by Tracy Deebs
“Grand Theft Auto, anyone? For the second time?” He grabs my free hand and we’re running again, straight toward the Homeland Security vehicles instead of away from them.
“Get in!” he yells, yanking open the driver’s-side door of the first one.
I don’t let myself think as Theo and I pile into the back. Eli’s pulling out before we even get the door closed, flooring it as he drives right past the agents investigating our truck.
It’s not the brightest move, but it’s the only one we’ve got. Not to mention gutsy as hell. Go, Eli.
Our escape doesn’t go unnoticed. “Get down,” Eli yells, and Theo shoves me face-first onto the seat, covering me with his body. Shots ring out, and the back windshield, right where I’d been sitting, shatters.
“Shit!” Eli swerves back and forth.
“Hit the gas!” Theo yells.
“I’ve got the thing floored,” Eli shouts back. “Just shut up so I can concentrate.”
The next few minutes pass in a blaze of absolute terror. I can’t see anything—Theo has me completely covered—but I can hear plenty and that makes everything worse.
Sirens sound as the remaining Homeland Security guys come after us, shots ringing out as they pursue us through the empty business park.
“Where’s the road, where’s the road?” Eli mumbles to himself as he sends us careening around a corner so fast the SUV takes it on two wheels.
“Up ahead, half a mile,” Theo tells him.
“We’re not going to make it that far. It’s only a matter of time before they hit a tire.” He yanks the car to the left around another corner, and Theo loses his balance, pancakes me.
I can’t breathe with him crushing my rib cage and my face pressed completely into the seat, and I struggle against him.
“Sorry, Pandora,” he says a minute later as he pushes himself up.
“No problem,” I answer, before I realize how absurd we sound. Nothing like manners in the middle of a life-or-death crisis.
We hit the main road just as more shots ring out. They hit the side of the car, slamming into the metal.
“How are we going to get out of this?” I whisper to Theo, afraid of distracting Eli.
“I don’t know.” His hands are clenched, and I know it’s hard for him to sit back here with me, leaving our fate in Eli’s hands. But Eli’s doing a good job, taking turns at breakneck speed, dodging back and forth between the few cars that are on the road.
Homeland Security is still behind us—I can hear their sirens—but they don’t seem as close. Eli whips around another corner and hits the brakes, hard, as he strings together every curse word I’ve ever heard in the most imaginative way possible. We’ve hit a solid wall of traffic and people. There’s a huge demonstration—or riot, I can’t tell—going on. Sitting here, in this car, makes us easy marks.
Theo drags me out before I can even sit up. We’re running again, backpacks on, as we weave through a huge crowd of angry people. They’re screaming and protesting, throwing things at police officers, and I’m trying to figure out why they’re so upset—beyond the obvious, I mean. But when I try to look, Theo barks, “Keep your head down!” So I do, and I realize that he and Eli are slouching deeply, too, trying their best not to stick out in the crowd.
Eli takes the first side street we come to, turning right, and then left again a couple of streets up, so that we’re running parallel to the crowd but not actually in it. Hopefully the feds will think we’re still out there, trying to get lost in the teeming mass of humanity. They only saw Theo and Eli sitting down in the car—maybe they won’t realize just how hard it is for the two of them to blend in.
Eli and Theo are looking down each street we pass, and then, as if by mutual agreement, we make another quick right. I see why immediately. The whole street consists of apartment building after apartment building, and the curbs are lined with vehicles. “We need another car,” Theo tells us.
“Okay.” I look around the car-lined street. “Which one?”
“See if you can find one that’s unlocked,” Theo says. “Easier to keep attention off us if the window isn’t smashed in.”
“But not too new. The older ones are easier to hot-wire,” Eli adds.
“How the hell would you know?” Theo demands.
“I told you, Grand Theft Auto. It’s not just a game. It’s a way of life.” The grin he throws us is cocky and self-deprecating at the same time.
“And here I thought you were obsessed with Pandora’s Box before the last couple of days,” I comment.
“It’s not an either-or situation. GTA’s where I learned to drive like that, too.”
“I’m impressed.”
We’re moving while we talk, checking car after car. I lift up on the driver’s-side handle of an old blue Chevy Blazer, expecting to find it locked, but this one actually clicks open. “Hey!” I call. “I’ve found—” But Eli and Theo are already there, pushing me to the side.
“Do you really know how to hot-wire it, Eli?” I demand.
“No, but it can’t be that hard, right?” He pops off the panel.
“It isn’t.” Theo shoulders him out of the way. Bends down and grabs on to two wires. Twists them. The engine roars to life.
The relief I feel is painful, overwhelming, and for a second my legs turn to rubber. Strange, isn’t it, how when the fear is rushing through you, your legs are strong and steady. It’s only after it’s gone, after you realize that everything is somehow going to be all right—or as all right as it can be—that all the fight goes out of you.
“We need to book it,” Theo tells us, getting into the driver’s seat. I climb in behind him.
“I’m not even going to ask how you knew how to hot-wire this thing,” Eli says, as he settles in the passenger seat next to him. For once, there’s no anger in his tone.
I grin. “Boy genius, remember?”
“With a murky criminal past.” He snickers, turns back to face the front. “Don’t forget to put on your seat belt.”
“A little late for that warning, isn’t it, Speed Racer?”
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”
“You did good,” Theo tells him. I know it’s as close as he can get to an apology for the fight in the hotel room, and a glance out of the corner of my eye tells me Eli realizes the same.
“But we’ve still got a lot to do before we’re home free.”
Eli groans. “Same old Theo.”
Theo ignores him. “Eli, get the map out and tell me where to go. We need a way out of this mess, and it needs to be side and back roads. We don’t want to take the chance of being on the highway, even if we’ve changed cars. It’s too dangerous. And Pandora, get out that letter from your dad. Get to work on figuring out what the code is, and then start on the game. Once we get out of Albuquerque, we need to know which way to go. We can’t afford to waste time, or gas.”
“How is our gas situation?” Eli asks as he unfolds the map.
“Three-quarters of a tank, which is something. It gives us a little breathing room.” He makes a sharp left turn, so that we’re again running parallel to the demonstration.
I reach into my pocket for the envelope. Pull it out with shaking hands and just stare at it for a minute or two. I know I have to read it, but everything inside me is screaming not to open it. To leave it alone. The last time I read something from my father I’d brought us here.
“Look at it this way, Pandora,” Theo says from where he’s watching me in the rearview mirror. “We have seven days until the world explodes. How much more could you screw up?”
Amazingly, it’s exactly the impetus I need to start reading. So as Eli directs Theo on a path that resembles a slalom race more than it does a coherent route out of town, I unfold the letter and begin to read:
Dear Pandora,
Since you’ve gotten this far (and congratulations on that, by the way), I figure you must have a lot of questions for me. I know I have a lot for you. Things look com
plicated now, but if you see this game through, you’ll realize that it’s all really very simple. That we, the human race, have managed to make so many of our own problems through the years and that unplugging everything is the only way to make it right. I’m just trying to make it right.
Do you remember the day this photo was taken? We’d run away from home for a few days to have an adventure. You were so serious, so earnest, when we left Austin early in the morning. You hugged your mother and told her not to worry. We were doing Walker business, and she wouldn’t understand. It was all I could do not to laugh. Truer words, Pandora, have never been spoken.
I took you to Orinoco to see the solar array, and you giggled, said it looked like something aliens would build. You were too young to understand, but you had a good time anyway. Eating M&M’s—except for the green ones. Those you gave to me because you said they tasted “weird.” I still love green M&M’s. And I love you, Pandora. I can’t wait to see you and can only hope that by the time you find me, you’ll understand just how necessary this game is.
I know you can do it.
Good luck and I’ll see you soon.
Your father
I read the letter twice, getting angrier by the second. Understand? He wants me to understand what he’s done? Wants me to believe that he loves me? What a joke! Fathers who love their daughters don’t turn them into portents of destruction. Nor do they pit them against the most dangerous agencies in the United States.
And what does he mean by “see you soon”? Is Theo right? Are these clues leading me straight to him? Just the thought infuriates me—if he wanted to see me again, there were a billion better ways to go about it.
It hits me suddenly, what the code is. Something that both my father and I remember from our first visit to Orinoco.
I whip out my laptop. It opens to Pandora’s Box right away—it’s not like there’s anything else out there, after all—and I waste precious minutes taking my avatar through the motions until I stumble on the level two AR gate Theo had been searching for yesterday.
When the code comes up, I type in “M&M’s” and wait for it to open. It doesn’t. Damn. I was so sure … I glance back at the note and this time I try “Green M&M’s.” The gate opens and the ten-minute countdown begins.
30
“What’s going on?” Eli says, leaning over the seat to see the game. “Did you get a new power?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out.” I play with a few buttons, but nothing hits me. “I don’t think so.”
“You must have. How else are you supposed to deal with all those fumes escaping from the cracks in the earth?”
I’m too busy checking things out to answer. I take a quick run around, try to see what’s been going on since I’ve been here last. There are more players filing in after me than there were last time, though I’m not sure how they got through without the code. Maybe the gates are left open once I plug in the information? I hope so, because that means soon there will be even more people to help us.
Although, to be honest, none of the players seem to be doing so well right now. They’re stumbling around, falling down. Some are even lying on the ground, though I don’t know if they’re supposed to be passed out or dead.
I take a few steps, spin in some circles, but before I can get very far my knees go out from under me. I fall down, and no matter how many buttons I push, I can’t get up.
“Come on, Pandora! Get back on your feet,” Eli says from where he’s watching in the front seat. “You’ve only got eight minutes.”
“I’m trying! It’s not as easy as you think.”
“Let her play, Eli. You need to focus on the map,” Theo barks.
I glance up, see a huge group of people huddled together in the center of the road about a hundred yards ahead of us.
“Turn right at the corner. It’ll get us out of this mess.”
Theo does as Eli says, then slams on the brakes so hard that I fear whiplash as I jerk against my seat belt. When my brain stops rattling in my head, I peer out the front windshield. There’s a huge group of people blocking the street. They’re carrying bats and metal pipes, makeshift weapons that they’re using to bash in store windows and car windshields.
“Shit, I’m sorry!” squawks Eli.
“Get out of here, Theo!” I yell.
Theo throws the car in reverse, starts backing out the way we came, but it’s too late. The crowd from the main street is pouring onto this one, blocking us in as they loot and destroy.
“What do we do?” Eli asks. He’s trying not to show it, but I can tell he’s afraid. Then again, so am I.
Theo crawls forward with the car, hoping, I think, to intimidate people into getting out of the way. But another look proves that’s not going to happen. All he’ll do is get them angrier, and the last thing we want is for them to turn that fury and fear on us.
Conscious of the time limit ticking away on my laptop, I shove it in my backpack anyway. “We need to ditch the car.”
“What?” Eli goggles. “Are you crazy? They’ll rip us apart out there.”
“Not if we get out now, before they reach the car.” I toss both Theo and Eli their backpacks.
“She’s right,” Theo says, even as he casts an uneasy glance behind us.
The mob’s getting closer. Another minute and they’ll be on us. “Let’s go!” I say, grabbing my backpack, throwing open the door, and plunging into the mass confusion.
Eli and Theo are right behind me—I can tell because they’re both swearing as they follow my headlong flight away from the car and through the throngs of seething humanity. It’s a dangerous move, especially with the game’s time limit running out, but staying in that car is even more dangerous.
I’m jostled and bumped with every step I take, but it isn’t too bad. Isn’t nearly as bad as it could be. When I reach the corner, I look back. People are already on the Blazer, beating in its windshield and side windows while others rip out the radio.
“Don’t stop!” Theo tells me, shoving me forward with a firm hand on my lower back.
I turn the corner into more chaos, start wrestling my way through it. As I do, I’m conscious of every second that passes. If I don’t find a spot to play the game now, there’s no way I’ll be able to complete the task. No way we’ll be able to advance.
Looking around, I make another executive decision and duck through the shattered window of an already-looted store. From the looks of it, it was a women’s boutique, but there’s not enough merchandise left for me to be sure. Just a few broken bottles of bath salts and some ripped blouses and sweaters.
“What are we doing in here?” Eli demands, but I don’t waste time answering him. I just duck behind the counter and pull out my laptop. Two minutes and fifty-eight seconds left. I am so totally screwed.
Not sure what else to do, I systematically press Ctrl plus every key on the keyboard. I finally hit paydirt when I land on K. I start to glow again, but this time it’s not the helpful, vibrant red from the last level. It’s bright yellow and it starts in the center of my being. A burning, pulsating heat that grows and grows until it all but encompasses me.
“What do I do? What do I do?” I’m back to pressing every key, hoping for some clue as to what’s happening. Am I going to implode? Spontaneously combust? Turn Supernova and suck everything and everyone around me into the sixteen-pronged force field that is growing around me with every second that passes? As the Vergina Sun, a symbol of the twelve gods of Olympus, forms behind me, that last idea seems more and more likely.
Eli and Theo are leaning over my shoulder, eyes wide as they watch me amass more and more energy, more and more fire, on the screen. If I don’t do something with it soon, I’m going to explode. There’s no way I can hold all this.
I glance at the countdown timer. Two minutes and three seconds.
A noise sounds at the door, glass crunching under boots, and Eli and Theo throw themselves on the floor behind the counter.
If it’s more looters, we don’t want to be caught here with our solar backpacks and laptops. If it’s the cops, we don’t want to be caught here at all. And if Homeland Security has somehow managed to catch up with us … Well, it doesn’t even bear thinking about.
I hit the Mute button on my computer, try to keep playing even as I’m afraid to breathe. The guys are sitting up against the wall, weapon-like shards of glass clutched in their hands as they wait for whoever’s at the doorway either to make a move or to head somewhere else.
On-screen, time’s passing at what feels like warp speed, and I still don’t know what to do. People are IMing me, but I don’t have time to read, don’t even have time to look as I search desperately for a way out of this mess.
Whoever’s at the door of the store decides not to move on, their footsteps coming closer to the high counter we’re hiding behind. The countdown hits 1:00 and I know this is it. I either try to do something or bail out of the game right now. Following my instincts, I run across the rocky, ripped-up desert, leaping over small cracks and fissures until I get to the huge fracture that so much of the noxious gas is pouring out of.
This is fracking at its worst—Big Oil polluting the dirt we grow things in and the groundwater we drink by injecting chemicals into the earth to release natural gas to the surface. The only problem is it releases all these other toxins as well, more evil into a world already saturated.
Knowing this is my last hope, I jump straight into the fracture. As I fall, I pray I’m doing the right thing, that I won’t die like all the others who fell through the earth during the giant attack.
Long, excruciating seconds pass as I fall and fall and fall. Longer, more excruciating seconds crawl by as whoever’s invaded our space pokes around, looking for something. Merchandise to barter? I wonder. Or three teenage fugitives on the run from every government agency in the country?
