Elusion

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  “No!” I scream above the wind, trying with all my might to wrest myself from his grasp.

  And then everything fades behind a blinding wall of light.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  SEVEN

  BRIGHT ORANGE-AND-BLUE FLAMES crackle and jump in front of my eyes, sending me into a mini-trance. I search my mind for a memory of the last time we used the steel-encased ethanol fireplace in the den. Thanksgiving, maybe? It was definitely on the first night the temperature bottomed out, right before it started to snow.

  But I doubt everything right now.

  Patrick and I have been back from Elusion for about a half hour. I can hear him in the kitchen, shouting into his tab at one of his senior programmers. The minute Aftershock wore off and Patrick could move his hands, he called Orexis, looking for an explanation as to what happened to my Escape and how I managed to see a man who has been dead since December.

  My head falls forward a bit and I feel the heat of the fire on my cheeks. It reminds me of the comfort of my father’s hug, and the soft timbre of his voice, but these aren’t remembrances from months ago—they are images from the here and now, stolen moments that I want back more than anything in the world.

  The house is suddenly silent. I feel a comforting hand on the small of my back. Patrick squats down and sits beside me, placing a steaming mug of tea on the floor near my feet and wrapping a fleece blanket around my shoulders. I raise my chin and keep my eyes focused on the flames that dance in front of us.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my elbows on them. “What do you think?”

  “Yeah, dumb question,” Patrick says. “I just got off the phone with the manager of the tech crew. He can’t really give me a straight answer about what might have happened until he gets a more detailed report.”

  “More detailed? I told you everything,” I say, my voice sharper than I intend it to be. “Plus you were there. You saw for yourself.”

  I shouldn’t act like this is Patrick’s fault. He came over here as soon as he listened to my message and went searching for me in my Escape once he got my destination code off my wristband. He’s always watching out for me.

  “I know, but maybe you could walk me through it one more time,” he says, setting his tab on the patch of floor between us. “Is it all right if I record this? Just so nothing gets lost in translation?”

  I nod and then add a smile. Patrick has been a dot-your-i’s-and-cross-your-t’s kind of guy since we were kids.

  He hits a button on his touch screen and says, “Go ahead.”

  I let out a cleansing breath. “Well, when I first got to the Thai Beach Escape, everything seemed fine, but the landscape was way different than the last time I was there.” I think back to the golden water, the aqua sun, and the purple sand. “The colors were all surreal and the trees were made of glass. I don’t know; it was like something out of a child’s dream.”

  Patrick loosens his necktie and slips it over his head, putting it in his jacket pocket. “Those changes were made to the World destinations a while ago, Ree. You’re just noticing it now?”

  When I’m quiet, I feel his hand on my shoulder and turn to face him. He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell by the softness around his eyes that he realizes I have hardly been to Elusion at all since my father died.

  “It’s not what he would have wanted.” I bite my lower lip a little to stop it from quivering.

  “I know,” he says quietly.

  “Are all the Escapes like that?”

  “Yes,” he admits. “But the design changes were a business decision.”

  “A business decision, huh?”

  “Market research suggested that making Elusion like a fantasy world would give it more commercial appeal.”

  “Since when do you listen to market research? You loved the way Elusion was before.”

  Patrick’s face hardens a bit, but only for a second. He’s not about to let us get off track. “So you got to the beach. What next?”

  “I went for a swim in the ocean. Then I strolled through the flowers, collected some seashells.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It was. But then I remembered why I was there.” I stretch out my legs and stare at my feet. “I got into a fight with Avery today over her vlog about the firewall. So I went there to find it and see with my own eyes, so I could walk up to her tomorrow and call her on her BS.”

  When he sighs in disgust and mutters, “That stupid video,” I’m caught by surprise. From the tone of his voice, it’s almost like he thinks Avery is the worst of our problems.

  “As soon as I got to it, the entire world started falling apart. And that’s when I saw my dad. He was standing there in front of it, like he was waiting for me.”

  “Then he said something to you, right?”

  “He warned me. He said no one was safe.” Suddenly my heart sinks so fast I have trouble catching my breath. “That’s when he was ripped away from me and sucked behind the firewall. Then, out of nowhere, I was zapped home.”

  Patrick starts cracking his knuckles. It’s one of his many problem-solving techniques, and I find it terribly annoying, so I nudge him with my foot and thankfully he stops.

  “The safety alert on your Equip probably detected a change in your brain chemistry and cut off the program,” he says.

  “But that doesn’t explain why I saw my father, or what happened to me when I went back to the Escape. This tornado appeared out of the water, and it was heading straight toward me—”

  “Why didn’t you press the emergency button on your wristband?”

  The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. Maybe because I’d just seen a ghost.

  “I wanted to . . . I figured if I tried, I might find my dad again,” I murmur.

  Patrick reaches over and puts an arm around me. “It wasn’t real, Ree. I know you want to believe that somehow he might be alive, but . . .”

  I slump down and lean my head against his chest. “If it wasn’t real, then what was it?”

  Patrick doesn’t say anything in response, but I can’t help but notice that his heartbeat has picked up steam.

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with the firewall.”

  Now his breathing is getting faster too.

  Is there something that he’s not telling me?

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “Right before David died, he and I installed the firewalls ourselves to prevent hackers from infiltrating the program,” he says. “All of them are application-, circuit-, and network-based, so they’ve kept intruders at bay, but there are assholes out there who will do anything they can to find a breach, trust me. They surround all the dumps—”

  “Wait a minute,” I say, my head popping back up. “What are dumps?”

  “Oh, that’s just programming lingo for the Escapes. Dumps are made up of basic codes with security programs in each one. Grouped together, these dumps make up the master program for Elusion, which becomes active when someone turns on the app,” he explains.

  “Got it. But let’s skip the geek slang, okay?”

  “Sorry.” Patrick gives me a small smile. “Like I was saying, the firewalls surround all the Escapes. They’re located about five miles from the drop point, and they connect all the Escape programs, sharing walls. They also work as a barrier, preventing users from traveling from one Escape to the other.”

  I look into his eyes for traces of worry or deceit, but they seem honest, like always.

  I know I’m doubting everything right now. But my best friend? If I second-guess him, it’ll feel like a part of my life is shattering, just like that insane scene at the beach.

  “So it’s like a force field then? They keep viruses out and people in.”

  I’m sure this is a gross understatem
ent, but Patrick nods his head in agreement anyway.

  “Exactly. They’re just there to protect the user. They don’t harm people inside the Escape in any way. And they sure as hell don’t make them addicted.”

  I reach forward to get my mug of tea, but Patrick grabs it first and passes it to me. When our hands touch and his fingers linger on my skin, another reminder pops into my head.

  I was dodging all of Patrick’s calls and texts today. For reasons that seem kind of silly, given everything that’s happened since then.

  “Avery could care less about the truth; she just wants to run a smear campaign and come up with ridiculous sound bites,” he adds. “Everything she said in that video was completely slanderous.”

  “Is that why you had her site shut down?”

  “It wasn’t hard to do. Our lawyers said her claims were a textbook case of defamation,” he says. “Anyway, she has a lot of followers. We couldn’t let her go around saying that Elusion is addictive and Orexis is falsifying data. Not when we’re so close to introducing our product nationwide.”

  I take a sip of my tea. I don’t know if the warm liquid on my tongue triggers the memory or the smell of the passionflower leaves. Regardless, I realize that I’ve left out an important piece of information.

  “I saw a number written in the sand!” I say, my excitement nearly causing me to spill my tea all over Patrick. “It was right by the firewall, but it washed away before you showed up. Maybe it means something.”

  “What number?” he asks.

  “Fifty-twenty,” I reply.

  At first his eyes have a faraway look, but after a beat he casts his gaze all around the den. “Where did you put your tab?”

  “It’s on the couch in the living room.”

  Patrick springs to his feet with a “Be right back,” and in less than a minute he returns with it in his hands, typing furiously on the keypad. I stand up and glance over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m checking for viruses.”

  “But I haven’t noticed anything weird on my—”

  “Oh, did you get a prompt to upgrade to a new version of the app?” he asks as he types something on the screen.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t have any problems with it.”

  “There still could have been an error in the downloading process. It could have—”

  “Caused my Escape to become unstable,” I say.

  “And God knows what else,” he says.

  “Has this ever happened before?”

  Instead of answering me, Patrick takes a few steps backward, a look of shock—or is it fear?—slipping over his face like a dark veil. Then he turns his back to me, as if he’s trying to block my view of the tab, and begins typing on the touch screen furiously with his right hand.

  “Patrick? What’s wrong?” I ask.

  Again, no answer. Every ounce of his attention is on the tab, where his fingertips are still skimming the touch screen at a rapid pace.

  I have to admit, the way he’s ignoring me is making me kind of antsy.

  “Did the scan find anything?” I say, poking around him and reaching for my tab, hoping he’ll show me what he’s doing. He’s been pretty candid with me up until now—so his sudden need for discretion doesn’t make any sense.

  But Patrick pulls the tab away from me so hard that I almost trip over him. “The diagnostics haven’t finished yet,” he snaps.

  “A simple no would’ve been fine,” I say.

  “Can you please just be quiet? I’m in the middle of something.”

  I’ve rarely seen this defensive side of Patrick, but when I have, he was trying to hide something, like his secret stash of Halloween candy or the XXX sites in his browser history.

  So my hunch that he’s keeping something from me—something about Elusion or my tablet—is feeling more and more like a fact.

  But why? What is he afraid of?

  “Give me back my tab, Pat,” I say, holding out my hand. When he doesn’t reply, I nudge him hard with my elbow, and he flinches. “I mean it. Give it back now.”

  He looks at me and clears his throat. “I really should take this into Orexis, Ree. I can have a whole team of people spend all day running protocols—”

  I launch toward him and quickly snatch the device back without Patrick putting up much of a fight. “This was a present from my dad. It was one of the last things he ever gave me, and it’s not going anywhere.”

  I’m not proud that I played the dead-daddy card, but Patrick’s odd behavior has me concerned that I can’t trust him with all the personal information contained within my tab’s data banks.

  Like all the Net searches I did on Josh Heywood.

  He puts his hands in his pockets, his brows knitting together in a fit of worry. “Just don’t use your tab anymore, okay? I’ll get you a new one. And don’t tell anyone what happened until I figure things out—not even your mom. You have to promise me.”

  “Patrick, I don’t understand. Tell me what’s—”

  “I should head out,” he interjects, grabbing his tablet off the floor and stopping the recording. Then he brushes back a strand of blond hair, his eyes reddening at the corners. “Try and get some sleep, okay? We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  As soon as he leaves the house, the ethanol fire automatically shuts off, and I’m alone in the dark.

  I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor . . .

  As another stinkball hits the wall inches away from my head and bursts open like a bubble, I run my hand over the worn, yellow page and think how lucky Thoreau was. He never had to serve detention in a crowded, stuffy lecture hall filled with about two hundred code-of-conduct offenders.

  My eyes flick up once the rancid smell infects the air, and three greasy-haired boys a few rows below me burst into laughter, nudging each other with their elbows. I had purposely taken a seat away from the fray, in one of the rows near the top of the auditorium, but my attempt at privacy has backfired. I’m up so high that Mr. Von Ziegelstein, the moderator, doesn’t notice the unruliness unfolding around me. He is sitting center stage, perched on a stool with his gaze fixed solely on his tablet. Every so often he runs his fingers through his hair plugs, but other than that he’s like a statue. It’s almost like he’s impervious to the chaos—the loud talking, music blaring, and stinkballs being launched from pellet guns by the kids in the back seats. Or perhaps he’s just given up on trying to keep order in a place where nobody listens to him.

  But the noise is doing much more than distracting me from reading my father’s copy of Walden—it’s pushing the anxiety I’ve been pinning down inside me right to the surface. I even put one of my hands on my stomach to settle the acidic feeling that hasn’t left me since last night.

  When I saw my father inside Elusion.

  When Patrick tried to take my tablet away from me.

  I shake my head, hoping to dislodge those thoughts from my mind and focus on the book again. Three girls behind me jack up the volume on their WAV files, and the music is so loud I’m having a hard time concentrating. I wind up skimming through the small printed text and when I reach the end, I flip back through the first few chapters, my finger trailing down the side of the page. I’m just about to put the book away when my finger stops on a line that gives me a sudden case of tunnel vision. I can no longer see any other words on the page. It’s like a spotlight has formed around this one sentence, so I read it over and over again.

  The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

  That’s how they seemed yesterday. Both my father and Patrick.

  Desperate.

  You’re not safe. No one is safe. You need to find me. . . .

  Just don’t use the app on your tab anymore, okay? And don’t tell anyone what happened . . .

  Their voices are a constant loop in my head, triggering an avalanche of questions that threatens to bury me alive. Why did Patrick seem so suspicious and strange yesterday? How could those vis
ions of my father have felt so real? What really happened at the beach in Elusion?

  I’m distracted from my thoughts by a collective murmur that sweeps through the crowd, followed by a dozen or so catcalls and whistles.

  I glance down toward the front of the auditorium and see Zoe Morgan, talking to Mr. Von Ziegelstein and gesticulating like crazy. Her jet-black hair flows loose around her shoulders, and she has on a pair of patent-leather stacked heels that make her at least four inches taller than she really is. At first I wonder why she could possibly be in here. Zoe’s an honors student and senior class president, and she has most of the teachers wrapped around her finger. Then I notice the length of her cargo skirt—midthigh is definitely not acceptable—and how she’s cut a sexy slit up the side of it. That’s at least seventy-five demerits. Pretty puny when compared to the even thousand I received for my little altercation with Avery, but still enough to earn her a brief stint in this zoo.

  I shut my book and stick it back into my bag, catching a glimpse of Zoe as she makes her way into the crowded room, totally out of her element. She clutches her tab in her hands and scans the hall for an empty seat. Since there’s one next to me, I stand up a little bit and wave my arms above my head, hoping that she’ll see me. Our eyes lock and a smile lights up her face. As she climbs the lecture hall’s steps with long, purposeful strides, I can see how naturally pretty she is. Unlike at Patrick’s party, there isn’t a drop of makeup on her mocha-colored skin, and even so, her cheeks are a delicate shade of dark rose. When she finally reaches row GG, Zoe is huffing and puffing, like she’s just finished a race.

  “I am. So out. Of shape,” she says through halting breaths.

  I pat the chair beside me and laugh. “Those steps are the reason I don’t take bathroom breaks.”

  Zoe sighs and scoots past me so she can park herself in the seat to my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a kid aiming a stinkball at her and shoot him a death stare that stops him in his tracks. Surprisingly, he responds with a nod of respect and slips the pellet gun back in his pocket.

  “Funny, I didn’t know you were a regular here,” she says.