6 Digit Passcode

by Collins, Abigail

  We reach my room, and my father lets go of me to open the door. He pulls something out of his pocket, but I only see a glint of silver before his hand has hidden it.

  “Like mother, like daughter, right?” he says, and I know from how he feels about my mother now that it isn’t a compliment. “You know that’s not the answer I wanted to hear.”

  I am halfway inside of the doorway when I feel him push me from behind, just hard enough to pitch me forward into the room. The door slams shut behind me, and I hear a metallic click coming from the other side of its handle.

  I know before I attempt to turn it that it is locked, and my father – who isn’t really my father – has the key.

  Chapter thirty-one

  I bang on the door, twist the handle as hard as I can, and scream until my throat gets hoarse. I can hear my father’s footsteps as he walks away, but I can’t stop pleading with him, yelling for somebody, anybody to let me out. The room that had once felt like a spacious hotel suit now feels more like a prison cell.

  I can’t help but think that this is like my experience at Division 6 all over again. Here, the torture chambers have been painted pastel colors and decorated like bedrooms, but their purpose is the same. And though their goals may be different, I think that Divisions 4 and 6 are more alike than they’d care to admit; they are both using humans as tools to achieve their objectives, each holding the view that their own race is superior.

  They are too busy trying to create the perfect being that they haven’t even noticed the damage they’ve done in the process.

  Is it better to be numb and never have to feel pain, or to have just enough of an emotional range to miss the feelings you can no longer have? I wouldn’t choose either option, and I’ve decided not to take sides in this war. I am a human, and that’s all I want to be.

  The only problem is, I’m surrounded on all sides by people who want to change me into something else.

  I look around me, trying to figure out what I should do next. Even if I could find something small enough to fit into the locking mechanism on the door, I wouldn’t know how to pick it, and one shove of my shoulder into the thick panel of wood tells me that I have no chance of breaking the door down.

  There is a single window in the room, small and just high enough that I have to stand on the points of my toes to see out of it. I’ve looked through it many times in my attempt to learn more about the Division I’m now living in, but all I can see are the rooftops of a few surrounding buildings and a cement alleyway cutting between a couple of them. I have rarely seen people walking outside, except for those entering or leaving what I presume are shops along the street. I can tell from my view that the building I am in is probably the tallest and most occupied of all of them, but I still don’t know how many other humans are staying here with me.

  The window is made out of a layer of thick glass that cannot be opened from the inside. But even if I could get through it, there’s nowhere for me to go from this height; there are no ladders or balconies I can use to climb down. I wonder if the floors below me also have windows, and how many other people have tried to escape through them. But then I remember that nearly everyone else is here voluntarily, so I doubt any of them have actually tried leaving.

  I press down on the wooden table in the corner hard enough to break off one of its legs, and I try to pry the door open with it. The thin plank is useless against the sturdy wooden panel, and when I fit it beneath the door and pull up on it the end splinters and cracks.

  But even if I could somehow get out of this room, what would I do then?

  The Digits must have a weak spot – part of them is human, after all. I know that their brains are their only source of mortality, and I’ve seen more than a few times what a bullet to the head can do to one of them. But I don’t want to kill anybody, even if they’re acting as my enemies. The gun I raised against the Digits I faced in my simulations still sends shivers down my spine when I think about it, and I only ever shot at places that I knew wouldn’t cause serious harm.

  But the Digits in Division 6 can be controlled. Whoever creates the chips in their foreheads can take over their minds and bend them into whatever kind of monster they want. If I could somehow access that kind of technology, I would have the chance to shut them all down – at least until I could figure out how to fix them. But I’m just one person – one weak, human being – and I don’t know the first thing about technology; we never learned about it in school, and now I know why.

  I change out of my sweat-stained clothes and wash my face in the bathroom sink. In the mirror above the counter my reflection startles me; I barely recognize myself anymore. My face has thinned out, creating hollows in my cheeks and deep pits beneath my eyes. My hair has grown wild and uneven, so I tie it back with a ribbon to keep it out of my line of sight. My dark skin has paled and looks almost as ashy as my mother’s did after she died.

  The Digits have already changed me this much, without even touching my body. They’ve only picked at my brain, but the rest of my body has had to bear the consequences. If they keep this up, I’ll be dead long before they have the chance to kill me.

  Frantically, I begin searching the room, with one thought on my mind – I have to get out of here.

  I check the closet, but it’s as empty as I was when I first came here. The dresser drawers are filed with my meager supply of spare clothes, and the bag Rin gave me is propped up against the end of the bed, with Fray’s teddy bear as its only contents. All of the instruments they used to look into my mind have been taken away, leaving only a desk lamp and an empty tray of food from yesterday afternoon.

  I decide to pack my things, just in case I’m somehow able to escape; I pile my clothes into my bag haphazardly and push down on them until the button closes without any bulges. Laying the bag in the middle of my bed, I pull a chair out from behind the table and push it against the wall beneath the window. I climb on top of it, holding on to the back of the chair for balance, and take in as much of the outside world as I can through the small rectangle of glass.

  The whirring sound of vehicles passing hits my ears, but I can’t see any movement on the street below. I notice that there are ridges on the walls just underneath each of the windows on the outside, and I guess that they’re probably separated from each other by a distance as broad as I am tall. The fixtures look kind of like window-wells, and I wonder if that’s what they were used as once. Now, they’re just bits of chipping plastic jutting out of a concrete wall.

  If I were to break the window and climb down the building by using the ridges as hand- and foot-holds, what are my chances of making it to the ground alive?

  Before I’ve even finished thinking my plan through – including what I would do if I actually did reach the ground in one piece – a noise from just outside of the door to my room stops me cold; it begins with quiet, shuffling footsteps, followed by a beat of silence that filters through the air like smoke.

  Then I hear the unmistakable click of a lock and the grating of metal, and the door creaks open slowly. I don’t know who I expect to walk through it – my father, hopefully, or maybe Flynn, Rin, or any of the other Digits I’ve come across here – but the last person on my mind is the one who greets me with a smile before closing the door and blocking my only exit with his body.

  Well, his new body, technically.

  “I would advise against jumping out of the window,” Dori says to me with a loose smile on his face. “Unless you want to risk dying – or worse.”

  “What’s worse than dying?” I ask without thinking.

  His smile falters, and I notice for the first time that he had a gun holstered around his waist and one hand curled tightly around the grip.

  “If you don’t know that by now, then maybe you really should consider jumping.”

  His tone has more bite in it than I remember. Maybe Holden’s death has made him bitter, or maybe he’s just behaving the way he’s been programmed to.

  “What
are you doing here?” I ask, turning in place on the chair but not stepping any closer to him. “If you’re here to kill me, then just go ahead and get it over with, because I don’t – ”

  “I’m not here to kill you,” he interrupts. He seems to have only just realized that he’s got his gun half-drawn in one hand, because he quickly lets go of it and crosses his arms to keep them still. “If I was, you would already be dead. I’m here to help you.”

  “Like you helped Holden?”

  I bite my tongue, but the words have already left my mouth. What I’m talking to is just a piece of Dori, wrapped up in layers of mechanics and controlled by the people he once claimed to hate. He couldn’t have stopped himself from killing Holden; his mind isn’t even his own anymore. But it still hurts, because I know how much the real Dori must have been fighting for control, watching from the inside while his own body took the life of the person he loved the most…

  His face falls, his eyes cast downwards. He doesn’t speak for a moment, but if I look closely, I swear I can almost see his shoulders trembling.

  “That wasn’t really me. I would never have done… It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been in my right mind. You know that.”

  I shake my head, but he doesn’t look up at me. “I know that the Dori I first met and the one who shot Holden aren’t the same person. But you’re the same as you were the last time I saw you. You’re still one of them. So if you’re not here to kill me, what are you here for? To kidnap me – bring me back to Division 6 so they can do it for you?”

  “No, they don’t…” He hesitates, and I can feel waves of tension rolling off of him from across the room; “They don’t know that I’m here. I’m not being controlled right now – I promise.”

  “How can I be sure you’re telling the truth?”

  Dori closes his eyes and lifts the fringe of his hair away from his forehead. The shiny red chip is still embedded into his skin – or whatever material his flesh is made out of now – but there is a thin crack running down its center and deep scratch-marks cutting into it on all sides. It looks like Dori carved into his own forehead with a knife, but still couldn’t reach far enough to remove his controller.

  “I know this isn’t really proof. I did my best to get rid of it, but it’s wired inside of my head and I can’t pull it out.” He brushes his hair back into place, taking extra care to make sure it’s covering all of the damage he’s done to himself. “But they can’t control me unless they know where I am – and they don’t. I snuck out during a training session when nobody was watching me.”

  “But can’t they just track you? Using your chip?”

  I can’t believe I’m actually talking to him like I believe his story. Just because he has a few painless gashes on his face doesn’t mean he’s telling me the truth. For all I know, he could be luring me into a trap to get me to come with him back to camp.

  “They can,” he says, the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, “but I’m not planning on giving them enough time to do it. As long as I keep moving, they can never catch me.”

  “But… you can’t just run away forever. They’re going to find you eventually.”

  “That’s true, but I don’t care about that.” He takes a step closer to me, his hand moving back towards the grip of his gun; instinctively, I try to turn away, but I fumble my feet on the chair and only just manage to grab onto the window frame to keep from falling off. “Getting you to safety is all that matters. After that…”

  He lets his words trail off as he pulls his gun out of its holster. Part of me expects him to shoot me with it, or at least aim it at me with a threat on the other end. But instead, he shifts it in his hand until he’s holding it by the barrel and reaches his arm out to me.

  “Take this; you’re going to need it more than I am, and I don’t trust myself with it. Not after… what happened to Holden. Not after what I’ve done with it.”

  “So you’re repenting?” I spit, keeping my hands at my sides. “Is that why you’re doing this? Because you think it’ll make up for what you’ve done?”

  He pauses, keeping his arm raised and his gun held out to me. “No. No, I… I can never repent for what I did. This isn’t about me. I still have a little bit of my humanity left in me, and I want to use it before they take it away. I remember what it felt like to pull the trigger and watch the love of my life die in front of me – because of me – and I can’t go through that again. I need you to take this. Please.”

  He waves the gun at me, and I reluctantly pull it out of his hand and into my own. His grip on it is tight, like his body is instinctively fighting to keep ahold of it, but he lets go as soon as he realizes what he’s doing. Even though the other Digits aren’t actively controlling his mind right now, his body still knows what it was made to do. He’s still a loose cannon, whether he realizes it or not.

  “How… how did you get in here? Aren’t there guards posted at the gates or something?”

  His expression brightens visibly when I change the subject from his failures to his successes, and he grins in a way that is so reminiscent of his human self that it makes my heart ache.

  “Ah, that’s where things get interesting.” He sits down on the end of the bed and motions for me to do the same. I tuck the barrel of his gun into the waistband of my pants and tentatively join him, sitting as close to the door as possible. “You see, Division 6 finishes their training regime with a series of tests to prove your loyalty to their cause. Most of it was… awful.” He shudders. “Holden was the final test, and I didn’t even know it. But after that… They trusted me. They gave me access to their databases, and through them I learned more about each of the Divisions than I was ever taught in school. There’s a reason they tell us so little about them – they’re hiding secrets you can’t even imagine.”

  As excited as I’m sure he is to know all of these things I don’t know, I wish he would just tell me and get it over with. If he’s being tracked right now, it’s only a matter of time before he leads all of Division 6 to Rin’s hiding place, and as much as I’ve grown to distrust her, I still don’t want a war to break out in her homeland.

  When I don’t respond, Dori continues, speaking quicker this time. “Anyway, I discovered that the Digits weren’t originally meant to be the superior race to humans. Actually, they were created by a team of scientists as a way of keeping the smartest people alive long enough to finish their research and help find cures to human illnesses. But greedy people got ahold of the technology, and it expanded way farther than it was ever meant to. I dug a little deeper and I found something I thought you might be interested in.”

  He pauses just long enough to frustrate me, and then asks, “Ever heard of a Digit named Cyrus?”

  Chapter thirty-two

  I try to explain to Dori my connection to Cyrus, but he already knows most of what I tell him. He knows about Tesla, too, but he tells me that she and Cyrus have different ideals – that she’s aligned with Division 6, but he isn’t technically on anyone’s side.

  “Cyrus knew about you before he even met you. He knows about your mother, too,” Dori explains. “I don’t understand the whole story behind your mother’s death, but I do know that Cyrus is the reason she stayed safe for so long. He kept her – all of your family – hidden.”

  “Then… why was he the one who came to get me after she died? He helped Tesla interrogate me and never once tried to stop her from taking me away.”

  “Tesla found out about you on her own. Cyrus has an image to keep up; he can’t let her find out that he’s not on her side.”

  “Then whose side is he on?”

  “His own. Well, yours, technically.”

  I frown and wrack my brain, trying to make sense of it all. If Cyrus was really on my side this whole time, he did a great job of hiding it. And why would a Digit side with a human, anyway? I’m the sort of creature they use as cheap labor and dispensable militia, not as allies. I’m still not convinced that
the Digits don’t share the common goal of wanting to eliminate the human race entirely, because from what I’ve seen, that seems to be what Rin and the rest of Division 4 are trying to achieve.

  Dori sees my confused expression and continues without waiting for me to say anything. “The day after you left the camp, Cyrus came looking for you under the pretense that he wanted to observe your training and check in on the other new recruits. He scanned me, and he must have seen you in my brain somewhere, because the next thing I remember is him disabling my chip and telling me to go after you.”

  “So Cyrus is…” My head aches and I feel a wave of nausea rolling through my stomach. I almost wish that all of the Digits were my enemies, if only so I would know who to trust. Dori nods as if he knows what I’m going to ask, and I change my question without finishing it. “So… there are other Digits like Cyrus? Like, underground human protection services? What’s in it for them?”

  Dori rubs at his eyes, and I think that if he was still human, he would be wiping away tears by now. I wonder if he realizes what he’s doing, or if he still remembers enough of his human self that things like this are just reflexive to him.

  “You know what Division 6 has been trying to accomplish with their ‘training,’ don’t you? They want to build an army of Digits so that they can take over every other Division as their own. They want their Council to rule the world, and they plan to convert every single human to their side after they’ve done it.” I nod silently; none of this is new information to me, but it sounds even more terrifying when it’s all pieced together and said aloud. “But Division 4 is no better. Just because they’re trying to help out as many humans as they can doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it for their own selfish reasons. Cyrus told me about your brain.”