I answered, “Yep,” and he set me down. I sat in one of two chairs arranged in front of the room’s only other furniture, a desk with an out-of-date PC on it. For real, that was it. No wall of state-of-the-art surveillance screens, no “Hang in there!” kitten poster, just…nothing. A fuzzy void with the three of us floating in the middle. Taupe incarnate.
The two of them stood behind the desk, apparently totally unsure what to do.
Finally, the one Nari had charmed the day before—Walton? Weston? He didn’t wear a name tag—shook his head and asked, “What the hell?”
I shrugged.
“Are you high?”
I lifted my chin. I could feel the fake blood drying on my face, neck, hands, chest, stomach. “I am the voice of the misused masses!” I shouted. “I am your conscience personif—”
“Okay!” the other one barked. “Enough of that. We don’t care and there’s no one else listening.”
“Cool, sure,” I said, and settled back into the chair, all calm and casual while inside I was freaking the fuck out. Because
(1) Office, guards, door shut tight behind me. You know, the obvious.
(2) If I was in here, where was San?
(3) What the hell was I doing all this for anyway? To help Bells? Sure. For my own excitement-loving self? Okay. But oh my God if I didn’t get out of here, this one stupid decision could rob me of everything—everything—that I wanted out of the next few years, the next decade? Two decades? My entire life?
(4) HOW WAS I GOING TO GET OUT?!
Seriously. SERIOUSLY. All that planning? It’d been San, San, SanSanSanSanSan. How to get San in. How to get San out. How to deal if San got caught. But what about me? What about Reese? “Run,” Nari had said. Run and “hope they don’t chase you.”
Except, well, funny thing? HE HAD.
I took a slow breath through my nose, held it, and exhaled, trying and failing to slow the iridescent hummingbird pace of my heartbeat.
The guard from Nari’s Owl Cam—I’ll go with Waldo—sat in the desk chair across from me, hands folded on the desktop. “So, Miss…,” he started.
“Voldemorta.”
The other one—let’s say…Garth—arched an eyebrow. “Voldemorta?”
“If you prefer, you may call me She Who Must Not Be Named.”
Garth rolled his eyes and sighed.
Waldo took his hands off the desktop and put them in his lap. The gesture made him look softer, shoulders more rounded, stance informal. “Help me out here,” he said, eyeing me up and down. I imagined what a macabre sight I must be and, for the span of a good spine-length shiver, felt a glittering Super Pegasus’s worth of proud. “What is all this? Protest? A cry for attention?”
I was at a loss. I got why I hadn’t gotten one of those cool Secret Service earpieces, since I was supposed to stay in character, and if I was caught, explaining why a performance artist protester was wearing a freaking earpiece and radio would be sorta tough, not to mention incriminating. But also, What if I got caught?
I was thinking, racking my brain for the easiest, most direct, most expedient lie, anything I could force out of my throat as it constricted with panic, when there was a knock on the door.
Waldo and Garth looked at each other. Garth moved to see who was there. The door was behind me and to my right a little, so I couldn’t see who Garth was talking to when he cracked the door and asked, “Yeah?”
“I’m here for my friend.” Bells’s voice was low and steady. Garth opened the door a little wider and I saw her, standing there in all her sweatshirted, blue-jeaned, ponytailed glory. She looked at me, covered in fake blood, and didn’t so much as flinch.
“Voldemorta is your friend?” Garth asked.
Waldo snorted.
Bells pushed into the room, and in that instant I quit lamenting that she was my rescuer. I’m not proud of it, but yeah, I’d wanted Nari. Nari, so quick on her feet. Nari, so charming and flirtatious. Nari, who’d met Waldo the day before. “Voldemorta is a minor,” Bellamy said. Not true. I’d been a full-blown legal adult for almost four months. But they didn’t know that. She took a wide step past Garth and gestured for me to stand up. I did. “A minor whom you unlawfully restrained. Whom you laid hands on for exercising her right to free speech and freedom of expression.”
I wanted to cheer. Apparently, Nari wasn’t the only one quick on her feet.
“Hey,” Waldo said, standing behind the desk. “She’s trespassing. You’re trespassing!”
Bellamy arched an eyebrow. “Physically occupying the common area of a commercial building during business hours is not trespassing. Maybe loitering, but unless otherwise posted, my friend was entirely within her rights.”
“Within her rights to go completely crazy?”
“Crazy?” If a voice could do things like “drip with disdain,” Bells’s would’ve been doing just that. Salivating with it, drooling. “Using performance art to express her disgust with the iniquities of globalism and unfettered oligarchical capitalism is ‘crazy’?”
Both men raised their eyebrows. Garth opened his mouth to speak, but Bellamy took half a step forward and cut him off with a steady stream of ad-libbed awesome. “Are you aware that the clothing for Rowan Malik’s department store line is manufactured in factories in Southeast Asia where employees, young women mostly, work sixteen-hour days and live twelve to a dorm room? And that that clothing, not including the impact of the refinery of the raw materials needed to make it, is then boxed up and loaded onto enormous barges that not only pollute the air with massive emissions of greenhouse gases but also cause oil and acoustic pollution of the oceans? And that once those boxes are delivered, they’re trucked all over the country to be peddled by workers who primarily make minimum wage, meaning they can’t afford things like health care or college or, at times, basic necessities like housing, which contributes to the cyclical nature of impoverishment among the working poor?
“And that is only one fraction of one aspect of one of Foster Innovations’ affiliated businesses. I can continue. Or, perhaps, we could instead agree that acting upon a passion about the shape of our world, a shape that will doubtlessly affect my friend’s and my future, not to mention the vast majority of the world at large, has little if anything to do with an individual’s state of mental health.”
There was a beat of silence. The most incredibly satisfying beat of silence I have experienced in my life so far.
“Jesus,” Garth muttered.
Waldo pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “It’s Friday,” he said to Garth. “She didn’t hurt anybody.”
“Agreed.” Garth turned to us. “Get out.”
We did.
SANTIAGO
Llevar las riendas.
Take the reins.
An eternity later, which Nari assured me was closer to five minutes, after she’d described the venting schematics she’d managed to find and checked all the floor’s cameras to ensure that it was finally and completely empty, I stood on one of the conference room’s rolling chairs and did a ridiculous thing. After all, apart from my ability to wear a suit while looking a passable twenty-two or -three, this was why I was here. Not to stand on a rolling chair, using the corners of my faux ID to unscrew a vent cover from the ceiling, specifically, but in the event that something demanding the physicality of, say, squirming through a vent or maybe sprinting down eleven flights of stairs in a mad chase occurred.
With the adjustable rolling chair elevated as high as it would go, balancing a foot on each of its armrests, I reached above my head and unscrewed the twelve small screws securing the air-conditioning vent’s cover to the ceiling, putting each screw in an interior pocket of my suit jacket as I went. Next, I wedged my ID under one side of the cover and gently pried it from its encasement, hopping down from the chair to set it on the floor once it was free
.
The vent itself was maybe eighteen inches square and rose at least a foot straight up into the space above the drop ceiling before the shaft leveled out and, per Nari’s research, ran parallel to the outer wall of the building until it took a ninety-degree turn above Foster’s office to run along the other exterior wall.
“Well?” I heard Nari in my ear, impatient. There were no cameras in this room, and I imagined her not being able to see me drove her nuts. As for me, my hands were slick and my heart had grown to fill the entirety of my torso.
Staring up into the duct, I answered, “I can do it.”
I took off my suit jacket and draped it carefully on the conference room table, then tucked my tie inside my shirt between two buttons so it wouldn’t flap around in my way. The radio I unclipped from my belt and put in my front shirt pocket.
“Here goes,” I said into the mic. “Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda.”
“What?”
“ ‘Although the monkey’s dressed in silk, she remains a monkey.’ ”
Nari laughed a little in my ear. I listened hard but didn’t hear Bells in the background. “Again, what?”
I smiled and pressed the button to speak again. “Just thought the moment needed a little something extra, you know?”
“Sure, San, extra,” she said, but I could tell she was smiling. “Maybe go now?”
“Okay.”
I closed my eyes, took one deep breath, then climbed back onto the armrests of the chair. With my arms outstretched, the ledge where the duct leveled out was at least six inches above my fingertips. I held my arms straight above me, bent my knees, and jumped.
I made it. Fingers curled over the flat edge of the vent, the metal slick with a fine layer of dust, legs dangling, chair pushed out from underneath me from the force of my jump, I pulled myself up, careful to keep my elbows tucked in tight at my sides. My shoulders brushed either side of the narrow space. Once I got my chest level with my hands, I stretched first one arm out, then the other, bracing my hands on the duct’s sides, squirming up and forward with muscles straining until, finally, my whole body was in the duct.
The interior was dark, lit only by what light came up through the vent. I lay on my stomach, propped on my elbows, to catch my breath. The steel was cool. I kept my head down to keep from brushing the top. According to the plans Nari’d found, the ductwork ran from the conference room to Foster’s office through his private bathroom, my exit point. I took as deep a breath as the narrow space allowed and moved, army-crawling forward through the duct.
It was not quiet or graceful. I sincerely hoped Nari was right that no one was here.
After ten or fifteen feet of that, I came to the next vent, constructed the same as the other and looking down into Foster’s bathroom. Shit. How was I supposed to get out? The screws needed to be unscrewed from the outside, and breaking the vent would, well, leave a broken vent.
Beyond the foot-and-a-half gap above the bathroom vent, the duct continued on through Foster’s office, the space quickly growing too dark to see where it turned to follow the offices along the building’s eastern side. Lying on my stomach with my arms folded beneath my chest, I stared down the dimly lit vent shaft at the view of the bathroom floor below, then squirmed forward, bending at my waist over the edge of the opening to reach down and shove at the cover with my hand. It was solid.
I pulled myself up into the duct again and moved forward across the gap until I could get my feet down to the vent cover, which I kicked, gently, trying to get the screws to give. “San?” Nari asked in my ear. I ignored her. Over and over, at each of the four corners and along the sides where I knew the screws were from the other vent, I kicked and pushed at it with my toes. One or two at a time, the screw holes stripped, and the cover loosened and finally, finally, clattered to the ground.
Carefully, I lowered myself down the shaft and dropped to the tiled floor, pitching myself slightly to the side to avoid hitting the vent cover.
I stretched my back and wiped my dusty hands on the thighs of my slacks, then reached for the mic at the back of my tie knot. “I’m in.” In Robert Foster’s private bathroom, a billionaire’s private office bathroom that looked exactly as I’d imagined it might: huge, immaculately clean, nicer than anyone could ever need, with an oversized steam shower, built-in closet unit with frosted-glass doors, one of those state-of-the-art electronic toilets, and black marble everywhere. I took it all in as my heart rate slowed; then I retrieved the vent cover from the floor.
“Awesome,” Nari answered.
I leaned the vent cover, thankfully only slightly marred, against the vanity and searched the floor until I found all twelve screws. Cupping them in my palm, checking the count again, I held the mic’s button with my other hand and asked, “How’s Reese?”
Silence as I stood on the counter next to the sink, balancing carefully near the edge, fake employee ID in one hand and cover held up with the other, refitting it into its slot. Silence as I fit the first few of the small screws back into the corners. They hadn’t fared too well, but I managed to force enough of them into their stripped screw holes that the vent seemed solid enough. Those that wouldn’t stay I tucked into my pocket.
“Nari?”
I took a hand towel and wiped down all the surfaces I remembered touching and a few I didn’t, just in case, then threw the towel over my shoulder to wipe down the desk and computer.
“She’s fine.”
I paused. Nari’s tone was flat and hesitant, but if she was lying, there was nothing I could do. I opened the bathroom door.
While Foster’s bathroom screamed tech-obsessed point-oh-one-percenter, his office was a little more demure. I’d seen it on Nari’s Owl Cam, but compared to that narrow, slightly fish-eye version, the real thing was, well, real. The hardwood was a darker color than the floors outside. The air smelled slightly of lavender, maybe eucalyptus, something subtly floral and fresh. From inside the bathroom doorway, I scanned the windows, desk, walls, and was about to step out into the space when I saw it, a single security camera above the office’s door.
“Nari,” I whispered into the mic, eye on the camera. “Are you watching Foster’s office camera feed?”
“What camera?” She paused. “Shit.”
“So that’s a ‘no’?”
“It’s not— Hang on.”
I waited, feeling for my heart rate, trying to keep it slow. If I had to bail and go back through the vent, I’d never get the cover on and—
“Found it. Private feed. I can’t— Dammit.” I heard her frantic typing in the background. “I can’t swap the feed—all I can do is pause it.”
“Can it see the bathroom doorway?” I sank farther back into the bathroom.
Her hesitation was damning. “Yes.”
“Can you see me?”
“No.”
“So we just have to hope he doesn’t notice. That he won’t have a reason, say seventy thousand reasons, to check the footage.”
“The program’s good, Santiago,” she said, defensive. “It’ll work.”
What had Keagan said? Working or not working, it all feels like fire to me. I clenched my jaw, fingers on the flash drive in my pocket, thinking of Bellamy, my parents and sisters, then myself and that feeling when I know I’ve done a dive right.
“Okay. Pause it.” I took a deep breath, and as I finished exhaling, she said, “Okay. Go.”
I crossed the open floor to the desk in six wide strides, pulling the virus-loaded flash drive from my pocket. I clicked the mouse to wake the computer up. The lock screen flashed on, and I typed in the password Nari had learned from the keystroke spyware she’d delivered to Foster weeks ago in an email. Once the home screen opened, I plugged the flash drive into one of the USB ports on the back of the computer, waited the few heartbeats it took for the folder, labe
led HAHAMOFOS in true Nari style, to appear, opened it, downloaded it, and…
That was it.
I ejected the flash drive and shoved it back in my pocket, closed out of the computer, wiped everything down with the hand towel and returned it to its rack in the bathroom, unbuttoned my cuff to use my sleeve to close the bathroom’s door and open the office’s, then stepped out into the hall.
The door closed on its own behind me. The lock on the handle clicked as it shut.
I pressed the mic’s button and said, “Done.”
REESE
I am a rainbow. Freaking incandescence personified.
“Holy shit—I can’t believe you pulled that off,” I said, three inches out of FI’s main doors. The air was fresh! The sky was blue! The sidewalk glittered in the setting sun! Well, no, it didn’t. It was a sidewalk. Concrete and black gum stains and bird shit. But we were free, free, FREE!
“Oh God,” Bells said, “same.”
“What!” I spun on her, smacking her shoulder, still feeling like I was a thousand feet above the ground. My messenger bag, which I’d scooped up off the floor on our way through the lobby, bounced against my hip, heavy with the half-empty jug of fake blood I’d taken in, you know, just in case. The mess of it on my face cracked and flaked around my mouth as I smiled. My shirt was sticky with it. The empty packets were still taped to my stomach. “You just…winged it?”
Bellamy giggle-snorted. “Yup.”
I let out a mad laugh. “I gotta tell ya, Bells. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
Bellamy, four or five inches shorter than me, jogged a step to keep up. “Me either,” she said.
We charged toward Keagan’s car, basically skipping down the sidewalk, freaking flying. For real, a sinkhole could’ve opened up in front of me and I’d have either leapt across it in one weightless bound or cackled the whole way down.
Immoral Code Page 19