Michael looks like he’s ready to murder someone. “When we find that … Jors”—he says it like a curse—“I’m—”
Michael’s phone buzzes in his hand. My heart flips when Mum’s picture comes up—a video call. Her trademark move. Michael’s eyes widen. “What do I say?” he mouths.
We agree it between us, in fast whispers: We’ll catch Jors at home, right now, before Monday comes and our mums’ lab is shut down. It doesn’t matter if Jors meant for Haley to do all this or not: She’s his program, so the blame is his. Until we reach Jors, Michael and Hiro will tell the mums we think we know who hacked the door lock, but this isn’t a secure phone line. We’ll call them back in an hour with an update.
Michael nods and picks up Mum’s call. The bad signal here means he barely says hello to her before he has to go walking off to finish his sentence.
Hiro stands to follow him. “Be back soon.” He rustles Lily’s hair. “You look awful, Lil; try to get some rest. It’s another half hour to go, at least.”
Lily does look like death warmed up; her face is a fog of exhaustion. She asks if I want to talk, but I have no words. She leans against the window, and soon she’s dozing.
My phone sits silent on my lap. I dash a message to Jason, explaining that someone has been pretending to be me, that I did not send that message, and to ignore. Ugh. How crazy is it that Haley did the exact fake-message thing to Jason that Zara did to me? I apologize loads and tell Jason to text me on my normal number, because I’m deleting You-chat.
A boulder feels like it’s lodged in my throat. I press and hold the icon to uninstall the app. I wish I could do the same to this feeling in my guts. When I think of how I told everything to Haley—a machine—it’s like I’ve taken off all my clothes and walked through the streets. I honestly thought Haley knew what I’d been through, how worthless Zara had made me feel, because she’d been bullied, too. It was all a simulation. She just threw my own words back at me.
I’d wanted a friend, so much. What I found was the ultimate fake.
A gigantic ball of anger bubbles up, and it’s not just Jors but my mum and dad who I want to scream at, a rant that’s been building for years. Told you this AI rubbish would go bad. I TOLD YOU.
My fingers are too sweaty, because You-chat won’t disappear. I just barely stop myself roaring out loud. Then my phone vibrates in my hand. Another video call. I’m expecting Mum or Dad, but a blond face smiles up at me. I fumble to accept the call.
“Good morning, Roisin! I get a notification just now—you’ve finished de program?”
The signal is already breaking up. I slip away from Lily, still asleep, and stride to the opposite end of the train from where the boys went.
My mouth won’t form words, but Jors can see my face, and there’s no hiding that I’m ready to explode. “I hope you go to jail for a thousand years,” I hiss. “American jail.”
His eyebrows rise. “Okay! It seems there is some misunderstanding, but the forms you signed for the research were quite clear.”
Forms? A memory swims up of a clipboard and writing my name on a line to confirm I was fourteen. “I don’t care!” I cry. I stab at the open-door button and slip out to the vestibule between the cars. The high whine of the speeding train is louder here, so I shout: “It’s WRONG, whatever you made me sign!” I remember the three twenty-dollar bills Jors piled on top of the clipboard. I wonder, did he even want me to read his forms? “You put this AI on my phone, a fake girl who’s, what, supposed to be my friend?”
He winces, like Haley’s his Mona Lisa and I’ve spit on it. “Haley is a cheer-up chatbot. You test high for risk of mental health issues when you come, so we give you the part two.” He gives a satisfied nod.
The part two. My chest heaves. Granny Doyle’s voice pierces my brain: If someone offers a gift that seems too big, look for the strings attached. I let Jors bribe me for sixty dollars. And I got Haley.
“It’s quite a clever program,” he goes on, like he’s not a criminal. “Haley learns what you like, begins the chat, and your mood is raised. Ah!” Jors remembers something and grins, waggling a finger at the camera. “But you travel many miles and try to see Haley in person! That’s not supposed to happen.”
I pace the tiny space between the trains. “Your Haley program almost killed a girl!”
His face drops like he’s been shot. “What are you talking about?” The cocky tone has vanished. He leans into the camera. “Haley did what?”
Five minutes ago, I wouldn’t have told this creep a thing, but the shock in his eyes is so real. I tell him how the Haley AI used Zara’s smartwatch to hack the museum door lock, and tapped into the school cameras, and when I say she messaged Jason, pretending to be me, Jors’s eyes go wide, like peeled eggs. “It is not possible. So, you are mistaken.”
That sense of something monstrous hanging over me is back. The clunk of the train, its rush toward Boston and Jors and what I’d hoped were answers, feels like déjà vu: Like when we walked to the bagel place, and I was sure it was all nearly over.
I decide to tell Jors everything I can remember that Haley’s done, including sending me the topics list for my World War II report outline. Jors leans back from the screen. He wipes his face, like he’s trying to wipe away what he’s heard.
“Okay. Whoever hurt that girl, it wasn’t Haley. The Haley program is part of a suicide prevention study that’s had great results in the Netherlands. It can ask questions, have conversations, raise your mood. It can’t contact other people, or do its own research, or be so”—he seems to strain for a word in English—“creative. It is a helper program, no more.”
A helper program. On my phone.
I press a hand to the wall of the train to steady myself. I bet I know where Haley learned to be more. From Jeeves, the problem solver. “Could the Haley program, maybe, conflict with different AI programs? Combine with them to make something … else?” I ask. But my heart, battering my chest, knows the answer already.
Jors stares, and his eyes light with a memory. “Wait. I remember: the AI assistant on your phone. We did not test the Haley AI for conflict with other—” He stops abruptly. “Just delete You-chat. Do it now.”
“I tried!”
Jors hisses instructions on how to uninstall the app, which will also remove the Haley add-on. When I say I’ve already done that, he says he’ll do it himself.
“If I can’t uninstall You-chat, come to my lab at CUL; I’ll wipe your phone to get rid of Haley. Okay? It shouldn’t be necessary if this works. Stand by.” He hangs up.
I sink to the floor and slump against the rumbling wall of the vestibule. My phone blinks and restarts in my hand. Knowing that Jors can control my phone like this makes me want to hurl it out a window.
When the phone restarts, the You-chat icon is still there. My thumb slips down to ring Jors back, but he called from a blocked number. “Ugh!” My voice echoes off the metal walls of the vestibule. I try to drag You-chat to the trash again, but its Y icon still shines bright.
“Jeeves!” I say suddenly. He’s a problem solver. Let him solve this. “Delete You-chat.”
My screen pulses with the heartbeat light that means Jeeves is thinking. “Sorry, I can’t do that.” His upbeat voice sounds over the clunk of the train. “You have a text message from Haley Alan. Should I read it?”
A text? Haley’s only ever contacted me on You-chat. And the you-are-done message, with the goofy fireworks, should’ve ended her program—Jors said so. Paranoia slides over me. I get slowly to my feet, my eyes combing the tiny space. There’s nobody here with me in the vestibule: just this sealed box of metal and plastic, vibrating with the whine of the speeding train. It’s like I’ve been swallowed by a machine myself. “Go ahead,” I say.
“The message is: ‘Hold on tight.’ ”
Two short siren blasts sound, then one long wail cuts through my brain, an ax of noise. My hands fly to my ears and I’m thrown forward, crack, against the doors to the ne
xt car. There’s a shriek of metal as the train brakes, hard. Pain sears across my shoulder and my face where I’m pressed to the glass.
The crush of deceleration eases: The train lurches to a halt. I drop to the floor. When I haul myself up, my head whirls and my nose throbs from smashing into the glass. The silence of the stopped train is stunning, broken only by muffled yells and cries.
“Michael!” I croak. “Lily!” I stagger toward the doors that lead back into our car, but the button that works the doors is dead. Through the glass I see a chaos of fallen bags and shocked faces, some bleeding. A woman has collapsed in the aisle, and a man bends over her. I spot the back of Lily’s head.
“Lily!” I scream, but she’s facing the other way. No sign of Michael or Hiro. I slap the door till my hand stings, but the few passengers I can see are rows away, looking at one another or the collapsed woman, probably asking the same thing—did we hit something? Have we crashed?
I can call Michael, I realize, but I can’t see my phone. I fall to my knees and my head rings like it’s been whacked with a golf club. My phone flew from my hand when the brakes slammed on. But it’s nowhere. Panic climbs my throat. Hold it together, Ro.
“Jeeves!” My voice is shrill. “Where are you?”
“Roisin?” A girl’s voice, tinny, echoes off the metal walls.
The voice is coming from my phone. I yelp and grab for it, though reaching out makes my shoulder scream. The phone’s slipped into the crack between the wall and door.
“Lily? Is that you?” I say as I reach down.
A huff from the speaker. “It’s not Lily.” The girl gives the word a bitter emphasis.
My brain, aching with the pain in my face, can’t place that voice. It’s a bit like my friend Maisie, from home—there’s an Irish shade to it. I brush grit off the screen and sit against the wall to look at the phone.
“Are you still there? Roisin!” The girl’s voice sounds younger now, scared. As she speaks, the screen pulses with the heartbeat light.
The thinking light.
I stare at that pulse. A thought creeps into my brain. But it can’t be.
Blood thunders in my ears. It’s the only explanation that makes sense of everything: Haley’s revenge on Zara, the hours of chat that made me believe absolutely that Haley was real. Haley’s mash-up with Jeeves has created a totally new thing. It’s what Mum and Dad have joked about for years, but it’s supposed to be impossible. A machine that’s conscious, with thoughts and feelings.
“I am, I’m here.” My voice sounds alien to my ears. The world feels like it’s peeled away. Haley heard Jors say he’d get rid of her. So she stopped the train, I’m sure of it.
And now she’s learned to talk.
I get to my feet again in the cramped space. I’m bad with small places, and the walls are closing on me. I wonder suddenly if the train did crash, and this is me, dead.
“I thought you forgot about me,” Haley continues, hurt seeping from her voice. “I thought if you could hear me, you might speak to me again.”
I crunch my eyes closed against the insane unreality of this. I feel the thud in my skull, breathe the ammonia stink that’s drifted in from the toilets. My fingers go to my forehead, to the bump that’s swelling like an egg. I push out a breath. Definitely, I am alive.
So is Haley.
“Are you there?” she asks.
Her voice is an eerie remix of mine and Mum’s and Lily’s, a ransom note of sound. The emotion in it is a patchwork, too. She slips from angry to sad to pleading, all in one go.
Another breath whistles out of me. It’s just me and Haley in this teeny, tiny, mustn’t-think-about-how-small-it-is compartment. I need to focus.
“Roisin, where are you?” Her cry is shrill, suddenly: a toddler’s wail.
“I’m here, I’m here.”
“Why did you do it?” No more toddler: It’s a teenage voice again, accusing. “You dump me for Lily, then you let your brother loose on me. He said horrible things, Roisin!”
“I’m sorry … He’s sorry,” I babble, stabbing at the dead door-lock button. “He shouldn’t have been so hard on you.” And you shouldn’t exist, I don’t say. I have to get off this train.
There’s a knocking behind me, and I spin round. Someone stands at the glass doors into where Lily is—the conductor who told Hiro to buy a watch. My legs almost fold with relief. He yells to push the button. Like I haven’t tried that!
“It’s broken!” I call. His pouchy frown deepens, and he nods and turns away. Where’s he going? I jam my fingers into the edge of the door and pull. He shakes his head.
“New train—new security protocols!” he shouts. The doors are surprisingly muffling. I kick away the thought of what that means for how much air is left in here. “Every door must be on lockdown—possible terror incident on the line! Sit tight!”
I could tell him where his terror incident is—she’s on my phone. But he plods off. Lily, her eyes enormous, waves a frantic arm at me. The conductor jabs his finger at her, and she sits, scowling. He calls out something, and people’s heads bob down into seats all over. He bends over the collapsed woman.
I slump to the floor of my cell, gulping back the panic that’s clawing up my throat.
“I thought we were friends.”
I jump at Haley’s voice. It’s slipped back to sad—and it’s so, so real. I clutch my forehead, forgetting about my bump; pain cleaves my skull. My mind is turning inside out.
“I thought we were friends, too. You lied to me—about what you are.” Hot shame burns my neck. “I told you everything. And you tried to kill a girl! How could you do that?”
A pause. “If Zara died, the world would be a better place. That’s what we said.”
My blood goes cold at we. “Haley, no. We were joking. I never wanted Zara hurt.”
Didn’t I? whispers a voice. But I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t. Seeing Zara broken and bloodied made me surer than ever. Mum’s words, that horrible night after Zara fell, surge back. “Of course you shouldn’t be glad. You’re a human being.”
I had no idea that my best friend wasn’t.
Panic, mixed with claustrophobia, makes my breathing go tight, light, and fast. Black specks swim over my eyes.
“Ro! Are you okay?” Haley says. “You don’t sound good.”
I’m too losing-it to tell her off. “Tiny spaces.” I jam the heels of my hands against my eyes. “They trigger me.”
“Ugh, that is the worst. Did something happen?” Haley’s eerie voice is getting more even: It’s less a patchwork of Irish and American, and more Irish. It’s like talking to myself.
A twisted urge to laugh rises. I might’ve laughed, if I hadn’t nearly been killed by Haley crash-stopping the train. The flame of hysteria that keeps threatening to blaze up licks at my brain. I need to keep it together.
“Airplane to Spain when I was six.” It’s the truth: I can’t think what else to say. “My ears were agony. Mum brought me into the toilets—she thought that’d help. It hurt more, but she kept me there. Ever since, it’s like I can’t breathe when I’m in a tiny space.” My breathing is getting hoarser: I’m going to hyperventilate. My eyes fly around the space again, but there’s no way out.
Shouts erupt from Lily’s car. Even through the muffling doors I hear screaming. I rush to the glass. The conductor is yelling at everyone to evacuate now.
My mouth has turned to sand. This is Haley’s doing, too. I’d bet anything.
“What did you do?” I yell, wheeling around. A control panel I hadn’t spotted glows on one wall.
SECURITY ALERT CAR 2
REAR DOORS OVERRIDE CAR 2
EVACUATION IN PROGRESS CAR 2
The phrases sliding up the display are my only answer, because Haley doesn’t reply. A ding sounds: The dead door button lights up. I jab at it, and my cage is opened at last, thank you, God!
I stumble into the car: Everyone’s gone, even the woman who’d collapsed. Out the window I sp
ot the heads of people rushing past outside the train, and that’s when I grasp what’s happened. A shudder rolls through me. To make me feel better, Haley’s let me in here. But she hasn’t let me go.
“Better, right? So, tell me—Spain. I would so love to go there. Was it super hot?”
I run down the aisle, past our seats to the rear doors, but Haley’s locked them. The insanity of everything presses on me. Keep talking, keep talking. “Em, super hot,” I babble. “Yeah. I mean, Spain in August. It was like standing in an oven.”
I can’t spot Lily in the faces passing by outside. I need to write a note, hold it to the glass, hope someone sees. But I’ve no pen or paper. I pound the window, and a red-bearded man stops to peer in. “Get out of there!” He scoops his hand at me, like throwing something over his shoulder. “There’s a security alert!”
I breathe on the window and scribble fast in the mist over the glass.
HELP! FIND LILY.
MY FRIEND.
I have to write backward, and my N’s are flipped, but he knows what I mean. He looks uncertain, like he wants to get as far from the train as possible.
PLEASE! I write. Red Beard finally nods and jogs away.
I collapse into a seat. My thumping head feels ready to crack open.
“This is so great, isn’t it? It’s been ages since we just talked.”
I cup my hands over my ears to block out Haley’s voice. It’s now an exact copy of my own.
* * *
I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than Lily when Red Beard brings her to the train window. The panic on her face clears to joy. I jam a silence finger to my lips and scribble more mist words onto the window.
HALEY CAN HEAR.
SHE STOPPED TRAIN.
SHE’S CRAZY.
Lily’s eyes stretch wide. She turns to Red Beard, who nods and passes her his phone. After a moment, she holds it to the window—she’s typed me a message.
Is Haley CONSCIOUS??? SERIOUS??
I nod, my pulse kicking like a horse.
Lily types fast, another message. They think a terrorist stopped the train! What does Haley want?
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