“And explain to me why they can’t just fix this worm thing, again?” my mom asked as she put her hand out. I delicately placed the chip in her palm.
“It’s not just a worm that corrupts the computers you’re near,” Tommy explained patiently for the millionth time. “It actually wipes all of the HORUS computers in the world. They have this cloud-sharing system, HORUSHARE, and all the computers with access will go blank, even if the program isn’t open at the time.”
“So someone watching their computer at the time would see…?” I asked, not even knowing enough to name any options.
“An ‘operating system not found’ message,” Tommy said.
My mom handed the chip back to Tommy, who stuck it in a pouch in the back of a copy of War and Peace. The chip settled where Maddy had once told me that “library cards,” whatever they were, used to slide, and then Tommy closed the book carefully and sat it, face down, on the table. Apparently, that book was a rare early edition, which meant the HORUS agents who captured me would be less likely to tear it apart to look for weapons if they found it. It also seemed that Tommy and his crew had laminated the outside to make it waterproof, though I couldn’t tell if that was for technical or sentimental reasons.
“Tell them it’s a gift for Maddy,” Tommy said.
I took the book, brittle with its paper cover as dry and cracked as a snake’s skin under the laminate. “In a way, it is.”
Then I thought back to when Maddy was talking about his dad’s work. He’d said something about seeing his whiteboards covered in writing, and I’d definitely seen a wall’s worth of filing cabinets when I’d visited.
“Won’t they have things printed? You know, just in case? I’ve definitely seen Dr. Stone’s collection of backup files in his office, so I can only imagine how many cabinets he has downstairs or at the HORUS building.”
“We thought of that,” Tommy said as he swiveled around in his seat and looked at me, “and we have a plan. In fair warning, you’re probably not going to like it.”
“It can’t be worse than getting captured by HORUS guards and brought into the belly of the beast… right?”
“Oh yes it can.”
Tommy took the book back from me and flipped through the pages. I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but then, three-quarters of the way through, the book had a thin paper storage compartment with words printed on it so that, to anyone else, it would look like just another page.
“We didn’t pick War and Peace for nothing,” Tommy said as we all stared down at the paper-thin black square he slid out of its hiding spot. “It was just the biggest book we could find.”
The square object’s lights, a trill of alternating red glows, blinked menacingly with every beat of my heart.
This time, I knew what the machine did without having to ask.
“Come on,” Tommy said, closing the book. “It’s time to take this show on the road.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Maddy
I HAD never felt so helpless. While Jesse traveled back across the United States, I sat in my bedroom pretending to read 1984, ignoring my mother’s insistent knocks, and lying to my dad that I was “fine.”
Time seemed to stand still and yet rush forward—my room had become a prison cell, locking me into that moment, while outside my room, things were happening that I could no longer control—and I tried my best to stay calm.
I took deep breaths.
I opened and closed some books.
I called Georgia.
“They won’t let me see you,” she said.
“I know.”
In the mirror, I inspected my original strand of brown hair, as well as two others that had seemingly cropped up overnight. Was my skin getting lighter too? Had that wrinkle in the middle of my forehead always been there?
I tucked the strands of hair up with bobby pins and made a mental note that if Jesse didn’t arrive that night, I would go to the mall the next day and get my hair dyed before anyone noticed. I’d also need tan powder and something to cover the wrinkle—maybe bangs?
Then I got back into bed and returned to staring up at the ceiling.
Jesse had only come to my house a few times during the years that we dated, mostly when my parents were away on weekend trips or traveling for work functions. During one of those times, he’d commented that I had a “rich person’s ceiling.”
“What does that mean?” I’d asked him as I rolled over on the bed and put my chin on his chest.
“Well, take my ceiling, for example. Most people think they stopped making popcorn ceilings in the late 2020s, and yet there it is, staring at me every night as I fall asleep.”
“And mine?” I looked up at what I wrote off as a plain old ceiling, just like all of the others in ours house.
“Crown molding, panels, and a skylight through the openings in the solar panels? If those don’t scream ‘I’ve got more money than I know what to do with,’ I don’t know what could.”
I hit him lightly. “It’s not my money, and you know that. If it was, I wouldn’t spend it on wooden trim.”
“Oh really?” He moved to tickle me, but I grabbed his hand before he could. “What would you spend it on?”
Once I determined he wasn’t going to try to tickle me again, I settled back into the crook between his waist and arm and stared up at the panels above me. “I don’t know. Books?”
“Of course. You’d probably spend a million dollars on a first edition… oh, what’s that author’s name again?”
“Margaret Atwood? F. Scott Fitzgerald?”
“No, not them… think older. British. Wrote plays, I think?”
I started laughing before I could even get the words out. “Do you mean William Shakespeare?”
“Right. Him.”
“I doubt I could get anything that touched Shakespeare for less than a billion at this point, but I like your optimism. Do you know that they used to read Shakespeare in every English class? He was our Andrew Masterson.”
“Our who?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know… Andrew Masterson… the guy we read in English class like two months ago?”
“I think I remember more Shakespeare. Recite something for me.”
This was a game Jesse loved to play, though it made me feel self-conscious. We would browse through an online bookstore, he would choose an author at random, and I would recite a quote from something they’d written. I’d only gone blank once—then again, I could have just made something up for all Jesse would have known.
“Fine. Here’s something from Macbeth. It’s abridged, and it’s a bit dramatic, but I think you’ll like it. ‘Life… is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’”
“Wow. I like that.”
“Of course you do. It’s depressing.”
“It’s not just that.” He began tapping his fingers on my arm, something he did whenever he got an idea for a drawing or painting. “I can visualize it: gray, swirling, empty void.”
“I think I like your sun better.” I was watching his eyes, looking for that darkness that appeared without warning.
“It doesn’t need to be one or the other. Maybe life means everything and nothing at once. Maybe it’s a sun and a furious storm at the same time, you know?”
“Deep,” I joked, but really, I did know. “What about you? What would you do with it?”
“What?” His mind was drifting into that void; I could feel it, the way I could feel his mood when we met outside of school in the morning without even needing to read his face.
“The money. If you could spend it all on something, what would it be?”
“Oh. Right.” The tapping continued. “I guess I would give it to you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because you deserve crown molding. I mean… you deserve everything.”
That was the first time we had sex, the first time I looked up at that same ceiling and realized that Jesse was the one. I would nev
er, ever love anyone the way I loved him.
TO MY surprise, a few hours later my dad came to my door and interrupted my ceiling staring to say that Dr. Reed had experienced a change of heart and that he was bringing Georgia over to see me after all. Maybe they were worried that their prized patient was depressed, or maybe Georgia had convinced her father that she really was the best thing for me at that moment. Either way, at 7:00 p.m. sharp, the doorbell rang.
Voices echoed up the stairs, two conversations trickling into one stream of words: I love your dress—How is he?—It’s new. I actually designed it myself—Not good. I think he might be depressed.
We can’t have that.
I’ll have to get one made. I just love the color.
Someone needs to get him out of his room. Georgia, honey?
Footsteps moved away from the voices and down the hallway to my door. I knew, from the weight and woody echo, that Georgia was wearing her favorite cowboy boots, probably with a new white dress that looked exactly like the old one and a braided leather headband.
“Madison? Are you in there?”
When I opened the door, the only difference was that her dress was tan instead of white.
“It is a nice dress,” I said with a straight face, but then I started laughing.
“Shut up,” she teased as she pushed me lightly and walked into the room. “I had to keep up appearances.”
“And what a difficult task that must have been. You didn’t want to hire a cobbler to design you a new pair of shoes while you were at it?”
“They’re in production,” she teased as she flopped down on my bed.
I lay down too and ran my hand through her hair. Just being around her calmed me down, and for the first time all day, I felt at peace. She started talking about our dads and their plans for me, but right then, I just wanted to forget all that and breathe.
“I don’t think it’s actually going to be that bad. Sure, they’ll show you off to their investors, but I think after that they’re going to let you go about your life. They won’t really need you as their show pony anymore.”
Then I felt something in her hair.
Something hard.
A bobby pin.
Without being too obvious, I pretended to stroke her red hair and pulled the bobby pin out as gently as I could.
Trailing behind it, like the line behind a fishing pole, was a single strand of brown hair.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jesse
THE STONES and Reeds were eating dinner, Darlene reported as soon as she had the chance. For some reason, the idea of the two families peacefully sharing a meal made me more furious than anything had in a long time, but I tried to fight off my anger. After all, I had a job to do.
“Are you ready?” Tommy asked from the seat next to me. He had changed into a black T-shirt, pants, and sneakers. Since it wasn’t dark yet, he just looked weird. We were parked about a block from the Stones’ house, behind a toolshed that was bigger than my old apartment, preparing to make our advance.
“Sure,” I lied. War and Peace was clutched to my chest, and my smart watch was tied to my wrist in case I needed to call for backup. We hadn’t really thought that far ahead… probably because no one thought I had a shot at getting out of this alive… so if I actually did survive, we’d need a new plan.
“Step one is getting into the house and giving the chip enough time to work on Dr. Stone’s computer and the rest of the network,” Tommy repeated. “Once the computers are wiped, Darlene will activate the alarm and sprinklers. You’ll activate the bomb and drop it—don’t worry, it’s waterproof—and get the Reeds and Stones out of the Stones’ house. During the chaos, our friends on the inside will also blow the Reeds’ house and the unprotected HORUS headquarters. Simple, right?”
“Simple.” My stomach churned, and I felt like I might throw up on the van floor before I could even get to step one.
“All right.” Tommy put his hands on my shoulders. “It’s go time.”
“Be careful, principito,” my mom called out.
What if that was the last time I heard her voice?
Once I stepped out of the van and began my trek toward their front gate, my knees started shaking and trying to buckle. Pull yourself together, I thought, but the shaking didn’t stop.
The gate was brick and about twenty feet tall—too tall for a burglar to scale without a ladder. Compared to my apartment, where you could hear every neighbor’s fight and smell every neighbor’s dinner, the house seemed… lonely.
Beyond the gate would be a carefully planted arrangement of manicured bushes, trimmed trees, and contained flower beds. Naturally, the Stones had a gardener—or rather, a team of three gardeners—and they lived in the BB, about two buildings down from us. I’d never met them, since meeting them would have involved hanging out at Maddy’s house during the daylight hours, but he’d told me they were the most patient men on earth. They’d have to be, considering how impatient his mother was.
At the gate I pressed the intercom button and waited. A second later a guard’s voice answered robotically, “Welcome to the Stone residence. Please state your order of business.”
I looked down at the blacktop under my feet and took a deep breath.
“This is Jesse,” I said. “I’m here to turn myself in.”
The intercom went silent, and a few seconds later, Dr. Reed’s voice came through the speaker.
“Jesse? This is a surprise.”
Other voices trickled in behind him, including Maddy’s.
“I’m sure,” I said, trying to make my voice sound more confident than I felt. “But I won’t surrender until I talk to you in person—alone. I won’t take no for an—”
Before I could say answer, the gate buzzed. Then it opened slowly, revealing two armed guards in white HORUS uniforms with their hands poised on their holsters.
“I’m unarmed,” I said, holding up War and Peace, “unless you consider the written word dangerous.”
The men snickered. Maddy would have told them that the written word was the most dangerous weapon of all, and in this case, he definitely would have been right, but luckily, he wasn’t there to warn them.
I walked between them up the driveway to the house, where two more guards in white suits met me at the door and took me immediately to the right. At the other end of the hallway, I heard voices—Maddy’s was one of them. “Who’s here?” he asked, then louder, “Is that Jesse?”
The guards took me down the flight of stairs that led to Dr. Stone’s home laboratory—just as we’d hoped they would—and all sound disappeared.
“Wait here while we get Dr. Reed,” the guards said. “Don’t touch anything or make a sound.”
When they reached the top of the stairs, they locked the deadbolt on the door from the other side. That was how we knew they’d probably take me there—they wouldn’t want me getting out. The room was lined with the whiteboards Maddy had mentioned, as well as the filing cabinets full of physical records. On a desk on the other side of the room was Dr. Stone’s computer, and I quickly inserted the chip. A minute later I heard the deadbolt slide back and footsteps come down the stairs.
“You managed to make a scene,” Dr. Reed said, his voice smooth even as his face betrayed his anger. “Maddy knows you’re here—though I’m sure that’s what you intended.”
“I just want the chase to stop,” I said. I forced my face into a mask of teenage angst. “And I want to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” Dr. Reed’s eyebrows rose.
“Maddy is happy with Georgia—he told me so himself. I don’t want to ruin his life…. I’ve already done that once.”
Lying is a lot easier when the words aren’t really a lie.
“Fine,” Dr. Reed said. “One last goodbye, and then you leave Maddy alone for good. Understood?”
“Yes.” I looked down at the book. “Should I…?”
“Leave it here.”
A minute later I was in the Stones�
�� dining room, smack dab in the middle of their fancy family dinner. Maddy and a girl who must have been Georgia sat on one side, the one facing me, with Mrs. Reed across from them and Mr. and Mrs. Stone bookending the table. A generous spread—turkey, smoked ham, three types of salad, and a pasta dish—decorated the surface in its sterling silver splendor, and matching gray napkins protected their laps from falling morsels.
“Jesse,” Maddy said as he stood and sent his napkin floating to the floor. He wore one of his book-cover T-shirts and ratty jeans, which I imagined his mom wasn’t thrilled about. Now that I thought about it, something looked more… Maddy… about him. “What are you doing here?”
Get to the computer first, and then distract them, I remembered Tommy saying. We’ll need at least fifteen minutes. Darlene will hit the fire alarm once we call the house and give the signal.
“I’m here because I love you.” My voice was loud—too loud—and it echoed through the room. “I won’t let you go, even if it means they kill me because of it.”
“After this stunt, we just might,” Dr. Reed said. His face, though bemused, indicated that he was not kidding. That was what made a man like Dr. Reed so terrifying—now he had created life, he didn’t care about ending it.
“I left,” Maddy said. “I chose Georgia. Why can’t you accept that?”
His face was frozen. He was lying.
“Because I know you feel the same way,” I said. “And I have to hear you say it, even if it means that Dr. Reed and your dad wipe me or kill me or whatever they’ll do.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Maddy said. “In fact, this actually reminds me of a scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You know, right after we find out about Oberon and Titania’s estrangement but before Puck applies the charm.”
Everyone around the table looked at him like he was crazy as he babbled about the plot of one of his favorite Shakespeare plays, but I didn’t. I’d realized what it would take several minutes for them to figure out: Maddy knew about my plan. What other explanation could there be for one of his “Shakespeare lectures,” especially the one play he knew I could follow?
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