Double Down (Lois Lane)

by Gwenda Bond

  CHAPTER 21

  I ran my hands nervously through my hair, smoothing it down even though no one was going to see it, and deposited my phone on the desk. Then I fished the holoset out of the desk drawer where I kept it tucked away, and hooked it over my ear. Once I was on the bed, I took a tiny pause to draw in and release a deep breath, then pressed it on.

  Night rose up in front of me, the brightly colored kind in the game. Tonight’s theme seemed to be a variation on the northern lights by way of neon, painting the sky like unnatural fireworks. A distant spaceship cruised across it, and the bat with red lasers on its wings flew overhead—no, wait, there were several bats of the type and they winged past displaying zero interest in me.

  “Hey,” said a familiar voice.

  “Hey yourself,” I said, turning to find my favorite friendly alien. “Sorry if I’m late.”

  He smiled. “Not at all. What’d you guys watch?”

  “His Girl Friday, aka the best movie ever.”

  He hooked his arm through mine, and began to walk us away from Devin’s castle. We were going in the opposite direction we would usually, down a slope toward a thick stand of trees. There was a vaguely menacing green glow within them. I’d never noticed a forest so close before.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “TheInventor gave me coordinates—I asked for them, giving him a general area. I know you have your doubts, and so I didn’t necessarily want to give him a tour of our turret. They’re this way, in the forest.”

  Our turret. “You are too thoughtful to hang out with the likes of me.”

  “Take it back,” he said.

  I was more relieved than I probably should have been that TheInventor wasn’t going to be privy to all our secrets—maybe. I’d wanted to get here early to talk strategy, but SmallvilleGuy seemed to be on my “let’s be careful here” page.

  “Never,” I quipped.

  “Fine.” His hand was warm on my arm as he guided me down the hill. “And what did you talk about with Lucy and your mom?”

  I considered telling him that they’d teased me about possibly having a boyfriend. But this wasn’t the time or place, heading into the sketchy glowing woods.

  “We discussed which boys are as hot as Cary Grant, the guy in the movie. Also our nails. Our hair. Makeup. Girl stuff.” I paused. “I’m kidding, obviously. We talked about our feelings.”

  He burst out laughing. Good laugh, as usual. I suspected the grin I wore was entirely goofy, and I didn’t care.

  “Yep, still kidding,” I confirmed.

  We reached the edge of the trees. The glow made it possible to see where a normal forest would have been pitch dark, casting light enough to reveal that the bark wasn’t designed to look like normal tree bark. It had small oval gray-skinned faces with big black eyes traced over it instead. Like some of the other alien character designs in the game.

  “Sounds like you had a good time,” he said.

  “I did. But it was weird to have a night off. Sorta off, I mean. Speaking of… do we need to make any plans before we meet this guy?”

  “What made you ask about him earlier, by the way?” he asked, tone curious.

  “I’m not as trusting as you. Except with you.”

  His hand tightened a fraction on my arm, a pleasant distraction from the topic of our conversation.

  It was true—he might not be willing to tell me who he was, but it wasn’t for lack of trust in me. He was protecting someone else. His parents were likeliest, I’d decided. And he clearly thought he was protecting me too by keeping his secret, even though I didn’t need his protection.

  But I understood wanting to look out for the people you cared about.

  “Why shouldn’t we trust him, though?” he said, finally. “I think he’ll help us. He helped us before and just because I asked. He didn’t even pry for details about why.”

  “True,” I said, “and again, I trust you. And he’s the only one who has the access we need to track what’s going on at the boards. The only way we’d know if our IP addresses—or who we are—had been compromised.”

  “This is our best option,” he agreed. But more grimly now that I brought up the threat of us being found and found out.

  His words put me in mind of Melody’s description of me when I’d vowed to help her. Maybe I wasn’t being entirely fair to this strange computer expert. He had built the platforms that brought SmallvilleGuy and me together, after all.

  “Wow,” SmallvilleGuy said, releasing my arm and taking a step in front of me. “This wasn’t here before.”

  I had been so focused on him, and he’d been guiding us so easily through the woods, that I hadn’t been keeping my eyes on where we were going.

  In front of us was a clearing and smack in the middle of it sat a spaceship. It was a tall, deep silver disk about thirty feet across, ringed with multi-hued lights that cycled in an almost soothing pattern over and over again. As we watched, part of the side detached and unfurled like a silvery tongue.

  The silvery tongue was a walkway that led to an opening. An entrance.

  Hopefully we weren’t about to be attacked by random aliens.

  I looked back to SmallvilleGuy and he was squinting off to the side of the ship. Sometimes that brought up more information and stats in the game. “Nothing comes up,” he said.

  I tried and confirmed the same result.

  “But these are the coordinates,” he said after a moment. “I scoped them out earlier.”

  I jumped when a deep voice greeted us, emanating from inside the ship: “Good evening. Please come inside.”

  SmallvilleGuy steadied me with a hand on my arm. “Not until you tell us who you are,” he said.

  “I would think it is quite obvious, SmallvilleGuy and SkepticGirl1. I’m your friend, TheInventor.”

  My heart thudded.

  “I’d say he likes to make an entrance, but this is more of a statement piece,” I said, low.

  “SkepticGirl1, I suspected you’d be funny.” The voice paused. “I did not, however, foresee that you would be an elf princess.”

  “I didn’t pick it,” I muttered. Self-conscious as always when I remembered my short dress and bare feet. Not to mention the pointy ears. Thanks again, Devin.

  A laugh rolled outward. “I pity the person who did. It wasn’t you, was it, SmallvilleGuy?”

  SmallvilleGuy was smiling, though there was a tense set to the line of his shoulders that told me he was only slightly more comfortable with this than me. “I’m not that foolish,” he said.

  “Enough,” I said, embarrassed that they were talking about me so familiarly. I didn’t even know TheInventor, not really. “Are we going on board or not?”

  I’d always wondered what it looked like inside the ships that to and froed in the skies of Worlds. They were usually busy warring with each other or starting fights with mercenaries or high fantasy kingdoms.

  “I hope so, or I’ve gone to all this trouble for nothing,” TheInventor’s voice said.

  “Looks slippery,” I said as we each took a step closer to the metal walkway. SmallvilleGuy offered me his hand, and I took it gratefully, even if we were being watched.

  The moment we stepped onto it, the metal began to shift—

  I grabbed onto SmallvilleGuy as the walkway retracted into the ship, taking us with it. And then we were inside, the door sealed behind us like it hadn’t existed.

  “We’re safe here, from overhearing ears or prying eyes,” the voice said.

  I’d expected to see its owner, but the voice seemed to come from, well, the ship itself. Holographic screens ringed the circular interior, offering a 360-degree view of the forest outside and a glimpse of the slope past it. Above them were other screens, which revealed different exteriors entirely—other parts of the game—both on the ground and in the
sky. There was a console with buttons and a joystick, and the floor was more of the seamless metal that had ferried us inside.

  “Nice place,” I said, letting go of SmallvilleGuy even though I didn’t want to. “But you can come out now if we’re all safe.”

  “Oh,” TheInventor said. “I didn’t bother to create a character. I commandeered a ship instead and made a few customizations, designed a secure location. Games bore me, typically.”

  “It’s not like we’re playing,” SmallvilleGuy said. Which confirmed he thought that the choice was odd too.

  “Au contraire, we are locked in a dangerous game, as you know. People who are not our friends are hunting a man.”

  There was something shivery about the phrasing, saying it outright like that. But talk about overkill on the drama. “You sound like that short story everyone reads in school, the one on the island where ‘man is the most dangerous game,’” I said.

  “You are a surprise, SkepticGirl1,” TheInventor said.

  “Should I feel insulted by that? What were you expecting?” I asked before I could stop myself. I quickly added, “Don’t answer.”

  “Please don’t,” SmallvilleGuy said lightly. “If she feels insulted, we have to leave. And you’re right, we’ve been forced into playing a game and it’s a dangerous one. We should get down to business.”

  There was nowhere to sit besides the flight console, so I stayed near SmallvilleGuy. The screens around us dimmed, leaving one lit. It showed the Strange Skies boards.

  TheInventor started talking. “I’ve gotten private messages now from several people interviewed after these fake ‘sightings’ and they are all frightened to come back to Strange Skies. I can hardly tell them not to worry, when I know that federal agencies are attempting to hack into my servers and discover their real identities. And ours. I am at a loss as to how we combat this in time to keep that from happening.”

  “I thought the site was over-the-top secure. Are they that good?” I asked.

  “They must be,” SmallvilleGuy said.

  “No, she is right. I may have been a bit… cocky about the impenetrability of my defenses, and perhaps also underestimated their capabilities.”

  Like he’d apparently underestimated me. Saying that wouldn’t get us anywhere, though.

  Instead, I said, “But maybe they’ve underestimated yours.”

  “I would like to think so.”

  I started to pace back and forth. “Doesn’t it seem weird to you both that they targeted Skies at all?”

  SmallvilleGuy nodded. “To come to the boards looking for… the flying man… makes me think that they are striking in the dark. One element in a larger search.”

  “Intelligence gathering is the term you’re looking for,” TheInventor’s voice responded.

  My bare feet felt cold against the metal of the ship, and so I walked a little faster. “They want the flying man,” I said. “We know that much. But do we have any clue who these people are, besides an interagency task force? What agencies?”

  TheInventor heaved a sigh. “No one has been able to get them to show an ID at the scenes so far.”

  “No,” I said, “do you have any idea?”

  The ship went quiet briefly, then he responded.

  “I haven’t focused my attention too closely on the matter.” He sounded defensive.

  Hmmm.

  SmallvilleGuy leaned against one of the darkened screens, essentially the wall. “What are you thinking?” he asked me.

  “I’m thinking that our main concern is being found out, right? Our identities being compromised, and them tracking us down—our parents finding out about the site. For you, TheInventor, I assume it’s the privacy of users of your site.”

  “And my own privacy. I value that too,” the voice said quickly.

  “What if we made it so they had the same concern as us?”

  The lights inside the ship blinked, like a reaction almost, and I noticed my feet weren’t cold anymore. The floor had warmed.

  I didn’t like that. It kind of made me want to walk over and put my feet on top of SmallvilleGuy’s sneakers or something so I could stop touching it. It was probably some automatic function of the ship, though, so that would be ridiculous.

  “I don’t understand. What are you suggesting?” TheInventor asked.

  “If you were some top-secret interagency government task force, would you want the everyday person out in the world to know you’re looking for someone who can fly? At best, you become a laughingstock. At worst, you’ve confirmed for your enemies that such a person exists and started a race to find them.”

  SmallvilleGuy’s blue eyes were locked on me. “You’re right. But how does that not just make them more dangerous?”

  “First things first,” I said. “Mr. TheInventor, do you think you could get us some information about what agency Insider01 is affiliated with and anything else on this interagency task force?”

  “To publish on the site?” he asked.

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that. Something tells me that if we’re able to send them a message telling them that not only do they have nothing to learn from Strange Skies or its members, but that the owner of the site knows who they are and will tell the entire world, then they might back off. The threat of exposure is a powerful motivator.”

  “But how would we know if they did back off?” SmallvilleGuy asked.

  “I could monitor that,” TheInventor said. “Their activity. In fact, it could be part of the message itself, the caution that I will be watching for them to return.”

  His voice made him sound pleased with that idea. Good.

  “Could we ask them to delete the account if they agree to the terms? Set a deadline?” I asked.

  “It should be before the next scheduled sighting, which gives me less than twenty-four hours,” TheInventor said. “But if I can manage to crack the firewall, it could work.” He paused. “You two are as interesting as I’d hoped.”

  I didn’t want to hear how interesting we were. Not that I didn’t trust him—I thought he was on our team and would do as he said. But my relationship with SmallvilleGuy had always been ours, between us, no one else invited to participate.

  It was small, probably, to have only realized I’d miss that after it was gone.

  SmallvilleGuy said, “I don’t know about this. Are we crossing a line here?”

  I shook my head and walked closer to him. “The flying man needs our help. I assume he’s been alerted to their searching, but he can’t risk showing himself. We have to scare them off.”

  “For our own benefit.”

  “And for his. I owe him, and he’s never done any harm that we know of. For all we know this is some kind of rogue task force. There’s no good reason to be searching for him in this way, scaring innocent people.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, considering. TheInventor could go on and do this without him. But I wouldn’t be a part of it unless he was on board, no matter the risk.

  “I really do think it’s the right thing to do,” I said. “And if they don’t leave the boards, we can talk about whether it makes sense for me to write the story. Not exposing the flying man, but that there’s an interagency task force messing around with people who frequent message boards about weird stuff. I’d do whatever I had to in order to get it on the front page.”

  “You couldn’t,” he said. Meaning if I did, Dad would want to know how I’d found out. I’d have to tell him.

  “I could. All we’d be doing is bringing something underhanded out into the light. And all we’re trying to do is stop it before that becomes necessary. That it protects us too is just an extra benefit.”

  Finally, he gave a short nod. “We’re the good guys,” he said.

  I smiled at him. “We’re the good guys. Always.”

  TheInventor spo
ke up, and I nearly jumped again. I’d almost forgotten he was with us. “I had no idea you were a journalist, SkepticGirl1.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” I said.

  SmallvilleGuy was at my side. He said, “You’d better go get to work, friend.”

  “Yes. And I will be in touch soon,” TheInventor said.

  I was looking for the exit when TheInventor added: “Hold on.” I grabbed for SmallvilleGuy’s arm once again, but this time he was ready and took both my hands in his, steadying me as the floor moved under our feet. The silver ribbon of metal unfurled once more, lowering us back to the forest floor.

  As soon as we stepped off, before we could so much as wave, it returned to its spot and the spaceship lifted off and zoomed away into the neon northern lights sky. Leaving us in the faint glow of the forest.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” SmallvilleGuy asked.

  I echoed his words from earlier. “The best option we have.”

  A noise startled me, and it took me a moment to identify it. It was my phone, ringing back in the real world.

  CHAPTER 22

  This was not good.

  “My phone is ringing. No one ever calls me except my parents,” I said. “So either my mom figured out I’m gone, or—”

  “You’d better go,” he said.

  He was right. “It’ll work,” I said. “I bet you.”

  “You already did,” I heard, as I depressed the button on the earpiece and came out of the game and back to reality. I blinked, adjusting to having left virtual reality more quickly than I should’ve.

  The phone had already stopped ringing, but now it was buzzing with a text. I hurried across to the desk and grabbed it.

  There was one missed call and a series of messages from the last ten minutes: We have a problem. Where are you? Lois, answer your messages. Answer your phone. Please.

  They were from James. And the last one: I was calling to tell you Dad just summoned Boss Moxie and Mayor Ellis to my house and told them to bring the clone. Right now.