The Child Thief 2: Deep Shadows

by Bella Forrest

  “So, hiding our faces was completely pointless in the end,” I concluded. “They’re going to have our addresses anyhow. If that list actually includes us.”

  And that was the horrible truth.

  If those lists contained our personal information, and if the Ministry had infiltrated OH+, then they did have everything they needed to track us down if they dug deeply enough to find the lists. And without some sort of technical support, we had no way of knowing what they were up to, no way of protecting ourselves.

  We were going to fail, not only at saving our friends, but at surviving.

  “So, if Nathan has been spying on us and keeping notes about it, he just put all our lives in danger,” I concluded. We might all die because of what he’d done, and we had no idea why.

  “Do you think they went after the techs because they know we need them?” Jackie asked slowly, sitting up from where she’d flopped onto the floor. “Do you think they’re trying to keep us from breaking our friends out of jail?”

  “That seems overly simplistic, though it might be correct,” Jace replied. “It makes you wonder what they’re holding our friends for.”

  “It can’t just be that,” I replied. “Think about it. They rigged OH+ in such a specific way, and it doesn’t really make sense. There was a trip wire on the sign-in, but then they froze the site so that no one could get through the sign-in at all. They made it so that you actually had to hack the site to get in, then filled it with snare protocols to trap and track anyone who got in there. They set it up specifically to catch the techs. That’s got to be about more than just keeping our friends in jail.”

  Suddenly, my phone rang, and we all jumped in surprise. It was Gabby. I exhaled and hit the accept button.

  “Gabby, I hope you have something good for us,” I muttered.

  She sighed.

  “Not particularly. Can you put me on speaker?”

  I did.

  “Go ahead,” I urged her.

  “I was trying to find a way to match all of those addresses to their owners, like you asked. As I texted you earlier, I was on the web, trying to figure out how I could get into public records without looking like I was getting into public records, and starting to poke around with what little information we actually have. It turns out that some of your addresses are on the list. Robin, yours is, and Jackie, yours. Ant, yours too. Hux’s isn’t.”

  Her words dropped into a dead silence, leaving the four of us staring at each other wordlessly.

  At least it answered one of the questions, though it wasn’t an answer any of us had wanted to hear.

  It also brought up others. Why were Jackie, Ant, and I on that list while Jace wasn’t? More importantly, had the Ministry found that list, or had it somehow escaped their attention?

  Until we knew the answer to that, none of our homes were going to be safe. We had to get the hell out of here—the sooner, the better.

  After a long pause, Gabby continued speaking.

  “So I haven’t found out anything more about that list, but I did happen upon something else.”

  She paused, and it was obvious from her silence that whatever it was she’d found was bothering her.

  “And?” I prompted, wondering if I even wanted to know.

  “And you’re not going to like it,” she murmured. “I had a tracker watching the OH+ portal, just to see if anything changed, and something did. They replaced the entire portal with a video. A video that requires a sign-in, and I’m guessing that any OH+ admin sign-in will do. They probably replaced the coding for the portal with the coding for the video so signing in to it will take the same steps as signing in to the portal did. It’s meant for our eyes only. They must have assumed that someone would still be trying to get into the site. Someone with an admin sign-in. Otherwise, why would they have put it there?”

  “What?” I gasped.

  It made sense, up to a point. The techs and admins could be different people, and I assumed that could be true of any portal like OH+. After all, Jace, the most technologically challenged person I’d ever met, was an admin. Administrative duties meant organization and oversight, not just hacking and programming.

  They’d stolen our techs so that we couldn’t get into the site ourselves—or at least they thought they had. But they hadn’t known who the admins were, and had assumed some of them had still been free. So they’d left a message that only admins would have access to. It didn’t take a genius to guess that it was a message left for the very top level of people.

  They’d left a message that they hoped our leaders saw.

  Another long pause ensued, before Gabby sighed again.

  “I’ve asked some of my friends if they’d ever heard of the Ministry sending anyone personalized videos, and no one has ever heard of them doing anything like this before. I can’t find anything that indicates a history of doing it, though I don’t suppose anyone would have left it in writing. Mostly the government stays off the public web. They’ve got better things to do, I guess, than interact with the commoners. This is not their usual style, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.” Again, she stopped speaking, as if to gather her breath. “Guys, I think we’re in trouble.”

  I gulped, agreeing wholeheartedly. If what I’d seen today, combined with the fact that the Ministry had released a video just for us, was any indication, we were indeed in big trouble.

  How many more times would we be able to escape the net closing in around us?

  26

  We were gathered at a back table in the Roundhouse that evening, awaiting an update from Gabby. We’d agreed that we needed to be together for whatever this video was going to show us, and that the Roundhouse was the safest place to watch it. Although it was a public place, it was also… well, a public place. Since we weren’t sure whether the Ministry had found the List of Five Hundred, staying in public seemed like the best choice.

  Even so, I jumped anytime anyone made a loud sound, and the sound of the door opening and closing was pure hell on my nerves.

  No one else looked any better than I felt. Jace was doing his best to act calm, but I could tell by his widened eyes that he was just as worried as me. Jackie was several shades paler than her usual tanned self, and Ant looked pinched around the mouth. Granted, we had the additional stress of being chased by the Ministry on our minds, but I doubted the others in our group were doing very well, either.

  I didn’t know where they’d spent the day, but Julia and Marco both looked like they were ready to throw up, and Allerra appeared to be deeply regretting whatever had led her to join OH+ in the first place.

  I’d still been going to summer camp at her age, I realized abruptly. Zion had told me that she was only sixteen, and when I was that age I’d still been entrenched in my childhood. Going to classes and spending money as if none of it mattered. I’d lived in a world that the people around me had probably never even known. I’d been so young, and so naïve.

  Allerra and Gabby, on the other hand, had seen exactly what the Burchard Regime had made of the world. They had personal experience with what it meant to be on the low end of society.

  And now, with what it means to be hunted, and in terrible danger.

  I pushed aside the heartbreaking thought and moved my eyes toward Alexy, Zion, and Cloyd. It hadn’t escaped my notice that out of all of us, they seemed the least disturbed. Oh sure, they seemed more nervous than usual, and Alexy hadn’t cracked any sarcastic jokes when I entered with Jace’s hand in mine. Yet they still didn’t look nearly as frightened as the rest of us. Certainly not frightened enough, considering we were about to watch a video that the Ministry had sent directly to us.

  I frowned, remembering what the man in black who had grabbed me that morning had said.

  “We’re here to help. Zion and Alexy sent us.”

  It had been very distinct and very specific. I definitely hadn’t misheard him. We hadn’t even addressed that event in the stress of sorting things out, but that didn’t m
ean I hadn’t been wondering. Who had those men been, and how had Alexy and Zion sent them? Who were Alexy and Zion? And while I was at it, who was Cloyd?

  My thoughts were interrupted by my phone buzzing. I almost jumped out of my skin before I got it together enough to grab it off the table.

  Glancing at the caller ID, I saw Gabby’s name. I hit the accept button and brought the phone quickly to my ear.

  “Hi, Gabby,” I said, my voice cracking under the strain. “What have you got for us?”

  “Can you put me on speaker, so I can talk to everyone?” she asked.

  I hit the loudspeaker button, then placed my phone back on the table, making sure the sound was low. Everyone was going to have to lean in, but I didn’t want anyone in the bar overhearing our conversation. There was no telling who might be in this bar, and I knew now that the Ministry could be anywhere—at any time.

  “Gabby, can you hear me?” I murmured, motioning for the rest of the group to get as close to the phone as they could.

  “I hear you,” she replied slowly.

  “We’re going to need to talk very quietly, so if our voices come through too muffled, let us know.”

  “Okay.” There was a tense pause, and then: “I’m… Robin, I’m not sure what to do with this. I’m not sure…”

  “I know,” I said softly.

  It didn’t take a lot to figure out what was bothering her. When it had just been Jace, Ant, Jackie, and myself, she hadn’t hesitated. It had just been the four of us listening to her, and we hadn’t really questioned her—which had likely added to her confidence. Suddenly, there were many people listening to her, and it was giving her stage fright.

  Understandably.

  She was just a kid, and she didn’t really have much experience with hacking to start with. Not to mention the fact that she was socially a little bit… underdeveloped. She’d grown up on a ship with only family around her, and though I’d never had a problem with her, I knew that too many strangers made her nervous.

  “Just pretend you’re only talking to me and Hux, okay?” I told her, hoping it would calm her down and get her moving.

  The longer we sat around here, the more time the Ministry had to find us—or lay a trap for us somewhere else. We needed to get into whatever she’d found, figure it out, and then decide how we were going to address it. The lack of direction was killing me.

  Gabby took a while to respond, but finally replied, “Yeah, I think I can do that. So I’m just going to pretend I’m only talking to you, then.”

  Her voice started growing stronger, and I gave her a grin, even though I knew she couldn’t see it.

  “So, as I told you earlier, I’ve had… a tracker on the OH+ portal, because I wanted to see if they were going to do anything else with it. I didn’t have any specific expectations, but I thought it’d be smart to keep an eye on it, you know? About three hours ago, they did something. They switched out the portal itself for a video, so that the entry to the OH+ network now leads to video footage rather than our site.”

  “What’d they do with the site?” Zion asked nervously. “Where’s all the stuff that was stored in there?”

  “I-I-” Gabby stuttered, thrown off by the sound of a strange—and very gruff—voice.

  I shot Zion a look that told him to keep his mouth shut.

  “She obviously can’t know that, can she?” I told him. “She’s not the one who took the site down.”

  I turned back to the phone, but Gabby was already answering for me. “And that won’t be a problem, will it, since I have a copy of the entire thing sitting on my desktop.”

  A grin split my face. I couldn’t help it. It was just so clever—and so very Gabby. Of course, she had that copy still sitting there. The impressed look on Zion’s face just made it even sweeter, and for a moment I wished Gabby herself had been here to see it.

  I glanced up at Zion, my eyebrows rising up toward my hairline.

  “Well, Zion, looks like we have the information from the site. Are there any other pressing questions, or should we move on to seeing what the Ministry wants to tell us?”

  Zion nodded, but before I could ask Gabby to move forward, Cloyd put a hand up.

  “Hold on,” he said. “How do we even know that what this Gabby has is real? How do we know this is something we should actually take seriously?”

  “I’m going to say we know that because the OH+ site disappeared, and this video took its place, Boyd,” Ant said sharply. “That’s a pretty big clue, don’t you think?”

  I shot him a grateful look, but it was matched by Cloyd’s look of frustration.

  “Why would she know about it when Nathan doesn’t?” he asked. “We all know that Nathan is better with tech and has far more experience than this girl. From what I’ve heard, she’s only a kid, for goodness’ sake. How would she have discovered something he didn’t?”

  Jace leaned forward abruptly and frowned at Cloyd.

  “What’s your issue, Boyd?” he asked. “The answer to that is very simple: Nathan didn’t want to be involved with the portal. He knew there was a chance it was set up with snare protocols and other tracking devices, and he didn’t want to get anywhere close to it. In fact, he specifically told me he wanted someone else to do it, and Gabby very kindly volunteered. She was incredibly brave, I might add, and she did a brilliant job. What’s the problem here?”

  Cloyd sat back in his chair and folded his arms, looking like a little boy who was pouting.

  “The problem is that we don’t know her,” he said gruffly. “We don’t know anything about her. She could be misleading us all.”

  I cringed at the fact that Gabby was right there on the phone, hearing all of this, and brought one fist sharply down on the table.

  “But you know me, don’t you?” I asked, tipping my head at him and trying to get him to back off with the intensity. He stared at me, and finally gave me a grudging nod. I nodded back.

  “And I vouch for her,” I said simply. “If she says she has something we need to see, I believe her. And if you trust me, and I’m telling you that you can trust her, then that should be all you require. She’s taking a huge risk to help us, and even if she’s supposedly off the grid”—I shot Jace a glance, hoping he’d confirm that this was still true, and he nodded—“nothing about this makes me comfortable. I think she deserves a little bit of credit, here.”

  I shut my mouth and gave him a look that dared him to disagree with me, but he maintained a stony silence.

  When I turned my eyes toward Zion, and finally Alexy, I found no expression on Zion’s face and a smug grin on Alexy’s, as if I’d somehow pleased her with that response. I gave her a confused look, but then turned to the phone again.

  “What do you mean, off the grid?” Zion asked suddenly.

  My mind flew through the implications of his question, and I shook my head firmly. Gabby’s privacy was just as important as anyone else’s, and I wasn’t going to give up her location—even if that location was somewhere in the middle of the ocean. She might be counting on her constantly changing position to keep her safe from the Ministry, but that didn’t make it my right to tell anyone else about it.

  “That’s not my information to give out. Now, if there aren’t going to be any further interruptions, I suggest we call this meeting to order. Gabby?”

  “Thanks, Robin,” she said quietly. “So, as I was saying, we’ve now got a video, and it’s obviously meant for us. They’re going to know the moment we pick it up; I can’t help that. I’ve been looking and looking for a way to watch the video without them realizing that we are, but they’ve got it set up so that it’ll only play once, and I can’t get around that. I’m guessing they wouldn’t want this sort of thing shared. So once we’ve watched it the first time, that’s it. It’s like an exploding message.”

  The mention of anything exploding made me cringe, and I exchanged a quick look with Jackie, my bottom lip between my teeth. I’d never realized the people who ran the Mi
nistry were such big fans of blowing things up.

  “So, they’re going to know that we watched it,” Jace repeated slowly. “I don’t know if it will matter, honestly. Because whatever they’ve got to say, I suspect it will require a response. In which case we’ll be showing that we saw it almost immediately. Right? So what harm will really be done by showing that we watched it?”

  There was a long pause from the other end, and I hoped she wasn’t going to give us any more bad news, because we’d had enough of that for the day.

  Finally, she replied, “You’re right. They’re going to know, but they were probably going to know anyhow. Since I can’t find a way around it, I expect it’s a mute point.”

  “A moot point,” I corrected her automatically, my mind boggled again at how young she really was. “Now, let’s get to it. Gabby, the video?”

  There was a sigh, and then: “Okay, right. As I said, I had to have an admin’s sign-in to get into it, so I used Hux’s. I haven’t watched it, but I did download it, so I’m going to pipe everyone the video through the encrypted app Nelson gave us. I suggest we all watch it at the same time. Remember, this is only going to be good for one viewing. Once we watch it, there are no do-overs. It’s going to self-destruct. So make sure you’re paying attention.”

  Again, we were interrupted by Cloyd.

  “Excuse me?” he asked sharply. He turned toward Jace, his face both shocked and somehow betrayed. “She has your sign-in? How? Why? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? How stupid it is?”

  I scooted back several inches, shocked at the look on his face. Was he attacking Jace? I’d thought they were the closest of friends! Sure, I’d overheard them arguing, but this seemed bigger than that. I looked from Cloyd’s angry face to Jace’s confused one, and back again, unsure how to respond to the situation.