I didn’t wait for Rain to say what was on his mind. I wanted to get this out before I decided against it. “I’ll make you a deal,” I told him. “If you help me find my family, if you help get them to safety, far away from the New Capitalists, then I’ll help you with whatever it is you and your friends are planning. Wouldn’t it benefit your cause to reveal I was alive and well and fighting on your side?”
Rain took a step backward, leaned against the wall behind him. He shook his head. He seemed stunned by the offer. “But Skylar, that’s—”
“Just hear me out,” I interrupted. I wouldn’t let him say no. He had resources and I wanted access to them. “You tried to rescue me, which means I can trust you. And if you’re against the New Capitalists, that means we’re already on the same side. Consider the possibilities.”
Rain wouldn’t look at me. He studied the calluses on his hands, the cuts and the scrapes. “It would be dangerous.”
“Up on the cliff, I showed I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, you did.” Rain started to pace back and forth across the room. It made me think of Adam, made me wish to see him, someone I knew was a friend. I could almost see Rain’s thoughts spinning now, the way his eyes burned. “And it’s true, we could use you. You could help us.” Rain’s voice rose in excitement. “Once people hear you’re on our side it would give us the advantage. There are Keepers who haven’t chosen their allegiance yet and we need them with us.” The skin on Rain’s face was flushed and his hand waved through the air as he talked. “And the rebellion we’re planning involves more than just the Keepers. It involves citizens in the App World and some of the seventeens who got left behind.”
I closed my eyes. The possibility of seeing people from home washed over me. That most of them were Singles like me was heartening. “Can I see them? The seventeens?”
Rain was nodding, more to himself. “Yes, you could. And we’d be able to do some tests.”
My eyebrows arched. “Some tests?”
“Just trust me,” he said. “I’ll explain on our way out there. We have a place where everyone is gathered. A secret place.”
I got up from my chair. Rain and I watched each other from opposite sides of the musty room as I tried to decide on my answer. “All right,” I said finally. “I’m in.”
A slow smile spread across Rain’s face.
“All right,” he said. “Me, too.”
I took a step closer.
So did Rain. “I’ll come for you at your Keeper’s in the early morning, before the sun rises. It will be easier for us to get out of the city that way. Less conspicuous.”
I took another step, so Rain and I were face-to-face. “Okay. But let’s be clear. I’ll join your cause, and in exchange, you’ll use your resources to help find my family.”
Rain’s smile slipped. He hesitated a moment. But then whatever had given him pause fell away and he nodded.
This time, I was the one who reached out my hand. “Deal?”
Rain held my gaze. Clasped my hand in his. “Deal.”
The library was still bustling as we moved through it, people coming in and out of the doors, the sun shining through each time someone opened one of them. I turned to say good-bye to Rain, but he was so close behind me we nearly crashed into each other.
He frowned. “I’ll walk you back to the Keeper’s. She must be worried sick about you. She’s going to be angry, too.”
I let the scarf slip lower so I could speak. “I got here on my own. I can get back on my own too.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re stubborn, you know that? If you’re not careful, that’s going to get you in trouble.”
“No, I’m determined to find my family,” I corrected. “They’re two different things. And it’s my determination that’s going to help your cause.”
He shook his head. Then he shrugged. “Fine. Have it your way.”
I studied Rain again, the way his eyes flashed when he spoke to me. This was the Rain Holt I’d seen on the mountaintop, the Rain who would stand up to his father and rescue me, the one who’d rebel against the horrifying plans of the New Capitalists. It was so easy to get caught up in his words and his passion. For a brief moment, I saw what made the Under Eighteens swoon over him at home.
“You’re not at all how I imagined you’d be,” I said.
Exhaustion flickered across Rain’s face, so quickly I almost missed it. Then a lopsided grin appeared to replace it. “I probably don’t want to know what you imagined about me from the App World, do I?”
“No, actually.” I shook my head, my hand already grabbing the end of the scarf to pull it higher across my face. “You don’t.”
I managed to get back to the mansion without anyone paying me undue attention. My eyes wanted to close even as I put one foot in front of the other. It was strange how the body could command rest, protesting further use by beginning to shutdown, the mind powerless to its needs. I passed the brightly colored roses, the trees with leaves like teardrops falling toward the ground, and the sea, the smell of it drenching the air. As I neared the door I had slipped out earlier today, I saw the Keeper waiting for me. She was pacing back and forth. I started across the wide marble esplanade.
When she saw me her face lit up with relief, and then darkened with anger. “Where have you been?” she demanded. Her typically neat braids, usually pulled up and away from her face, were frayed and falling everywhere, and her chest rose and fell quickly with great heaving breaths. “I’ve been so worried! It’s dangerous for you in the city. You could have been captured!”
“I’m fine,” I told her quietly, caught between regret and guilt. I stopped in front of her, trying to decide what to say next. A bird chirped overhead, the only sound other than the leaves rustling in the breeze. The sun was shining on my face as it dropped low in the sky, making way for evening. “I’m sorry I took your key, but I wish you hadn’t felt like you had to lock me in.” I looked at her, my eyes wide and honest. “I also wish you had enough faith to tell me the truth about my place in this world.”
“You saw Rain,” she said. The anger on the Keeper’s face began to break apart. “I was protecting you, Skylar.” Her voice wavered. “You’re only a girl,” she added. “I wanted to give you time to adjust to your body, even if it was only a little bit.” She regarded me for another moment, her eyes shining like glass. Then she threw her arms around me in a hug. She held me tight, sniffling. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Slowly, I extended my arms around her.
“Come inside,” she said after a while, letting me go. “You need your rest.” She turned and headed toward the door.
I hung back a moment, not quite ready to shut myself away. I watched the sky turn red and pink as the sun disappeared below the horizon. Not blue like me, not like me at all. For some reason, this thought was a relief.
Hands. There were hands on my skin, my body, pushing me. Shoving me. Hands again. I remembered them from before.
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed.
“It’s okay, shhhhhh, it’s okay,” came a soothing voice. “It’s just me, Skylar. It’s only me.” The hands slipped away—the Keeper’s hands. They’d been on my shoulders, shaking me awake. I opened my eyes. The Keeper turned on the lamp next to the bed, the sudden brightness startling.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, squinting, my voice hoarse.
“Nothing’s wrong.” She sat down on the bed, smoothed the blanket with her palm like always, a gesture of comfort I was growing used to. “You were dreaming. Do you want to talk about it?”
I took a deep breath, the air seeming thicker for some reason. I shook my head. “No. I’m all right. What time is it?” I asked. It felt as though I hadn’t slept at all.
“Four thirty in the morning.” The Keeper was about to say something else when I saw we had company.
Rain appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. “Good morning.” He sounded too awake for this hour. “We should get out of
New Port City before the sun rises.”
I pulled the sheet up to my neck. “I need to get dressed.”
He nodded, and the Keeper ushered him into the other room. She shut the door behind her, but then—ever so slowly and silently—I opened it a crack so I could hear what they were discussing.
“This is happening too quickly,” the Keeper was saying. “You’re pushing her.”
“No,” Rain said. “This was Skylar’s decision.”
“Do you really think that’s wise?” the Keeper asked.
“Yes. She can do a lot of good for us.”
“Does she know . . . ?”
“Not yet.”
The Keeper whispered something else, too low for me to catch.
By the time I finished dressing and emerged from my room, the Keeper and Rain were standing side by side, not looking at each other. I put a hand on the Keeper’s arm. “I know you want to protect me, how much you worry, but I’ll be fine.”
She glanced sideways at Rain. “I’m going to make myself some tea to calm my nerves,” she said, and headed off toward the kitchen. When she passed Rain, she added, “I don’t like this.” I heard the sound of the faucet and rushing water as she filled the teakettle and set it onto the stove to heat.
Rain’s eyes went to the scarf dangling in my hand. “You won’t need that today.”
I set it aside on the couch. Then I stopped in the kitchen. “We’re leaving,” I said to the Keeper. Rain had already slipped outside.
She took down a cup and saucer from the cabinet. “Be careful,” she said.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,” I told her. Just before I walked through the door, there came the sharp shriek of the kettle, that awful sound echoing loud and high in my ears like a warning, and I hoped the words I’d spoken to her were true.
21
Field trip
THE WORLD WAS still dark, the only sound our footsteps in the grass as Rain and I stole across the lawn. The moon was a lonely slice of light in the sky. We headed toward the city center, the streets becoming narrower, the buildings rising higher and higher like a stairway reaching for the stars. It seemed as though Rain and I were the only two people in the Real World.
“It’s so quiet,” I said.
Rain glanced at me, his face in shadows. “It won’t be quiet for long. This way.” He beckoned me down another street.
Eventually we came to a stop before a staircase that led underground. We walked through a tunnel to an abandoned-looking floor beneath one of the city’s buildings. It was so eerily empty it reminded me of Loner Town. The only sound was of water dripping from the ceiling into a puddle. I slowed my pace and shivered. The air was cool amid so much concrete. We turned another corner.
I halted with surprise. “We’re taking a car?”
“This place is an old parking garage.” Rain walked up to a small black car and knocked on the hood with his fist. It was all right angles and peeling paint. A long cord connected it to a charging station in the wall. “And yes, we are. Where we’re going is much too far to walk.”
I peered inside the windows. The seats were tan and torn, the stuffing pushing up through the gashes. The car looked like it might fall apart. “Does it still work?”
“Yup,” Rain said. He sounded proud. He unplugged it from the charging station. “Real sun and wind is pretty amazing at powering things. Even cars.”
“How did you find it? I didn’t see any in the city.”
He opened the driver’s side door. It creaked in protest. “There aren’t many left.”
I eyed him skeptically. “And you can drive it.”
Rain nodded. He took a deep breath and looked at me over the top of the car. “Honestly, I didn’t even think to try until I saw what you could do that day on the cliff.”
I eyed him back. “What does that”—I knocked on the top of the car with my fist, the metal cold—“have to do with this?”
“Well, there are a number of theories out there about how the plugs are changing our brains. Some of them are pretty doom and gloom, but not all are,” he said. “I recently started to test one of them out on myself.”
In the silence, the water dripped and plopped from the ceiling into the puddles. I started to put two and two together. “Before I unplugged, Lacy mentioned something about how living virtually might alter brain chemistry, and have an effect on the body. What else do you know?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Think back to your time in the App World for a minute,” Rain hinted. “Think about all the skills you learned, and the kinds of things you do when you’re gaming.”
I nodded, remembering all the things I used to love to do, especially things like swimming. “Sure, but in the App World, we do everything with our minds.”
“Yeah, and that mind is connected to a real brain in a real body.”
I shook my head. “You think the skills we learn virtually are transferrable to the Real World?” On one level it sounded impossible, but the more I thought about it, the more it also made sense. It would account for so many things that until now seemed mysterious. On the cliff that day, I’d even imagined I was in a game, and acted accordingly—as though all the skills I’d had when I was playing in the App World were skills I still held and could apply at will. It would account for how I could find my way around New Port City without seeming to know where I was going. I ran my hand along the top of the car, over the rough spots of paint and the smooth metal, seeing it with new eyes. “So you can drive here,” I said slowly. “Because you could drive in the App World.”
Rain’s hand rested on the open door. He nodded. “As it turns out, all those racing games prepared me well. Gaming especially seems to prep your brain so that once you learn to connect your mind to the body’s movements, you simply know how to do things here that you thought you could only do in the App World. Or at least, that’s the theory,” he added.
The possibilities were stunning. And exciting. If this were true, it meant that all that time we spent in the App World had an actual effect on the real body, and how it connected with the brain. It meant that Apping could change us—all of us—and in ways that could be wonderful, or awful, depending on which body, which mind was in control of those skills. “If your theory is right, the implications are huge.”
Rain’s eyes were alight. “I know. Though I’m not sure if it applies to everyone evenly. The brain is a complicated part of the body.”
Then I remembered the guard I’d stabbed. All that blood. “Virtual experience doesn’t replace Real World experience, though. The stakes are different here. And so are the consequences,” I added. In a game, no one got hurt for real. No one died. I felt my body slump a little with the sheer mental weight of it.
Rain watched me solemnly. “This is true, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Now let’s go.” He got in the car and shut the door.
I shook off thoughts of the guard and slid into the passenger side.
Rain put the key in the ignition and patted the dashboard lovingly. Then he turned it.
The car roared to life.
Rain stepped on the gas and suddenly we were moving. My knuckles were white from gripping the handle on the door. Even though Rain’s theory made sense, it was another thing to test it out in a vehicle that could end up killing us. He maneuvered through the underground parking garage until we reached a ramp that led up to the street. We got to the end of it and rounded the corner. The city was still dark as we headed down the boulevard that cut across the island and ended at the cliff. There were no other cars and no one else out so we sped along, block after block, until we reached what looked like a giant gaping arch over the ocean.
A bridge.
“Are we leaving New Port?” I asked.
Rain glanced at me. Bobbed his head once.
It was still pitch-black outside. The only glow was from the car’s headlights, two pools of light stretching out ahead and cutting through the darkness as we rose up, up, up over
this ribbon of concrete and metal that stretched across the water. Eventually we came to the other side of it and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I turned around and looked behind us.
Through the back window, the skyscrapers of New Port City cut a series of shadows across the darkness. A few lights were on in the buildings, proof that there was still life in the city’s midst. Somehow, those tiny sparks were comforting. The sun was just beginning to lift, the warm glow of red burning along the horizon. We raced along the empty road, Rain swerving occasionally to avoid a pothole.
“You really can drive,” I said.
“You could, too,” he said quietly. “Though you’d have to practice first, somewhere safe, where there isn’t anything to crash into.”
“Right,” I said. “What about piloting an airplane? Or a helicopter?” I went through the list of things I’d learned to do while I was gaming.
“If you could get your hands on one of them, sure,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to be on board for the test flights.”
The gears of my mind were turning. “So what does this mean for other App World citizens? You mentioned you weren’t sure if the way the plugs change our brain chemistry would affect everyone in the same way.”
The car leaned hard into a sharp curve in the highway. “That’s what I’d like to figure out.” Rain shifted the wheel expertly. “In theory, sure, the brain and therefore the body would have the same instincts and skills a person developed while in the App World. But you also have to remember: the real body is vulnerable in ways that the virtual self isn’t. So, for example, if a tiger ripped off someone’s arm, it would be gone forever.”
“Well, that’s disappointing,” I said. “I liked the idea of those transferrable skills including the one where I can regenerate a limb.”
Rain laughed and I joined in. “No kidding,” he said.
The sun became a great ball of fire in front of us. Rain put on a pair of sunglasses and handed me a second pair that he pulled from the glove compartment.
I put them on. “How do you think we make all those skills work?” I asked, remembering how when I woke up at the Keeper’s, I could barely focus my eyes, how I had trouble speaking, how my legs struggled to hold me up. “Is it always adrenaline that makes them kick in?”
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