by Tracy Deebs
I’m too tired, too inoculated to horror, to stage a fullblown, center-stage meltdown. I do, however, turn my head and call for the guys. Just because I can cope doesn’t mean I have to do so on my own, after all.
Eli comes running, Theo at his heels, and together the three of us pull the man inside. He’s dressed in a blue T-shirt with the words “Liquid Gold” on it and a pair of jeans, steel-toed boots on his feet. And he’s dead. Not injured, not unconscious like I first thought, but dead. We’re too late to do any good, which seems to be the story of our lives lately.
Still, we can’t just leave him here to rot, can’t pretend he doesn’t exist. The guys carry him into an empty room down the hall, and I find a blanket, drape it over him the same way I did the woman in the convenience store yesterday morning.
They say everything gets easier if you do it enough, but as I stand over this man, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to dealing with death. I hope I won’t, because if I do, I’m afraid that’s when I’ll lose the last kernel of hope I carry inside me. When I’ll let the evil win.
I can’t stand it anymore, so I turn. Walk away. Try to focus on what I was doing before I saw him. But I can’t. There’s something about that man. Something about—
I run to where Eli dropped our backpacks earlier, rip mine open, and pull out my laptop. I look back at where the man lies under the blanket, and I know what the code words are. I remember standing there, in that cornfield, staring at the ear of corn in my father’s hand and listening as he spoke about ethanol and biomass and the future.
I type in the words on the man’s shirt—“liquid gold”—which is how my father always referred to ethanol. The game beeps, and I’m back in Louisiana, standing in front of an oil-drenched Gulf of Mexico.
Theo and Eli see what I’m doing and come running. “Did you—”
“Yes.”
“Awesome,” Eli crows, picking me up and swinging me around. “That’s my girl.”
Theo’s more subdued, but his grin looks just as real. When he smiles at me like this, it feels like I’ve won the lottery—it’s so different from the cold, blank face I used to get from him, and sometimes still do.
“So where are you now?” he asks.
“The Gulf. I think we’re supposed to clean up the mess from the latest oil spill.”
“Really?” Theo cocks an eyebrow. “And how are we supposed to do that when the experts haven’t been able to figure out how?”
“I have no idea.” The guys settle down next to me with their iPads, and together we race to beat the ten-minute time limit. I press a bunch of buttons, trying to figure out what my new power is. Eli and Theo are doing the same, but nothing happens. At least not until a shimmery gold glow appears in the distance.
We have to get to it—I’m not sure how I know this, but I do. And I’m not the only one. A couple of the other players who followed us through the AR gate have noticed the glow as well and rush toward it, dodging around various obstacles the game has laid in our path.
I get tripped up attempting to scale the edges of a bridge that spans the mouth of the Mississippi and plummet into the disgusting oil-and-pollutant-rich water below. Eli and Theo try to catch me, but they’re too far away.
“Keep going,” I tell them as I search for a way out of the filthy river. It isn’t easy. Ships keep cruising by, churning up the river and knocking me into currents that try to pull me deeper and deeper underwater. I struggle back to the surface time and again, but I’m getting weaker. I can feel it, even before I see that my life and power points are spiraling downward.
“Are you out?” Theo demands as he continues to hurtle through obstacles.
“No. Damn it.”
“I’m coming back for you.”
“Don’t.” Already the glow in the distance is diminishing. “You need to get to that glow quickly.”
Above us there’s another huge crack of lightning, followed almost immediately by a loud rumble of thunder. Seconds later, a deafening screech rips through the air.
“What is that?” I ask.
“I’ll go check.” Eli leaps to his feet.
“We only have four minutes left to beat this level! We don’t have time for this.”
“It’s not going to do us any good to level up if we end up dying for real,” Theo tells me as he follows his brother.
He’s barely done speaking before another series of high-pitched shrieks nearly rupture my eardrums. I duck my head and cover my ears, even as I start gathering up my stuff. I finally recognize the sound—a heavy-duty battery-operated fire alarm is going off. Which can only mean the lightning has finally gotten lucky and hit something flammable.
I run to the window behind Eli and watch as the world lights up all around us, fire streaking along the ground as it follows what I can only assume is an ethanol trail. One of the big tanks must have gotten damaged and this fire—beautiful, hypnotizing, terrifying—is the result.
“We’ve got to go!” Eli shouts, shoving his iPad beneath his shirt.
“Isn’t it safer to stay in here?” I scream above the alarm.
“The fire’s already in here,” Theo yells. “Why do you think the alarm’s going off.” He, too, protects his iPad under his shirt, and, numbly, I do the same to my laptop. Then we grab our backpacks and rush for the open door, flying through the central laboratory, and back out into the night. There is lightning outside, but somehow risking a lightning strike sounds better than sealing ourselves in a building and burning alive.
The cold air strikes my face as we run. It stings, but not as badly as earlier. The rain has let up some, which might be good for us but is doing nothing to stop the fire, which is growing in strength as it zips straight toward the leaking ethanol tank. “It’s going to blow!” I scream.
But Theo and Eli are already ahead of me on the realization front. They run for the closest shelter they can find, the walkway under a flight of outside stairs, and drag me in their wake. It’s far from ideal, but it’s better than nothing when, seconds later, the huge ethanol tank explodes.
Theo throws himself over me as debris rains down. Most of what comes this way hits the stairs above us, thank God, but some falls through the gaps between the steps, while other debris flies in from the side, propelled straight out by the power of the blast.
In the middle of it all, curled into a ball for protection, Eli pulls out his iPad and once again starts to play.
“What are you doing?” I yell at him. “Cover your head!”
“There’s not much time left. Only a couple of minutes.”
“Damn.” Theo and I move so that we’re partially shielding him as well. A searing piece of metal falls through a crack in the stairs and lands on my leg, burning me through my jeans. As I jerk around like crazy, trying to knock it off, I wonder how many burns Theo’s sustained while covering me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, even as I pull out my own laptop and try to play. For all I know, my avatar could be dead, considering it was stranded in the middle of the Mississippi when we made our mad dash under the stairs.
I’m not dead, though. Another player whom I don’t recognize—Darkness191—has pulled me to safety. My avatar lies gasping on the edge of the river, while his stands over me. I want to thank him, but it will have to wait until I’m in a safer place.
Eli makes it to the glow on the other side of the river, which I now realize is at least half of the Greek pantheon. Poseidon reaches out, touches him on the head, and Eli begins to turn green. Not a glowy green, like has happened to me, but kind of a sick green that sweeps over him from his feet to his head.
He plays with a few keys, and a steady stream of green comes from his fingertips in a strange wavy line. When I zoom in, I see it seems to contain a bunch of microorganisms.
“What are you doing?” I ask as other players crowd around to watch him.
“I have no idea,” Eli says, except as he presses more buttons the microorganisms grow, change shape, become other
, larger organisms.
As he continues to produce more and more, each a little different from the one that came before it, the first organisms launch themselves onto the oil spill and begin to eat. The countdown continues: 14, 13, 12, 11, … Eli produces more and more organisms, launching them into the water faster and faster. They gobble up the oil spill, but it’s not fast enough. There’s no way the life that Eli’s created is going to be enough. No way it can get through everything in time.
Theo must reach the same conclusion, because he rolls off me—the debris has stopped falling—and launches himself into the game. With six seconds to go, his avatar holds his hands out and sets fire to all of the remaining oil spill.
The last of it disappears just as the clock hits zero. Which is a good thing, because at that moment another huge explosion rocks the ethanol plant.
41
I start to duck and cover again, but Eli yells, “We have to go!”
I want to argue with him, but the world around us is one giant inferno. There’s fire surrounding us on nearly every side, huge walls of flames that are spreading in a wide circle that is closing in rapidly from both directions.
“Come on!” Eli yells again, tugging Theo and me to our feet. I glance at Theo, whose face is completely white, and I know he’s in bad shape. There are numerous holes in his T-shirt from where burning debris got him, and his bullet wound has started to bleed again.
When he takes a step forward, he sways a little. “He’s not going to make it,” I tell Eli, wrapping my arm around Theo’s waist to brace him. When I touch him, I realize he’s burning up. Despite my best efforts, infection has set in from one of his wounds and he has a raging fever.
Anything else? I want to scream to fate, to the universe. To my father. Is there any other obstacle you want to give us right about now? Because, seriously, this doesn’t seem like enough. We need more.
“Here!” Eli shoves his iPad into his backpack and tosses it to me. “Take this.” And then he bends down, puts a shoulder into Theo’s midriff. Theo crumples over him, and Eli stands up slowly, staggering under his stepbrother’s massive weight, even in the fireman’s carry he’s got him in.
I whip off my hoodie and slam it down over Eli’s face to block the worst of the fumes, before doing the same for myself with my shirt. Then I scoop up the other backpacks, and we’re running straight for the small hole in the flames. Correction—I’m running and Eli’s staggering, and the hole is closing so fast that I’m terrified we’re not going to make it in time. Of course, the rain has stopped, so any help it might have given us is long over.
“Come on!” I yell at Eli, wrapping my hand around his free arm and trying to drag him. It’s like trying to move a mountain, especially when most of my strength is taken up by carrying three of the heaviest backpacks in creation.
By the time we get to the circle of flames, the opening we’d been aiming for has shrunk to the width of one human body. I shove Eli through in front of me, run through behind him. As I do, one of the backpacks catches on fire and the flames sweep all the way up the strap.
I drop it before the flames can do much damage to my bare skin, kick it along the ground until the fire is out, then scoop it up and keep running, despite the heat of the strap against my hand. There’s fire everywhere, the smoke so thick I can barely see, and it’s only getting worse. We need to find a way out of this hell. Now.
“Where do we go?” I scream at Eli. The fire has me lost, turned around.
“Over there.” He points at a black truck, then dissolves in a fit of coughing so hard I’m afraid he’s going to collapse a lung.
I take the lead then, heading in the direction he pointed, though I’m coughing so hard that running is almost impossible. Finally, I see it looming in front of us.
“Almost there,” I tell Eli.
He nods, too out of breath to speak.
We stumble up to it, and Eli rasps, “I think the key’s in my pocket. I found it on the guy.”
I shudder a little at the image of Eli searching a dead man’s pockets, but since it’s about to save our lives, I can’t be picky.
After opening the truck, I run around to the driver’s side and climb in so I can help Eli maneuver Theo into the middle of the bench seat. As soon as he and Eli are both in, I start the engine and take off.
It’s like the fire is chasing us, and in the end I hold my breath and pray Hollywood knows what it’s doing as I imitate the movies and drive straight through a big patch of flames. The truck doesn’t blow up or catch fire, which pretty much constitutes a miracle in my book, but I’m too busy driving and coughing to give thanks.
“How is he?” I demand of Eli, who’s in even worse shape than I am. But Theo’s not coughing much and it worries me. He inhaled as much smoke as Eli and I did.
“I’m okay,” Theo rasps. Relief fills me. At least he’s coherent enough to track the conversation.
I gesture to the backpacks. “Eli, get Theo some Advil and his antibiotic. They’re in the front pocket of his backpack.” I wish I could give him some of the painkillers from earlier, but I need Theo alert for a while.
Eli does as I instruct, and Theo downs them in a couple of swallows. Even that seems to be too much effort for him, and his head falls listlessly onto my shoulder.
“Hang on, Theo. I’ll find somewhere for us to get you help.” I don’t know where, since most of the area has been abandoned, but it makes me feel better to say it.
At least until I go around a curve and see proof of why it’s a terrible idea to taunt the universe about matters of bad luck, even worse to ask what else can happen, as I did a little while ago. Because it turns out I only thought we were in bad shape before.
“Look out!” Eli screams, even as I slam on my brakes in an effort to avoid plowing into the two black cars with darkly tinted windows that have put themselves directly in my path.
Men and women with guns pile out.
I start to throw the truck in reverse, but it’s too late. Another two cars have pulled behind us, blocking us in.
Homeland Security has finally found us.
42
Except as I get a closer look at the agents surrounding our car, guns raised, I realize they’re not being led by Mackaray at all, but by Lessing. These people are FBI. I don’t know why, but somehow that makes me feel a little better. Ridiculous, I know, but based on that late-night visit to my house, if I had to choose an agent to be in charge of me, Lessing would definitely be the one.
Still, that doesn’t make getting out of the truck any easier, especially when they grab Eli and Theo and immediately handcuff them.
“What are you doing?” I demand. “Where are you taking my friends?”
“You aren’t in a position to be asking questions, Ms. Walker,” says Lessing. “That’s my job.”
There’s a hard edge to her voice that wasn’t there when I first met her in Austin. Oh, she wasn’t easy on me then, but now she looks like there’s not much—if anything—that’s going to stand in the way of her doing her job. Certainly nothing as pesky or pissant as the United States Constitution.
Of course, with her blaming me for 104 nuclear power plants getting ready to blow up in America alone (it’s amazing the trivia Theo knows), I can understand why she might not be interested in playing nice.
“He’s sick,” I say, pointing to Theo. “He’s been shot.” I’m coughing so hard I can barely understand myself, so I repeat the words. They need to get Theo some help.
“Let’s go,” she says to me, grabbing my arm and shoving me into the back of her SUV. I don’t like that she’s separated me from Theo and Eli, don’t like that I can’t know what’s going on with them. Right away, my imagination conjures up the worst, most disgusting prison available. With Theo as sick as he is, he can’t even put up a fight.
The idea torments me, and even as I tell myself to be quiet, not to give her any information, I beg, “Please. Tell me what you’re doing with them.”
> “You ought to be more concerned about what we’re going to do with you. They helped a fugitive flee custody, but you, Pandora, are a fugitive in the worst case of cyberterrorism ever committed.”
“It wasn’t their fault. Please, don’t hurt them.” Even as the words leave my mouth, I know how stupid they are. I have just given her everything she needs to take me apart. But I can’t bring myself to care. Theo and Eli have done nothing wrong—they don’t deserve to suffer just because they were concerned enough to help me try to save the world.
Sure enough, Lessing narrows her eyes. “If you want to keep them safe, you need to give me something in exchange. Tell me how to stop this worm.”
“I can’t! Don’t you think if I knew how, I would have stopped it by now?”
“I don’t know.” She settles back against the seat and looks at me. “When I met you at your house, I thought you were just some dumb kid. An unwitting pawn in this whole thing. But now … I’ve chased you halfway across the country, Pandora. You can’t tell me it’s just dumb luck that’s kept you from being caught before now. Which begs the question: Who’s helping you?”
Her words hit home, echoing my thoughts about how my father has used me. Somehow they hurt even more coming from her, though the look on her face says she isn’t trying to be malicious. Which just makes it worse.
