Robin, who had always been less interested in The Game, had accused me of being obsessed and a fanatic, so how come he’s so into it now?
“Still as a programmer?” I ask.
“Yeah. I played it 24/7, until I got too good.”
“Too good?” When had that happened?
“I saw what happened to you when you won, and I didn’t want to ping on their system and get recruited to that place.”
“ASTA?”
Robin nods. “It was way too much like an army base. It gave me the creeps. And that was before I knew what they did to you. So I intentionally struck out on a few program challenges and lowered my score. But The Game is not the only game in town. In fact, there are some games and some challenges which are way more fun.”
“What about your schoolwork?”
“I hacked into your laptop and copied your assignments and tests, so I’ve officially met all requirements and passed eleventh grade,” says Robin with an evil grin.
“But that’s cheating!”
“Nah, it’s honing my skills.”
“What skills?”
“Well, I decided if I couldn’t go out,” he gestures beyond the window, the place where you have to get through mom if you want to set foot, “I’d go in. So I learned to hack.”
“You’re a hacker?” What the hell!
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Robin says, sounding wounded.
“It is!”
“You sound like Mom, always worrying that something bad will happen.”
“You’re not paranoid if they are out to get you,” I point out. Sofia had once said that, back when I still believed ASTA’s motives were noble and their methods pure.
Robin points a finger at me. “You’re living proof that playing it safe and doing exactly as you’re told doesn’t necessarily keep you out of harm’s way.”
He has a point.
“Where did you learn how to do it?”
“Here and there. Mostly I’m self-taught.” I swear there’s a note of pride in his voice. “But now I’m part of a community of like-minded alternative-entry programmers —”
“You mean hackers,” I interrupt.
“— who get together and exchange tips and targets, so we can improve our skills.”
Targets. That word again. My brother has been targeting computer systems; I’ve been targeting humans. I guess I’m not in any position to judge.
“Where do you meet?”
“Online. There’s a game called War Galaxy — it’s awesome — and you’re an anonymous character, and you can talk privately with other gamers, in hacker jargon or even computer code. It’s like an underground community, really cool. We’ve all given our avatars names beginning with H — Harry, Hank, Houdini. I’m Hector. I’ve learned so much.”
“And what do you hack?”
“Everything, anything. I got into the school system — gave you an A+ for US Gov.”
“Robin!”
“Pity you didn’t also get one for chemistry, like I did. Gotta say it — I did remarkably well on my finals.”
I throw another cushion at him.
“Cheat.” I’m laughing — amazed at his nerve. Kind of impressed, to be honest.
“But the most interesting site I like to sneak into is The Game.”
“The Game?”
“There’s some interesting stuff in there, it’s incredibly complex with all these interconnecting matrices. And a bunch of some dual-track architecture I haven’t been able to figure out … yet.”
Robin loses me in a barrage of jargon and confusing details. I’m sure my eyes glaze over, but I when I hear him say, “I discussed it with my online group. Those peeps have got some interesting theories about it, too,” I sit up straight and pay attention.
I’m not laughing any more.
“What theories?” I demand.
“The less you know, the better. It’s safer that way.”
“I told you everything!” Almost.
“It’s very technical and complex. You wouldn’t understand, anyway.”
“Robin, please be careful. ASTA and The Game are the same crowd, practically on the same premises. ASTA uses The Game to identify the talent, and then recruits, trains and employs them. You can’t trust anything they say.”
“Huh.”
“What ‘huh’?”
“You’ve changed. You used to always believe what you were told, do what Mom said. Now you’re much less trusting, much more cynical.”
“I learned the hard way. I told you what they’re capable of.”
“Even more reason they need to be investigated. Maybe even stopped.”
“Are you crazy? They’ll see you snooping around inside.”
“Haven’t so far.” Robin is looking mulish.
“They will eventually. They’ve got incredibly bright people working for them — they only select the best.”
“Like you?” He grins, but I ignore his attempt to divert me.
“They’ll catch you sooner or later, and then you’ll be in such trouble. Promise me you’ll quit?”
“I promise I’ll be careful. I hide the secret stuff in a locked safe inside my P.C.” He’s smiling again. He thinks I’m overreacting.
“I’m not kidding, Robin! They watch and track everything. They’ll pick up any intrusions for sure. Maybe they already have and they’re monitoring your every move to see what you’re up to. For all you know, Hank or Houdini might be moles.”
He twists his face into an exaggerated expression of disbelief. “That’s a little far-fetched.”
“There was a mole in our unit!” I bang a fist on the bed, desperate to make him understand how dangerous his “games” are. “She was planted there by the bosses to spy on us. She ratted Quinn and me out. You think they don’t have spies and moles everywhere? Please, Robin, you don’t know — there are some things I haven’t told you, but please believe me when I tell you they’re up to some seriously bad stuff.”
“Like what?”
“The less you know, the better. It’s safer that way.” I throw his own words back at him.
“Very funny, Jinxy.”
“It’s not funny, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s not a game. What I know could get me detained indefinitely or maybe even … worse. Please promise me you’ll stop this crazy-dangerous behavior.”
“Don’t blow a motherboard. I’ll be careful, I promise. Very, very careful. Nothing will go wrong, you’ll see.”
Chapter 20
Bait and switch
Monday morning is cloudy and cool, with a forecast of rain. Robin checks the weather and announces, “It’s a good day for some bait and switch, mother-truckers!”
I laugh, still amazed at how my brother has changed. If I had stayed at home, would he still have changed? Or did the absence of me give him room to unfold? It’s something to think about.
Wearing latex gloves, Robin helps me cut off my ID bracelet and stows it in his pocket. When he’s back from his run, he’ll put it in my bedroom.
I stick my head into my mother’s study, where she’s working on the design of a new website for an online dating service. It’s a service after Mom’s own heart, because not only do you find potential dates on the site rather than in the real world, but the actual dates themselves are safely and hygienically online. You meet your date at a virtual restaurant and chat on voice-over IP, or simultaneously watch a new movie release while sitting “together” in a virtual cinema. She’s told me that the service plans on introducing program-connected sensor gloves, so online lovers will able to hold hands virtually too. What’s next — an implant in your head that fools you into thinking you’re tasting buttered popcorn? I miss the old Cineplex with its bubblegum-crusted armrests, massive screen, and excited crowds of teen girls screaming whenever the abtastic hero took off his shirt. The sooner we get our bizarre society back on track, the better.
I’m loathe to disturb Mom — it would
be so much easier to slip out unannounced — but I have to say goodbye.
“I’m going for a run, Mom. Bye.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, Jinxy.” Her hands hover over the keyboard. Her eyes are filled with concern.
“I’ll be fine, please don’t worry about me.” I hope she remembers these words afterwards.
“Be quick,” she pleads.
I’m tempted to say, “I am just going outside and may be some time,” like that Antarctic explorer who left the tent and was never seen again. But I say only, “Goodbye. Love you,” and close the door again.
Today, I’m wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a zip-up canvas jacket with multiple pockets, and I’m carrying Dad’s old hiking backpack stuffed with my essentials. Today Robin is the one dressed in shorts and a T under a white disposable PPE suit, and he’s carrying my small red backpack.
“When I’m not here for this afternoon’s transport back to ASTA, they’ll send a team to come ask questions,” I warn, pulling the PPE hood up over his head and securing it in place with a bobby pin.
“You went for a run this morning, and afterwards you disappeared. No, I have no idea where you might be — that’s true — and I’m mad at you because you’ve caused our mother great concern.”
I wince, because that will also be true. But unavoidable.
“And all I know is what you said in the note you left in my room — which is to say: nothing.”
In the note, I’d said I was running away because I was unhappy at ASTA and wanted to be with my boyfriend. That I hadn’t told either Robin or my mother any details because it was better if they didn’t know, and I didn’t want them to try come fetch me.
I hope that it will be enough to protect them from more than a basic questioning from ASTA. I think it will. Sarge and Roth will know that I would never share any dangerous details with my mom and Robin, because that would put them in danger of being interrogated. So it would be a futile exercise to grill them.
I hug Robin tightly, make him promise to take care of himself and Mom, and to be ultra-careful online. He makes me swear to try to keep myself safe too.
“Good luck,” we both say at the same time.
Robin exits via the decon unit. In the PPE suit and sunglasses, and disguised by the facemask and hood, he looks indistinguishable from me. Almost. His feet are a size larger than mine, and his running shoes are a dark blue while mine are black, but the spook apparently doesn’t notice because when Robin sets off running in an easterly direction, the brown sedan trails behind.
I put on a respirator and pull a PPE suit over my clothes, because it will be less likely to attract attention than going out exposed. I force myself to wait ten minutes, then head out, westbound, checking over my shoulder that I’m not being followed. The PPE suit fabric doesn’t breathe, so I start sweating almost immediately, even though the soft drizzle of rain is cool on my face. The combination of hot and cold and nerves makes me feel sick, and a little faint, but I run fast — spurred on by my anxiety — and I’m at the old drive-through ten minutes before time.
I shelter under the roof overhang, slouching up against the wall beside the cracked order window, and I wait, telling myself he’ll be here, he’s coming, he won’t leave me here.
Minutes drag by like hours.
I can’t stand still. I push off from the wall and pace up and down the weed-choked drive, sidestepping rusted soda cans and kicking an abandoned kiddies’ meal toy robot into some nearby weeds. A plastic sign hangs lopsidedly off what was once an illuminated menu pole. I read through the menu slowly, to burn through a few more minutes. Burritos, quesadillas, tostadas, empanadas.
I check my watch again. Are the hands even moving?
I’m out of sight of the main road — we still call it that, even though these days it carries almost no traffic — but I still feel exposed, like someone’s watching me, waiting to pounce. What if there was another spook tailing me, and I just didn’t see him?
09h06. He’s not going to come, I know it. No one is — it’s too dangerous and, besides, they won’t want me. He won’t want me.
I should just go.
I’ll wait until 09h15 before giving up.
09h13. I hear the noisy exhaust of a nearing car and run to the corner of the drive-through, braced to sprint if it slows and opens a door, but it merely turns the corner, rattles over a pothole, and keeps going. Shoulders slumped, I slide down against the wall and sit, eyes fixed on my watch, on the hands which creep around, lurch by tiny lurch.
09h15 comes and goes. I’ll wait until 09h20, 09h25, 09h30.
It’s over half an hour after the time I said in the note, and still I sit, head in my hands, staring at the ground where a tiny black ant staggers under the weight of tear-splash. Time passes, but I can’t make myself move. What will I do now?
I yelp as I’m nearly run over by the white panel van that swings into the drive-through. A door slides open. A hand reaches out, seizes my wrist and yanks me inside, shoving me onto the floor. It belongs to a girl wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.
“Go-go-go!” she urges the driver and then turns back to face me.
She braces herself against the metal grid behind the driver, crosses her arms, and studies me from top to toe.
“So,” she says, and her brown eyes are anything but welcoming, “you’re her. The girl who kills.”
Part Three
Chapter 21
Patdown
“I’m Evyan,” says the girl in the back of the van.
“Like the water?”
“It’s with a Y — E.V.Y.A.N.!” she snaps.
“I’m Jinx.”
“I know who you are. We all do.”
“Right.”
We say nothing more during the long drive to wherever it is the rebels are hiding out, wherever it is Quinn may be. My hands sneak inside my jacket and pick at my scabs while I covertly study Evyan. She’s taller than me, older, skinnier, with jet-black hair shaved close on one side of her head and worn long on the other. The entire outer edge of the one ear I can see is pierced with at least a dozen studs and rings, and there’s another through one nostril. She’s dressed in Gothic black from head to Doc-Martined toe. She looks tough and mean, though maybe that’s just the effect of the sneer that twists her lips every time she looks in my direction.
So much for the welcome wagon.
We travel in silence for hours. The old van rattles and bounces over the last thirty minutes of our journey and then judders to a stop. For a few moments, absolute silence presses against my ears, then with a grating noise, the rusty door slides open, flooding the gloomy interior with light. Silhouetted in the doorway, stooping to climb into the van, is a tall, lean figure. Even before I can make out the thick mahogany hair, the slate-gray eyes or the olive-toned skin, I know it’s him by the black-and-white checkerboard-patterned sneakers.
“Quinn!” I breathe out in a whoosh of relief.
Until this moment, I wasn’t sure he was safe. But he’s alive and well. And apparently unperforated by any bullets.
“And?” Quinn says. He is speaking to the Goth-girl; he hasn’t even looked in my direction yet.
“We were there half an hour before she arrived.”
They were? Where were they hiding? Some sniper I am, that I didn’t spot them. Didn’t even think to look because I was so busy checking I wasn’t followed.
“And we waited half an hour after. Didn’t spot any tail or watchers. Pretty sure we weren’t tailed coming back here.”
“Pretty sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Quinn nods approvingly, and Goth-girl grins.
I feel small and stupid sitting on the floor of the van while they speak over my head, like a child at an adult’s meeting, so I clamber to my feet.
“You thought I wouldn’t lose my tail before getting to the meeting place?” I ask, offended.
For the first time, Quinn turns to look at me. He’s not as handsome as I remem
ber. He’s more so. His face looks harder, leaner, sharper, even though it’s been less than two weeks since I last saw him. And he still wears the silver ring through his left brow, looking more like a pirate than ever.
His eyes are stony as he studies my face — the faint trace of bruise which lingers, the red scar on my cheek where I’ve scratched off the scab — and then looks away.
It’s Goth-girl who replies. “No. We thought you might bring a tail.”
“Why would I br— … Oh, you thought I was leading you into a trap?” I ask Quinn. “You thought that — after I helped you escape?”
“You might have changed your mind. Or they might have gotten to you. Or … your helping me escape might all have been a setup so that I could be followed, and lead the spooks to the rebels.” His voice is still deep and traced with that faint, musical Irish lilt, but it’s as cold as a blast of winter wind.
“I don’t think you did help Quinn escape,” says Goth-girl. “Sounds to me like you were all, ‘Help, help!’ calling for reinforcements to come catch him.”
I ignore her and speak directly to Quinn. “Wow.” My voice is flat. “You don’t trust me at all, do you?”
“After what you’ve done? With the information you possess?” Quinn snaps. “How did you even know where Connor was being held, if they didn’t tell you?”
“Because I was held there, too! That’s where they took me for … for questioning, after you got away.” I swallow hard, pushing away the memories that threaten to surface. “I saw Connor’s file there.”
Goth-girl gives me a deeply skeptical look.
“Quinn, I thought you understood I was on your side, I thought you would want to know what I’ve found out, that I could help you in the fight, that you —”
“You thought we would just welcome you with open arms?”
I glance from one to the other of them. Goth-girl has her arms folded across her chest again, and she’s taken a step closer to Quinn. He has his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans — no chance of open arms there — and there’s no warmth in his flat gaze. I want to lift my chin, leap out of this van, and stride off out of here — wherever the heck here is — but I swallow my pride.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 32