Blackout

by Meredith McCardle

  “We get in and we spread out,” Indigo orders as his feet pound up the steps. “Iris, you head left; Violet, you head right; and I’ll go straight. Keep an eye on each other’s coordinates at all times. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I say. Behind me, Violet grunts in approval. Left, I tell myself. That’s west. The spot Orange was last seen in. We approach the door and slow to a walk. Sprinting in like crazed monkeys would draw a bit too much attention. Time to dial it back.

  Security at the State House is nonexistent in 1904. In present times, there are guards and metal detectors, but here we just walk on in and no one gives us a second glance. It’s so weird the way people in the past just assumed they were safe.

  We rush through Doric Hall, up the few steps into Nurses Hall, then weave our way through the crowd of people milling about the entrance to Memorial Hall. We enter a large rotunda, and I brace myself for chaos and confusion, just like Red said. But there is none. There are people running about, busy on this election day, but there’s no mass hysteria. Certainly no police and onlookers crowded around a body. I look at Indigo, and he jerks his head left before heading through the arches toward the Hall of Flags.

  I push my way through a group of men talking about whether a candidate named Douglas has the Socialist votes. Memorial Hall is a massive round room with arches held up by marble Ionic columns. There’s a balcony level that circles the entire room. And Orange is nowhere to be seen.

  I look over at Violet on the other side of the rotunda. She’s weaving in and out of the arches, scanning every inch of the room. I do the same, going in the other direction.

  Men wearing tall hats, men wearing funny suits, men shouting about this or that political issue on the ballot. But no Orange.

  “Pardon me, sir.” I tap a rather large man on the shoulder. He’s talking to a short, thin man who looks like his polar opposite. They’re standing almost exactly where Orange supposedly disappeared. “I’m trying to locate my brother. He said he would meet me in this spot twenty minutes ago, but I haven’t seen him. Have you been standing here awhile?”

  The large man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gold watch hanging from a chain. “Dear me, is that the time?” He squints. “I suppose I have been here for a while. Half an hour at least.” He looks at his companion and chuckles. “You’re far too engaging, Norris.”

  I don’t have time for this. “My brother. He’s about this tall.” I hold up my hand about six inches above my head. “Light-blue eyes, hair as orange as a carrot, face dotted with freckles.”

  I catch Norris staring at my dark-brown hair and olive complexion. He raises an eyebrow. “Your brother?”

  I clear my throat. “Have you seen him?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone matching that description, miss. I’m sorry.”

  “Very well. Thank you for your time.”

  I ask a few more people, except this time I change “brother” to “cousin.” But it’s the same answer every time. No one has seen Orange. It’s like he wasn’t here at all, which makes no sense. He was tracked here. This floor, this spot. Right freaking here.

  I look over to find Violet staring at me from across the rotunda. She shrugs. I can’t see where Indigo disappeared to, so I look back at Violet and point at the balcony. She nods and takes off toward the stairs.

  But then I stop. There’s something on one of the pillars, right by where Orange was last tracked. It’s small and rectangular and looks like a sticker, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have stickers in 1904.

  No, this one was placed here by a modern traveler. The hair on my arms stands on end. I walk closer to the sticker, but I already know what’s on it. I just know.

  My gaze flies to the balcony. Violet’s stepping off the last stair now. I look back and claw at the sticker. It peels off in one go, and I push up my sleeve, slap it onto my forearm, then pull my sleeve back into place. I race for the stairs.

  The balcony is crowded, but not as crowded as the ground floor. I pretend to look over the edge, but I know I’m not going to find Orange.

  “Did you see anything?” Violet hisses to me.

  “Where is Orange?” I ask. I don’t answer her question, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Do you think someone took him?”

  Operation Blackout. It’s the only thought running through my head. They took Orange. They took Zeta. But who? And why?

  “Why would anyone take him?” I say. “And that wouldn’t explain why his tracker went off. You and I both know there’s only one way those things deactivate now. So assuming people took him, they’d have had to kill him there, right there”—I lean over the edge of the balcony and point to the western arches—“and then smuggle his body out of this crowded building.”

  “That seems . . . highly unlikely.” Violet chews her bottom lip.

  “You think?”

  “So then what happened to him?”

  I remember the brief conversation I had with Orange just a week ago. How unhappy he was with all of the changes that have been made.

  Blackout. Orange was blacked out because he was too vocal. Did Bonner have something to do with this?

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  I spot Indigo. He’s back in the rotunda. He glances around, and I let out a sharp whistle. He sees us in the balcony and holds up both hands, palms up. He hasn’t found anything either.

  The sticker on my arm is making my skin tingle.

  Violet and Indigo insist on spending the next forty minutes combing this place, which is just a waste of time. Every hour we spend here means that more than ten hours pass in the present. But I can’t very well say no, so I join in the fruitless search. Indigo even manages to sneak himself inside the governor’s office for a minute.

  I should tell them we’re not going to find Orange. But I don’t. Not yet.

  “Now what?” Violet asks as the three of us head down the stairs. Boston Common spreads out before us, and I notice the chill in the air. I wasn’t thinking when I left. I dressed for the summer, not late fall.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Indigo says. “There’s not a trace of Orange anywhere in that building.” Then he turns to me. “You’ve been very quiet.”

  I rub my arm. I can’t tell them I found the sticker—can’t tell them about XP—but I can say something.

  “I’m just wondering whether Bonner had anything to do with his disappearance.” I feel their eyes boring into me.

  “That’s quite an accusation.” Indigo pauses. “Not that I don’t think that woman is heinous, but where is this coming from?”

  I tell them about my weird conversation with Orange. How he practically shouted to Bonner that he didn’t have to take her crap rules anymore.

  “But the door was closed?” Violet says.

  “When he said it? Yeah. But he said it really loudly. There’s no way she didn’t hear him.”

  “So what’s your theory? Bonner sent one of us back to kill Orange out of spite?” Indigo shakes his head. “Because apart from the three of us, the only people who can project are Yellow, Green, and New Blue. You think one of them killed Orange?”

  And then I remember distant, drugged eyes staring out at me from an elevator lobby.

  “Tyler can still project, too.” My voice is a whisper.

  “Old Blue?” Indigo says. “You think Old Blue did this?”

  “I’m just kind of thinking out loud.”

  “I can guarantee you that Old Blue is never coming anywhere near the Guard again. Last I heard, he’s an inpatient at a mental hospital.”

  I flinch. He is. And so is my mom, and dammit, I haven’t thought of her and that ticking clock for at least an hour. I mean ten hours. I’ve lost so much time being here.

  “I just think it’s a little suspicious, that’s all. Especially since there would’ve been an easy way to figure out what happened to Orange.”

  Indigo stares at me.

  I sigh. “Send us back to before his tracker
deactivated, right? Then we could see with our own eyes what happened.”

  “You know we can’t actually do that. It’s one of our key rules. No do-overs. You know that, Iris. Sending us back to before Orange disappeared would have tipped him off that something was wrong—he’s too well trained not to notice us—and considering we don’t know what the hell happened, that would have been a very, very dangerous situation. For all of us.”

  “Look, I just—”

  “We need to get back,” Violet cuts me off. “Standing around here sharing crazed theories isn’t going to help us find Orange. He’s obviously not here. So we need to follow protocol: go back and report everything we found.”

  She’s right, of course. It doesn’t help Orange at all, but we need to leave.

  Bonner and Red are waiting outside the gravity chamber when we arrive.

  “Anything?” Red practically barks at us.

  Indigo shakes his head. “Not a trace. Nothing. Everyone at the State House was going about their business like nothing was wrong.”

  Red’s brow furrows, while Bonner stays still as a calm sea. She’s giving nothing away.

  Red gestures down the hallway. “Back into Sit Room One. All of you. I need to know everything that happened from the moment you arrived in 1904 until now.”

  I touch his arm. “Blue?”

  “Traveling back now. He’s probably five minutes behind you guys.”

  Then there’s a ziiiiiiiip sound and a whoosh, and Abe steps out of the gravity chamber. I forget the rules, forget decorum, forget everything. I leap forward and fling my arms around his neck. I breathe him in, resisting the urge to kiss his jawline, my favorite part of him.

  “Thank God you made it back!” I squeeze him closer to me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Bonner clears her throat, and I drop my arms from Abe. “Blue, did you see anything unusual during your mission?” Bonner asks.

  Abe’s nose crinkles like it always does when he’s confused. “Um . . . no? Unusual how?”

  “Orange is gone,” I say. “His tracker deactivated on a mission.”

  Abe blinks. “He’s dead?”

  “That is what we’re trying to ascertain,” Bonner says. “Blue, go upstairs and start on your report. Make sure you include a detailed summary of every person you encountered and pay close attention to any events that seemed out of the ordinary, no matter how small. A casual glance, a misplaced object. Anything.”

  I give Abe’s hand another squeeze as Bonner ducks into the Sit Room with Red right behind her.

  “Love you,” I mouth, and he does the same.

  As I enter the room, Indigo, Violet, and I exchange one quick glance that lets me know they’re not going to reveal everything that happened. Our little conversation at the end will stay private. But I still can’t shake the feeling that something is very off here. And that one or more of the people in this room might know what really happened.

  Indigo and Violet take a seat, but I rip the sticker from under my sleeve and thrust it into Red’s hands. He looks down at it, then up at Bonner, and shoves it into his pocket.

  And that tells me everything I need to know. Red’s been trained to hide his real thoughts. But I’ve seen them sneak out before, when I confronted him with Alpha’s deception back at Peel. And I just saw a flash of them now.

  He knows way more than he’s letting on.

  And now my mind is made up. I’m not keeping XP a secret any longer.

  CHAPTER 8

  I take a deep breath and look at my teammates. All of my teammates. Well, the ones who can project anyway. We’re the only ones who have the genetic ability.

  I look from Yellow to Violet to Indigo to Green and finally to Abe. We’re all gathered in my bedroom. I’ve barely slept since we got back from 1904 last night. My last nerve is fried, and it’s only six in the morning. Green’s been complaining nonstop about being here early. I’m not sure why. I’d love any excuse to leave if I lived in that crappy basement studio in Allston that’s all his government salary will allow.

  “You’re being weird,” Yellow says. “Just so you know. I feel it’s my duty as your friend to tell you that.”

  I ignore her. “Guys, we need to talk.”

  “About Orange?” Indigo says. “I agree. I don’t understand how he could just disappear, no trace of him. Like, I don’t get the physics of it. Unless he’s dead, he’d show up on the tracking system, right?” He looks over at Abe. It didn’t take long for everyone to view him as the authority on these things. Abe always assumed he’d be drafted to join the science and technology wing of the CIA. But he chose to be here with me.

  “That’s how I understand it,” Abe says.

  And now we’re all business.

  “You’re sure he wasn’t anywhere in the State House?” Yellow looks directly at her brother. “Like, one hundred percent confidence?”

  Indigo narrows his eyes. “Thanks for second-guessing my ability to do my job. Yes, Yell, I’m one hundred percent confident he wasn’t anywhere in the State House.”

  “I don’t think we can ever be one hundred percent confident on anything.”

  I touch Indigo’s arm because I think he’s about to chuck something at his sister, but he waves me off and shoots Yellow a dirty look. “We checked every spot in the State House that we could find. Obviously, given the time constraints, we didn’t have a chance to check blueprints ahead of time to make sure there weren’t any secret rooms, but Violet did that when we got back.”

  Violet nods. “Nothing. We searched the entire place.”

  “And there’s no way someone could have killed him and smuggled him out,” Indigo continues. “It was an election day. The place was packed.”

  “Look.” Violet motions to Yellow, Green, and Abe. “I know you guys weren’t there, but you have to take our word that Orange just disappeared. There’s no explanation for it.”

  “Of course there’s an explanation.”

  All of our heads turn to Green, who’s leaning with his back against my door, arms crossed. His shaggy brown hair has flopped in front of his eyes, but he doesn’t make a move to brush it away.

  “He’s dead,” Green says matter-of-factly.

  No one else says anything.

  Blackout. Blackout. Blackout.

  I have to tell them.

  Green uncrosses his arms. “Oh, come on, I know you’re all thinking it. If what we’ve been told about the new trackers is correct, the only way Orange’s could have deactivated is if his brain stopped functioning, and if his brain stopped functioning, he’s dead. You all know it’s true.”

  “Of course we know it’s true,” Yellow says. “But that doesn’t explain how someone could have killed him or why there was no trace of Orange anywhere.” She matches Green’s sullen expression.

  “Guys,” I whisper. “There might be another explanation. I know some stuff you don’t. Stuff that relates to Zeta, too.”

  Five heads turn to look at me, and I avoid making eye contact with anyone. Especially Yellow and Indigo. I drop my voice low so that anyone who might be lurking outside can’t hear me. “If I was to say the word blackout, what would that make you think of?”

  “Power outage,” Indigo says. Yellow and Violet both nod in agreement.

  “Okay, and what if I were to say the word blackout in a military setting. Same answer?”

  “Of course not,” Green says. “You’d think of special forces, obviously. What is this about?”

  “Let’s just say that I stumbled across some information that leads me to believe a blackout has something to do with the disappearances of Zeta and Orange.”

  “Stumbled across this where?” Green asks.

  “That doesn’t matter, but . . .” I look from Yellow to Indigo. “Your dad may have known about something called Operation Blackout.”

  Indigo’s eyes go wide, while Yellow purses her lips.

  “Wait, you think some kind of Annum Guard special op
s team took out Orange?” Indigo says angrily.

  I nod. “And I think your dad, too.”

  “You’re saying you think my dad is dead?” Yellow asks in a small voice. Indigo takes her hand. “I mean, the idea was always in the back of my head, but I never wanted to . . .”

  “I don’t know,” I say gently. “I’m really not sure what to believe. I hope no one is dead.”

  Yellow doesn’t look at me. She stares at my bed.

  Green pushes off the wall, and I brace myself. Green has never given me that warm, fuzzy feeling, and now that I know his father murdered mine—shot him shortly after they both orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy on the order of Eagle Industries—getting to know Green really is the least of my concerns. Besides, he has that way of speaking where he tries to make himself sound like my superior, not my teammate.

  But then he surprises me. He nods. “In the same vein, does anyone else think it’s highly suspicious that we suddenly have interns connected to three very, very important people?”

  Abe juts his chin in the air. “What are you saying?”

  “Interesting timing, that’s all,” Green says. “A few days after the daughter of a senate committee member, the son of the vice president, and the grandson of the secretary of defense start combing through our secrets, Orange goes missing. I’ve thought it was suspicious since the first second they appeared. And now there’s this? Operation Blackout? It’s related.”

  “Where’s your proof?” I ask, even though the same thoughts are running though my head.

  Green turns to me. “I obviously don’t have any, Iris.” The way he says my name—sarcasm mixed with a hint of derision—this is the Green I know.

  Yellow shoots her hand into the air, like we’re in a classroom. “Hang on,” she says. “Operation Blackout. I’m not sure why, but it’s kind of ringing a bell.”

  “Think, Yellow,” I say.

  “I’m trying.” She closes her eyes. “I can picture myself in my dad’s office at home. I’m like twelve or thirteen. I’m looking for paper for the printer. I think we’re probably out of it, but I’m opening all the drawers anyway, drawers I’m not supposed to open. I’m jumpy because my dad will kill me if he finds me going through them.”