“Okay, so what do we do after we put in our password and are offered a dialog box?”
“Type in your message. Whatever you want to say in plain text.”
“What about keystroke surveillance?”
“I wrote an interception program that garbles the keystrokes.” He smiled. “And I snarfed Dally’s pixelating tech to ward off eavesdroppers.”
“So I type my message to Adam,” I prodded.
“Right. So when you’re done, tap F2 and it will encrypt it into a random phrase: ‘I want to borrow your shirt,’ ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘Did you read about Trinidad Ray’s new song?’ I’ll load thousands of them.”
“Then what?” Adam asked.
“So then, you copy and paste that new message into the Dally dialog box and send it. When Xoey opens it, she copies and pastes it into another game called Operation Gunnerside. It’s an FPS game I made for fun years ago, but the hidden interface will work as a perfect counterpart to my Tilted app. On the home screen, you hold down your finger on the third tree on the top left while double-tapping the tower window on the center bottom. That will open up a new password window, which gives you access to another dialog box. In this one, you paste your message from Dally and tap F4. Then you get to read your decrypted message.”
“That’s pretty clever, Sam,” I said.
Adam continued frowning. “But if one of these apps gets pulled from the game store…”
Sam shrugged. “Then I’ll make new apps with the same hidden interface, which shouldn’t take too long since the important stuff is already coded. Then I’ll just send you a game recommendation on Dally. In the meantime, you can still set up meetings through the tackle league or through a Dally group chat. I already set one up called “Fans of Operation Gunnerside.” I’ll enroll everyone when I finish setting up your user profiles. You can use it to post emergency messages. We’ll come up with a few basic codes, like if anyone says something about a pink shirt, it means you’re going to be offline for a while. A red shirt means you’re in trouble, a white shirt means you’re traveling. That kind of thing.”
“Then if any group gets shut down or overrun with other users, we could create a new one and recommend it to each other?” I asked.
Sam smiled. “Yup, you got it! And the two game apps can be used to encrypt/decrypt messages for any social media platform. So even if you get locked out of Dally for some reason, or maybe you want to go retro and load Instagram or Snapchat, that works too.”
“How long until you have both apps up and running?”
“Soon,” Sam said. “I already wrote the game code for both. Now I’m finishing up the inscription stuff. Gwen is pentesting it, looking for vulnerabilities.”
“What’s the biggest risk, Sam?” Adam asked. “Honestly?”
“There are all kinds of risks. A man-in-the-middle attack might be the worst. Where someone gets between us—pretends to be one of us?”
“We need to figure out a human way to verify our identity,” Adam suggested. “Every time we send a message, it would have to be something…foolproof.”
Sam nodded. “Okay. Gwen and I will work on it, but Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“The first time I set up a RAT on Kino’s server, I hesitated. It was a huge risk. Oliver helped me get past it. ‘Everything worth doing is risky,’ he said.”
For a minute we just sat there, nodding at each other, wishing so badly that Oliver was still with us, offering wisdom, support, and his unwavering sense of humor.
We’re getting him back, I thought fiercely.
“Are you making a user ID for Paisley,” I asked.
He nodded.
“Make one for Oliver too.”
22
Riley
It takes us two hours to reach the depot, or rather, the old warehouse across the street. Claire told us it is where dozens of people sleep the night before riding transports into Slick, where they look for work, refuge, and food.
Reed and I don’t go inside. It’s been a long time since we’ve been around other people and our scare at the amusement park has us both on edge. Besides, Claire told us raids by UDR officers are frequent.
“Sometimes they’re just harassing people,” she said. “Shaking them down for bribes or information. But sometimes it’s a legitimate crackdown and they’ll cart people off to work camps or the frontline.”
We hide in an adjacent alley where a deep doorway provides us some protection from the wind. I doze a little—maybe Reed does too—but only for a few minutes at a time. Mostly we wait for the sun to rise, and for the perfect moment to cross to the depot in a crowd of sleepy travelers.
I blow on my hands and time the UDR patrols that circle the area.
“Ten-minute intervals,” I tell Reed.
He nods and tells me about the cameras he’s spotted. “Four on the front of the depot building, two at the intersection light, at least a couple more on this side of the street. No way we can avoid them all, so we better get right in the center of the crowd when we cross.”
I know already! I want to say, but I bite my tongue. He’s said we need to find our way to the middle of the crowd a dozen times already, and it’s driving me crazy! Still, I know it’s just nerves. Today is the day we find out if the fake IDs Gwen and Sam uploaded to our nanochips will work.
“Do you trust the override?” Reed asks, tapping his wrist.
“If it was just Gwen, or anyone else, I don’t think I would, but Sam…”
“Yeah.” Reed nods. “Sam won’t let us down.”
I still feel uneasy if I think about it too much. Just like the UDR has always been there, watching me, my nanochip has been part of my body as long as I can remember. Mama once told me that I screamed for three days after it was implanted, which made her sick with worry. She had heard stories of babies who were allergic to the chip housing, and how they developed horrible rashes or even died, but the government makes no exceptions. Everyone in the UDR is implanted, then our chips are loaded with data throughout our lives: medical and school records, activity monitoring, warnings, red flags, citations, fines, warrants.
It wasn’t until we reached the Resistance after escaping from Windmill Bay that I even heard of someone tampering with their chips. The government has always told us they are fail-proof. Sure, people have tried to dig them out of their arms or replace them surgically—but every story I heard ended badly. But then the Resistance installed a bug on all of our chips before they ever let us near Fort Unity. It didn’t wipe out any of our data, they assured us, just our locating beacons. Which was fine, so long as we stayed out in the middle of nowhere.
“But what happens when Reed and I get to The Rose to rescue Lexie?” I asked.
“We’ll just give you fake IDs,” Gwen said.
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Anything is possible,” Sam said. “The problem with most fake IDs is they don’t have the government watermark, so people who try and use them are immediately arrested. But yours are going to be genuine IDs, so that won’t be a problem.”
“Yeah, but that creates a whole new set of problems, right?” I asked.
“Only if your aliases rise like The Walking Dead,” Gwen said.
Sam laughed, but I had no idea what they were talking about.
“The concept is simple,” Gwen explained. “UDR citizens disappear all the time: into the Dirt, into the Red Zone, then, poof, suddenly their nanochips go dormant, either because they are living off the grid, or more likely, because something happened to them.”
“Something like…”
“They died. But with no official death certificate, they just stay in the system, which only purges inactive chips every five years or so.”
“Gwen hacked the UDR citizen database,” Sam said, his eyes alight with admiration.
“Not just me,” Gwen interrupted. “There was a whole team of us, including someone on the inside who still gives us regular updates with a l
ist of dormant IDs. We choose a couple that match your general description—age, height, weight, hair, and eye color—and make sure they were at least within a couple hundred miles of where you’re going when they disappeared, then viola! You’ve got yourself some new IDs.”
“Specifically, Clyde Ferdinand and Bonnie Archer,” Sam says.
“But they won’t look exactly like us,” I pointed out.
Gwen snorted. “We replace their photos with yours. That’s actually one of the easiest hacks in this whole process.”
“But the UDR has Reed and me on their Most Wanted List,” I said.
Reed wagged his finger. “Yes! And facial-recognition software will flag us as soon as we pass through their sensors. They’ll arrest us on the spot.”
“Nope!” Sam looked practically giddy. That’s when he explained the invisible mask software he was writing. “We’ll upload it to the UDR Cit-Track database by the time you get to Slick City. Promise!”
“But back to their data—Clyde’s and Bonnie’s—will it camouflage our own?” Reed asked.
“Actually we’re stripping your data out completely,” Gwen said.
“What?” Reed looked at me. I knew what he was thinking. Stripped of my data? It gave me the creeps.
“Sorry.” Gwen shrugged her shoulders. “It’s the only way.”
“So what happens to it?” Reed asked. “It’s not lost forever, is it? It can be restored, right?”
“Sure,” Gwen said. “We’ll load it on an old thumb drive. You can carry it with you or leave it with Sam for safekeeping until we reverse the process and you become Reed Paine again.”
“That’s…archaic,” Reed said.
“Exactly!” Sam laughed. “It’s what our ancestors did—carrying their data on a cell phone or tablet, carrying ID cards and paper money in a wallet. Crazy, isn’t it?”
“But what happens if either Bonnie or Clyde is not dead?” I asked. “What if they suddenly show up on the Cit-Track?”
“That would be a problem,” Sam said. “If you pass through a UDR gate somewhere and the Cit-Track shows you’re also somewhere else, they’ll get an alert and detain you.”
Reed crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t like this. There has to be another way.”
“It’s the only way,” Gwen said. “If you try to go anywhere near Slick City without it—either with your own data intact or stripped of any data—you’ll get caught. Believe me. But this method works. We’ve been borrowing IDs like this for several years now. No one’s ever gotten caught.”
“There’s always a first time,” Reed grumbled.
“You don’t have to go with me,” I told him. “You could stay here, help Xoey get Oliver back and—”
“No.” Reed shook his head. “That’s not an option. I’m going with you.”
“But if—”
“But nothing, Riley. Just try to stop me.”
I didn’t try to stop him, because I didn’t actually want to go looking for Lexie alone. But now that we’re about to test our fake IDs—weeks after we thought we would—it all feels like a greater risk.
“Have some faith,” Xoey told me before we left. “God wants you to find your sister, you know. He must, because it’s such a good thing to do. Just reach out to Him whenever you’re feeling worried about it. Ask Him to protect you.”
Okay, Xoey. Here goes.
As dawn begins to break on the horizon, I close my eyes and pray.
A few minutes later, the sound of a metal door scraping against pavement makes me jump. Reed and I both scurry to our feet and peek out from our doorway just in time to hear voices around the corner of the brick warehouse.
“This is it,” I say.
Reed nods, following me as I head toward the crowd of people emerging from the warehouse. Sidestepping some and circling others, I find my way to the center of the crowd, making sure to stand near taller people who are more likely to block a clear view of me from any of the cameras. Reed is finding his own sweet spot just a few steps away as we head across the street.
The bus depot isn’t what I pictured. Just a series of narrow platforms covered in metal awnings. Under the awnings, a scrolling display tells us the bus schedule, the fee for riding, and the toll the UDR will charge during inspection, both of which will be debited through our nanochip accounts as soon as we step on the bus. Sam said he would make sure Clyde and Bonnie have sufficient funds to pay for our entry into Slick. Reed said that was just something else that could go wrong.
The scrolling display tells us three buses are expected at the depot this morning, but there only seems to be one destination: Slick City. Reed and I reunite in line between a tall man in a trench coat and a woman juggling a baby and a toddler. He briefly squeezes my hand, then let’s go as the first bus pulls up to the curb. We all move forward as the doors glide open. It only takes a few minutes to reach the front of the line.
“Welcome,” says the autopilot as I climb aboard. I find a seat close to the front and keep my head down, though I watch Reed’s shoes pass by. We sit apart by design. I am near the front door, while he is close to the back exit, just in case the worst happens and one of us finds an avenue for escape.
“You know our aliases—Bonnie and Clyde?” I said last night on the train.
“Yeah?”
“Xoey says she read about two famous bank robbers named Bonnie and Clyde. From a long time ago.”
“Were they on the run, like us?”
I nodded.
“But they got away, right? Lived to be old people living in the same retirement village?”
I shook my head. “Killed by police.”
I couldn’t see him in the dark, but I imagined him staring a hole through me. “Well, thanks for telling me! That will help me sleep well…you know, the night before we take the biggest risk of our lives.”
I smiled in the darkness. “Happy to help.”
It was funny then. Today, not so much.
The bus fills up quickly. Most passengers, like me, keep their eyes down and their mouths shut.
“It will mostly be Dirt folk going through,” Claire told us. “The lowest of the low to UDR officers: farmers, trappers, traders, low-income workers. People like me. We take our goods through, do our business, and come out again. Inside of Slick, everything is done the old-fashioned way. Mostly barter and trade, though some vendors take coin. The UDR patrol takes their cut when you head back through the gate, then— usually—they let you on your way.”
“Coin?” Reed asked.
She smiled. “Metal money. I’ll give you some to tide you over for a few days.”
Inside my pocket, I grip some of the coins Claire gave me as if they were some kind of talisman. The bus glides forward, and my heart begins to pound.
Talisman? What a joke! Putting my faith is some shiny object is stupid.
Then the memory of my last conversation with Xoey resurfaces. “You can pray as often as you like, Riley. As often as you need. There’s no wrong time or place to pray, and no such thing as too much prayer.”
Please, Lord! Help us get through the checkpoint safely, I pray.
Then I sit back and hope prayer works.
23
Oliver
Days pass.
Probably days.
I sleep, sleep some more, sleep more than I should.
What else is there to do?
I prowl my cell, count the blocks. Measure the floor with my feet.
Push-ups. Pull-ups. Sit-ups.
Sometimes I glare at the camera. I felt sorry for Reed’s mom when she was locked up like this, recorded like this, watched like this.
But I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.
Other times I sing at the top of my lungs, or dance around my cell, flailing my arms. I get close to the camera and wink. The more ridiculous I act, the better I feel.
On those days.
Other days I sit for hours and stare at the wall.
I’m a lone wolf. Re
sistant to all forms of manipulation.
That’s what I told my friends at Windmill Bay. I’m glad they can’t see me now.
I count boot steps in the corridor. Mostly they keep on walking. Rarely, they bring food. My empty stomach twists either way. Sometimes the sound of my food tray scraping against the cement floor makes me salivate.
That’s Pamplonian, right?
No. Pavlovian. Pavlov was the guy, right?
So where’s Pamplona?
Somewhere foreign. I picture bulls, but I’m not sure why. That’s what comes of reading books, but not enough books. Never enough books.
Most days, I just wait for the click clack of high heels. I wait for Kino to stand over me while her henchmen beat me again. She always rolls up her sleeves and joins the fun at just the right moment.
Today I wake to darkness. Not night, just a gloomy day. Rain spits at the barred window high over my head.
It almost never rains here. Almost, which is why I’ve guessed we are in the Western Sand. I haven’t been outside since they transported me with a black bag over my head, so I don’t know for sure. Still, I imagine palm trees. Most days, but not today. Today it’s raining.
I already said that.
Jonah is singing.
“…fast falls the eventide…”
I can’t make out all the words, but something about it is familiar.
“…Lord with me abide.”
I’m too weak to stand up today, so I roll toward the wall separating us and put my lips close to the vent, whispering.
“Jonah.”
“Help of the helpless…”
“Hey, Jonah! What song is that? I think I know it.”
For some reason, I’m desperate to know if I am right, if the song he’s singing is one Xoey used to sing in the Hidden Library when she thought no one was around. When she didn’t know I was in the laundry room next door, listening with a stupid grin on my face, like a lovesick puppy.
Jonah stops singing just long enough to say, “if you know it, sing with me,” then he picks up where he left off.
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