“Wake up, Regan.”
It’s my father’s voice, deep and comforting.
I can feel him stroking the palm of my hand with his fingertips, each invisible line that he traces helping me to come back from wherever I just was to wherever I am. My body feels like it’s encased in some kind of aluminum alloy, and I can’t really move except for one thing:
I can sort of wiggle my toes.
“Good, good,” he says. “Nice and easy now.”
“Is this like Aftershock? Is it going to wear off?”
I feel a twitch in my lips when I hear Josh speak, and I can breathe a little, my ribs giving way so my chest rises and falls without feeling like someone just put me in a straitjacket.
“Yes and no,” Dad answers. “She passed out because her delta brain waves were so strong she went into a deep dreamless state. Elusion usually only manipulates theta brain waves, which are mainly for intense meditation and light sleep.”
His words crash into one another in my mind, leaving particles and pieces scattered all over the place. As my eyes begin to open, so slowly I’m not sure it’s really happening, my brain tries to reassemble the fragments of my father’s explanation.
Delta.
Weak.
Dreamless.
“Maybe if we prop her up that might help,” Josh suggests.
I feel my body weight and posture being shifted, while my eyes still seem swollen and heavy. Something soft is placed behind my head, and I can tell I’m sitting up because my lower back and legs are at a ninety-degree angle.
“Da—” That’s all that will come out of my mouth.
“I’m here, sweetheart. Everything is going to be okay.”
Even with my depreciated mental capacity, I can hear the worry in his voice.
But I don’t care. My dad is with me. Finally, after all this time.
“Save your energy. Don’t try to talk.” Josh’s voice is but a soft whisper.
“Rub her feet. Her lower extremities seem to be responding faster,” my dad tells him. “We need to get her up and walking so we can get you both out of here. The firewall protects us from some of the stimuli, but it’s still dangerous. And with the kind of disruption she’s already suffered, she’s going to have a tough enough time with Aftershock as it is.”
Knuckles knead my arches and the balls of my feet, sending a tingling sensation up through my ankles and straight to my upper thighs.
“We can’t go back,” I hear Josh say. The tension in his throat is unmistakable. “Patrick locked us in here.”
My father’s hand clenches my arm just a little bit tighter as I utilize all my strength to open my eyes. I’m sitting on the barren, marshy ground, my back resting against the trunk of a dead tree. Josh is at my feet and my dad is kneeling beside me, his familiar face lined with concern. He looks like he did when I saw him on the beach—just a little more tired and dirty.
“What are you talking about?” my father asks.
“Patrick was with us in the Escape before our wristbands stopped working. When he left, he was furious, and then there was an administrator lockout, and—”
“Dad,” I whisper, trying to speak once more. He touches a hand to my cheek.
“Shhh,” he says to me.
I feel my eyes starting to spasm a bit and they begin to close, even though I’m fighting to stay awake.
“Let’s get her back to the compound,” Dad says to Josh.
He leans closer, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. And that’s when I notice his eyes. Once a deep brown, they are now the same color as Josh’s: a light, vacant gray. Before I can react, I succumb to the fatigue, drifting beneath the surface once more.
The next time I come to, it’s like I’m waking up in the real world. My body isn’t frozen like a block of ice; my brain doesn’t feel like it’s sunk underwater. Even my leg, with its penetrating wound, looks almost healed. I can sit up and look around, but there isn’t that much to see. I’m inside a small room that seems like it’s made out of stone, kind of like a cave, only the walls here are a bright shade of ivory instead of black. I’m lying on several pieces of starchy fabric with jagged hems, so it looks like they’ve been torn from somewhere.
I glance down and notice that I’m still in the same clothes from the Prairie Escape, but they’re ripped and very faded, like someone has twisted and wrung all the color out of them. My skin is surprisingly clean and I feel refreshed, like I haven’t been running from monsters, breaking through walls, and rolling down hills.
When I glance back up, I notice my father, standing in the corner with his back up against the wall, his arms crossed in front of his chest. He’s wearing the same clothes he wore on the beach, but like mine, they’re practically devoid of color. His smile is kind as ever, and when he takes a step toward me, I leap up and meet him halfway, pulling him into a great big hug the first moment I can.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” I say. Tears of happiness fill my eyes.
“It’s me,” he says softly, resting his chin on top of my head.
“I was so scared that I’d never see you again,” I say.
“I know, I was too,” he replies. “But we’re together now. That’s all that matters.”
I ease myself out of his arms and glance up at him through glistening eyes. “So this is real? Wherever we are?”
“Yes, it’s real.”
He motions to the makeshift bed and we both sit on the edge, just like mom and I had done only last night. Or was it longer? I’ve lost all track of time. I’m so confused and overwhelmed, I’m clinging to his hand like a little girl, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“How’s Mom doing?” he asks, as if reading my mind. “Is she okay?”
I bow my head, wondering if I should tell him the truth, but when I glance up into his eyes, the answer is right in front of me. “Uh-huh. She’s doing fine.”
We’ve all been through enough. Why make matters worse with painful truths?
“What about Josh? How is he?” I ask.
“He’s fine. He’s waiting outside. I wanted to talk to you. Just the two of us.”
My dad is avoiding my eyes, as if he’s about to tell me something I don’t want to hear. In the past, we had a lot of awkward, uncomfortable conversations that began the exact same way. Discussions about my grades, my lack of ambition and drive, and other subjects I’d rather not recall.
“Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it,” I attempt to reassure him. I thought he was dead and now I’ve been given a second chance. I can handle whatever he’s about to tell me.
“I’m not sure that we can.” The pitch of his voice deepens, taking on a somber tone that I’ve rarely heard from him.
“What happened, Dad? Who did this to you?” I plead.
“Josh told me you saw the memo,” he says, casting his eyes away from mine. “So you know that Elusion can cause nanopsychosis in young users. And that we were trying to find a way to adapt the product so it wouldn’t be dangerous.”
“Yes, we do,” I say. “But you need to tell me everything that went down after that. Step by step, and don’t leave anything out. I can take it.”
He exhales and we lock eyes again. Whatever he’s about to say right now, I know in my heart he’s going to be honest.
“Before we submitted Elusion to the CIT, I had Bryce Williams run a bunch of tests on subject groups, monitoring how trypnosis affected the users. Standard protocol for any type of product like ours,” he explains. “I was working on programming and security networks with Patrick, and that was taking up all of my time.”
I nod, vaguely remembering the countless days and nights he spent at the Orexis lab, working on Elusion. “But then Bryce discovered a problem, right?”
“Yes, he did. Something that I’d just never foreseen,” he says. “I didn’t anticipate how someone with a brain chemistry that was still in flux and developing would respond to trypnosis. And when he suggested sodium pentothal, it seemed like a good solution.”
A gasp catches at the base of my throat and I let go of his hand. “So you went ahead anyway? Even though you knew people might be in danger of getting hurt?”
“While Patrick and I focused on the Escape design and the firewalls, Bryce did more studies, verifying that the chemical was effective,” he says. “He even brought the materials to Cathryn and got her to sign off on them. He said she wanted to expedite the process and was satisfied with his results. At first, I thought this was pretty convincing evidence that we were in the clear.”
“And something changed your mind?”
“Yes. For a couple weeks after we started fitting the wristbands with the sodium pentothal, something kept eating at me. We usually approach the entire board of directors and production staff with these types of reports, at special meetings called A and Ms—Assess and Manage. The findings are presented to the group, the documents are thoroughly reviewed, and a Q and A is held. But Bryce went straight to the head of the company to receive clearance. Why would he do that?”
I bite my lip as I try to think of a reason. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to take a closer look at the reports?”
My dad nods. “That’s exactly what I began to think. So one night, I logged on to my quantum and searched the shared network for the source file so I could review the documents myself. But it had been deleted. There was no trace of it anywhere.”
“Was the name of the file fifty-twenty?” I ask, my heart pumping fast.
He shakes his head, placing a hand on my shoulder. “No, honey. That’s a room number.”
My brow knits together in confusion. “A room number? All this time, I thought . . . Really, it’s a room number?”
“Yes, it’s a room at Orexis,” he says calmly, before taking a deep breath and finishing his thought: “Where Cathryn Simmons is holding my body hostage.”
For a second I think I must have misheard him or misinterpreted what he said. “What?” I ask quietly.
“I confronted Bryce about the missing file,” my dad continues, “and he just blew me off. Said it must have been some kind of downloading error.”
Where have I heard that before?
“But I knew he was lying. Mostly because he was horrible at it,” he says. “So I went to Cathryn and told her that we needed to halt production and hold off on submitting Elusion to CIT until we located the missing data and had it vetted the right way.”
“And?” I say, encouraging him to go on.
“She seemed to agree. In fact, she thanked me for coming to her with this and told me she was going to discipline Bryce.” He hesitates. “The next morning, I came to Orexis and I couldn’t access my own quantum. I spent hours trying to locate the problem. Patrick even tried to help me.”
“So you’re sure Patrick had no idea that anything was wrong with the trypnosis?”
“I don’t think so. The teams working on Elusion were very separate and didn’t have the proper permission to view each other’s files,” he replies. “Besides, Patrick wasn’t very interested in that aspect of Elusion. He loved the tech stuff, the programming and coding. The neuroscience wasn’t as enticing to him, I guess. And he didn’t have the right education for it either.”
Patrick was telling me the truth—he didn’t know anything about nanopsychosis until after my father was gone. I feel a pang of guilt, but then it drifts away when I think about how he acted in the face of adversity, how he looked out for himself instead of the people who were being harmed by Elusion and how he locked Josh and me inside Elusion because he was jealous.
What could be more cowardly than that?
“Anyway, the whole quantum fiasco was a wild goose chase,” my father goes on. “While I was caught up with that, Cathryn and Bryce submitted Elusion to CIT with falsified data behind my back,” he snaps, his voice crackling with anger. “Within twenty-four hours, we had temporary approval, meaning we could release the product in three test markets.”
“So what did you do?”
He gets up off the ground, his body tense and rigid. “I called them both to an after-hours meeting. Room number fifty-twenty.” He pauses and clenches his hands into fists. “When they showed up, I gave them an ultimatum—either withdraw Elusion from the CIT review and stop the initial distribution of the Equips and apps, or I was going to destroy Elusion.” He stops, as if remembering.
“What did Cathryn do?”
“She laughed. She didn’t think I was serious. She thought that since Elusion was made up of separate entities, these Escapes, it was indestructible. And that’s when I told them that each one of the Escapes was armed with a fail-safe mechanism that could destroy the entire program. No one knew about it but me.”
“Oh my God,” I breathe.
“Cathryn started screaming about how she would do anything to prevent me from sabotaging this project, and then Bryce attacked me,” he says, gritting his teeth. “He got me in a pretty good choke hold, but I broke free of him, grabbed my tab, and activated the destruction mechanism.”
My eyes widen with surprise. “So you did it? You took down the network with the malware?”
“Not quite,” he says. “The Elusion system is very complex, and it takes . . .” He looks at me and pauses for a minute, as if searching for the right word. “Time,” he says finally. “But the moment they realized what had happened, they both subdued me, hooked me up to an Equip, and forced me into Elusion. Bryce most likely put an override on all the safety features so he could keep me here as long they liked. And I’m sure Cathryn is paying him a lot of money to keep me alive, too.”
“I don’t understand. Why would they want to keep you in Elusion?”
“I know they told everyone I’m dead, and I’m sure they would kill me if they could. The only reason I’m still alive is because they can’t find the destruction mechanism. I’m guessing they’ve found just enough proof to know that I’m telling the truth. They probably think they can scare my subconscious into telling them where it is. But it won’t do them any good.”
I really can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What about administrator access to Elusion? Does Patrick have that?”
“No way,” my dad says. “He’s a great programmer and can code an amazing Escape design, but he’s too young for that kind of responsibility. Bryce is the only other person besides me with administrator access.”
“So Patrick didn’t lock Josh and me in here?”
My dad shakes his head.
“But how did Bryce even know where we were?”
“I don’t know,” my dad says. “He must’ve figured out how to track you.”
That pang of guilt over Patrick is back and it’s even stronger than before, and I’m still confused. There are so many more questions that I want to ask my dad—about Walden and the anagram—but I’m too engrossed in his story to get derailed right now.
I stand up and meet him, eye to eye. “So Elusion is going to self-destruct?”
“Yes. And the destabilization of the Escapes you experienced will be nothing compared to D-day.”
My blood runs cold. If Elusion is going to destroy itself while he, Josh, and I are here, we’ll most likely die. Then again, we might die anyway.
“That’s why you told me it wasn’t safe. That’s why you asked me to find you,” I say, my voice shaking with disappointment. The numbers, his message—I misinterpreted his clues, and now we’re all trapped.
“It’s not your fault. When I’m behind the firewall, the only messages I can get out are numbers, kind of like communicating in computer code—”
“Why didn’t you just tell me all this when you saw me on the beach? Or in the ice cave?” I swallow and force myself to admit the thought that’s tearing me apart. “I was at Orexis,” I say. “I could’ve found you!”
“Even though I can get into Elusion, it’s extremely dangerous for me to stay there past a few seconds. The stimuli in Elusion are too powerful for our brains to handle—the longer a user stays inside, the more damage it causes. Th
is place provides some protection, but it’s very dangerous to be in Elusion. All of my trips there are timed, and then I’m pulled back through ping tunnels.”
“But how’d you know where I was in the first place?” I ask. “And how can you control anything here?”
My dad smirks a little, like he used to do when he was proud of his ingenuity. He flashed this smirk at Patrick all the damn time.
“There’s a tracking sensor on your Equip wristband,” he answers. “I can access the signal in here because of the ping tunnels I set up with my remote computer. The blue and green lights you saw inside the tunnel are kind of like a homing device, which only I can read.”
I smirk back, equally proud of his ingenuity.
“As with any program, there are hundreds of ping tunnels that can be hidden by the programmer, but every time we use one to get to Elusion, Bryce finds a way to seal it shut,” he adds. “At this point, there are only a few tunnels left here for us to use.”
“You keep saying ‘here,’ but I have no idea what that means,” I say, rubbing my temples. “I know we’re behind the firewall, but from the looks of those monsters, we seem anything but safe.”
“Those things can’t reach us at the camp, I swear,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, I’ll show you around. We’ll have time to sort everything out later.”
I nod, giving my dad a brave grin as I stand. When we turn toward the entrance of the cave, Josh walks in. He gives me a happy smile, which I find very strange, considering what it took to get us here and what I know now about the fate of Elusion. His broad shoulders are pulled back straight and strong, like the first night I saw him, and the darkness that usually clouds his eyes isn’t there, even though they’re still drained of their gorgeous amber color.
“Ready,” Josh says.
“Thanks,” my dad replies, giving him a nod as he walks past him. Josh takes my hand and we follow behind my dad, walking through a narrow passageway that appears to be constructed of both enamel and plaster. He seems so giddy, and it’s a little unnerving.
“Ready for what?” I ask Josh.
“You’ll see,” he replies cryptically, bringing my hand up to his mouth and kissing it.
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