where, in real life, the star of Texas is painted, with one letter of the word “Texas” in each of the spaces between the star points.

  But in the game, it’s different. The star is six pointed, not five, and where the letters would normally spell out Texas, there are numbers. I stare at the six numbers—57, 101, 50, 43, 35, 11—and try to break the code. I add them up in my head, divide them, try to think of different things they could be a code for, but nothing seems to work.

  “I don’t get it,” I tell the guys, frustrated. “This has to be it.”

  “No, you’re right,” Eli tells me reassuringly. “This is it. Don’t worry—we’ll figure it out.”

  “You try.” I hand him the computer and settle back into my seat. “I’m so tired my eyes are crossing.”

  Eli clicks a couple of keys, blows up the numbers so they’re a lot bigger than they were, and right away he crows, “I’ve got it!”

  “What? You do?” I spring forward, excited and a little miffed, too, that he figured it out so easily when I couldn’t.

  “Do you see that?” he asks, pointing to the number 35.

  There’s a little degree circle next to it at the top, and Theo—who is watching the game as much as he is the road—calls, “Latitude and longitude!”

  “Exactly. Here, write this down, Pandora. The coordinates are N 35°11′57″ and W 101°50′43″.”

  My hand is trembling a little as I write, not from fear this time but from excitement. Finally, we have a lead. Finally, we have something to go on. Finally, we have … what? What exactly do we have? And why do I even care? Shouldn’t I be more worried about saving myself from the tentacles of Homeland Security than I am about this stupid game?

  Around the world there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people playing Pandora’s Box. People who are much better at gaming than I’ll ever be. I should leave it to them. Besides, who even cares? How can a game save the world? Just because my father—who has proven himself to be a psychopath—says it can, doesn’t make it true.

  Yet even as I’m thinking these things, even as I’m telling myself I don’t care what he’s created and what point he wants to make, I’m leaning forward, watching as Eli tries to plug the coordinates into the game.

  It doesn’t work—big surprise. The game’s not set up to take latitude and longitude. Not the original, and not this tweaked, nightmarish version of my father’s. In the original, you can hop from city to city through the AR door, but you have to know what city you want to go to. It must be the same in this version as well.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Eli says. “Why leave us a clue that we can’t follow? How the hell are we supposed to know where this point is if the game won’t take us there?”

  Suddenly, something occurs to me. “Maybe the coordinates aren’t meant for our avatars. Maybe they’re meant for us.”

  “You think your dad wants us to just run around the world checking out GPS coordinates?” Eli sounds skeptical.

  “I’ve got a GPS app on my phone. We could—”

  Theo laughs, and it takes me a second to figure out what’s so funny. And then I remember. No network, no GPS. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere with a set of GPS coordinates an
d no way to figure out what they are. Except …

  “We need to find a library!”

  Eli looks at me like I’m crazy, but Theo gets it right away. Libraries have atlases, and atlases have latitude and longitude.

  Of course, there’s just one problem. The next town big enough to have a decent library is hundreds of miles away—maybe in the wrong direction. What I wouldn’t give for a map right about now …

  “Hey, what are those coordinates again?” Theo demands as he continues to drive north.

  Eli repeats them, and Theo hits the steering wheel excitedly. “That’s Amarillo!”

  I stare at him, bewildered. Supersmart is one thing, but actually having a bunch of GPS coordinates running around in your head—that’s just plain weird.

  “How do you know?” Eli demands, and it’s obvious he’s thinking the same thing I am.

  “My dad and I used to geocache—”

  “Geocache?” I ask, completely lost.

  “It’s like a giant scavenger hunt. Someone buries something and then throws the GPS coordinates up for other people to use to find the object. Whoever digs it up logs that they found it and can either replace the thing in the cache with something of their own or leave it exactly as is. Either way, they have to put it back in the same spot for others to find.”

  “And you did this for fun?” Again Eli asks what I’m thinking.

  “It’s cooler than it sounds.” Theo shrugs and manages to only look a little insulted. “Anyway, my dad grew up in Amarillo, so when we had a free weekend we’d fly up there to check out the caches. We landed at those coordinates enough for me to know them.”

  “And you’re sure these are the right ones?” I ask.

  “Positive. Those are the coordinates listed on a map for Amarillo, Texas.” He rattles the numbers off again, this time without looking at them.

  “Okay. I’ll go with you on this,” Eli says. “But where in Amarillo?”

  “I don’t know. Probably downtown?”

  “What good are general coordinates going to do us?” I ask, frustrated. “Amarillo isn’t as big as Austin, but it’s large enough that we can’t just go wandering around, hoping to figure out what my father wants us to do next.”

  “Why not? We found the clue in Austin.”

  “Yeah. In the game. And we only found it because of the …” I freeze as the truth hits me like a runaway train.

  I fumble for my backpack and the stash of photos. As I pull them out, Eli’s already made the connection—we’re definitely on the same wavelength today.

  “What’s the next photo?”

  “I don’t know. They aren’t in any order.” I rack my brain, try to remember what order the pictures were in on the blog. But I only saw it that once, and a lot of things have happened since then. Maybe the picture of my dad and me near the huge solar array was next? Or was it the one with us close to the silo?

  I just don’t know—and my age in the photos isn’t a good indicator. The pictures were all mixed up on the blog—no order that I could tell, except, obviously, for this one.

  “Look for markers,” Eli says. “Anything that seems like it could give a clue about where these places are.”

  “I’m trying!” I snap. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  Eli doesn’t say anything and neither does Theo. Which makes me feel doubly guilty for jumping at Eli when he was only trying to help.

  “Here.” I hold a few of the photos out in a pathetic attempt at a peace offering. “Maybe you’ll see something I missed.”

  Our fingers brush as he moves to take the pictures, and a warm tingling works its way down my fingers. He smiles but doesn’t say anything, so I try to ignore it.

  I shuffle through my pile of photos again, and this time I see something in the corner of one of them. My dad and I are in front of a huge sign that says ENDEAVOR FARMS, but to the left of us is a small road sign. I squint, try to make it out, but it’s a ways from us, and the numbers are slightly blurred.

  Eli leans toward me to get a closer look. His breath is warm on my cheek and I ignore that, too. “I think the first number is a two,” he tells Theo.

  “And the last number is a seven!” I trace its lines with my pinkie finger.

  “Twenty-seven?” Theo asks, his voice dark and a little disappointed. “I don’t think—”

  “No. Two eighty-seven,” Eli corrects him. “There are three numbers, and I’m almost positive the middle one is an eight.”

  “But I can’t read what state it’s in. That part’s too blurry.” I sink back against my seat in disgust.

  “Yeah, well, there’s a two eighty-seven that runs into Amarillo, so we’re going to take a huge leap of faith and assume this is it,” Theo says. “We can pick it up about an hour north of here and follow it all the way in. We’re looking for Endeavor Farms, so once we get to Amarillo we can grab a phone book and figure out where it is.”

  “Do they even still make phone books?” Eli asks.

  Theo doesn’t answer, but his hands tighten a little bit on the steering wheel at the same time as mine clench into fists on my lap. They’d better still make them—and we’d better be able to find one—or we are screwed before this thing even begins.

  And so is the rest of the world.

  17

  We switch drivers about an hour out of Amarillo, so I’m behind the wheel when we hit the city limits.

  “Start looking for a gas station or something like that,” Theo says. “Someplace we can find a pay phone.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Eli mutters, but he turns to stare out the window. “When’s the last time you saw a pay phone?”

  I’m about to ask for a backup plan when Eli shouts, “Hey! There it is!”

  I turn, expecting to see a pay phone. Instead, we pass a huge sign that reads, WELCOME TO ENDEAVOR FARMS. It isn’t the same color or font as the one in the picture, but I’m not sure that means anything. It’s been about thirteen years since the photo was taken, after all.

  Looks like our luck is taking a major upswing, though I guess that has more to do with Theo than any goodwill from the universe.

  I glance behind me out of habit, make sure no cops are in the vicinity—though to be honest I think they all have better things to do. Then I slow down a little and make a U-turn right in the middle of the highway, bumping and sliding us across the huge patch of grass that separates the two sides of the road.

  “Drive much?” Theo asks as I turn right at the farm’s entrance. Eli just laughs.

  “I thought we were in a hurry.” I don’t take my eyes off the sharp curves in front of me. The driveway’s built like a sidewinding roller coaster.

  I keep going for about a half mile into the property, before I have to stop in front of a huge iron fence. The thing is about twelve feet high, with ornamental spikes at the top—not to mention a thick chain and padlock holding the gates closed.

  “So much for the welcome,” I mutter.

  “Got your climbing boots on, Pandora?” Eli asks.

  I flex my feet in the flip-flops I’ve been wearing for hours. “Not hardly.” I turn around to look at Theo in the backseat. “I don’t suppose you have bolt cutters back there, do you?”

  “I left them in the garage.” He looks completely chagrined—like he took my question seriously and can’t believe he forgot something as obvious as bolt cutters.

  I crack up. I can’t help it. “Then I guess we’re doing this the old-fashioned way, huh?” I back the van into a small turn-around area, then pull forward as if I’m preparing to leave.

  “Hey. Where are we going?” Eli asks in alarm. “I can climb this thing easy.”

  “Yeah, but why should you have to?” I back the van up until the rear bumper is almost touching the fence.

  “Very smart, Pandora.” Eli grins his approval.

  “I have my moments.”

  Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I scoot out the passenger door just in time to see Theo clim
b onto the hood of the van. “Need help?” he asks, extending one large hand down for me to grab. I stare at it a second, trying to decide if I want his help. He’s been kind of obnoxious for the last few minutes.

  That jerkiness doesn’t outweigh his having made himself a national fugitive for me. And it’s not as if I have much of a choice, anyway. Refusing would look petty.

  But I’ve waited too long, weighing my options, and I watch as Theo shuts down once more. I swear, the boy has more layers than an onion, and I can’t seem to get past the skin.

  “Theo …” I reach a hand out to him, but he doesn’t turn around. And then Eli’s next to me.

  “Hey, Pandora, need a boost?” He squats down, laces his fingers together.

  “Yeah,” I say, though I don’t take my eyes off Theo. He doesn’t bother to glance back at me.

  I clamber onto the hood and then follow Theo onto the roof. It’s a little bit tricky in my flip-flops, but I manage. And then I just have to grab on to the top of the bars, pull myself up and over without impaling myself on an iron stake … or three.

  Piece of cake, I tell myself, but my palms are slippery as I boost myself over, putting my feet on the horizontal rail that runs along the back of the fence. I start to climb down and my hands slip off the fence. I scramble for purchase, but it’s too late. I’m falling. I try to roll so that I won’t land flat on my back on the ground, brace myself for an impact that doesn’t come. Instead, Theo catches me against his hard chest, his heavily muscled arms like tree trunks around me.

  “You okay?” he murmurs in my ear.

  “Yeah. Great.” Suddenly I can’t remember how to swallow. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Eli jumps down beside us. “Does anything hurt, Pandora?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good.” He glares at Theo. “She can walk, you know.”

  “Yeah. I got that.” He slides me slowly, carefully, to the ground. “You ready?”

  He’s asking me, his body language shouting that he doesn’t give a shit if Eli’s ready or not.

  Instead of answering, I strike out down the remainder of the long driveway that leads straight toward two huge buildings. One looks like a barn and the other is a massive greenhouse directly behind it. In the distance is a small house, but it’s too far away to see if anyone lives there.