by Richard Bard
Mom kept the motor running after she pulled the Fiat into the driveway. “I’m going to run to the store,” she said. “I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes. Tell Sara and Ahmed to stick around. I want to speak to all three of you when I return.”
I didn’t ask what it was about. Why bother? I grabbed my backpack, jumped out of the car, and walked up the steps to the porch. The front door swung open before I could grab the handle, and Ahmed stepped out and nearly speared me with the end of his short board.
“Whoa!” he said, twisting to one side. “Sorry about that. Hey, I’m headed to the beach. Would you like to go?”
“Mom says we have to stay here.”
“Huh?” Ahmed leaped down the steps as the Fiat backed down the drive. “Mom, wait!”
It was no use. She waved a finger to indicate she was in a hurry and then drove away. Ahmed’s mouth stayed open longer than necessary, the palm of his free hand jutted into the air as if to ask what had just happened.
Beyond him, a car with blacked-out windows pulled away from the curb and followed Mom around the corner.
Chapter 2
I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE some sort of genius, but I got confused just as easily as the next kid. Even more so, since my brain never seemed to slow down. It gobbled up information day in and day out—cataloguing, memorizing, analyzing. A part of me realized it came naturally to me, but another part wondered how long I’d be able to keep it up. What happens when my brain gets overstuffed?
My dad had the same gift, if you want to call it that, though he wasn’t nearly as good with computers as I was, and Dad’s abilities seemed to be coming and going lately, like something was changing in him. I catalogued that in the Worried About Dad drawer.
I’d have to start a drawer on Mom, too, after the way she was acting this morning.
The drawer system worked pretty well for me. I kept the bad drawers closed so that the uncomfortable feelings they gave me didn’t distract me from the important stuff, like online gaming. There’s nothing like diving into a role-playing game, where you control the character’s choices and actions, or a first-person shooter where quick reflexes mean the difference between life and death. Living inside a good game pushed away the constant flow of data that bombarded me all the time in real life. In a game, the world is…finite. I liked that word, even though most seven-year-olds would screw up their face if I used it. But my vocabulary was pretty much only limited by whether or not I’d been exposed to a word. Between books, TV, and the Internet—not to mention my brother’s occasional bouts of jabbering—I’d learned lots of words. And I never forgot them. My brain stuffed them into drawers and I could recall them whenever I wanted. It’s the same with videos, pictures, people, and places. You name it, I remember it. And math and numbers? Don’t even get me started on that.
I had lots of drawers.
It’s pretty cool, I guess, but when most everyone around me had trouble even remembering what they ate for breakfast that morning, it kind of made me stand out. People look at you funny when you’re different. That’s why I didn’t play with kids my age.
They didn’t get me.
But my family did, and like my dad said, In the end, family is all that matters.
I was hungry but I figured I could wait a while. Mom should be home soon, and I was hoping she’d bring something good for lunch. I climbed up on the bar stool and scooched it up to the kitchen counter. I liked to sit on the end that butted up against the wall. My dad’s Snoopy helmet hung there on a peg. He liked to wear it when he flew acrobatics in one of the old planes at his work. Sometimes he put it on my head when he told me stories about his Air Force days. It smelled like old leather…and Dad.
Sarafina and Ahmed were at the kitchen table. She wore shorts and a cut-off tee shirt that Dad would say showed too much for a thirteen-year-old, and if Mom noticed the touch of makeup my sister had on, she’d be in trouble. I don’t know why she bothered with face paint, especially around her eyes. They were her best feature, big and friendly. As usual, she was texting someone on her iPhone. That’s what she did if she wasn’t playing music on her keyboard.
Ahmed was still in his board shorts and tank top. His right knee bounced up and down so I could tell he was anxious to go to the beach like he planned. He didn’t have many friends but he loved surfing at the beach down the street from our home. He said his Afghan skin was built for the sun, and oceans were among Allah’s greatest gifts. Right now, he was focused on his laptop, which was connected to two external speakers. He tapped a key and a loud karate kiai made me flinch.
Sarafina looked up and crinkled her brow. “You’re kidding, right?” she said. “Pleeease use your headset. Those screeches are enough to give a person a headache.” She should know since she had perfect pitch, and the ability to compose amazing songs in her head and play them with her eyes closed on a piano or keyboard. I loved listening to her play. We all had coping mechanisms. Hers was music.
“Uh-huh,” Ahmed said, without looking up from the screen—or putting on his headset.
He was studying a recording of his last sparring event, playing it over and over. When he focused on something, it could be hard to break him loose. I’d learned it was best to let him be when he got into that mode. Even though the brain implant he received years ago had done wonders to eliminate most of the adverse affects of his autism, he still suffered from bouts of paranoia. When that happened, he couldn’t stop talking. It could be annoying and he knew it. So over the last year or so, he’d been trying to channel that energy toward karate classes.
The video ended, and I cringed when he tapped the screen to start it all over again. Another loud kiai sounded. Sharper this time. I flinched again.
“Really?” my sister said, glaring at him. Ahmed didn’t notice, so she huffed and plugged in her own earphones, turning her back on him as she texted.
I pulled my tablet from my backpack and propped it up on the counter. Then I donned my neuro-headset, which was about the coolest thing ever invented. The wireless device was a human-to-computer interface that allowed me to control online games using nothing but my thoughts. Talk about hands-free! The game developer named it the Spider because of the way its eight legs draped around your scalp and forehead. If it had been up to me, I would’ve named it the Octopus, since each of the legs was embedded with rows of circular probes that reminded me of tiny suction cups. Either way, it was the latest device of its kind, way better than anything else out there. The headset was still in beta testing, but a bunch of them had been distributed to select gamers around the world—the best of the best—each user getting a unit registered exclusively for his or her use, no exceptions. It was no surprise that Uncle Marshall—who wasn’t my real uncle, either—was invited to join the beta testing group. He’d been a gamer elite for ages, same as many of his friends, and was probably on top of the distribution list.
But he’d been swamped lately with government contracts for his cyber-security consulting business, and right now he was in Rome visiting his wife, Lacey. She was an actress and she was on location for a film. So he’d let me test it out for him on the sly. I was supposed to pretend I was him whenever I used it online. He’d even added his own twist to the software so that when the server at game headquarters pinged for a location address, it was rerouted to wherever Uncle Marshall’s laptop was.
I slipped the Spider onto my head, activating the noise-canceling feature to tune out the world. It felt like home. The instant I switched it on, the application on my tablet responded with an audible cue. “Good morning, Marshall. Are you ready to play?”
Oh, yeah! I thought, and the screen automatically drew me into the online game in progress.
As usual, while I played, I blocked out the endless stream of underlying images, words, and numbers that accompanied the data stream, figuring it was some sort of subliminal advertising gimmick the game makers were testing out. As I dodged explosions and returned fire with all sorts of cool weapons, my mind drif
ted on autopilot, exploring the network of other players, connecting to their emotions and thoughts in a way that didn’t allow them to notice the intrusion. I could tell the exact moment when each of them recognized Uncle Marshall’s TurboHacker call sign—by their emotional groans. That’s because I didn’t lose very often, and when I did it was usually because Mom interrupted my play. But none of the other players ever gave up. In fact, they seemed more determined than ever to beat me.
My favorite weapon was the robotic swarm. It became available after you used conventional weapons to kill twelve players without dying yourself. The swarm consisted of twenty-four dart-sized drones that hovered and zipped around like hummingbirds. The player could switch his screen view to any one of them, and a single strike from a drone’s needle-tipped nose spelled instant death. The key to my success with them was multitasking. Players tended to maneuver a swarm as a single unit. A few of the better players had learned to split their drones into two groups and they had a far higher kill rate than everyone else—other than me, of course. I used an entirely different strategy, my brain separating the drones into twenty individual units so they could either move with the swarm or operate independently. It came naturally to me, so I guess it wasn’t very fair to the other players, but heck, war isn’t fair, right? Besides, the better I got, the more the other players teamed up against me to even the odds.
I loved it!
Chapter 3
I WAS MIDWAY THROUGH a leap off a building, blasting my M1216 shotgun at two opponents who’d just run past, when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a burst of three short vibrations, then three long, three short—Morse code for SOS. I think my heart might’ve skipped a beat because my breath caught in my throat. I glanced up to see shocked expressions on my sister and brother, and even with my noise-canceling headphones on, I knew the ring tone that accompanied the code on all our phones was “Danger Zone,” a song from Dad’s favorite movie, Top Gun, programmed to play by an application that synched specific text messages with distinctive tones.
I ripped off my Spider and we all scrambled for our phones.
“Oh my God!” Sarafina gasped. Her face was white.
“No, wait a minute,” Ahmed said, standing up so fast that his chair toppled backward. “I was supposed to go surfing. What about school? My stuff? I haven’t even eaten lunch yet. This can’t be for real—”
I ignored him because the moment I unlocked the screen on my phone, I knew it was real. Mom and Dad had pounded it into our heads over and over again. The alert message would never be sent as a drill. The group text had come from Mom’s phone. I stared at the four characters that would change our lives forever:
Now!
Sarafina dropped her phone on the table. Her hands shook and her fingers danced in the air as if they were playing an aggressive song on the piano.
Ahmed’s rant continued, his words spilling over one another. “Where’s Dad? We don’t even have a car. I love this house. What about my board—”
I tuned him out, recalling Dad’s instructions:
Don’t question. Act!
I snapped off the back of my phone, yanked out the battery, and threw the device as hard as I could against the tile floor. Glass cracked, plastic splintered, and my sister and brother froze. I set my jaw and returned their stares, ignoring the tears spilling down my cheeks. Sarafina’s fingers calmed and Ahmed’s lips tightened. We needed to work together. I knew it. They knew it.
Ahmed blew out a breath behind clenched teeth. His eyes narrowed and a nod told me he was back in control. He removed the battery from his phone and dropped the remnants beside mine on the floor. Sarafina followed suit. That act of solidarity was like the Spider game’s countdown clock reaching zero.
“Move!” Ahmed said, grabbing his laptop and running toward the staircase leading to our bedrooms. Sarafina was right behind him. I jammed the Spider and tablet into my backpack and followed.
“Sixty seconds!” Ahmed shouted as he dashed into his bedroom.
My sister let out a yelp and disappeared around the corner.
I ran into my room and a flush of sadness washed over me when I realized this would be the last time I’d ever see it. I pushed the feeling aside and kept moving. Most of the stuff I needed was already in my pack, but Dad had drilled into us that our survival depended on having everything on the list. So I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and pulled out a new cell phone, a rolled-up sweatshirt, a Swiss Army knife, and a rubber-banded wad of documents and money. I shoved it all into my pack.
“I hate these long pants,” my sister shouted from her bedroom. “They make me look fat.”
“Don’t forget the barrettes!” Ahmed said.
I pulled on my jeans, laced up my sneakers, and slung the pack over my shoulder. Fighting back a sniffle, I took one last look at my room, memorizing every detail—the action figures on my dresser, the wall covered with my favorite fractal patterns, the model airplanes hanging from the ceiling—
“Thirty seconds!” Ahmed shouted.
I flinched, grabbed my favorite Transformer figure, and rushed out the door. There was one last thing I had to get that wasn’t on the list.
Dad’s life depended on it.
Chapter 4
Twenty Thousand Feet Above Fujian Province, South China
MY BACKPACK WAS at the back of the plane, but I could still feel the energy emanating from the miniature pyramid I’d taken from Dad’s floor safe. The mini, that’s what I called it, felt good in a way I’d never felt before, like I was stronger somehow and everything was going to be all right. I’d known all along Dad had taken it from the island on the day that an overhead Grid of pyramids left by an ancient alien race had nearly destroyed humanity—which is a mind-bending story of its own—and I’d been tempted to ask him about it several times. But he’d wanted to keep it a secret, even from Mom, so I let it go.
“It’s so cold,” my sister said, shivering under our shared blanket. Ahmed scooted closer on my other side, draping his blanket over the three of us.
We huddled together on inward-facing web seats in the cargo compartment of a transport aircraft that Ahmed said was a C-130. The interior wasn’t finished like the passenger jets I’d been in before. Instead, it was noisy and drafty, and it rattled like crazy every time we hit the slightest bit of turbulence. There were two covered pallets of cargo tied down near the back of the plane and two guards toward the front. One of them was dozing and the other had just plopped into his seat after prepping a fresh pot of tea.
A man was lying on the seats across from us. At least we thought it was a man from the jeans, sweatshirt, and short black hair, but his back was to us so we couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t moved since we woke up. His ankles were zip-tied together.
Our ankles were free, but our hands were zip-tied in front of us and our wrists were chafed from the cuffs. Sarafina had begged the guards to remove them when we’d first awakened an hour ago from the drug they’d given us. She’d received a slap in the face. They seemed to hate us and I knew why. Ahmed had shot one of their friends when they had jumped us at the arcade after we’d fled the house. He’d fought back, a gun had come loose, and he’d picked it up and fired. He’d done it to save Sarafina, and I’ll never forget the look on his face when he’d squeezed the trigger. Pure determination. He hadn’t flinched, and he’d held the pistol in a two-handed grip just like my character held the Colt Python in the Spider game. But the sound of the shots echoing in my ears, the holes exploding in the man’s chest, and the expression of terror as blood gurgled from his mouth had been a lot different from a video game.
I didn’t like it.
When one of the other men had grabbed me from behind and held a knife to my neck, Ahmed had turned the weapon in my direction, and I realized part of him had believed he could take out the guy without hurting me. I swear my heart stopped beating, and if I hadn’t willed him to stop I think he might’ve tried it.
The guard checked his
watch, and I had the sense we were in a slight descent.
“Maybe we’re getting close,” Ahmed said, keeping his voice low.
“Yeah, but close to where?” Sarafina asked with a shiver.
She was right. There was no telling where we were. But based on how hungry I was, we must’ve been traveling for a very long time.
But it didn’t matter. We had a plan, and we were waiting for Ahmed to get it started.
“Any second,” Ahmed said, watching the guard.
“How can you be so sure?” Sarafina asked.
“He keeps jiggling his knees up and down, just like Alex does.”
I could see it, too. I had the same nervous habit when I was holding it in.
“Get ready,” Ahmed said.
Sarafina tensed. “I’m scared.”
“Like Dad says, it’s okay to be scared,” Ahmed said. “There’s no such thing as courage if there isn’t fear. Besides, it’s gonna work.” His confidence helped me relax.
Her lips tightened, but she nodded, leaned over, and placed her head in my lap, pretending to take a nap. The guard glanced over but Ahmed was right—the man’s mind was elsewhere.
Sarafina closed her eyes and I snuggled the blanket under her chin like Mom would when she tucked me in. Then I caressed my sister’s hair, casually removing her barrette and passing it beneath the blanket to Ahmed.
He took the tool and I could feel his movements beneath the blanket. We’d all done it dozens of times before, a talent we’d learned compliments of Uncle Becker. He’d taught us lots of things during his visits over the past year, and getting out of flex-cuffs was one of them. Even the thickest ties turned out to be no problem, especially if you had a tool like a barrette with a modified tongue that slid easily between the lock’s angled teeth. I felt my brother’s relief and knew it had worked. He passed the barrette back and I handed it under the blanket to Sarafina. It was her turn, then mine.