6 Digit Passcode

by Collins, Abigail

  I want to know where I am. I want to know who the other children who arrived with me are, and what they’re here for. I have what feels like a thousand questions running through my mind, and only one way of getting the answers.

  Without warning, a sharp, hot sensation pulses in the back of my neck. It pushes deeper, and I can feel it crawling under each layer of my skin. It feels like a smoldering coal has been shot into me, but instead of going straight through my throat, it embeds itself just under the skin. But the pain of it is just as bad as if it had gone out the other side of my body.

  I jump back unconsciously, my hand automatically reaching for the base of my neck. I fall against Tesla, who staggers a bit but keeps us both upright. The syringe falls to the floor, and I can hear the barrel of it shatter.

  I expect to see blood on my fingers as I pull them away from my wound, but they’re clean. My head is throbbing, but the burning has subsided somewhat. I push myself off of Tesla quickly and back away from her until my back hits the wall. My whole body feels like it’s pulsing with adrenaline.

  “What the hell?” I sputter, grabbing at my neck again. When I push down on it, pain shoots through my spine and circles around my head.

  Tesla smirks – actually smirks – and kneels down to pick up the pieces of broken glass from the floor.

  “When all of this is over,” she says sharply, “you are going to run away. We’ve learned enough about you to know that is what you are planning to do. This is merely a precaution. If you try to hide, we will find you.”

  No. No no no. No.

  I don’t know what I expected when I realized that the object Tesla was assembling was a syringe. I might have thought she was vaccinating me for something – maybe a disease that’s common in whatever city she’s taken me to. Or perhaps she was planning to sedate me, or drug me into telling her my most precious secrets, or maybe even poison me. I expected a chemical to run through my body, painless and silent, and I would have accepted it no matter how it affected my body.

  But this isn’t an injection – it’s a tracking device. She’s implanted a microchip into my neck, into the chord of my body that connects to the base of my brain, that she and the other Digits can control. I don’t know what else she can do with it, but it scares me enough knowing that she can use it to track my every move.

  I wasn’t planning to run away – at least not immediately. First, I want to avenge my parents and learn more about their murderers. I want to know what my mother did to deserve her fate. I want to learn what happened to my father’s body, and why my brother and I were spared.

  But after all of that happens, yes, I had planned to flee. Once I’ve accomplished my goals, the Digits will become my enemies; they will want nothing more than to see me dead. And they’ll come after Fray, too. I can’t let that happen; he’s all I have left.

  “Why do you assume I’m going to do that?” I ask. I feel braver than I probably should, but I’m too upset to think of the consequences of my actions right now. “I thought we were supposed to be helping each other. How can I trust you if you’ve already proven that I have no reason to?”

  Tesla’s expression remains the same, but her eyes look slightly darker. There is no hint of confusion on her face, however. It’s almost like she expected me to react this way.

  “Last night you went home to bury your mother,” Tesla says; it isn’t a question, so I don’t respond. “You found a note on her body that told you not to trust us. After you read it, you intended to return to your friend’s house to gather your things and run away with your brother, is that correct?”

  A wave of shock and panic surges through my body like electricity; I can feel it tingling in my fingertips and my toes.

  “How… how did you – ”

  I am stammering; the words I want to say keep getting stuck in my throat. Tesla interrupts me before I can continue, and for once I am thankful for it.

  “I already told you that we sent out a group of our own to examine the scene of the crime. How would we have checked your mother’s body for marks without noticing the note she so clearly held in her hand? Use your brain, child. Your mother didn’t die with a letter in her hand. Someone had to have put it there.”

  I can practically hear the gears turning in my head. I imagine that this must be how it feels when a Digit is thinking; if their brains are as mechanical as their bodies, then they must have metal pieces inside of them that bump into each other when they think too hard. This is how I like to imagine them, anyway. The more robotic they seem, the less human I find myself believing they are.

  “You! You did it?”

  “I’ve already told you that I wasn’t there personally, but technically, yes. The note was found in your mother’s room, but we knew that you would never find it on your own. And we thought it imperative that you did find it.”

  I press my palms flat against the wall behind me, as if by pushing it hard enough I can somehow get it to move. My eyes catch on the only exit door, but it is between myself and Tesla, and I know without a doubt who is the fastest among us.

  “That note…” I begin, weighing my words on my tongue carefully before I say them. “My mother wrote about your kind. She said that the Digits would come for me like they came for her. She told me to run away. If you don’t want me to do that, then why would you purposely let me read something that tells me to?”

  Just when I think perhaps I’ve finally gotten the upper hand, Tesla cracks a smile that sends a chill down my spine and makes the back of my neck ache.

  “You’re assuming that the Digits she was referring to are the ones from Division 6.”

  It doesn’t even occur to me what exactly she’s saying, at first, but when it finally hits me it’s like a rush of wind in my face. I hold my breath and wait for it to pass, but it doesn’t.

  The darkness in Tesla’s eyes lifts, and for a moment she almost looks human. She tosses the broken pieces of the syringe into a trash bin next to the desk and stands.

  “We aren’t the bad guys here, Everly,” she says. “The Digits who killed your mother were from another Division. They are the ones she was warning you about – not us.”

  “But – then, why?” My voice cracks the louder it gets. “If my parents were murdered by some nobodies in another city, then why does it matter so much to you? My parents meant nothing to you. They were just simple, unimportant humans, weren’t they?”

  I feel anger building in my chest again, and I take deep, silent breaths to try to push it down. Even though my parents are gone, I feel a powerful urge to protect them. If I couldn’t have defended their lives, I feel like the least I can do is defend their memories.

  “They were,” Tesla says simply, and I scrape my fingernails against the wall to distract myself. “To be honest, it isn’t their deaths that matter to me. But the reason they were targeted, yes – that is very much a concern of mine.”

  I ignore the first part of her statement and choose instead to focus on the last thing she says. Later, it will bother me that she told me that my parents’ lives meant nothing to her, but I can’t afford to dwell on things like that right now.

  “Please,” I say instead, trying to sound a lot more cooperative than I feel inside. “Please, tell me. I need to know why. I’ll do whatever you want after, I promise. But if you know what happened…”

  “You’re going to do whatever I want anyway, remember?” She taps on the back of her own neck and points to me. “And we’ve already discussed this. If you keep your word and help us, then I will give you whatever information you want. I’d even drop you off on the doorstep of your mother’s killer with a loaded gun, if I thought that would ease your guilt even marginally.”

  My face burns with heat and I dig my nails against the wall until they start to chip. Tesla walks to the door without looking at me and pulls it open. The creaking of its hinges startles me and I flinch.

  “It will all be worth it in the end. Your patience will be rewarded.” She ho
lds the door open for me and waits for me to exit first; I push myself off of the wall and walk across the room as slowly as I can. “But for now, you’re going to be assigned a cabin, where you’ll be staying during the duration of your time here. You’re going to want to get some sleep tonight; you’ve got a lot to think about.”

  I brush my hair off of my shoulders and down my back, and an unpleasant prickling sensation runs through my neck. I don’t have a lot of thinking to do, it occurs to me. All of my thinking is being done for me, now.

  Chapter thirteen

  I wake up the next morning to a stranger standing over my bed, and I am so startled that I fall to the floor in a mess of sheets and limbs. The cabin I’ve been assigned to was empty and vacant when I settled in last night, but now there is a lanky, dark-haired boy looking down at me with his arms crossed and a broad smile on his face.

  He bursts into laughter, and I quickly scramble to make sure my bedsheets are covering the necessary parts of my body; I am wearing a thin nightgown I threw in my suitcase in my haste yesterday; the only other pajamas I remembered to bring are too warm and itchy for the mild weather, but I feel a bit chilly and exposed without my pile of blankets and pillows covering me up.

  I pull the sheets up to my neck, my face burning from my chin to my ears. I am thankful that my skin is dark enough to hide most of the redness in my cheeks, but I’m certain that my embarrassment is still very much evident to the stranger looking down at me.

  After a minute, his laughter fades into a breathy chuckle and he says, “Good morning, sleepy-head! Sorry about the abrupt wake-up call; I really didn’t think you’d be that surprised to see me. Have you never had a roommate before?”

  The gears in my brain turn slower in the morning, and I have to wait for the fog that has accumulated in my sleep to clear from inside of my mind before I can process what he’s saying. I don’t know what time it is, but it feels way too early for my head to ache this much.

  “Room… mate?” I say, shaking my head. “But… you’re a guy. And…”

  “And? What?” He shoots me a look that makes me regret having opened my mouth to begin with and puts his hands on his hips. “Cabins aren’t assigned by gender. And if you’re worried about me jumping you in your sleep, if I really wanted to, I would have done it while you were out cold for the past five hours. Plus,” he puffs out his chest like he’s proud of himself, “I’m already taken.”

  I look him over, being as discrete as possible and avoiding his gaze. His hair is shiny and black as coal, and it looks like it would reach down between his shoulder-blades if it wasn’t currently tied back in a small ponytail. His eyes are a pale blue that looks almost gray, and his skin, though noticeably whiter than my own, has an olive tinge to it that looks more natural than a tan. He’s dressed plainly, in a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a white tank top, but I can see his stomach muscles from underneath his shirt. He may look like a scrawny white boy from afar, but close up he’s about as close to physical perfection as I can imagine.

  “You’re not my type, anyway,” I spit out, and he gives me a look that tells me he definitely noticed me checking him out.

  “Sure thing, princess. Good thing you’re not my type either, then, isn’t it?” He smiles and extends his hand towards me. “So you can stop hiding on the floor now.”

  “I’m not hiding. I’m… ruminating.”

  I attempt a smile but it comes across as more of a grimace.

  “Well, you can do that just as easily standing up, can’t you?” He waves his hand impatiently until I take it; I expect it to be cold, especially given the way he’s dressed, but instead I feel warmth radiating off of his entire body. “My name is Dori, by the way. And yours is…?”

  He pulls me to my feet, and I keep a firm hold of my bedsheets with my free hand. To his credit, though, his eyes don’t leave my face. Huh; I guess I’m really not his type. I’m kind of relieved, actually. I don’t think I’d be able to share a cabin with him if I knew that he was.

  “I’m Everly,” I say, pulling my hand out of his as soon as my feet are flat on the ground. “Sorry, but what kind of name is Dori?”

  “It’s short for ‘Dorian’. But don’t call me that. Ever.” He looks deadly serious, but then the corner of his lips twitches and he grins. I notice that even though his teeth look practically perfect, his smile is undeniably lopsided. “What’s ‘Everly’ short for, then?”

  “Nothing. It’s just Everly.”

  “Can I call you ‘Eve’?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Nah, I think I will. I like the sound of it better, anyway.” He claps me on the shoulder and nods to himself. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see a small suitcase laying open on the floor next to the other bed in the cabin – my roommate’s bed now, I suppose – with a pile of clothes stacked inside of it. There is a blanket on top of the mattress that looks hand-made, and I wonder if someone Dori knows made it for him. A paperback novel rests on the nightstand, with worn edges and a cover that looks like a blur of blue and red from where I’m standing.

  It occurs to me that all of these items belong to Dori. That means that he was allowed to bring whatever he wanted to here, and from what I can tell he was given ample time to choose exactly what he took with him. Where I’d had just minutes to shove whatever I could into my suitcase for fear of what Tesla would do if I wasted too much time, Dori had folded and stacked each article of clothing, selecting his favorite books and a quilt that is clearly sentimental to him.

  I wonder if I was the only one who was forced to come here. Were the others threatened? Were their loved ones bound and injured to ensure their cooperation? Do they trust what the Digits tell them, even though they’re most likely lying?

  Dori walks away from me and crouches down next to his bed, rifling through his suitcase. He pulls out a couple of shirts and holds them up against his chest, tossing the ones he rejects haphazardly onto the edge of the bed. I guess I was wrong about him being a neat-freak.

  “So, what are you here for?” he asks me, his back still turned. “What train did you come in on?”

  He seems to settle on a navy-blue button-up shirt and – after a few minutes’ consideration – a pair of jeans that don’t look much different than the ones he’s already wearing, except perhaps a shade darker.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, confused. “I didn’t have a choice. A Digit brought me here and I don’t even really know why – Wait! What are you doing?”

  Dori turns around to face me, his tank top balled up in his hands and his jeans around his knees. He raises his eyebrows at me like he doesn’t even realize why I’m bothered by the fact that he’s standing half-naked in the middle of the room with a woman – well, okay, technically a girl – watching just a few feet in front of him.

  “Getting dressed,” he says matter-of-factly. “We’re all supposed to meet in the Main Lab in an hour, and I want to grab some breakfast before I go. I got in late last night, and I’m starving.”

  As if on cue, my own stomach grumbles unpleasantly, reminding me that I haven’t eaten in nearly a day, either. Dori grins at me before pulling his shirt down over his head and smoothing it out over the waist of his jeans.

  “The Main Lab? Where’s that?”

  “You really didn’t get much of a tour, did you?” he asks, and I shake my head. “You must have just gotten here. I mean, so did I, but at least I knew what I was signing up for. I’m guessing you did something to piss off your guide and got sent to bed early?”

  I wouldn’t exactly call Tesla my ‘guide,’ but he’s right, otherwise. My expression must give away what I’m thinking, because his grin widens until his pointed incisors jut out over one side of his lip, and the smug look on his face makes my cheeks burn.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” he says in lieu of my silence. “I can show you around if you want. Of course, we’ll have to see how much freedom they’ll give us first. I assume they’re going to be watc
hing us quite closely from now on.”

  Something in his tone grabs my attention, and I press my fingernails into the insides of my palms to wake myself up. He’s acting far too cavalier for someone in the same position as I am. He doesn’t look frightened, or confused, or even surprised that he’s here, and I’ve been in this place almost a full day longer than he has.

  “You’re talking about the Digits, right?” I ask hesitantly. “You said they’re watching us. Why? Do you know what they want? Why we’re here?”

  He shrugs and says, “Your guess is as good as mine. I know that they claim they need our help with something, but I have no idea what people like us can do that they can’t.”

  I get the distinct feeling that Dori isn’t telling me the truth – at least, not all of it – but I know next to nothing about him, so I can’t be sure. And now that we’re roommates, I feel like I have to be especially careful not to betray his trust. Besides the boy in the wheelchair, he’s the only person I’ve encountered here who has shown me any hint of friendliness; I can’t afford to risk losing that.

  “People like us?” I ask instead, my curiosity making it hard for me to keep my silence.

  “You know…” He waves one hand around airily and hums like he’s trying to think of the right word. “Outcasts. People society won’t miss if they disappear.”

  He takes in my shocked expression with no small measure of amusement on his face. I want to be upset with him for being so coy about things I don’t know, but I am too busy being angry at everyone else. Particularly, Tesla, Cyrus, and the other Digits responsible for me being here. But I am also disappointed in Roma and my mother – they both knew something about this place, and these people, and they kept it from me all this time. I might not be here if they had just been honest with me.

  Dori pulls a jacket out of his suitcase and swings it over one shoulder. He pushes the bag shut but doesn’t zip it closed, and sits down on the bed so hard the mattress squeaks.