Twenty-Five
I awoke in a strange bed. When I tried to sit up, my head swam with throbbing pain. I took a few slow breaths and tried to sit up again, thankful for the soft mattress below me rather than a cold, cement floor. At the foot of the bed stood a figure I strained to see clearly.
“Bailen.” His name came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Take it easy.” Before I could say anything else, he sat on the bed next to me. “You’ve been through a lot.”
I blinked, attempting to process everything that had happened. I’d woken up at the tracker facility. Peyton had rescued me. After that, things were fuzzy. “Where am I?”
“The Quarry. Makeshift Ghost Headquarters.”
Now I remembered. I’d returned to the Ghosts and was exactly like them now. Well, not exactly. They’d switched my tracker over to TROGS, but it was still unique.
The full reality of the situation flooded back to me. Dread swarmed in my core. My parents and Myles were still in danger. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and pushed my feet to the floor.
“Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the control room. You guys need my help.”
“That may be true, but you’re no good to us in this condition. You need rest and food.” He pointed to a bowl of soup on the table next to the bed.
“You think the authorities are going to sit around and wait for me to have a snack? We don’t have time.” My belly grumbled.
“Your stomach says otherwise.”
Heat rose in my cheeks. “Fine.” I picked up the bowl then scooted on the mattress so I could lean against the wall. I slurped a spoonful of soup. “Satisfied now?”
“About that, yes. But we need to talk.”
“About what?” Sensing a long conversation, I gulped down a couple more spoonfuls. The steaming broth crawled down my chest into my stomach, warming me from the inside out.
Bailen swallowed, his expression serious. More serious that I’d ever seen him.
I set the bowl back on the table. “What now?” I asked, trying to break the intense silence.
He reached for my hand, entwining our fingers. He ran his thumb over my mine. The methodical motion of his soft skin soothed me. But concern over the mysterious impending conversation consumed me. It was big. The weight of the air proved it.
“You must know by now the strange behavior of your tracker is no accident.”
“What do you mean? You think I did this on purpose?”
“No, I know you didn’t.”
“Then what? Just tell me.” I shifted uncomfortably on the mattress as a cloud of doubt formed around me.
“You know, your dad and mine aren’t so different.”
I scrunched my forehead. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “How so? I mean, they both like technology, but my dad works for the government.”
“Do you know what your dad does for the government?”
“Yeah, he monitors tracker diagnostics.”
“He does that now. But that wasn’t his original job.”
“How do you know so much about my dad? Have you met him?”
“Only once.”
“When?”
“When he brought Jake here.”
“He brought Jake to the Ghosts? Why?” I couldn’t believe Dad had never mentioned it, or Jake too, for that matter. Why did he act like Dad hadn’t known where he was? Jake’s list of secrets was growing out of control.
“To join the Ghosts. To be part of the small underground organization that would infiltrate Global Tracking Systems and take down the tracker network. We needed enough people to get the job done, but not so many that we’d get noticed. It’s why we kept the individual cells small. We needed people we could trust. And if one was compromised, it wouldn’t jeopardize the others.”
A chill ran through my body. My mind raced to keep up. I couldn’t find the words to ask the questions swirling in my head. Somehow, I managed one question. “How do you know all this?”
“My dad told me a lot. Your dad and mine were good friends.”
“Friends?” My insides churned as Myles’ confession in the cell came rushing back.
“They used to work together. But I also learned a lot about your dad from studying tracker technology. He’s a legend,” Bailen said. “Do you know what he did for the government before? Why they moved him into his current position?”
“I’m not sure I understand.” As soon as the words spilled out of my mouth, everything started to make more sense. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the daughter of the man who’d helped finalize the tracker technology had a malfunctioning tracker. In fact, it was contradictory.
It also made no sense that Dad had helped build the tech that violated his beliefs to his very core.
Outside of Rufus Scurry himself, my father knew more about tracker tech than anyone. I always thought he’d stepped down as Scurry’s right-hand man so he could spend more time with us. But he was a danger to the system if he didn’t cooperate. Moving him to a desk job like tracker diagnostics was some kind of punishment. But for what?
“My dad made my tracker malfunction?”
Bailen nodded once but studied the floor like he had something else to hide. “I think so,” he muttered.
I cupped his chin and lifted his head so he had no choice but to see me.
“Why do you look so guilty?”
“Because…” He scooted away and brushed his shaggy hair out of his face. “You know, you’re so stubborn.”
“Yeah, what’s your point?”
“I suspected all this time, but I didn’t know what it would do to you. Not after…” The fragment hung in the air. He swallowed. “I wanted to tell you so many times, but I didn’t know how.”
“This isn’t your fault.” Assuming he was right, my dad was the one who’d been lying to me, not Bailen. “How long ago did my dad do this?”
Bailen’s attention returned to the floor, more evidence he didn’t want to tell me what came next.
“How long?” I repeated, more forcefully.
“I don’t know for sure.” He sighed, like he had no choice but to tell me. “Your dad found a loophole in the system. But it’s not easy to smuggle information out of a tightly controlled development facility. He would have had to hide it somehow. The Ghosts knew he altered a chip and implanted it in someone he trusted. I’m guessing you got that chip as a baby.”
“Since I was a baby? My dad’s been lying to me my whole life?” I opened my mouth to speak but closed it again to collect my thoughts. “Why didn’t he tell me?” But I knew the answer. If Dad lied, it was for a good reason, for the one thing that he held so closely to him—his family and his faith.
I sat in silence, digesting the new information. So that was why they were punishing my parents—for something Dad had done. What I now carried. Maybe I should have stayed in the tracker facility. If I had cooperated with the authorities, maybe they would have let us go. But then years of my dad’s work would have gone to waste. The tracker network had taken everything. Of course he’d want to defy it. For the very same violation I felt now.
“How come Jake never told me?”
“I don’t know if he ever knew for sure, but when your chip went offline, we all started to suspect. He also knew if you were ever captured, it would have ended the whole operation. Your dad was still undercover, and there were way too many people looking for leaks. Years of funneling secrets to the Ghosts would have been wasted. They’d know your tracker had been tampered with, and then they’d figure out what the Ghosts have been doing. They’d be able to close the loophole, stop us in a second.” He let out a long breath. “And they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because things are changing quickly. We are running out of options, and there’s not much time left. There’s an upgrade in a couple of weeks that will lock us out of the system.”
“So it’s now
or never?”
“Yes. And like it or not, your whole family is part of this. Your dad was a founding member of the Ghosts, like my father. After everything that happened, the authorities capturing you…” He took a deep breath, like he was preparing to unload the secrets of the entire tracker network. “When you told me about that message, I knew you needed to know the truth. But when you got back to the Hive, there wasn’t time. Everyone was scrambling. Now that you’re safe, I can’t keep it a secret anymore.”
“Wait a second. What message are you talking about?”
“The one you said your parents sent, right before the authorities showed up at your apartment. That wasn’t just a trap; it was a trigger. A clue on how to unravel the whole tracker network. Your dad said he would get word to us when it was time. I’m certain that message was it.”
I shook my head. “The authorities were just using my parents as bait. Besides, there was nothing in it resembling a clue.” Hearing from my parents had been so wonderful, I’d not only saved it on my personal network, but I’d made sure to commit the message to memory. It could be the last thing I’d ever hear from them. Even if it was a trap, I’d take the memory with me forever.
“Well, to the naked eye, the message would appear normal. But think. Was there anything weird about it?”
I went over the message several times in my head. Was there something I’d missed? I thought about the words again.
“They mentioned more tests. I thought they were nuts. Dad tried to stop the authorities the first time they ran tests.”
“Exactly. Anything else?”
I ran through the message a couple more times. “They called me ‘honey.’ They never call me that.”
“Is that it?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Hmm.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I wish I could see that message.”
“You can.” I popped up from the bed and searched the edges of the room.
“What are you doing?” Bailen eyed me as I moved around the room.
I picked up a small rock and etched the message onto the smoothest wall I could find.
I stepped back and admired my work. “That’s it.”
Staring at the wall, Bailen rested his head in his hands. “Mind if I borrow that?” He pointed at the rock.
I passed it to him and watched as he wrote out some letters, but none of it seemed to make sense. He scratched them out then wrote some more. He stepped back and studied them for a couple of minutes. Shaking his head, he turned to me. “What was the time stamp on that message?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Think. It’s really important.”
I tried to picture the message in my mind, focusing on the upper right-hand corner where the time stamp always appeared.
“1700.” The number flew out of my mouth so fast, I knew it was the right one.
Bailen starred at the message again and tapped each letter with the rock like he was counting. He rubbed his temples. “Are you sure that’s right?”
“Yep, 5:00 p.m.,” I said. “Although that doesn’t make sense because I was there well after five.”
“Five,” Bailen muttered. But then his eyes grew wide. “Kaya, you’re a genius!”
“I am?”
But the only reply I got was the scratching sound of the rock on the wall. “It’s a rail cipher.”
“What’s a rail cipher?”
“It’s a way of sending a code embedded inside another message. The trick to decoding it is the timestamp.”
“5:00 p.m.?”
“Yeah, count in five letters.” He circled the Y in honey. “Then you continue down diagonally.” He circled the next couple of letters O, U, H, and O.
I focused on the letters. “That’s complete gibberish. How is that a message?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He added two more letters to the list but stopped on the last line of the message.
The words you and hold stared back at me. Standing next to him, I could practically see the wheels turning in his mind. There was an intense fire burning inside him, like he was testing the latest tech. He was enjoying the puzzle.
His devilish grin appeared, as he circled more letters diagonally up from the last D in the word Dad. “I think I’ve got it.” He scrawled all the letters off to the side and then stepped away from the wall, revealing the message.
YOU HOLD THE KEY.
Twenty-Six
“What does that even mean?” I asked with a mixture of awe and confusion.
“It tells us you are the key to unraveling the whole tracker network.”
“Are you sure that’s what my dad meant by key? We already know my tracker is important.” I knew my dad and his cryptic ways. Nothing was ever as simple as it appeared. If the authorities were monitoring his messages, he would have been extra obscure, just in case they did decipher it. The message definitely had a deeper meaning. “Maybe I just have the knowledge to find the secret. It could be hidden anywhere. What makes you think he put the secret on my chip?”
“Where else would he have put it?”
“Good point. If that’s the case, how do I access it?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go to the control room and examine that chip again. Besides, the others will want to know you’re awake.”
I took his hand. He led me through a series of winding, dimly lit caverns. The narrow passageways grew wider the farther we went. Eventually, we entered a larger room filled with the familiar glow of computer equipment. Many of the Ghosts were there, but not nearly as many as at the Hive.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“This is it.” Bailen spoke those words like this was the price we’d paid.
“What happened?”
“A lot of people disappeared when the authorities found the Hive.”
The room felt smaller. I gasped for air as the walls closed around me. I scanned the computers. The group had easily been cut in half. I spotted Jeremy in the corner of the room. He nodded at me, a stiff short tilt of his head that said he was glad I was okay. I returned the gesture. He pointed at something on his monitor then turned to Peyton next to him. She said something, but I couldn’t read her lips.
“What about Emily?”
Bailen’s gaze fell to the floor, taking my heart with it. Yet another person lost to me. Because of me. I needed to fix it. Every single thing that had gone wrong, that I could still fix.
“I saw your dad.”
Bailen’s face softened as he gave me an expectant look.
I instantly regretted giving him hope. “They hauled him off before Peyton rescued me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to him.”
His expression hardened again as he returned his focus to his monitors.
I turned toward the chair, the one that was quickly becoming a comfort despite all the mysteries that seemed to evolve from it. I lay back in it. “Hook me up.”
Within minutes, wires dangled around me, and the computers beeped softly.
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” I called over to the tower of monitors Bailen was hiding behind.
“No, but we’re going to run some diagnostics and search for anomalies. If we compare it to your last set of scans when your tracker was offline but emitting that strange signal, maybe we can figure out what’s different and uncover what’s hidden on the chip.”
Doubt consumed me. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. It was like chasing a target that didn’t exist.
Something about the message bothered me. It spoke to me in a way that nothing ever had before. Intuition told me it was for me and me alone to unravel. But I couldn’t tell Bailen. It would crush him to not be part of this.
He peered over the monitor at me. I couldn’t see the bottom half of his face, but could tell the data was boosting his mood. I couldn’t exclude him from the puzzle. He lived for that kind of stuff.
The sensors humm
ed to life. I closed my eyes and let the vibrations hypnotize me.
“We have all the data we need. Now we have to wait for the computer to run the comparison,” Bailen said, bringing me back to full consciousness.
I peeled the sensors off and joined Bailen behind the glowing screens of data. The lines were meaningless, but the rhythmic up-and-down motions calmed me. Peyton and Jeremy joined us.
“How long will it take?” Peyton asked.
“At least a few hours,” Bailen replied. “It’s searching for tiny fluctuations. It could take a while to scan all the data at this level of detail.”
“Good,” Peyton said. “That gives us enough time for a recon mission.”
“Recon? What kind of recon?” How much had I missed while I’d been captured?
“We need to scout out the authorities’ main headquarters,” Peyton said.
“We’ve been sitting around long enough. It’s time to go on the offensive.” Jeremy crossed his arms, making his muscles bulge.
What was with the sudden change in attitude? Was it the loss of numbers? Was it an act of desperation? “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Maybe we should free your dad and my parents first. We can’t just leave them with the authorities. Not to mention we could use their help.”
Bailen shifted back and forth.
“You are such a chicken. Just tell her.” Peyton was half a step from slugging him.
“Tell me what?”
We engaged in a three-way staring contest. I moved from Peyton to Bailen and back. Time slowed to a crawl as tension wrapped a web around us.
“Enough secrets,” I said at last. “Just tell me!”
Bailen grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the group. “Our dad gave us explicit instructions not to rescue him or your parents. We’re supposed to keep you safe and continue on with the mission, no matter the price.”
“But how can you leave them there?” I chewed my bottom lip. With every passing moment, I got the sense they were going to let them die there if it came down to it.
“Kaya, this is a war. Freedom has a price.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t a price I was willing to pay. Losing loved ones for the sake of my freedom wasn’t acceptable. I’d already lost my brother. That was far more than any person should have to endure—even if it did mean freedom for countless others. What was the point of freedom if you couldn’t share it with your friends and family?
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