by Tracy Deebs
The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching two by two,
The little one stops to tie his shoe
And they all go marching down to the ground
To get out of the rain.
I wonder if that’s what we look like, and more, if that’s what we are to the person who designed this nightmare, who did this to all of us. Just ants scuttling along the earth, annoying and unimportant, as we try to save our useless little existence.
I think we must be, because how else could he do this? How else could he ruin so many lives so easily?
Does he know? Wherever he is, does he see what he’s done to us? Is this what he planned all along, or has it taken on a life of its own? Are things worse than even he imagined?
A car drives by too quickly for the conditions, and its tires kick up water from the puddles forming near the curb. It sprays all over us, and Emily curses, slips. Theo’s right there to grab her, his hand on her elbow, lending support. But the near fall hurts her already-damaged knee, and when she tries to walk again, her limp is much more pronounced.
“I need to rest for a second,” she says, and I can hear the pain in her voice. I want to tell her it’s okay, that we can stay here as long as she wants, but the storm is getting worse. And what was a fifteen-minute drive is going to be closer to a three-hour walk, especially at the rate she’s able to move.
In the end, I don’t say anything at all, just start to help her over to the retaining wall that edges the sidewalk. Before we get there, though, Theo and Eli stop us. “Grab on to my shoulders and wrap your legs around my waist,” Theo tells her. When she can’t pull herself up, Eli gives her a boost onto Theo’s back.
“You can’t—”
“Just do it,” I say. “We need to get going.”
She finally does, reluctantly, but asks, “When did you turn into a Nike commercial?”
“Right around the time the world went insane. You got a problem with that?”
“No.” She grins at me. “Just checking.”
Now that he doesn’t have to worry about Emily’s leg, Theo sets a brutal pace that has me scrambling to keep up. Which amazes me, considering he’s got Emily on his back plus his own injuries from the car accident. She doesn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, but still. Sometimes he and Eli seem almost superhuman.
We walk for miles in the dark, for hours that seem to stretch on forever even with the steady beam of Eli’s flashlight to lead the way. Though the storm finally lets up when we’re about halfway home, by the time we make the turn onto my street, I’m ready to weep with joy, and from exhaustion. It’s after midnight, and while I’m a night owl, I swear this has been the longest day of my life. I want nothing more than to take a hot shower, crawl into bed. And wake up tomorrow with everything back to normal.
Not that that’s going to happen, but a girl can hope.
Suddenly, Emily starts struggling against Theo’s hold. “Let me down,” she says.
He casts a surprised look over his shoulder. “Just let me get you to Pandora’s—”
“No, it’s fine. My mom’s probably waiting at Pandora’s house ready to rip me a new one. We were supposed to be back at my place hours ago.”
“And that has what to do with my carrying you?”
Emily doesn’t answer, but then she doesn’t have to. I’ve known Emily’s mom for more than a decade, and while she’s great, and everything my mom isn’t, she also tends to overreact. If she sees her youngest child being carried home by a half-naked giant, there will be a scene like no other. And Emily will end up spending the night in the emergency room, whether she needs to or not.
“Just let her down,” I tell him. “It’ll make everything easier.”
He starts to argue, but something changes his mind. I’m not sure what it is, though he casts a wary glance down the street to my house. The look is gone almost as soon as it appears—before I can decipher it—and after a second he squats down so I can help Emily off his massive back. When he stands, the streetlight catches his face just right and I realize the other reason Emily is making such a fuss.
Theo looks tired, weary, all the way to his bones. It seems strange to see him like this—all night, he’s been so strong, and now, suddenly, he looks amazingly, vulnerably human. But then, he did perform miracles at the crash site before carrying Emily ten miles, all while injured himself.
She must sense that it’s caught up with him.
The last little bit seems to take forever. Emily’s knee is a lot better and she’s barely limping, but the rest of us aren’t doing so well. My feet are on fire, and I have blisters on both of my heels.
We finally get to Theo and Eli’s house, and I raise my hand in an exhausted good-bye, but Eli says, “You’re not getting rid of us that easily. We’ll walk you to your front door.” If possible, he looks even more tired than Theo, like putting one foot in front of the other requires a gigantic effort.
“I’m not going to my front door,” I tell him. “We’re going around that curve up there and getting into Emily’s car. Everything else will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m done.”
“Okay. Then we’ll walk you to the car,” Eli says stubbornly.
“Seriously?” I roll my eyes, give him a little shove toward his driveway. “Go get some sleep.”
“Yeah.” Theo puts a hand on Eli’s shoulder, steers him toward their house. “We’ll see you tomorrow.” The gesture, and the words, are totally out of character for him, but I’m too tired to examine his motives.
Eli looks like he’s going to protest as Emily reaches into her purse, pulls out paper and a pen, scribbles something on it, and holds it out to them. “That’s my address. I live behind the huge H-E-B on Market. Come over whenever you wake up, and maybe my dad can help with the whole accident thing.”
Theo takes the paper, nods. “Thanks.” Then he turns to Eli. “Come on.” His voice is hard, determined.
We leave them there, watching us, though it seems strange. This morning I’d been worried by Theo and disdainful of Eli, and now I don’t want to leave them. I know it’s stupid, but every instinct I have is screaming that I am safe with them in a way I’m not anywhere else right now.
Still, I let them go—what else can I do? But the moment we walk around the second bend separating my house and Eli’s, I know I should have followed those instincts.
Something is wrong. Really wrong.
Pandora’s Box wrong.
The whole back section of the street, which is normally dark and quiet by eight o’clock every night, is lit up like Rockefeller Center two days before Christmas.
My stomach tightens and I freeze. Please don’t let it be for me, please don’t let it be for me. The words run through my head—my own personal mantra against this strange hell my life has turned into.
Emily grabs my hand, whispers, “Let’s go back and get the guys. They probably have another car—they can drive us to my house.”
“What if your mom’s here?”
“She’s not,” Emily tells me. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t just run away from this.”
We move a little closer, scan the front of my house and the cars parked in my driveway. Besides Emily’s, there are two white cars with red and blue flashing lights. A black car with ominously shaded windows. And perhaps most frightening is the huge SUV with gun racks visible in the back. For the first time in a very long time, I wish for my mother in more than the abstract. She’s a lawyer, and it sucks, just completely sucks, that she is thousands of miles away when I need her most.
“Going for help isn’t running away. My dad knows FBI people, works with them. He can help us.”
That sounds good. I need all the help I can get.
“I just don’t understand why the government is here,” she continues. “They can’t be going to every house that plays Pandora’s Box. Otherwise we would have seen them when we passed Theo and Eli’s, right?”
<
br /> I don’t answer. There’s a sick feeling in my stomach as I think back to the birthday present on my laptop screen, the one I hadn’t wanted to open. Was I the only one to get that message? The only one in the world picked to unleash this disaster? It doesn’t make sense.
I take a deep breath, try to calm down. But the one thought that manages to get through the haze only makes it harder to function. Did I do this? Did I somehow do all of this?
I think of the chaos at Little Nicky’s, of Josh screaming for his daddy, of his father so badly injured. I think of all the panicked people on the street outside the restaurants.
Is all of that somehow my fault?
How can that be possible? The Internet failed before I ever touched that gift. So did the phones and the TV. Pandora’s Box might have caused this, but it isn’t my fault. It isn’t my fault.
I repeat it again and again, trying to convince myself.
But then why are the police and God only knows who else in my driveway? In my house? It’s not like they have nothing better to do tonight—the accident we were involved in proves that they do.
Emily and I hold on to each other tightly as we take a few steps backward. I don’t have much of a plan, short of getting around the bend before they stop us and then running like hell back to Eli and Theo. Everything inside me screams that Theo will know what to do.
But we’ve only taken a few steps when someone in the driveway points a flashlight at where we’d been standing a few seconds before. “Hey!” a deep male voice shouts. “Who’s there?” The light moves as he begins to run toward us, looking anything but friendly.
I want to flee, to race back in the other direction. Except Emily’s knee couldn’t take it, and where would we go, anyway? Now that they’ve spotted us, it’s not like we can just disappear. And the last thing I want is to bring this to Eli and Theo’s doorstep—they don’t deserve it.
“Go,” I whisper fiercely to Emily even as I step toward the pool of light under the streetlamp. Maybe I can distract their attention, give her a chance to get away. “Get out of here!”
“And let you face this alone?” she answers indignantly. “As if.”
“Damn it, Emily, hurry. He’s almost here.”
I try to shake her off, but her grip on my hand tightens. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do. I’m not leaving you. Besides, they could just be here to help.”
“Does he look like he wants to help? And why me? Go, Emily!” I rip my hand from hers and take off running, straight toward the police officer. “Hey, who are you?” I shout, trying to get his attention.
Get away, I tell her fiercely in my head. Get away, get away, get away.
But Emily isn’t my oldest and most loyal friend for nothing. She hustles after me, calling my name, loud and clear enough for everyone in a two-mile radius to hear.
The policeman stops in front of me, shines his light in my face, and I blink, try to focus. “Are you Pandora Walker?” he asks, his voice deep and serious. He’s young, and a little frightened looking despite the no-nonsense voice. His blue eyes are wild in the eerie glow cast by the lights, and his hair is standing on end, like he’s been running his fingers through it all night.
“Yes.” It takes every ounce of control I have to stop my voice from shaking.
“You need to come with me.” He turns the flashlight on Emily, who has stopped right behind me. “Emily Scott?”
“Yes?”
“How did you know her—”
“Is that your car?” he asks, talking over me and pointing at Emily’s cute little Prius, sitting at the top of my driveway. The front passenger window is smashed, where they must have broken in to get her information. With no Internet, they couldn’t just run her license plate.
She nods, swallows audibly. I can tell she’s terrified, and I’m furious she didn’t try to get away when I gave her the chance. I’m even more furious that we’re in this position at all. It’s ridiculous. I didn’t do anything but play a stupid video game.
“What are you doing here?” I demand.
“Let’s go in the house and talk.” He sweeps his arm in a mockery of gallantry as he motions for Emily and me to precede him up the driveway.
“What if I don’t want to go in the house?”
His flashlight, and eyes, run over me. The rain has washed away most of the blood—and my careful hairstyle—but his gaze lingers on my nose piercing, Social D tank top, and ripped jeans. He’s already decided I’m a troublemaker.
“Then you can sit in the back of my police car while I go inside and let the various agents in there fight over where they want to take you.”
“The house it is,” Emily says brightly, her eyes pleading with me to keep my mouth shut. Which I do, but it bothers me. I don’t like being threatened, especially when I haven’t done anything illegal.
I start walking.
Behind me, the cop pulls out a walkie-talkie and mutters a couple of codes I don’t understand. But the next thing I know, all hell breaks loose.
People flood out of my front door. Men and women in uniform, in suits, in jeans and polo shirts. I don’t know who to look at, don’t know what to do, and I feel myself shrinking back, curling in on myself. Suddenly bravery and self-sacrifice seem completely overrated and I know—with total certainty—that the only thing stopping me from running, from probably being shot in the back, is Emily’s arm linked through mine.
Three people—two men and a woman—break away from the pack. They aren’t running, but they are moving quickly and with an authority that tells me they’re in charge here. Which seems strange. This is my house, my mother’s house, and the idea that all these people have been in there for God only knows how long, pawing through my stuff and finding out every secret we have—which admittedly isn’t many—makes my stomach hurt.
“Pandora Walker?” asks the woman, who gets to me first. She’s dressed in a gray pantsuit, and she looks pissed. Her mouth is pinched, her blond hair scraped back into a bun so tight it pulls at the corners of her eyes.
I nod, not knowing what else to do.
“Come inside. We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Excuse me, but can I see some identification? Who are you people? And do you have a search warrant?” Emily asks, and I’m grateful all over again that she is with me, though the last thing I want to do is get her in trouble. My brain has all but shut down, so that questions about what is going on are foreign to me. As are thoughts about my rights.
One of the men steps forward, and unlike the other two, he isn’t dressed in a suit. Instead, he’s wearing threadbare jeans and a black T-shirt—much like Eli was. The lack of formality should put me at ease, but it doesn’t. How can it, when his face looks carved from granite, his eyes so dark and intense that it seems like he can see straight through to my soul?
The look he gives me says he’s not happy with what he sees.
“I’m Tom Mackaray, with Homeland Security. This is Frances Lessing of the FBI,”—he gestures to the woman—“and this is Michael Lundstrom from the NSA.”
Jesus. Is there a domestic law enforcement acronym that isn’t represented here? I sway and Emily reaches out, steadies me.
“Where are you two coming from, Pandora?”
“We went out for pizza.” Emily again.
He frowns at her, and I’m shocked to see that his face really does move, after all. “When I want to hear from you, Ms. Scott, I’ll address you.”
“Yes, sir.” Emily quiets quickly under his scrutiny, not that I blame her. Despite his casual appearance, this man looks like he wants to throw us in a deep, dark hole and toss away the key. Which is a bad thing for so many, many reasons, not the least of which is the phobia I’ve done my best to ignore all night. I’d never last in a cell like that because I’m terrified of the dark.
“So, now that we’ve all been introduced, let’s go inside.” It’s Lundstrom tal
king, and he’s all but bristling with impatience.
“You still haven’t shown us the search warrant.” I speak up this time.
“No, I haven’t.” Mackaray tries to stare me down, but I’m not budging. Not on this. Maybe it’s a dumb move, but I don’t want to go into the house with these people. Looking into their faces, I’m suddenly aware of just how distant a document the Constitution really is.
Lundstrom grumbles, takes a threatening step toward us. At any second I expect him to grab us and shove us into the house—or to pull a gun and force us in that way. But as long seconds pass, he just stands there, glowering.
Finally, Lessing reaches into her pocket and pulls out a document. As she hands it to me, her eyes go to a spot behind us, and I realize the reason they’re playing so nicely is because we have an audience. My neighbors across the street are watching. And though the world seems to have gone to hell in one evening, I guess it’s still not a good idea to manhandle kids. At least not if there are other options.
I open the envelope and stare at the words on the page. They don’t make much sense to me, but even I know enough to realize that I’m holding the real deal. I skim through until I get to the scary words:
Seize and examine, by persons qualified to do so, and in a laboratory setting, any and all electronic data processing and media devices that may have been used while engaging in cyberterrorism as defined in the Annotated Code of Texas, amended and revised.
Cyberterrorism.
My knees buckle, and I swear I would have fallen if Emily wasn’t there, holding me up.
This is happening. Oh my God, this is really happening. Reading those words makes this real. The FBI and Homeland Security are in my house, accusing me of cyberterrorism and searching for—I find the spot on the warrant that details what they want, which feels like everything. My laptop, my cell phone, my digital TV box, my iPod, my Play-Station, my iPad, and any other electronic equipment they can find.