The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  “I know,” I admitted. “Theo is doing some more research. I’ve seen the map—the train tracks really do go right into Cambridge. We just need to follow them. It’ll be okay.”

  “Until we get to Cambridge,” Ilana said.

  “Well, then maybe we can take a bus or something to MIT. Everyone must know Dr. Varden there.”

  “Why do you think she’ll even help us?”

  I knew Ilana had started as one of Agatha’s projects, and a scientist always sees a project through to the end, but I said, “Because she owes me one. She owes Baba.”

  “I see,” Ilana said.

  “I have her notebooks, so I think I know where her lab is. Theo was going to do some research, too. To see if she still had a page on the MIT site or anything.”

  “Theo,” she said. “Why him? He thinks I’m a danger to you.”

  “But he likes you, too. He helped me get this started. We just started talking, after the fire. I’m not very good at keeping things in.”

  “I set the fire.”

  My feet stopped. An owl hooted.

  Finally, I managed to speak. “But why?”

  “You’re not the only one who saw this coming.”

  “You overheard your parents talking?”

  She huffed at the word “parents.” “No. I just sort of knew. And I guess I knew there was something about me in that place. The same reason I didn’t want you to go in there. It was a compulsion.”

  A compulsion. Something she had to do. Which before would have been a simple concept. We all have things we feel we have to do. Like how I felt I needed to get Ilana out of there. But with her, those feelings, were they even her own? “Was it like a voice telling you?”

  Ilana started walking again with strides so long, it was hard for me to keep up. “No, doofus. I just knew it was what I had to do.”

  “We were thinking that maybe it had something to do with your doctor’s appointment. What did they do?”

  “I don’t know. I got there and then I must have fallen asleep or they put me under, because I don’t remember any of it. Then I woke up and it was all done. I just felt lethargic, you know? Like I could barely move and didn’t even really want to. All I remember is hearing them say something about dampening.”

  “They must have pulled back on one of your qualities. But it made you act overly concerned instead.”

  “I never meant to hurt you, Mori.”

  “I know.”

  “But I did hurt you. In my mind I was protecting you. What if it happens again? While we’re trying to get away, what if I can’t let you go over that fence?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  The thought had never even occurred to me. What else hadn’t I considered?

  “My parents dampened me once,” I told her. “They told me they never had, but I overheard them say that they made me less brave. That’s why I’m afraid of everything now.”

  “You’re not afraid of everything.”

  I shook my head. “I am. It’s okay. Because now I know. I know that it isn’t really me to be so afraid, that somewhere in me the bravery is still there.” The latency digs deep and finds something that’s buried within you and ready to come out. When my parents had dampened me, they’d done the opposite: they pushed the bravery down inside of me so I couldn’t feel it anymore. But it was still there.

  We made it to the tennis courts and eased between the fence and the overhanging trees. Not that anyone was up and looking out their windows, but it still seemed the safer course of action. My backpack caught on a branch, and Ilana loosened it for me.

  Once we were deeper into the woods, I put my headlamp onto my head and flicked the switch. Ilana veered to the left, away from the fence, but I knew just where she was going. Oakedge was bathed in moonlight, looking more magical than ever before: silver and cool. If a fairy or a fawn had stepped out into the clearing, it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit.

  I looked up at our oak. It’s funny, I never named that tree. How can you name something that’s older than you? I never tried to draw it, either. I pushed my glasses back up onto my face and thought about the first time I’d brought her out here, when I had told her that maybe I wouldn’t get a latency. I hadn’t meant it then, not really, but now the idea seemed more plausible.

  Ilana dropped to her knees in front of our garden and began carefully pulling out the plants. She wrapped them and put them into her backpack.

  If I did choose a latency, I wanted to be sure I’d pick something that wouldn’t change me too much. Dad’s latency let him play out how a certain course of action would go, what the domino effects would be. That would be terrifying: if I could think through how this escape with Ilana was going to go, I probably would be too frightened to do it.

  I crouched down beside her and began pulling peas off their vines. “I never thought we’d really need the things we grew,” I said.

  “I wish Oakedge were real,” she said. “I wish we’d built a house and we could come here and live.”

  “I know,” I said. “Me too.”

  “All of us,” she said. “You and me and Theo and Benji and Julia. We’d be okay.”

  “We would,” I agreed. “We will.” I wanted a latency that would make my words true, that would mean my friends and I could always be together. But maybe true friendship was something bigger than our science could understand.

  Ilana got to her feet. “Come on, before it’s too late or I change my mind.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Maybe it’s not really mine to change or not.”

  As we approached the fence, I heard voices, low and whispered. I stopped and reached out to get Ilana to slow, too. I flicked off my headlamp, but not before I saw two silhouettes. “It’s us,” Theo called out. “You’re all clear.”

  We came up to the fence with only the moon to light our way. They were standing in the shelter of the snakelike tree roots.

  Benji held up a phone, probably his father’s, judging by the faux-wood case it had on it. He swiped around until he found the app, then ran it over my watchu, which beeped a quick digital melody, then faded.

  Theo had a knife. The blade was cool against my skin, but he cut through the band with ease, and my watchu fell to the ground. My wrist felt strange without the slight, constant pressure of the wristband. Theo scooped it up and dropped it into a bag. “I’m going to run this stuff back to the playground so they don’t know where we left from. But we need to get going soon.”

  Ilana held out her wrist. “I have a watchu, too.”

  Benji deactivated her watchu, and Theo cut it off her as he explained, “We’re guessing they’ve marked you internally. Benji has an app that can scan for the tracker.”

  “I developed it myself,” he said. “It was meant to check for hidden tracking devices. I was way into spies when I was little. I just hope my deactivation app works on the tracker.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” I asked.

  We all looked at Benji. “I’ll have to cut it out.”

  Ilana’s eyes grew wide.

  “It’s okay,” I told her.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m not just a skateboarding genius. I also happened to ace every test they gave me at the animal lab. Remember, you and me, we don’t need latencies, right?”

  Ilana nodded. “I’m pretty sure that was already taken care of when I was created.”

  “Well, home fry, not only do I have many intellectual geniuses, I also happen to have a very steady hand. If we can find the device, it’s just a quick slice. But first, let me scan you.”

  Theo paced away from us. He looked up at the moon, then peered back through the woods.

  Benji ran the phone up and down Ilana’s body. At her ankle, it started to vibrate in Benji’s hand.

  Ilana rubbed her ankle.

  “You feel anything?” Benji asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “It’s worth a shot.” Benji typed into the phone and s
canned Ilana’s ankle. He bit his lip and tried again. He shook his head. “It’s not working.”

  Ilana sat down and put her leg up on a rock. “Okay, Benji, let’s do this. Something tells me it’s gonna be gnarly.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

  I bandaged her ankle as best I could. Benji had brought gauze and tape, and then we wrapped an Ace bandage around it, too, just to be sure.

  “We have to leave,” Theo said.

  Benji looked down at his phone. “I feel like we should leave a message or something for our parents.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “I’ll do it. Quickly. I promise.” I took the phone from Benji and began typing into the notes application:

  To our parents, our neighbors, our teachers, and friends:

  We did not make this decision easily or lightly. We did not do it to defy you. You have raised us to believe that we are all the same, the designed and the naturals. You have raised us to look out for one another. We think you made a mistake when you wrote the core values. Creativity, ingenuity, experimentation, and order are essential, but the founders left out Community. Community is what we are. Community is how we function. Community is how we survive. And so we made the choice to save our friend. We hope you understand.

  Sincerely,

  The Firefly Four

  As I was passing the phone back to Benji, we heard a crashing noise. Theo dropped to the ground and pulled me with him.

  The crashing grew closer, and it breathed heavily.

  Theo was right. We should have just gone. We’d been missed already, and now we’d be stopped before we even started.

  “I’m here.”

  It was Julia.

  My heart danced in my chest. “You came!”

  “Miss this? Are you crazy? We’re the Firefly Five, aren’t we?”

  32

  I stepped up onto the tree that lay across the fence while my friends stood on the ground behind me. The moon shone through the trees on their faces like they were each under a spotlight, the stars of my universe.

  My legs were shaking, and my heart, and all of me. Still, deep in the center, I could feel it. Calm or strength—something to hold on to and pull out. I could do this. My parents had pushed my bravery down, that was true. They had hidden it inside of me, but I didn’t need a procedure like a latency to get it out. I had to find it myself. I had to search inside of myself and find that bravery and pull it to the surface. I could do it because I had to. Because Ilana needed me.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Theo coming back through the woods. He had gone to toss our watchus and the phone by the playground. He jumped up beside me, shaking the tree. I put my hand on his arm to steady myself. “This is the midnight version of all of us,” I said. “The midnight version of the Firefly Five.”

  “What’s the midnight version of you, Mori?” he asked.

  “Brave,” I answered. As I said the word, I started to feel it: a hardening in my chest and my stomach. I took a step forward.

  Theo and I walked along the top of the tree like it was a balance beam. I heard our friends get on behind us. First Benji, then Julia, then, after a moment’s hesitation, Ilana.

  The gully was deeper than I had thought, and I swayed a little. Theo put his hand on my shoulder and we walked the rest of the way, right into the leaves that should have been sky-high. Maybe that’s the root of our bravery: each other.

  The woods on the outside of the fence didn’t seem much different from the woods on the inside of the fence. The trees grew tall and strong, and the bats and a lone owl flew over the fence like it was nothing to them.

  Theo had a digital compass, and he used it to guide us through the woods. We walked in a single-file line, dodging tree stumps and puddles as best we could. We held the branches out of the way for one another. It almost felt like the hikes we had taken when we were younger as part of our nature studies unit. We’d even done one at night and our teacher had shown us glowworms, which were really lightning bug larvae, and also that if you snap a mint Life Saver candy in your mouth, it will spark.

  But this time we stumbled through the dark. Ilana and I had our headlamps, and we all had glow sticks and flashlights, too, but we didn’t use them. Not that anyone knew we were missing yet. We just didn’t want to draw attention, I guess. Didn’t want to announce our presence.

  We were beyond the fence. Well beyond it. In the wild, confused world. The one where chaos reigned.

  “It’s quiet out here,” Benji said. “I didn’t expect it to be so quiet.”

  “Just because it’s quiet doesn’t mean it’s safe,” Julia said.

  “It’s not safe,” I said. “None of this is. But we still have to go.” I knew what I said was true. That was something else they had left out of our core values: kindness. Because what did all the others matter—the creativity, ingenuity, experimentation, and order—if you weren’t willing to help a friend who needed it?

  Ilana smiled at me and squeezed my hand. “Mori the night-walker,” she said. “My hero.”

  I tried to smile back at her, but it was hard. I managed to say, “Forever sisters, right?”

  “Come on,” Theo said. “We have to keep moving.”

  We came out of the woods into the bright light of the moon. Ahead of us was another forest, but down a ravine were the train tracks that we would walk along to bring Ilana back. To bring her home. And maybe, I thought, maybe I would find where I belonged, too.

  Theo scrambled down first, half running and half sliding over the rocks and leaves that lined the ravine. He looked back up at us, and we followed down after him. Benji, Julia, then me. We waited at the bottom for Ilana. She stood up on top of the ravine, bathed in moonlight. It outlined her sharp profile, the smooth lines of her strong body. It made her hair and skin glow. She was like us, but not. For certain, though, she was one of us.

  She ran down the hill in three graceful strides, then stood next to me. We were all on the train tracks now, facing east.

  The tracks stretched out straight ahead of us, a clear path of where we needed to go. We’d done the hard part—we’d left Old Harmonie. Now all we needed to do was walk toward the lights of the city.

  They were the same lights I’d seen from the other side of the fence hundreds and hundreds of times, but they did seem different from this side. Brighter. More steady. Or so I hoped.

  I turned to Ilana. “Come on,” I said. “It’s time to go home.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In February of 2014, my family was visiting Florida, and my husband and I snuck out for a walk into town. Over fried oysters, I started telling him about this idea I was working on for a new book. It’s a utopia, I told him. But something goes wrong. I laid out the key points of the book, and we kept talking about it as we walked home on a beautiful, warm evening. Thank you, Nathan, for being the first person to believe in this story.

  My agent, Sara Crowe, let me know I was on the right track and encouraged me to keep building this story and this world. Sashi Kaufman also read an early draft and helped me to focus my themes. Maria Albrecht’s creative writing students at the Clinton School for Writers and Artists gave me honest feedback on the opening, and answered my questions about characters and world building.

  Once I had a sturdy enough draft, I sent it on to my editor at Bloomsbury, Mary Kate Castellani. Words cannot express how smart an editor she is: she crystallizes for me what I am trying to do and asks just the right questions so I can make it work. The entire team at Bloomsbury is wonderful. Thank you to Erica Barmash, John Candell, Beth Eller, Melissa Kavonic, Cindy Loh, Cristina Gilbert, Kerry Johnson, Linette Kim, Donna Mark, Lizzy Mason, Catherine Onder, Emily Ritter, Claire Stetzer, Ilana Worrell, and Regina Castillo.

  Writing itself takes support, and I am grateful to my family: Eileen Frazer, Joseph Frazer and Susan Tananbaum, Ed and Audrey Blakemore, and that aforementioned husband, Nathan. Thanks also to Meg and Brendan Parkhurst for providing a second home f
or my kids—not to mention the delicious meals!

  And finally, and perhaps most of all, thank you to all of the readers—those who have just read The Firefly Code, and those who have read the books before. It’s an honor to share my worlds with you.

  The Firefly Five’s journey continues in . . .

  Read on for a glimpse at the thought-provoking sequel to The Firefly Code, where Mori and her friends leave their community and embark on an adventure that will change their lives forever.

  OUR VOICES DANCED UP INTO the sky like fireflies escaping a jar. We tramped through the woods away from Old Harmonie, giddy and edgy and loud. Theo had given up on keeping us quiet, and sometimes he even joined in with our singing.

  The trees out here grew wild and magnificent, like something I thought only existed in fairy tales or my imagination. Thick-trunked hemlocks and pines with boughs that hung low and brushed our shoulders. Creeping bunchberry flowers sparkled over the ground, and moss cocooned the rocks. I still couldn’t quite believe it was real. We were outside the fences of Old Harmonie. The plan to leave had been hasty and shaky, but here we were outside. Theo had lifted a map from Mr. Quist, and it had led us right to the train tracks that went into Cambridge. We were on our way.

  “The Firefly Five!” I yelled into the night.

  “The Firefly Five!” my friends called back.

  That’s what we called ourselves: Ilana, Julia, Theo, Benji, and me. We’d never been outside the fences of our town before. But Ilana was in trouble, so we went out to the wild world. Her ankle had a bandage wrapped around it from where Benji had cut out what we hoped was her only tracking device. She was something other than human—more than or less than, I still wasn’t sure. She was a project of Krita, the corporation that ran the community where we lived. They wanted to scuttle her and we weren’t going to let them. She was our friend.

  It sounds much simpler than it felt.

  But I couldn’t let the confusion and sorrow weigh me down. I climbed onto a small boulder next to the tracks and watched my friends marching in a line.