Double Digit

by Annabel Monaghan

  I laughed. “There’s no way that river allows for that kind of flow. And there isn’t even a large enough water body feeding into it. You must have some sort of regular energy source.”

  “We most certainly do not.” I’d offended him. “Let me show you.” He spread out a local map that showed the exact site of the compound. He identified the river and its tributaries.

  “Oh, and at what point does the river pass by here?” I asked. He put his finger right on the map, in the exact spot of the compound, and I made a note of our latitude and longitude.

  I nodded in understanding. “Wow. This place really is in the right spot.” He was pleased with me. He’d converted so many people to his way of thinking that he probably expected my reaction. And I was his chosen squire, after all. I studied the map a little longer, though I had all the information I needed. Score: Jonas Furnis—a jillion, Digit—one.

  “You are starting to understand. Our buildings impose on Mother Earth. We must build in response to her design, rather than try to alter her to accommodate ours.”

  I found myself nodding. Not that I was ready to become a card-carrying member of the Green Gangsta Brigade, but it was hard to argue with anything he was saying. Especially sitting in that beautiful setting.

  “Are you ready to get to work?”

  “I’m actually not thinking that clearly. Can we rest for a little bit first?”

  Jonas was annoyed. “Fine. Throw the girl and the boy in the skirt into the room with the others. They have two hours. And our FBI agent, we don’t need him interfering—take him out and make sure I never see him again.”

  EVERYONE SAYS I’M IN DENIAL, BUT REALLY I’M NOT

  AND SO BEGAN MAJOR MELTDOWN #1. I was aware that I couldn’t hear my own scream. I was aware that I was being restrained and that if I strained my right arm any harder, my shoulder would dislocate. I was aware that I had been very wrong to be so relaxed. They dragged John out and he caught my eye. It was a replay of when they were going to kill us in that middle school in Brooklyn. That time I saw confidence in his eyes, encouragement. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had a concealed weapon. This time I saw sadness or even a bit of an apology. He did not look like a guy with a plan.

  Danny started to freak out. “Digit. They can’t take him. Are they taking him? Digit, stop screaming.” I still couldn’t hear myself screaming.

  We were led down a poorly constructed staircase into a damp basement. When the door to our cell was unlocked, I wasn’t entirely surprised to see Adam Ranks slumped over on his bunk. I rushed over to him with that same suspension of reality that you have when you see a celebrity on the street. You feel like you know them so well that you want to run up and say hi, while they have no clue who you are. “Adam!”

  “Mr. Bennett!” I heard Danny behind me, terror in his voice.

  Mr. Bennett sat upright on the bunk directly across from Adam Ranks. This was the first time I’d ever not been happy to see him. I went over and hugged him anyway. I said, “They caught you. Now they have John.”

  He didn’t have to say anything. I saw the pain on his face. He held me for a few minutes and let me cry. How awful, really, to be comforted by a man who’d probably just lost his son. But I was going to take anything I could get. After I don’t know how long, I pulled myself together. A little. “Will they really kill him?”

  “I don’t know. He could escape if they don’t kill him right away. But now no one knows where this place is but me. I should have called my wife.” Danny was completely still. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. Reality was sinking in. And reality’s not exactly on my short list of favorite things anymore.

  Adam spoke: “Is this the genius? Who’s the kid in the hula skirt?”

  “Oh, I’m Danny, Digit’s brother. I would argue that you are the genius between the two of you. I mean, you create beauty, and now money, while she just keeps screwing up.”

  “Nice.” Jeez. “Are you okay?”

  “I am for now,” Adam answered. “But they don’t need me anymore. I turned over my technology so they wouldn’t kill me. And now they’re going to kill me anyway. Idiot.”

  “I love the evergreen. It’s perfect.” I was a little off topic and talking through a stream of tears, but I wasn’t sure I was going to have another chance to say that to him.

  “Thanks. That one’s called Natural Order.” Of course.

  “What are we going to do?” Danny was anxious to end the art appreciation lesson and get us back on track.

  “I have no idea.” Mr. Bennett said this while tugging on his ear to show that we were being listened to. He pointed to me. “I guess we’re all going to have to cooperate. They actually do make a strong case against our way of life.” He shook his head, unnecessarily, to show us he didn’t mean it. He pulled me close and barely whispered, “Listen to me. John is a survivor. He’s been trained to be. We work inside; he’ll work outside. No more tears—we need to think. And we need you out of here. Deal?”

  I barely spoke: “They caught you. And you’ve been trained.”

  “I’m old. I lost focus. John will not lose focus.” I nodded, a lie to make Mr. Bennett feel better.

  “I have no plan, that’s for sure,” I said out loud, nodding furiously to show that I actually did.

  “I know. What plan could possibly get us out of this?” Danny was playing along now.

  I wiggled my fingers as if at a keyboard, and smiled. “I have no idea.”

  I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE SOMEBODY, BUT NOW I REALIZE I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE SPECIFIC

  I KNEW MY PARENTS WOULD BE FREAKING out by now. They hadn’t heard from Danny or me since Saturday. My guess was that Tiki would have confirmed that no one had seen us and that my parents would have then contacted campus security and learned that it was all being handled by the FBI. Yep, they’d be freaking out for sure.

  I had two seriously half-baked plans, neither of which I could safely run by my co-captives because we were under surveillance. All I could do was wait until I was called to action. And maybe enjoy the surveillance aspect of it a little bit. “How old do you think Spencer is? She looks kind of old when she smiles, you know, around her eyes.”

  No one was amused by me. Especially not Spencer, who swung open the door and announced, “That’s it. Break over.” Mr. Bennett squeezed my hand goodbye, and I followed her.

  We walked down a long and poorly lit corridor that dead-ended into a set of wooden doors. Behind them was a state-of-the-art computer center with enough power to, well, take down the government for one thing. Computers and scanners covered one wall of the room, while the opposite wall was lined with neatly stacked twenty-dollar bills. A sole printer worked overtime spitting them out while one of the thugs made neat stacks of what was probably $10,000. It was a spectacularly simple operation.

  The seat of honor was held out for me in front of three large PC screens. I sat down and stared at them. On top of the one on the far left was a small black box with its own alphabet keypad.

  “We’ve wasted enough time, Squire.” Jonas was a little anxious. “Show us what you’ve got.”

  A stomachache? “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Get into the DOD.” He must have seen my resistance-slash-horror-slash-nausea. “Or I’m going to slit your throat right in this chair. Got it?”

  Loud and clear. I needed time and my laptop. “Let me see.” I started looking through the operating system on his computer. With each keystroke, I was looking for a solution. If I didn’t hack anything, he was just going to kill me. That I knew for sure. My only solution was to contact someone and let them know where I was. I needed my laptop.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I’m not feeling it.”

  “You’d better start feeling it, or I’ll have Wallace over there cut your feet off. We’ve done that before, and the stubs heal remarkably fast—you’d be surprised. But it sounds like it really hurts.” What the . . . ? Sweating here.

  “I told your, er
, associate Spencer before. This thing that enables me to see the numbers and crack the codes, I have to slip into a sort of trance to do it. It’s very strange, I know. But even just thinking about you cutting off my feet is shutting down my whole system. I need to be relaxed.”

  I saw it coming. Five, four, three, two, one. Jonas exploded. “Aaahhh! Do you think this is a spa weekend? I saw you do it. I watched you write the code myself. If I had known what you were doing, I would have recorded your keystrokes, and you would be decomposing in my compost heap already. You get yourself as damned relaxed as you need to be and do it.” Okaaaay.

  “I’m also used to working on my laptop. Your guys took it from me.”

  “Of course we did, but we found no hacking program on it. So whatever you’ve erased, you’re going to have to reproduce. Now.”

  “Would it make any difference if I just did it on my laptop? I already understand my operating system, and I’m just more comfortable . . .”

  “Fine. Just. Stop. Whining.” He stormed out of the room and slammed the heavy wooden doors behind him. I started to consider what a powerful tool whining is, even more so than crying. Crying can appeal to someone who has an aversion to seeing you suffer, but whining is a whole different game. It’s universally irritating. And in this case, lifesaving.

  Wallace the Foot Chopper snickered in the corner. I had the strangest sense that he was staring at my feet and maybe estimating the diameter of my ankles. Jonas walked in a few minutes later with my laptop. “We’ve disabled your email, and I’ll be watching your every keystroke. So don’t try to do anything cute.”

  I flipped it open and got to work. I started building the most elementary hacking program, all written in C and completely convoluted. I asked Wallace the password to the wireless network so that I could try it out. He eyed me suspiciously. “Sir, how am I supposed to reach out and touch the U.S. government without access to the Internet?”

  “Fine, the password is FurnisFire.” Ooooo, spooky.

  I decided to try my rudimentary program over and over again, attempting to gain access to various sites. My hope was that whoever had been monitoring my laptop for Mr. Bennett at the CIA was still doing so and would be able to locate us. After a while I remembered about the trance and moved my head from side to side with my eyes looking upward, Stevie Wonder style.

  Wallace put his hands on my shoulders to steady me. “I’m fine,” I told him. “The code, it is being written through me.” Now I was just messing with him. “We don’t want to alert the government that someone is trying to get in until the program has proved successful. Let me try it on a less secure site, like a public university.”

  “Fine.” His hands were still on my shoulders; no amount of shrugging was going to get him to release me.

  Something was telling me that if I was going to get out of there alive, it would be my dad who’d save me. Thinking of John made me panic, and thinking of Mrs. Bennett made me feel guilty. But when I thought of my dad, I actually felt calm, like this was just one of our old challenges. I’ve been called childish, and thinking my dad was going to get me out of this might just prove it.

  I easily hacked into the UCLA system, then into the Department of Mathematics and onto the platform that I knew would send automated messages to their central message board, careful to write only numbers. The first series of numbers I typed was my social security number, hoping that my dad would recognize it as me. Then I typed the first twelve digits in the Fibonacci sequence, hoping that it would remind my dad of the whole Jonas Furnis calamity. And then I typed 38.16, −81.19, desperately hoping he would recognize it as a latitude and longitude and come save me. It was a long shot, I know.

  Finally, when I’d been online for over an hour and a half and was completely out of ideas, I knew I had to buy some time. I didn’t want to get Jonas Furnis any closer to the DOD before we were found. I turned around and used my new weapon on Wallace. “I’m sooo tired,” I whined. “I’m almost in, but I’m feeling dizzy and hungry, and I just can’t concentrate. Can you just ask Mr. Furnis if I can take a break and start again in the morning?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I’ll let him deal with you himself.” He left laughing and returned with a visibly agitated Jonas Furnis.

  “Princess needs a little nap?”

  “My whole mind is shutting down. I mean, I’ve written a lot of code and it works, but I’m so tired that I’m making mistakes. The past thirty minutes of work have actually been counterproductive. Please. Just let me clear my head.”

  “Fine. Throw her back in with the others. This is a joke.” Another door slammed. I was beginning to like the sound of it.

  HAS ANYONE SEEN WALDO? I’M STARTING TO WORRY ABOUT HIM

  MR. BENNETT JUMPED AT ME WHEN I walked into our barracks. He put his hands on my face and looked me up and down to confirm that I was still whole. “Oh, thank God,” he said as he pulled me to his chest. I was really no closer to being saved, but I somehow felt safe. When I pulled away, I saw the dark, worried circles under his eyes and under the eyes of everyone else in the room. Okay, maybe just Adam Ranks’s. Danny seemed strangely fine.

  “Dig, you okay?” Danny was kicking back on his bunk, a kid at summer camp between lunch and kayak races.

  “I’m fine . . .” Mr. Bennett tugged feverishly on his ear to remind me that they were listening. “I’m just really so tired. I was stuck at first, but then they let me use my laptop, and I had a pretty easy time slipping into the trance and letting the codes reveal themselves.” I winked at a smiling Mr. Bennett. “But I did all I could do for today. I’m beat. I just need to lie down.” I whispered the rest into his ear. He smiled at the hope that someone at the CIA was still monitoring me, or that my dad would understand the numbers on his message board.

  “Dinnertime!” Spencer burst into the room like a waitress on roller skates, fast and impossibly coordinated. She had a large tray of what looked like boiled chicken and a pitcher of water. No glasses. We all got up to eat, and Mr. Bennett sat close to Adam and whispered about what I’d done. Adam nodded and smiled as he listened.

  Danny tore into the chicken like it wasn’t disgusting. “Man, I’m starving. How long have we been here? Mr. B., what time is it?”

  Mr. Bennett patted his watch sadly. “You know I haven’t wound my watch since I was captured. I mean, what’s the point?”

  “Dude. Mr. B., get a grip. We’re prisoners. They’ve taken everything from us, our freedom, fresh air. But they can’t take away hope. It’s all we’ve got. Now, you wind that watch and look toward the future, man. We’re not dead yet.”

  Mr. Bennett actually started to laugh. “Okay, Danny. Here I go, winding my way into the future. Doesn’t this kid make you miss California, Adam?”

  Adam Ranks smiled sadly. “He makes me miss everything—my wife, my kids, feeling like I had choices to make. Though I guess I did have a choice to make here, and I agreed to do what they wanted . . .” Mr. Bennett waved his arms and tugged his ear. Adam went on, “Which was the right thing to do. Digit, you and I are a powerful team.”

  I knew he was just playing the whole pretend-we-are-on board-and-cooperating thing, but I started to feel the magnitude of the damage that could be done with our help. I longed to see the complete body of Adam’s work and to know how much beauty he could create if he got out of here. And I thought of the meeting I’d missed with Professor Halsey, and all that I might have learned and contributed there. I just hoped to God that someone at the CIA was still stalking me. I had a lot I still wanted to do.

  Spencer came in to collect our dinner things and take us each to the bathroom. It was a small room with a composting toilet. I don’t totally understand what that means, but it has something to do with dehydrating our waste and reusing it? Let’s move on.

  “Big day tomorrow,” she sang. Before she shut and locked the door, she turned back to me. “And, sweetie, we knew the CIA was monitoring your laptop, just like they knew we were. We took all that
surveillance software off. They have no clue where you are, just so you know. Nighty-night!”

  John and Dad were our last possible saviors.

  The next morning we got to use the bathroom again. I’m just trying to think of the best parts of the day, and that was probably it. That, and the coffee. Jonas himself brought me a mug as I sat down to work. It even smelled better than normal coffee. He explained to me with pride how the water that they used was free of pollutants and that the organic soil was rich in nutrients. Everything you consume in harmony with nature tastes better. Apparently, he’d never had the chicken.

  I went through six hours of the same old drill. I wrote code that made sense but that was so slow and cumbersome that it got in its own way. But all my keystrokes looked like progress to Wallace, who stood behind me and emitted an “Are we there yet?” sort of vibe. I finally asked to lie down for a few hours.

  Back in the barracks, everyone was a little down. Mr. Bennett was lying on his bunk, silent and sullen. I sat down next to him and gave him a little nudge, saying, “Need Danny to give you another pep talk on hope?”

  “No. One was plenty, thanks.”

  “You okay?”

  He took my hand. “I miss my wife, that’s all. And I’m concerned that I’ll never see her again, that she’ll never know what happened to us. And that she and I won’t be able to spend the rest of our lives together like we said we would. Every day for a month, she asked me to move a stack of papers out of our bedroom in New York into my office. And I never did. I keep picturing her in our room now, looking at that stack of papers and remembering me as someone who didn’t care to listen to her. And I should have. She’s been telling me to leave you alone since I met you. That John deserved to have a relationship that had nothing to do with me. I’ve really screwed up. Not the relationship—you guys did that. But everything else. And John. I’m a little worried, I hate to say. If he’d gotten away, help would have come by now.”