Configured: (Book #1 in the Configured Trilogy)

by Jenetta Penner

  Back on the floor below, the outlines of the drones creep closer as they sweep the floor, and the outlines of two more figures come into view. Electricity in my stomach tenses me, but I wrench and turn toward Lena.

  "New guards. Meyer needs to work faster," I pant. I check again below us, and the guards stand right at the door to the boy's apartment.

  55 seconds. 54… 53… 52…

  "Lena, the guards are in one of the apartments," I say.

  "Better there than here."

  "No, the boy might have seen us."

  "What boy?"

  I tap off my comm so Meyer can't hear. "A kid peeked out the door just as we got to the stairwell. He might have seen us."

  20 seconds. 19…18…17…

  Lena opens her mouth to speak as the lock clicks.

  "Let's go," Meyer whispers.

  Lena bolts through the door toward the building's edge and launches herself to the next. I tap my comm back on and follow Meyer and Lena.

  At the third rooftop, an alert blinks. The three of us duck behind the stairwell entrance. An upward shaft of light from a guard's work light pierces the sky from the top of the building we left.

  4 Armed Human Guardians appears in my vision. They search the rooftop, then return inside.

  A Guardian whizzes overhead and continues toward the first building. I press into the wall to avoid being seen or scanned. We stay put for a few minutes until the drone is gone, then move through the series of rooftops.

  At the last one, a chasm awaits. It's not a chasm, really only nine feet, but it still seems like one.

  91% chance of success

  And a 9% chance…

  "Just follow the instructions," Lena whispers. "It's like in the sims."

  "You first, Avlyn," Meyer says.

  I shudder. "Me? Why me?"

  "You might get scared, and we'll have to leave you behind." He gestures toward the abyss. Part of me has no idea if he's joking or not. Lena pulls her satchel over her head, rolls it up, and tosses it to the other side. An echoey thump sounds when the bag reaches its destination.

  Lena shrugs. "See, the bag's safe."

  "Fine," I mutter to myself.

  The EP instructions are clear. Backtrack nineteen feet and take a running jump over the passageway. Tuck and roll on the other side.

  Easy. Right?

  I sprint back, bend my knees, and fill my lungs with what could be my last swallow of air.

  Don't overthink.

  I shoot toward the ledge. The wind fills my hair, and my chest heaves in anticipation of the end. When I reach the edge, I sail through air and over the ghostly EP illuminated blackness below. It's as if no one else exists. I close my eyes, then the EP blinks for me to tuck in.

  Thud.

  The concrete crushes into my shoulder, and a sharp pain sears my arm. I roll out. Nothing broken, but we are definitely not in the sim anymore.

  "I'm all right," I grunt.

  "Great, now move," Meyer answers in the comm.

  His sails through the air. I tuck my legs in to get out of the way before he hits, rolls, and jumps to his feet. His performance was just about a million times more graceful than mine must have looked.

  "On my way," Lena says.

  Meyer helps me to my feet as Lena joins us. Now to get down.

  The two of them each take out a small tool and release a trigger that shoots cable and anchors onto the bottom of the metal beams of the ledge. Meyer bends to check the security of it manually, but since my EP verifies the safety, I'm sure his does too.

  He turns. "You're with me, Avlyn."

  I inch toward him. Lena clips in, runs and checks her cable, signals, and disappears over the ledge.

  "How are we going to do this?" I whisper.

  He flashes a smile. "Carefully."

  He stands next to the ledge, exposes clips from his built-in harness, and secures them to the cable. He points at the ledge. "Stand here."

  "Are we facing each other?"

  "Nope, you have to be on my back. Now get going. The EP will tell you if you're secured," he says.

  Meyer turns and backs into me. The EP displays three extendable clips on the back of the suit for me to use as a harness.

  Secure flashes in my EP.

  92% chance of survival blinks, and my breath quickens.

  "Put your arms around my neck."

  I wrap my arms around his powerful shoulders, pulling myself in close to him. I gulp. If there wasn't an 8% chance we were going to die…

  Meyer hoists us up almost effortlessly with his strong arms and legs and climbs to the top of the rim. He checks his cable again. "Oh, and you probably want to close your eyes." He drops back over the edge with a jolt as he lowers us.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my nails into his neck. We don't plummet.

  Yet.

  92% odds of survival. 93%… 94%…

  I gasp for air and bury my head into his shoulders.

  "You're almost done," Lena whispers in the comm.

  100%

  Plunk. Meyer's feet hit the ground, and I open my eyes to Lena jogging toward us. She and Meyer unlatch us, dropping me to the concrete. He presses a button on the tool, and the cable unfastens from the rooftop and reels in as if never deployed. Streams of sweat drip down Meyer's face.

  The EP points our destination diagonal to our current location, and we have forty-two seconds before a human Guardian patrol rounds the building.

  "Got everything?" Meyer asks as he wipes the moisture away from his eyes.

  "Yep, I'm set," Lena says.

  They ready their stunners, and Meyer motions for us to go. My hands feel empty and useless.

  We make a break for the next block, then round in front of the first building into Sector A. Only a short distance until at least the first part of this mission is complete.

  The EP instructs us to slow. Human Guardians wait toward the edge of Sector Patrol, so we're directed to the left and through a narrow alleyway. From there, we can leave the city limits and head northwest.

  Meyer leads, and Lena makes sure I don't fall behind. Above is a shadowy chasm much like the one we jumped. From the end of the alley, the destination illuminates past the last building across the road and into the trees. Forty-five seconds from our stopped position to reach the tree line.

  Meyer fidgets with his handheld screen. "I disabled a nine-foot section of the electro perimeter. You should see it in your EP.

  The perimeter of Elore. I've never been outside the city.

  The open section glows in my vision, making my heart pound even faster. We dart out and over the road. I blast forward, trained on the cover of the thick trees beyond.

  7 Seconds. 6…5…4…

  Meyer cuts through the opening. He disappears from normal view, but not in the tracker.

  3…2…

  Lena hurls me forward after him.

  1…

  Human Security Detected

  202 ft.

  "Halt," yells a stern voice from behind us. When we don't stop, a pulse rips past and slams into a tree. Lena collides into my back, plunging us to the ground, crushing me into the underbrush. A mixture of earth and iron fills my mouth. I spit and wipe away the blood and dirt from my lips.

  She rolls off and pulls me to my feet as two guards speed toward us. Lena raises her weapon and fires twice. Frozen, the guards lurch forward, sliding over the thicket, and stop.

  "Are you okay?" I pant.

  "Fine. Guess the border's getting more aggressive."

  Meyer's voice fills my ear as a drone speeds over us. "Keep moving. They probably only think you're an escaping Level One citizen and won't bother chasing you far."

  I swallow and tail Lena, who's already on the move.

  My legs and lungs beg for rest, but I keep going. The pulses have stopped, or at least I can't hear them anymore. There must have only been the two guards.

  "Do you think they scanned us?" I gasp as we slow and catch up to Meyer.
>
  "The EP didn't pick it up if they did," he answers. "But you won't know for certain until you get home."

  If I get home.

  * * *

  The EP slows us for the remainder of the 4.4-mile trek to the detention center. There's too many ways of falling or being injured on the way if we move too fast. Eventually, an opening in the trees unveils a multi-level stone compound built in a clearing. A transparent electrodome glows over the structure in my EP, and a few Guardians patrol inside. We stay tucked in the foliage cover while Lena works on pinpointing the weak point in the security dome on her handheld, which she's pulled off her wrist and folded the thin, flexible material out into a tablet.

  A grid displays over the glow in my vision and the weakness glows bright. A security drone floats across the yard, scanning as it goes until it's out of sight.

  "Found it. I'm entering the codes," Lena whispers. "They should open a section of the electrodome so we can get in. Remember from the plan. We need to be out with Jayson in under twenty minutes."

  She taps them in, but her expression grows frustrated.

  Meyer walks to her and peers over her shoulder. "What's going on?"

  "They're not working," Lena grunts.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure. If they worked the security would be down."

  Meyer paces while cursing under his breath. As I watch him, a pit grows in my stomach.

  Lena folds her Flexx and snaps it back onto her wrist. She stares at it for a beat before her eyes flick to mine.

  "It's your turn, Avlyn," she says. "I'll log you into the detention center. Then you can create a rift in their defense shield."

  My eyes widen.

  Let's find out if I can really do this.

  21

  Lena cocks her head and pinches her lips together, staring at me. Waiting.

  I have no idea how to create a rift in the defense shield, but I'm here and I don't really have a choice.

  I sigh. If I'm not going to do what they want, I shouldn't have come.

  "Fine, patch me in."

  "Great. Get out your handheld and I'll link us up," she says.

  I grab it off my wrist and fold it out into a tablet, waiting for the code to appear on the screen. At home, I just touched the system's keypad. Let's hope the same works here.

  "The EP doesn't show it, but the electrodome is segmented," Lena says. "Like an orange, except in millions of layers. If you take out a small section for a few seconds, we can slip through, like we did at the border. That's what the codes were supposed to do."

  Lena takes out her Flexx and works while Meyer presses against the trunk of a tree. His weapon lifts slightly as the drones hover in and out of view in the grassy area surrounding the detention center again. Each time he looks my way, it's as if a fist grabs my stomach. I swallow down an urge to yell for her to go faster.

  "Is it working?" Lena asks.

  My heart pounds, and focus lies just out of reach. This whole thing feels like a bad joke. Like I conned everyone, including myself, into doing something I can't do. "No," I whisper.

  Meyer mutters something under his breath. "Try the codes again," he growls.

  She spins toward him. "Stop it, Meyer. She's just nervous." Lena turns back to me and reaches to clutch my arm with her free hand. "Just relax. You can do this. I believe in you."

  Just her touch sends an instant calm over my body. And her words? I've never had anyone say them to me.

  I suck in a breath, and with a jolt, a wave of sickness rolls over me as my view changes, replaced with snow… no… code. Random. Falling. But staring at it, my mind and body relaxes, and the snowy code organizes itself into patterns. Sparkling, electrical arrangements connecting one to the other. I reach for a sequence and graze over the glowing code. A hum reverberates through my hand and body. Calm. Warm. Like it's alive.

  What now?

  The last time I just asked for what I wanted.

  "Show me inside the security dome."

  The code patterns vibrate faster, and a section in front of me brightens. I grasp it, and a miniature, sparkling white hologram of the electrodome appears. Just as Lena said, it's broken into segments. First, eight gigantic ones. Not millions, but thousands of slices within each. Our location illuminates orange beside the closest segment.

  "Open the marked segment in five minutes, and then close it sixty seconds later."

  Nothing happens. Frustrated, I touch the segment I want and the code flows over and through my fingers. With a light hand, I trace the area I want to open.

  "Here," I order it.

  As if it were communicating, the code pulses brighter and a countdown displays in my vision. A pleasant tingling sensation spreads from my fingers into my arms.

  "Thank you?" After I say it, I feel silly. It's not like this thing is really alive.

  Intense light fills my surroundings as the nausea instantly returns. I shut my eyes and hold down the urge to vomit.

  Lena sits in front of me when I reopen them. "Are you ready?" she asks.

  But I can't hold back my stomach anymore and retch, but nothing comes.

  "Are you okay?" Lena grabs my shoulders as Meyer makes his way over to see what just happened.

  My stomach returns to normal and I suck in a deep breath. "Ready?"

  "What?" Lena asks. "Oh, are you ready to go in?"

  "I did it," I say. "We have about five minutes until it clears."

  "What? You're done already?" Meyer asks.

  "Apparently, she is." Lena shakes her head and swipes her handheld screen.

  Meyer shakes his head, confused. "How do you know it will for sure work?"

  The reality is I don't. This is so new to me. Hacking an app is one thing, this is something else altogether. "I guess you're going to have to trust me."

  "Fine," Meyer says. "Let's go. I'm ready to get this over with."

  "It's going to work. I just know it," Lena whispers to me.

  "Are you getting anything?" Meyer asks Lena.

  She shakes her head.

  He sighs. "You're leading this one, Avlyn."

  I whip around toward him. "Why?"

  "Because we aren't getting the same info in our EP as you. Lena and I are blind."

  "But we're linked."

  "Not for this. We didn't see what you just did, and I'm not getting anything now. Just the thirty-one-second run to the dome we already knew."

  "Can you at least see the segments in your EP?" I ask.

  "They're not showing, only the dome as a whole. How much time do we have?"

  "Three minutes thirty-seven seconds, and the EP estimates a thirty-one-second run to the cleared segment," I answer.

  Both Lena and Meyer set their countdowns manually.

  A Guardian whirs above. Although under thick cover, we all flinch, waiting for it to move on.

  The countdown finally hits one minute ten seconds and I bend to run. The EP blinks, reminding me to slow my breath, although it's difficult when your heart is pounding.

  "Get ready," I say.

  The darkened night and foliage seem to fall away as the timer ticks down.

  "Three… Two… One…" I whisper. "Go."

  I hurl myself toward the glow of the dome in my EP. The outline of my chosen section displays a hazy, warm orange. It isn't open yet. Meyer and Lena follow, just steps behind, blind to what I see in the EP, trusting me.

  Fear overwhelms me, but I stuff it down and press forward. Tall, wet grass whips my legs. As we near the illuminated segment, the warm, orange hue turns white in my vision. The section disintegrates and clears of the white glow. It's open. Enough for two people to pass through shoulder to shoulder.

  "Hit the shield straight on and we're dead." Meyer says in the comm. He still doesn't trust me.

  "We won't. Follow me exactly."

  I push into the rift thirty-one seconds before it closes. I turn, and both Lena and Meyer make it through. But a pop sounds, and Meyer swears, clutching his a
rm.

  "Are you hurt?" I whisper.

  "No. Came in too far to the right. Snagged the edge. It was just a shock."

  Lena grabs my elbow. "Follow me."

  She starts off toward the slate building. The yard in front of the detention center is completely devoid of any trees or plants except the grass, in contrast to the thick forest we trekked through to get here. The EP estimates a twenty-six-second run to our destination, a door on the right side that glows in my vision.

  "Jayson and the other Affinity members are in the south wing," she says in the comm, motioning to the left. "We don't have a specific tracker on him, so we'll search manually."

  Gasping, we reach the door. It's locked, of course, and a drone patrol alert flashes in my EP.

  "Guardian," I say.

  Meyer lifts his handheld and starts working on the lock. The security pad shows glowing white in my vision, transitioning to a warm orange. I put my palm to the screen, and the same warm sensation spreads through me, as well as sickness, but I push that part away. The pad glows orange in my EP, and the door turns sparkling white and appears to disintegrate. I gulp and turn as the white floats away like sparks on the wind, but the actual door looks normal.

  "It's unlocked," I whisper.

  "I haven't gotten through yet," Meyer grumbles.

  "Well, the drone is on our tail, and it's open." I wave my hand over the pad, and the door clears.

  Meyer shoves the Flexx in his pocket, replacing it with his stunner. "Good job. Let's go."

  He checks the hall. My eyepiece says it's clear, but a double-check never hurts. He signals for me to follow Lena inside.

  The door secures, and I'm met with a thin corridor lined with stark white walls. The instructions flash, telling me to continue to the right. A human Guardian makes rounds approximately forty-three seconds behind our current position.

  We route through a maze of hallways. Only identical white walls and doors come into view until we approach the core of the south wing and come out to a vast room four stories high, clear to the ceiling of the detention center, and descending deep underground at least six more floors.