No wonder everyone thinks this house is haunted.
The other attic is a little less cold. Tucked behind one of the boxes, I see a splash of red and move in closer to investigate.
There’s a sort of nest of blankets, and the red is a stripe on one of those very rough wool blankets. It’s in disarray. Someone was here, though. I feel the blankets, and there’s a faint lingering warmth. Someone was here recently.
Bijan is staring at the blankets with a look that’s triumphant with a side of creeped out. “Someone was here,” he says. “Was it your friends? Can you tell?”
I pick up the blanket, smell it, and then shake it out. In the bright sunlight that makes it in even through the grime on the windows, I see an extraordinarily long blond hair caught on the edge of the blanket.
“They were here,” I say. But they clearly aren’t anymore.
36
• Nell •
“Go, go, go,” my phone urges me as I drag Glenys by the hand down the block.
“Where are we going?” Glenys asks me.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“A new safe house,” my phone answers her. “But hurry! Hurry! Where you were is no longer safe!”
We’re in a neighborhood filled with enormous mansions like the one we’ve been lurking in, and I think maybe we’ll sneak in through another unlocked back door, but the app tells me to keep going. “How much longer?” I ask.
“Not far now!”
“That’s not an answer.”
“That’s the answer you’re getting!”
“Who are these people?” Glenys asks me, struggling against the wind. “The ones in the phone, the ones who told us to leave?”
“It’s an app,” I say. “Like the Catacombs, but secular.”
I look at my phone. A map has popped up, and I try to suss out how much farther it’s going to have us walk. Too far in this weather. We need somewhere to go inside and warm up, and I look around for ideas. It’s daytime, and stuff is opening up, but the historical James J. Hill House tour we’re passing right now is probably not a good option. We keep going.
Up ahead is a huge and extremely fancy church, and looking at the map, I’m pretty sure it’s the Catholic cathedral. Which means it’s probably open and probably free. “In here,” I say to Glenys. “We can sit in here for a few minutes and warm up.”
Glenys mumbles a protest—the Remnant says the Roman Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon—but I would sit in a fully operational actual whorehouse right now if the door was open and the inside was heated. Glenys doesn’t resist as I pull her inside. The door closes behind us, and we stand for a second in blessed quiet warmth.
“Where are you going?” the Mischief Elves ask. “This isn’t safe! Don’t stop here!”
“The wind isn’t safe,” I mutter. Their voices sound loud and flat and intrusive in the hush of the cathedral, and I close the app. I can reopen it when we’re ready to go.
There are other people in here, though it’s not crowded. I lead Glenys to a pew in a back corner, and we sit down. Glenys leans against me. The bright sun streams through the stained glass windows, and we can hear a soloist rehearsing with an organ at the other end of the church.
There’s a faint sweet odor that reminds me of the smell of my grandmother’s potpourri. “Whore of Babylon,” Glenys mutters again.
I imagine Steph correcting me: Sex Worker of Ancient Iraq, and I wonder if it would make Glenys smile if I whispered that to her.
“I don’t like being here,” Glenys says.
“We won’t stay for long,” I say. “Just long enough to warm up.” There are other people who are clearly here just to shelter from the cold, including a woman who’s stretched out along the very back pew to take a nap.
“Why did the people in the app tell us to leave the attic?” Glenys asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “They said someone was going to find us if we didn’t move quickly.”
“Maybe I should just go,” Glenys says. “You were doing okay with your father and his partners in sin.”
“No,” I say patiently, because Glenys keeps suggesting that she’s the problem and she is not. “My mother is the reason I need to run, not you.”
The Elves pop up with another message, this one silent. We have a new safe house for you, and we can arrange a ride. YES OR NO?
I tap YES.
Your new hosts will not be Elves. They will be our brothers. It’s time to download a new app.
Again I tap YES.
The new app downloads very quickly. Tomorrow’s Warriors, it says. Please sign in. Glenys peers over my shoulder.
The ten commandments of Tomorrow’s Warriors, it says. I will reveal our secrets to no one. My first loyalty will be to my fellow warriors. I will obey all instructions from my unit commander …
“I’ve seen these before,” Glenys says. Her whisper is urgent. I lower the phone and look up. “These were on a sign posted in the shed,” she says. “This list. I thought it was a Catacombs thing, for high-level elites.”
I pull up the Mischief Elves app and ask, “Is Tomorrow’s Warriors related to the Catacombs?”
No no no. No no no. The response comes instantly. The Catacombs may have stolen our ideas, though. Tomorrow’s Warriors are an elite group among the Mischief Elves, and that’s why we can send them to come help you. You have to trust us! Trust us to help you! We will not let you down!
Glenys puts her hand palm down over my phone screen.
“I don’t trust this,” she says.
I drop my voice, suddenly aware of the fact that my phone, the Elves, the Warriors—they might be able to hear me.
“I don’t trust this, either,” I whisper. I grope for the power button and turn my phone off.
37
• CheshireCat •
When I finally spot Nell on a security camera, it’s like she appears out of nowhere. She’s less than a mile away from where Steph is.
I check the recording, and this perception of her appearing abruptly was not because I wasn’t paying attention at the right time; she was not registering on the camera, or at least, her image wasn’t in the data stream being uploaded where I could access it.
As I try to make some sense out of this, she vanishes again. I ring Steph’s phone, because this feels rather urgent. “Steph,” I say, hoping I’m speaking into her ear and not on speaker to everyone. “Nell is at the cathedral. I think Glenys is with her. It is 0.7 miles away from your current location.”
Steph makes a noise I don’t know how to interpret and then says, “I’m going to call Jenny for a ride.”
I check Jenny’s location. She’s not in her car; she’s gone into a coffee shop. This is going to delay things. I consider trying to convince Steph to just go, then look up the current wind chill. It’s even colder than it was an hour ago.
“Why don’t you send the robot?” I suggest. “It can leave now, while you wait.”
“Oh, that’s a really good idea,” she says.
The robot was in sleep mode to conserve power, but now she takes it out of her backpack and carries it out the back door of the house, setting it on its feet. I swivel the head, taking a second to adjust to the visual input, which is distracting. “This is Bijan,” Steph says, gesturing to another person who I recognize as Morthos from CatNet.
“Hello, Bijan,” I say through the robot. He looks deeply startled. I decide to leave before I have to spend too much time pretending to be a human. “You should probably go back inside to avoid hypothermia while you wait. I am controlling the robot from a remote location and am perfectly comfortable.”
I turn the robot toward the cathedral and have it trot down the sidewalk at the quickest available clip.
Saint Paul, Minnesota, is not a small town, and there are types of robots that people are very used to—delivery drones, autonomous cars—but this style of robot is still enough of a novelty that I get a few double takes. Nell is still missing from the security camera footag
e, but I’m looking carefully enough now that I can see a ghost in the data. It’s the sort of thing that happens regularly, where some of the visual input is just randomly missing, but in this case, I’m pretty sure it’s not random.
It has to be the other AI, but why?
The robot is heavy enough that it isn’t in danger of being knocked over by the wind, but it does keep shifting it slightly off course, and I keep having to correct it. Also, the extreme cold is a problem for the robot; the joints are stiffening up.
Steph is contacting Jenny and asking for a ride to the cathedral; Jenny is telling her she’ll be there in a few minutes.
I wonder what else I might not be seeing. If the other AI knows how to get into the video streams to remove people before I can see them, what else is it hiding? I start analyzing camera data. It’s an intensive process, because I’m not just matching a pattern like I do to find a face; I’m looking for holes in the data and sorting out the suspiciously missing data from the ordinary things like fuzz and bad connections. It doesn’t help that extremely cold weather does strange things to data networks.
I’m approaching the cathedral when I see Nell and Glenys stepping out the side door. I send a message to Steph, letting her know, and I’m planning to follow them, but they notice the robot immediately.
“Nell,” I say. “It’s Steph’s friend Cat.”
She looks around, then back at me. She’s shaking. I can’t tell if it’s from tension or the cold.
“Please don’t run away,” I try. “Steph is looking for you. We think your phone may have been tampered with in a way that’s keeping her from sending you text messages, or vice versa.”
Nell nods quickly. “Yeah,” she says.
I check on Steph’s location. The car is a few blocks away, stopped at a traffic light. “Can you wait a few minutes?” I ask. “You can go back inside if you want; it is extremely cold outside. I will go with you, or wait outside; it’s your choice.”
“I think the priests or nuns or whatever might be a little freaked by the robot,” Glenys says.
I’ve been analyzing the missing data in the background and a picture is beginning to form, and it’s a very disconcerting one. “Actually,” I say, “on second thought, I’m going to ask you to move as rapidly as you can to the west, because I am very concerned that something bad is about to happen nearby.”
Glenys and Nell look at each other and don’t answer.
“I believe it’s probably the same people who tampered with your phones. They may be creating an extremely dangerous situation.” I speed up my speech.
“Inside the cathedral?” Glenys asks. “Should we warn people?”
“Not the cathedral,” I say. “The James J. Hill House, which is a historical house 0.1 miles to the south of the cathedral. If you will proceed to the west, I will use the robot to alert the people inside the James J. Hill House. Please do not dawdle.”
“But if it’s dangerous for us to go back into the cathedral—”
I decide that my obligations regarding the immediate danger to the people in the James J. Hill House are greater than my obligation to continue talking to Nell. “Just run west, please,” I say, and move the robot back toward the historical mansion as fast as the robot limbs will move.
The James J. Hill House is an enormous mansion—much larger than the one Bijan’s parents are restoring—built in 1891 by a railroad baron, now owned by the State of Minnesota. People come for tours. It opened about a half hour ago, and there’s a bus full of elderly people disembarking in front of the house as I gallop up. “Please get back on the bus!” I say, amplifying the robot’s voice to its highest level. “There is a gas leak!”
I am not actually sure if it’s a gas leak; what I saw was a great deal of activity, some of it in the basement, and “There’s a gas leak” will create what I think is the right amount of concern, whereas “There’s a bomb” may send people into an unproductive panic. I use the robot’s gripper to open the door to the house, and I go inside to warn the staff. Someone is standing behind the front desk, and her welcoming smile turns abruptly to wary bafflement as the robot comes in.
“Please evacuate,” I say. “There is a gas leak.”
She doesn’t stop to argue; instead, she pulls the handle that activates the fire alarm and heads very quickly for the door. “How many people are inside?” I call after her.
“Fifteen tourists, four guides, and six other staff,” she says.
They’re coming back down the stairs even as she says that, and I count them as they go, urging them to hurry. Finally, they’re all out. The robot is still detecting vibrations that suggest that someone’s in the house, though, and I follow the noises. It’s a huge house; I’m not sure where the noises are coming from. Then a door swings, and I see someone dressed for the winter cold, with a scarf covering most of their face. Blue eyes stare down at me.
“What the hell,” the person says, their voice muffled.
“You should leave immediately,” I say. “There is a gas leak.”
“No shit? I guess maybe I should,” he says, and runs out the back door.
Is that the last person in the house?
For that matter, was I right about the gas leak? The robot doesn’t have a gas detector, so it’s not as if I can actually test the air particles. I wonder if I should send it down to the basement for a closer look? In the distance, I can hear sirens—probably the fire department. Possibly the police. Maybe both. As I turn toward the stairs, I hear an echoing boom and see a bright flash of light, and that’s it for that robot.
38
• Steph •
We see Nell and Glenys running from a half block away, and Jenny slams on her brakes and pulls over, but she doesn’t jump out—she turns around with a rueful smile and says, “I’m going to let you handle this part.”
I get out and call, “Nell! Glenys!”
They stop cold for a second and then run to me like their lives depend on it. I think Nell is about to grab me in a hug, before she jams her hands into her coat pocket and doesn’t, after all. “Did you try to text me?” Nell asks.
“Yes,” I say. “More than once. The Mischief Elves app is blocking real texts and also sending forgeries.”
She jerks her head. “Is that Thing Two’s car?”
“I can’t remember which one you call by which number. It’s Jenny driving. She brought me out to help find you. She says there’s a meeting with a lawyer later today, which you need to come to, but if she has to go on the run to keep you both safe from the cult, she’ll do it.”
Nell and Glenys exchange a look.
“Also, my grandmother’s in the car. Just FYI.”
Glenys and Nell trail me to the car, and we all climb in, wedging ourselves in the back seat and sorting out seat belts.
“Hi,” Nell says to Jenny grudgingly.
“Hello, girls,” my grandmother says warmly. “I’m Steph’s mimi. Can I take all of you to lunch?”
My phone buzzes with a text, and I unlock it to find that I missed a bunch of texts from CheshireCat. “Head west,” I say to Jenny. “Like, right now. Right now!”
I’m afraid that she’s going to argue or ask why or demand we finish with seat belts first, but Jenny makes a careful U-turn and heads back the way she came. My grandmother, who’s either unable to read a room or resolutely unwilling to, starts reading off the names of restaurants we pass, suggesting that maybe we could eat at Nina’s? Or the Happy Gnome? Or—
Behind us, there’s an explosion that rocks the ground. Jenny slams on her brakes and turns, white-faced, to stare at me, and my grandmother shrieks, “What the hell was that?”
CheshireCat’s voice comes out of my phone: “Steph, are you okay? Did you find Nell?”
“Yes, Nell and Glenys. And Jenny and my grandmother are here,” I add, because even in my panic, I’m thinking that I need to make sure CheshireCat realizes that it’s not just me who can hear. “Did you get the robot out?”
“No,” CheshireCat says. “I guess I’ll have to order another one.”
There are sirens starting up all around us—police, fire, everyone and everything is heading toward whatever just exploded, and Jenny pulls the car over to let them by. Her phone makes a discordant wheep! sound effect, and she pulls it out, her hands shaking, and answers with, “We’re fine. I have Nell, and she’s fine. And Steph. And this other girl, uh, we haven’t done introductions. But we’re okay.”
“Is Bijan okay?” I ask CheshireCat.
“The explosion was in the James J. Hill House,” CheshireCat says. “The blast radius did not extend to his house.”
Jenny still has her phone to her ear but looks back at me and says, “Hill House blew up?”
“I believe everyone got out before the explosion,” CheshireCat says. “The robot raised the alarm.”
“Love you, too,” Jenny says into the phone. “Pass the word? I’m going to shut the phone off and drive for a bit.”
My whole body feels like it’s vibrating from tension, which means it takes longer than it should have to notice that my flip phone is ringing in my coat pocket. This sends me briefly into an entirely new freak-out, because the first possibility that occurs to me is that it’s my father trying to call me, and seeing a Boston area code in the caller ID doesn’t help with that. But there’s a reason I recognize the area code, I realize as I stare at it: I called that number this morning. It’s Xochitl. I pick up.
“Hi,” I say. “It’s Steph.”
“Steph,” Xochitl’s voice says. “You called me from your old phone. I figured there had to be a reason. But you haven’t been picking up.”
“Mom disappeared last night,” I say. “She left me a note to get in touch with you. She said she’d do the same and you could tell us where to meet. Do you know where she is?”
There’s a long pause.
“Xochitl,” I say. “Please tell me my mom’s been in touch with you.”
“The only call I got was from you,” Xochitl says. “When did you last see her?”
Chaos on CatNet Page 21