“Okay, now what?” I asked Jackson, prepared to take on the world. Or at least Bar Tech.
“We wait until dark,” he answered somberly.
• • •
It seemed like an eternity before darkness finally descended upon Barrington. Jackson, now confident that Bar Tech could no longer track us with our phones at least, gave the go-ahead. It was time to move on. And so the three of us left the relative safety of our hideout to rescue Maya and maybe even take down Bar Tech.
17. BAR TECH
* * *
The ultrasecretive Bar Tech headquarters sat atop the highest point in Barrington. I’d never paid much attention to the building before. A sprawling, modern steel-and-stone corporate behemoth with very few windows, it loomed over Barrington like an ancient castle or medieval fortress.
Formidable. Powerful. Impenetrable. An electrified, barbed-wire fence was a none-too-subtle warning to all would-be gatecrashers to KEEP OUT. It was definitely intimidating.
Jackson, Oliver, and I silently crept up the hillside, venturing into enemy territory. I was undeterred by the inherent risks and the danger I was putting myself into. I felt a little like a modern-day Joan of Arc—except without the fancy armor and visions of God talking to her. At seventeen, despite daunting odds, Joan had fought to help fifteenth-century France regain control of its country from the English during the Hundred Years’ War. Not that I was anything like a future saint, but thinking about what Joan had faced did inspire me to press on with our mission.
The three of us stood outside the Bar Tech compound perimeter fence and stared at its threatening sign: NO TRESPASSING.
“I can hop over it,” Oliver offered, eager to do his whole leaping-lizard thing, which he was getting amazingly good at.
“No need,” Jackson said, suddenly extending his hands to grab more than ten thousand volts of high-tensile wire.
“Wait! What are you—?” I momentarily panicked, expecting Jackson to be zapped into oblivion. Until I remembered that he was actually like a power station. He could emit plenty of voltage himself. I shrugged, feeling my face flush, a bit embarrassed.
Ignoring me, Jackson gripped the fence with both hands. I heard horrible, sizzling, zapping sounds. They were followed by a flurry of blindingly bright blue-white sparks.
Oliver and I dodged the flying embers, not wanting to get scorched, as Jackson blew out the electrical circuits and the entire Bar Tech power grid. After a few seconds Jackson let go of the fence and there was quiet. A moment later he magically whipped out a pair of wire cutters from his coat pocket.
“Swiped them from the shed,” Jackson slyly admitted, reading my surprise at the sudden appearance of the cutters. “Figured they’d come in handy.” A few quick snips and Jackson easily cut through that wire fence like it was a sheet of paper.
“He was an Eagle Scout,” Oliver quipped to me, explaining Jackson’s dexterity and fondness for gadgetry and tools. “I never even earned my Wolf badge.”
“Be prepared,” Jackson glibly responded, quoting the Boy Scout motto, as he pried apart the rigid wire fence and waved Oliver and me onto Bar Tech property.
“Won’t they know? About the fence being breached and all?” I asked, voicing my concern that the Bar Tech cavalry would no doubt come charging over and round us up like prize cattle.
“They’ll need to figure out what’s wrong first,” Jackson replied, leading our offensive up the hillside. “They’ll think their security system had a glitch. Which gives us just enough time to locate Maya before they realize what the hell happened.”
“And if we don’t find her in time?” Oliver asked.
“We do what we have to,” answered Jackson coolly, resolute in his mission.
To me that meant we’d use our powers and get out of there at all costs. I shot Oliver a harsh look, indicating my tacit approval of Jackson’s declaration. I was impressed by how Jackson had thought through every last detail. Oliver shrugged apologetically. He was obviously contrite for casting any doubt on our operation. I nodded empathetically—having suffered my own doubts—and then gestured that we should proceed. After all, time was of the essence.
As Oliver and I followed Jackson up the rugged, rocky terrain, I began to wonder just how long Jackson had been planning this assault on Bar Tech. This didn’t seem to be a whim or spur of the moment decision by him. Had he started planning this immediately after Dana went missing? Had he connected her disappearance to Bar Tech even back then? Before I had ever arrived in Barrington? Before he even knew about the pulse?
• • •
It took the three of us several minutes to scale the steep hillside. We moved in unison, clambering low to the ground to avoid detection from the spotlights that randomly scanned the area. I felt like a wannabe Navy SEAL on some top-secret mission in Pakistan, except for the minor fact that I was untrained, unarmed, and had no night-vision goggles.
We made it to the crest of the hill without being noticed and finally reached the darkened Bar Tech headquarters. The facility was called the Integration and Testing Complex. Radiating off the sprawling central building like spokes of a wheel were six warehouselike rectangular structures. They were numbered plainly—BLDG 1 through BLDG 6—with no other identifying signage or markings.
“What do you think those are?” Oliver whispered, pointing to the seemingly ordinary buildings.
“Research labs?” I conjectured, glancing over at Jackson, who was wedged close to me as we were lying on the ground.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Jackson replied quite cryptically, silently sizing up the structures. I admired how skilled he was at reconnaissance and surveillance.
Fortunately, the electricity was still out across the entire compound, courtesy of Jackson blowing the electrical grid earlier. I heard guards off in the distance shouting and scrambling around the grounds as they attempted to restore power and check for possible intruders. It was an effective distraction, hopefully providing us with just enough time to find a way inside and locate Maya.
Jackson got up and gestured for Oliver and me to follow him. He darted across the walkway between Building 2 and Building 3. Half crouching, I hurried after Jackson and prayed that I wouldn’t stumble or make any unwanted noises. Oliver followed me, light on his feet. We made it to the side of Building 2 sight unseen and huddled close to the wall. Jackson tried opening the first door we encountered. It was locked and protected by a coded security keypad.
“Don’t suppose anyone knows the code off the top of their heads?” I dryly quipped.
Oliver examined the keypad and announced: “It’s a CypherLock.”
“What’s the deal with it?” Jackson whispered, turning to Oliver in hope that he had some answers.
“Popular with the military and government and other high-value targets,” Oliver explained. “Requires a four-digit entry code, which usually changes several times a day for added safety. Simple but highly effective.”
“Don’t tell me you learned all this playing video games,” I teased, despite being suitably impressed with his knowledge.
“Like I’ve been telling my mother for years: They’re not a waste of time,” Oliver replied irreverently with a little smile, pulling out his cell phone and logging on to the Internet.
“Don’t you need your SIM card for your phone to work?” I reminded him of our ritual smashing of the SIM cards not that long ago.
“Actually, only our phones and the GPS have been disabled,” Jackson enlightened me. “The device still has Internet capabilities.”
“Well, according to this hacking website,” Oliver interrupted, scrolling through his phone, “there’s a default code that might allow us to reprogram the system.”
“Great, hurry. What’s the code?” I pressed, worried that some guards might pass by at any moment.
“Not that simple,” Oliver responded. “We need a power source to activate the system.”
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” J
ackson replied, holding out his hands and rubbing his fingertips like an expert safecracker.
Oliver and I crouched back as a bright jolt of electricity surged out of Jackson’s fingers to the keypad. The solid red light suddenly started flashing intermittently. Oliver hurried over and entered the four-digit default code. The panel light changed from flashing red to flashing green. Then he quickly entered another four-digit number before the light switched back to solid red.
“Care to do the honors?” Jackson asked, looking directly at me.
“My first industrial break-in. How romantic,” I remarked, half joking but also half serious, as I stood next to Jackson at the keypad waiting for Oliver to tell me the code.
“Six, seven, nine, six,” Oliver whispered.
“The date of the accident.” I nodded, having an “aha” moment, impressed by Oliver’s ingenuity. I entered the code and was pleasantly surprised when I heard the door click loudly. Amazingly, we’d unlocked the door.
“Now that’s what I call teamwork,” Jackson declared proudly. Then he opened the door slowly and carefully, being as quiet as possible. He peered inside, scanning around the darkness in all directions. He then nodded to Oliver and me that the coast was clear and hurriedly waved us in behind him. We entered a long, dark corridor and let the door swing shut behind us.
I was immediately struck by how incredibly cold it was inside the building—almost like the inside of a refrigerator. Goose bumps ran up and down my arms as I zipped up my jacket. I looked around and tried to get my bearings. It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light.
I crept down the deserted corridor behind Jackson. It led us into a cavernous warehouse filled with at least half a dozen intricate steel structures in various stages of development. They looked like giant mechanical creatures resembling mutant spiders, straight out of a science-fiction film.
“Holy crap.” Oliver muttered in amazement, his wide eyes taking it all in. “It’s like World of Warcraft come to life.”
“Doesn’t look like Maya’s here,” I remarked, stating the obvious. I felt both a bit awed and a bit frightened by what we’d discovered. What exactly were these things?
“We’ll just work our way through each building until we do find her,” Jackson stated, seemingly unfazed by the huge skeletal structures that were looming over us.
“What’re they building? Space ships?” I asked, cocking my head sideways, not having a clue exactly what I was looking at.
“Satellites,” Jackson answered. “The kind that get launched into outer space. This is where they build and test them.”
“What do they do up there in space?” I responded, stunned to actually be standing beneath such amazing machines or whatever they were.
“Not only do they track weather systems, they also track our every movement using GPS,” Jackson replied threateningly. “A perfect way to spy.”
“They’re made of aluminum, titanium, and steel,” Oliver said, walking underneath each one, closely checking them out. “Though there’s also some sort of graphite fiber-polycyanate face sheet over aluminum honeycomb core here.”
“Thanks, Einstein,” I kidded Oliver, despite my growing uneasiness at how Bar Tech was using its awesome technology against kids like Jackson, Oliver, and me.
“That’s probably the thermal stress facility,” Oliver added, pointing to an enormous freestanding Plexiglas chamber—like one of those stand-alone isolation booths. Except this one was so large an elephant could have easily fit inside it.
“Thermal stress? Now you’ve really lost me,” I had to confess. Science and cutting-edge technology never were my strong suit.
“Where they test these babies before launching them into outer space,” Oliver responded, really getting into all this geek-speak.
Just then we heard raised voices and hurried footsteps entering the building. Oliver and I looked at each other and froze in place as the footsteps charged down the corridor. It sounded to me like they were heading right toward us.
Jackson quickly crept over and whispered, “Time to split and find Maya before they find us.”
I nodded, trying to contain my fear despite my heart beating a mile a minute inside my chest. Pulling myself together, I hastily tiptoed after Jackson as he led Oliver and me to an exit at the rear of the building—just as two security guards were rushing in through the front door of Building 2.
• • •
“They must suspect we’re here,” murmured Oliver, a bit winded. He kept nervously glancing over his shoulder after our hasty departure from Building 2.
Darting past Building 3 in complete darkness, we slipped around the perimeter of Building 4, our bodies pressing close to the exterior wall. We had narrowly evaded capture and detection by the goon squad, who were now on the opposite side of the compound, busily turning Building 2 upside down, looking for the mystery invaders.
“What if this whole Maya abduction was just a setup?” I speculated. “A trap to lure us here.”
“Of course it was,” Jackson replied definitively, gesturing for us to keep low to the ground as we crept toward the nearest door. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll get us.”
Jackson suddenly held his hand up, holding me back behind him. I held my hand out and silently cautioned Oliver not to move a muscle either. Jackson pressed his ear to the door, listening for any voices or sounds of people waiting inside.
Suddenly the headlights of a gleaming black SUV flashed out of the darkness, brightly flaring in our direction. The oversized vehicle was zooming up the road, and the three of us were directly in its path. Oh, shit. We dropped down to the ground in unison.
I was silently praying that the glimmering headlights wouldn’t betray our presence, when I felt something gently touch my hand. It was Jackson’s hand. Concerned at first, I glanced across the pavement, and my eyes met Jackson’s, thinking he wanted to warn me about something. Instead he gave me this tender, caring look as his hand clasped mine. Jackson and I lay side by side, our hands entwined for a few brief seconds. Neither of us knew whether these were going to be our final moments together or not. I was a jumble of emotions. I felt elation at having such an intimate moment with Jackson and also abject terror that we were about to be exposed and locked up.
Luckily, the headlights just missed revealing us. The SUV whooshed by the building, speeding off to another area of the compound. Once the vehicle receded from view, Jackson pulled his hand away from mine and rose to his feet. Our moment was gone. It took me a second to catch my breath and pull myself together before I stood up too. By then Jackson, now back to all business, had cracked open the door, and we all slipped inside Building 4.
• • •
No one made a sound. But there definitely were other people lurking inside that facility besides the three of us. Their presence was felt. Ambient noises. Like heels clacking on tile, perhaps? And possibly a few muffled voices. It was difficult to know for sure what kind of situation we were walking into.
I skulked along the narrow, winding corridor in between Jackson and Oliver. The three of us moved like a pack of feral cats stalking their prey. Except in this instance we didn’t know if we were potentially the prey for Bar Tech. Still, we forged ahead, creeping through the tubelike passageway, which resembled a New York City subway tunnel: cramped, dark, and windowless. All my senses were on high alert, and so were Jackson’s and Oliver’s. I was aware of an overpowering chemical smell, which almost made me sick to my stomach. It reminded me of a strong disinfectant or antiseptic.
We reached a set of double doors at the end of the tunnel. They were solid steel, with no window to see through. Jackson was about to open the doors when I grabbed his arm and stopped him. He shot me a puzzled look. I didn’t say a word. Instead I just pointed to myself and then at the door. He nodded his understanding. Oliver then nodded too.
I took a deep breath and shut my eyes. Then I channeled all my anger and rage and how majorly pissed off I was feeling at
that moment. Over being betrayed by the adults in this town and in my life. By my own father, no less. That now-familiar warmth quickly infused my body from my toes up to my scalp, followed by that red-hot tingling up and down my spine. And by the time I opened my eyes, I could see by Jackson and Oliver’s captivated expressions that it had worked. Mission accomplished. I had successfully become invisible in just a few seconds.
“You’re really getting the hang of this disappearing thing,” Oliver said, nodding, quite amused.
“Not exactly a skill I can list on a college application,” I kidded. “But it’s definitely coming in handy.”
“Nica,” Jackson interjected. “Remember to tap on the door if everything’s okay in there.” He was determined to keep Oliver and me on track.
“Copy,” I replied, adopting Navy SEAL lingo like I was an old pro instead of a terrified sixteen-year-old.
Jackson then juiced the digital entry pad with his index finger, zapping it with just enough electricity to disarm the door locks. I gently pushed the doors open just wide enough for me to sneak inside the vast warehouse space without alerting attention. True, I was completely invisible, but a door magically opening and closing would definitely raise a few eyebrows.
I navigated that move as smoothly as if I had been doing industrial espionage my whole life, instead of just the last few days. I had no sooner crossed the threshold into the main warehouse than suddenly I encountered a pair of high-beam flashlights. Two very large and very imposing Bar Tech guards were heading right in my direction.
My immediate impulse was to grab hold of something really big and heavy and whack both of these brawny linebackers across the head. But then I had to remember that I wasn’t there to act out my anger or frustrations on them, as good as that might feel in the moment. This mission was about being stealth and locating Maya. So I deftly stepped out of their direct path as they barreled toward me. Last thing I wanted was to get mowed down—invisible or not.
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