by LS Hawker
September 9
Jade woke up, eyes stinging and head throbbing, and for a moment didn’t remember Olivia was dead. But that fact seeped into her consciousness, and she sat up and stared, bleary-eyed, out the window at soldiers roaming the field across the road, on high alert for more snipers or saboteurs.
In the bathroom, Jade peeled the bandage from her forehead, exposing the black stitches and angry red skin. Had it only been the night before last they’d wrecked the car? It seemed so long ago.
Jade didn’t bother to shower or eat breakfast. She opened the front door and a rifled guard stepped to the side.
“Hi,” Jade said.
“Ma’am,” he said. “Can I escort you somewhere?”
“I’m going to the lab,” she said. “You can come if you want.”
“I’m required to,” he said.
They walked across the Compound, the guard to her left and a little behind her. It felt creepy, having these shadows everywhere, but this was the new normal.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on here?” Jade said to the guard. “I mean, are you aware we’re being held prisoner here? Against our will? Does that bother you at all?”
“I don’t know anything about that, ma’am,” he said.
She went down to the lab, and Elias was already there, looking glum. She supposed she did too.
Jade seated herself at her desk and moved her mouse. “Is the system back up?”
“Yes,” he said, turning from his monitor.
Jade swiveled toward him. “Where’s Berko?”
“He’s not feeling well,” Elias said. “He developed a migraine and was up all night throwing up.”
Poor guy. “I’m surprised I wasn’t too, honestly.”
Elias turned back to his keyboard and typed as Jade faced hers.
The command prompt screen appeared on her monitor, and she worked not to react. It was covered with gibberish code, interspersed with actual words.
Our back door is still there. If they’d found it, they would have closed it.
So, obviously, was Elias’s chat program. Prickles of warning flashed over her skin as more code and words appeared on her monitor.
You need to write some code to lock up the program so they can’t use it unless you start it up. I’m not sure everything is as it seems.
She desperately wanted to turn and look at Elias but knew they were still being watched. More code popped up, and Jade’s eyes watered with the effort of not crying out.
Because I’m convinced that gunshot didn’t come from outside the Compound. It came from inside.
Chapter Sixteen
How could he know that? She couldn’t ask him. She had to trust he knew what he was talking about. Or was he under so much stress that his paranoia meter had jumped off the scale?
And what did that mean? That the NSA killed Olivia?
And if they shot Olivia, what would stop them from shooting all of them once they got what they wanted?
And what did they want?
What she did know was she had to work fast so they could get out of here.
If the NSA was going to let them leave.
She minimized the command prompt window and then she got to work, first confirming the back door was indeed still there. Even in the midst of all the craziness, Jade was eager to see if Clementine worked. But she did as Elias had asked—put a virtual padlock on the program. Then started wading through the results of the tests. She made sure she had an alternate screen to click over to in case Martin popped in for a surprise inspection.
Berko came in around noon, looking faded and wrung out. “How’s it going?” he asked, sinking into his desk chair.
“Okay,” Jade said.
He slid his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his red eyes. “I dreamed I was back in Palo Alto,” he said. “It was a great dream. You ever been there? I love it there. California is great. Beautiful. Nobody ever shot at me there. I wasn’t a prisoner at Stanford. Do you suppose we’re being punished for being greedy? For wanting to make the big money and all that?”
“I don’t think so, Berko,” Jade said. “I think pretty much anyone would have done it.”
Berko shook his head and put his glasses back on.
“When I get back to Palo Alto, I’m going to kiss the ground. I’m not kidding.”
“Have you eaten anything?” Jade said.
“Don’t know if I can keep it down,” he said. “My meds didn’t work. If I don’t catch the headache within fifteen minutes of its start, there’s no stopping it. But it’s starting to recede.”
“Speaking of food,” Elias said. “I’m going to grab something from the kitchen. You want anything, Jade?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Do they still have those pizza bagel things? You think you could pop one of those into the microwave for me?”
“Sure,” he said and left the lab.
“Take a look at this, Berko,” Jade said, beckoning him toward her computer. She brought up the fake command prompt and pointed out Elias’s messages. Berko did a good job of keeping his expression neutral. “What do you think?”
“Looks good,” he said. “I think we’re right on the money there.”
They locked eyes, and she couldn’t help herself. She hugged him. And once again, he let her, but it cost him. He groaned in pain and returned to his workstation.
The door flew open and Elias, out of breath, came running in. He sat back in his chair and typed.
Jade’s command prompt appeared.
They didn’t turn baseball-cap man over to the cops.
Jade typed a question and sent it.
“There weren’t any pizza bagels in the freezer,” Elias said. “Sorry about that.” He typed some more.
Went down to the storeroom and passed a closed door, heard tapping. That hall is lined with doors. Almost didn’t stop, heard whispering from inside the door. I say Hello?
Jade turned to Berko and said, “Hey, can you take a look at this?”
Berko wheeled over to her desk, adjusted his glasses, and leaned in then sat up straight.
“What—?”
“I know,” Jade said casually. Berko shut up, his eyes riveted to the monitor.
Elias typed on.
Voice says, I’m Harry Gilby, I’m being held prisoner.
Locked in a room in the basement?
Not done interrogating? Jade typed.
He wants to talk to you.
Me? Why me?
More text popped up on the screen.
He’s the one from the grocery store.
Berko and Jade stared at each other before looking back at the screen. So the baseball-cap man was the same guy who ran her and Olivia off the road.
Elias typed.
The guy with him didn’t run away. THEY SHOT HIM DEAD.
Berko’s eyebrows shot up and Jade said, “Bullshit,” out loud.
Elias kept typing. Another line of text popped up on Jade’s monitor.
He said we’re not working for the NSA, and there’s no Chinese threat.
Jade’s heart nearly stopped.
The door opened and in strode Martin.
“Status?” he said.
Jade kept her eyes on him but clicked her mouse and brought up the fake screen just before Martin focused on her monitor.
Martin’s eyes tracked to hers and then to Berko, who sat frozen, his mouth ajar. Everyone remained silent.
Jade had to hold her breath so her hyperventilating wouldn’t be evident.
Elias cleared his throat and said, “We’re writing the code right now for the power grid. You’ll be the first to know when it’s done.”
Berko stared down at the floor, and Martin cased the lab.
“I’ll just hang out in here with you all for a bit, okay?” Martin said. “Take a look at some of the code.”
“Sure,” Jade said, and she had a terrifying urge to giggle. As if any code they could write would make any sense to him at all.
Berko wheeled back to his workstation and said, “Martin, if you need help translating any Chinese correspondence, let me know.”
Martin didn’t answer him. He turned to Jade and said, “Let me see where we are.”
She rose from her chair so he could sit down and stare at the fake coding screen. He did, and her eyes lit on the minimized command prompt tab at the bottom of her screen. She hadn’t had time to close it out. She shut her eyes and prayed he wouldn’t click on it. She turned and looked at her teammates, who stared tensely at her screen.
“There’s no way to tell how long it’s going to take you?” Martin asked without turning around.
“No, sir,” she said.
He swiveled toward them. “You wouldn’t lie to me. Would you?”
“No, sir,” she said again, hoping her face didn’t betray her. She’d been told before she had a glass head—everything she thought showed in her face. She hoped this wasn’t true.
He continued gazing at her, and it took a superhuman effort not to start laughing, maniacal, hysterical, terrified laughter bubbling at the base of her throat.
Martin walked idly around for another five minutes before he left. The tension left the room with him. And poor old Berko ran out shortly thereafter. When he returned, he said, “I don’t know how much more of this my guts can take.”
“Ditto,” Jade said, her stomach sour and burning.
Elias waited a few minutes before typing, and Jade maximized the command prompt screen.
Should we wait until after dark to visit Harry Gilby?
Berko cautiously rolled back over to Jade’s desk and read Elias’s message. He pointed at the keyboard and Jade slid it his way. He typed, How are we going to get in there?
Elias turned around and lifted up the lanyard around his neck, waggling his keycard at them.
Hopefully they didn’t reprogram that door so we couldn’t get in, Jade wrote.
That was a big if. And she was burning with curiosity—who were they working for if they weren’t working for the NSA? The Chinese? Or someone else?
Elias typed, and Jade turned back to her keyboard and read, Let’s plan on coming back here at midnight. Guards will walk us over, but they never come in with us.
Jade closed out the command prompt window and then worked until dinnertime. She still had about a quarter of the testing data to go through. It would have to wait until tomorrow. She was fried. And she still had the nocturnal visit with Gilby to dread. Plus Jade kept thinking of things she wanted to tell Olivia, and every time it happened, her stomach bottomed out and tears threatened.
After the guard walked them back to the house, Jade went up to Olivia’s room, which was just as she’d left it. Colorful throw pillows covered her purple bedspread, one with a Minecraft creeper and another that said MAY THE d/dt(mv) BE WITH YOU!
Jade covered her mouth with her hand in attempt to quell a sob. A poster emblazoned with a feline face framed by the words WANTED: $100,000 reward, Schrödinger’s cat, dead or alive hung above her bed. Framed prints decorated the other walls, and then Jade’s eyes landed on what she wanted, what she was going to take: the framed photo of Olivia shaking hands with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Jade trusted that Olivia would want her to have it. She plucked it off the wall and took it to her own room where she set it on her nightstand.
Jade went downstairs into the kitchen and looked in the freezer.
“Szechuan beef or rigatoni?” she called out to her teammates in the living room.
“Either,” Elias said. “I’m going to go and get in a quick workout before dinner.”
“Okay,” Jade said. “How long will you be?”
“No more than thirty minutes,” he said and opened the front door. “How’s it going?” she heard him ask the escort guard as the door closed behind him.
“Berko? Rigatoni or Szechuan beef?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Berko said, lying on the couch with his eyes closed and his glasses on his forehead.
“But you need to eat something,” Jade said. “We need you to be strong.”
He waved a weak hand without opening his eyes.
“I’ll try to eat,” he said. “This is so humiliating.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jade said. “I doubt any of us have been under this kind of pressure before.”
“I know,” he said. “But Elias is this rock, and you’re—a slightly taller rock. And here I am puking my guts out like a little girl.”
“You can’t help that you get migraines. This situation is untenable. It’s not your fault.”
He opened his eyes. Without his glasses she could see how pretty his eyes were and was reminded how handsome he actually was.
“But my brothers took my migraines as a sign of weakness, you know? And then after my brush with the law as a kid, it scared me so much I made up my mind I was going to stay on the straight and narrow. Lucky for me I had a real facility with language.”
This was the most personal Berko had ever gotten, and Jade appreciated it. “I wish we’d met under different circumstances,” she said.
“Me too,” Berko said. “You really are one of a kind.”
Jade’s face reddened. She wasn’t sure how to take that. “Well, thank you,” she said. “I think very highly of you as well.”
That came out much more formally than she meant it, but he’d caught her off guard.
He laughed the first genuine laugh she’d heard from him in what seemed like ages.
“What I mean is,” Jade said. “You’re one of a kind too. You’re the only linguist I’ve ever met, and from what I can tell, you really know your stuff.”
Berko put on his glasses and sat up, placing his feet on the ground.
“The whole reason I originally became interested in linguistics was because of my name, and I wondered why the Ghanaians put these particular sounds together in that order to mean firstborn. Why the Akan language exists at all.”
“It’s fascinating stuff,” Jade said. “You’re going to do great things.”
“Am I?” Berko said, the defeat in his voice breaking her heart.
“Yes,” she said. “You are.”
When Elias returned, Jade pulled the frozen rigatoni out of the freezer and put it in the microwave, reasoning a spicy Asian dish might ratchet up Berko’s suffering.
Jade had a hard time eating but forced herself to. She needed her strength. Berko did the best he could, eating like a determined toddler, tiny bites, lots of water. As usual, Elias had no problem scarfing down any food put in front of him.
“I’m going to bed,” Berko said.
“I’ll be your wake-up call,” Elias said. He winked.
“You want to watch a movie, Jade?” Elias asked.
“Sure,” she said. Anything to pass the time until they went back to talk to Gilby.
At midnight, Elias went to Berko’s room and woke him up. They came downstairs and Jade followed them out the front door.
The guard held out an arm. “Sorry,” he said. “My orders are that you’re no longer allowed out of the house after ten p.m.”
They all traded glances. “But we wanted to go get some more work done,” Jade said.
“Sorry,” he said. “Those are my orders.”
“But—”
The guard shrugged. “You can talk to Mr. Felix in the morning about it, ma’am. Good night.”
They trooped back inside, alarmed at this new development.
The noose was tightening.
Chapter Seventeen
September 10
Jade awoke from a dream about Olivia running ahead of her in a wheat field. She kept looking over her shoulder at Jade. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry! Come on!”
I’m trying were the words Jade woke with in her head. “I’m trying.”
As she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, she thought, I have to tell Olivia about this dream. An
d then she remembered.
Everything that happened, Jade would think, I have to tell Olivia, and then she’d remember Olivia was dead, and feel it all over again. It was like when her grandmother with dementia would ask for her husband, and they would tell her he was dead, and it was always like hearing it for the first time.
Jade missed Olivia. She’d known her only three months and had never made such fast friends with someone. Now it seemed like a dream that she was ever here at all.
Today Jade would get through the simulation data by lunchtime. Maybe she would be home by dinner.
She didn’t really believe that though. She had the distinct feeling she might never see Ephesus or her family again.
She took a shower, careful not to wet her stitches, then got dressed and had breakfast. Before she left the house, she retrieved the framed photo of Olivia and RBG to put on her desk in the lab. She carried it out the front door and a guard fell in step with her—a different one from last night, of course. With a start, she realized she recognized him. The maintenance man who’d fixed their refrigerator, Connor Lemaire. But she didn’t feel friendly today. Not after everything. He walked behind her so she didn’t have to make small talk.
When they were halfway between the house and the office building, Connor muttered something.
“What did you say?” Jade said, stopping dead.
“Keep walking,” he murmured. “I said, Colonel Stevenson is on his way. Just act casual.”
Dan? Dan was on his way? Such a surge of relief and hope rolled over Jade that her knees buckled and she almost dropped Olivia’s photo.
Connor caught her. “Careful,” he said in a normal tone of voice, now walking beside her.
After the initial swell of hope, Jade began to wonder if they’d let Dan into the Compound. Why would they? Unless he brought an armed contingent with him.
“You left your tool belt on purpose, didn’t you?” she whispered.
His lips curved into a slight smile. “Just go about your business and don’t tell Elias or Berko what I’ve told you. All right?”