“Friends recognize each other’s accomplishments.” Harlow leaned over Troy as he stumbled to his feet.
“Fat chance.” Troy lunged, fists in the air. Wes caught him around the midsection and pushed him across the hall against the opposite wall.
“Dude, let it go,” Wes said.
When Troy relaxed, Wes released his hold.
“Come on, Lydia. Let’s go to lunch.” Troy pressed his hand to her waist, guiding her toward the cafeteria.
I grabbed Harlow’s face and turned it toward me. “Why do you egg him on?”
“He started it with the animated chat bomb. A record is a record. He needs to recognize it.”
“How about we keep the records to the soccer field? I can’t handle any more fighting. I don’t want you hurt or arrested. Again.” Fighting led to challenges and challenges led to episodes like last night in the woods. I couldn’t handle another run-in with the authorities. Last night had been enough for one lifetime. I wrapped my arms around Harlow, hoping he’d reciprocate and calm my nerves.
“Okay, fine.” He bent down and kissed me. Even though the quick peck sent electric chills through me, it lacked the luster of his normal kisses.
“How about some lunch?”
“Yes, I’m starving.” His lips quirked upward briefly in place of his usual smile.
I tried to laugh it off, but it didn’t sound the least bit genuine. “You’re always hungry.” I laced my fingers through his and we headed to the cafeteria. If I couldn’t keep everyone from fighting and pulling stupid stunts, it was only a matter of time before we’d all have field trips to tracker diagnostics.
Luckily, hunger was easy to fix. Getting him to admit tracker diagnostics had scared him more than he’d let on might not be.
Three
When our tracker displays turned red for five seconds, signaling the end the school day, I met Lydia by the girls’ bathroom so we could walk home together. Life would be a lot easier if our parents would let us drive flying crotchrockets like practically everyone else at school. Too bad my dad said flying motorcycles were too much for a new sixteen-year-old driver. I’d kill for a bike. Even though the walks home restricted us to the decaying sidewalks, at least Lydia and I had plenty of time to talk alone.
“Sorry I ran off with Troy. I didn’t know Harlow was going to get arrested.” Lydia nudged me with her elbow, a quick gesture to let me know she cared.
“Neither did I or I might have run with you. It was a long walk home.”
“That’s awful. I’m glad you’re safe. I wanted Troy to go back for you, but he said you’d probably gotten arrested with Harlow, and it wouldn’t do any good for us all to get hauled off.” And that was why she was my best friend. When it mattered most, she at least tried to make things right.
“So, what’s going on with you and Troy?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.
Her cheeks pinked. “I really like him.”
“Yeah, I know. What happened between you two last night?” I kicked a rock and it skidded across the concrete into a pile of trash. People really needed to stop tossing stuff out of their flying cars. Just because most people didn’t spend much time on the sidewalks didn’t mean no one did.
“After we ran from the authorities, Troy drove me home on his bike.”
We rounded the corner heading toward the residential high-rises. A few cars whipped by overhead, but the sky was relatively clear for the start of rush-hour traffic. “Do your parents know?”
“Of course not. They’d kill me if they found out I got on a bike. It’s bad enough I snuck in after curfew.”
After her brother’s accident, Lydia’s parents would ground her for an eternity if they found out she’d gotten on a bike. They were even stricter than my parents, who frequently reminded my brother and me that getting caught on a flying motorbike would be the least of our concerns. But if my brother was in a coma my parents probably would be that strict too.
That hadn’t stopped Jake or Lydia’s brother from sneaking out on flying crotchrockets anyway.
Thinking of my brother stung. He’d been a real jerk since he’d left for college. After the accident, Jake and I had become nearly inseparable. But since he’d left home, he’d completely stopped responding to my messages. I didn’t understand what had happened. It wasn’t like we’d had some massive fight.
“You broke curfew?” I asked to distract myself from the hurt feelings that swelled when I thought about Jake.
“Yeah, but it was totally worth it. Even if I would have gotten caught, which I didn’t. If they ask, I was studying at your place last night. We were finishing up an assignment, which was why I was a little late.”
“Right.” I had no problem covering. She’d covered for me a couple times when I’d lost track of time making out with Harlow on the roof of his high-rise. Nudging her in the arm, I asked, “But what were you really doing?” Troy might have been a jerk sometimes, but weren’t all guys? Lydia was crazy about him. She deserved to find someone.
“Getting a ride home from Troy.”
Could she be any more cryptic? The high-rises towered over us, as if they were concealing her secrets. The shadows cast from the dark siding threatened to swallow the information into oblivion. I wished she had an endless wall of windows into her thoughts like the buildings around us. She was going to make me drag it out of her. “You told me. Anything else? Come on. A girl’s gotta know.”
A laugh escaped her lips. “Making out with Troy on the roof.”
“I knew it. So are you guys a couple now?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re just having fun.”
“Uh-huh.”
I pulled open the front door to our hundred-story apartment building. We crossed the cream-colored tile and scuffed our feet over the ugly red-and-purple rug in the middle of the lobby. At least the black leather couches next to the doorman’s vacant desk weren’t so hideous. As we stepped into the elevator, a small app with a building map opened and DESTINATION flashed in my sight.
Home.
And with a single thought, the button illuminated for the thirty-fifth floor. In seconds, the doors closed. The lift hummed softly. “So are you going to make it official with Troy?”
“I dunno, maybe. He told me to call him tonight.”
“Tonight it is then.” I laughed as the elevator doors opened on our floor. “I want to hear all about it tomorrow. And I want every detail!”
“Fine.” She waved to me and went to the right, toward her place. “Remember we have movie night this weekend. I want to hear all about your new artwork.”
“Sure. Avoid the issue. Just remember, you can’t hide. I know where you sleep.” I waved back, reassured I could always track her down and force it out of her if I had to—the perks of being neighbors for the last ten years. And there wasn’t a day I wasn’t thankful Lydia’s dad had gotten transferred to St. Louis. With Jake ignoring me, I’d be lost without her.
As I approached my front door, I didn’t hear the familiar click of the lock. I pushed against the door, but it didn’t budge.
“Damn this thing,” I muttered as I thought about the backup unlocking program. But before I could blink to open it, my tracking chip activated the lock, and the door swung open.
Both my parents were in the living room with the news blaring. They glanced over the back of the couch with worried looks. I tensed. What was Dad doing home so early? And Mom always greeted me with a smile, but there was no evidence of one now.
I dropped my purse on the floor by the coatrack. “What’s up?” I flopped onto the recliner on the opposite side of the coffee table, unable to ignore my mom’s horror-stricken face.
“It’s all over the news,” Mom said.
“What is?”
Dad wore a blank expression. His kippah sat lopsided on his full head of dark brown hair. Sometimes I wondered if he wore it more to cover his tracker incision scar than for his faith. But looking at his drooping eyelids, I got th
e sense he was just tired. Tired of being forced to pretend to be something he wasn’t.
Trackers trumped faith. It hurt him more than it hurt me. He remembered what it was like to unplug completely. I would never understand that. And as much as I wanted to connect to Dad on a spiritual level, I wasn’t sure I wanted the space and quiet.
Observing Judaism came with sacrifices I self-imposed. Having a tracker came with sacrifices I had no control over.
“I got a national tracker message. It requested all nonessential personnel return home immediately,” Dad said.
News. I blinked twice and headlines scrolled across my vision. Words like “Armed Robbery” and “Critically Injured” caught my attention and images of red skulls filled the sides of the search. I couldn’t focus on one story through the jumbled mess.
Blood pulsed in my ears. If what I caught on the newsfeed was any indication, things were serious. Combine that with Dad’s nationwide tracker message, and we were talking something massively wrong.
Once I turned eighteen, the government would add me to the distribution list. I’d too know the joy of security alerts. Until then, I was stuck with my own limited personal searches and whatever was on the news. “What happened?”
Both my parents shook their heads and pointed at the news screen. Most families had gotten rid of theirs in favor of individual streaming on the network. Mom and Dad insisted we still do things together, which included watching the news and movies. Dad said it didn’t count as interaction if we all sat mindlessly in the same room watching different things on the network. I didn’t mind most the time, except when we all couldn’t agree on what to watch on the only screen in the house.
Messages scrolled across the bottom of the news screen. A computer-generated image of a man took up half the screen with the word SUSPECT below it in big, bold letters. The man, around my parents’ age, had fair skin with brown, curly hair and a scruffy, graying beard. His piercing green eyes seemed to accuse me of the crime instead of implicating him.
The announcer spoke: “If anyone has seen the man depicted in the composite, please contact the authorities immediately. I repeat, do not attempt to engage this man. He is considered armed and dangerous. We now return to Janis Covington, live at Brentwood Square, where the incident took place.”
“What’s going on? They can always find people. I thought that was the point of the trackers.”
“Kai, quiet please. We are trying to figure that out.” Dad’s attention remained glued to the screen.
Missing person. I blinked twice and five-year-old images of missing kids popped up on the edges of my line of sight. Kids of all backgrounds, but one of a young girl with long, mousy brown hair caught my attention. Her blue eyes refused to release their hold on me. “Damn wrong search,” I muttered, quickly clearing everything out of my line of sight.
“Would you stop surfing the network and pay attention to the news? You’ll never get the full story if you’re multitasking.”
“I was trying to—”
Mom’s hazel eyes focused on me without a word. A sure sign that if I didn’t knock it off, there would be consequences.
“Never mind.” I blinked twice while thinking about the minimize function. All the apps disappeared from my vision except the essential operations on my tracker, which blinked in the lower right-hand side of my vision. Once everything was as close to off as the system would allow, I faced the news screen. I don’t know how Dad knew when I had a million functions open, but Jake always joked that Dad had installed extra security on our chips to keep track of everything we did. He used to report directly to Rufus Scurry, the head of Global Tracking Systems, so it was best not to risk it.
A blonde female reporter with freckles on her nose appeared on the screen. Her concerned expression said everything.
“Thanks, Don. Right now, we know the suspect entered the building around 2:00 p.m. When the store owner refused to sell him a large quantity of lead wiring due to shortage laws, the man pulled a gun. The pair exchanged heated words, and the suspect fired on the shop owner, running away with the merchandise. The shop owner died on the way to the hospital.”
“I don’t get it.” I shook my head. “There hasn’t been a crime in over five years.”
“I know, Kaya. Let’s hear the rest.” Mom’s voice was soft but stern, meaning the situation was more serious than I’d originally realized.
“Mystery still surrounds this incident. The authorities are unable to track the man. They suspect he was acting with the Ghost movement.”
A red skull symbol replaced the composite sketch of the man.
“The Ghosts, an extremist group known for fighting the Tracker220 technology, threatened to make a reappearance just before going into hiding twelve years ago. Many are speculating this is the start of their return. Vandals have marked many businesses that support Global Tracking Systems with the red skull, a symbol adopted by the Ghost movement. Even more troubling, Rufus Scurry, the creator of Tracker220, was unavailable for comment on how this man bypassed the system. Live for KSDK, this is Janis Covington.”
“How could they let this happen?” I asked.
Dad switched off the news screen. “We’ve all put a lot of faith in the tracker technology, but it’s not perfect.”
“But the Ghosts? Why didn’t they hunt them down ages ago?”
“They rounded up a lot of suspects, but many evaded capture.”
“How can anyone hide with a tracker? It’s not like you can just go offline or shut it down.” My friends’ shenanigans in the woods aside, none of the story made sense. It went against everything I knew about tracker technology, which admittedly wasn’t a whole lot beyond apps and day-to-day usage.
“Simple,” Dad said. “You don’t draw attention to yourself. The crime today was strategic. Someone wanted the Ghosts to get blamed for what happened. They’ve got everyone in a panic. They like to create mass hysteria.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Most likely so they can divert attention away from what they’re really up to. Their reappearance brings with it the fear that the attacks will start again.”
“Attacks? What attacks?”
“Something I hoped I’d never have to explain,” Dad said with a furrowed brow. “When you were a baby, Global Tracking Systems started distributing the tracker technology on a large scale. The Ghosts spoke out against the technology, claiming it was an invasion of privacy. But their claims were dismissed because the tech it replaced had the same concerns.”
I knew about the tracker monitoring, but who cared if I searched for silly pictures on the network and chatted with my friends? “Why would the Ghosts care? Did they have something to hide from the authorities?”
“Some people think so. But most of the world agreed the benefits of instant access to infinite knowledge and the health monitoring capabilities far outweighed the few opposing voices. When it became clear that everyone would receive a tracker, the Ghosts waged attacks on Global Tracking Systems and other government buildings. That’s why they sent me home early today.”
Dad worked in a tech division for the government that monitored tracker diagnostics. He had a unique understanding of the situation since he was part of the team that finalized the tracker technology. He always knew how to explain things in a way I could understand.
“So why isn’t this part of our history lessons?”
Mom sat on the arm of the recliner. She twisted blond hair into a knot like I did before I cut mine, then put her hand on my knee. “People don’t want to remember that horrible part of our history. And the government thought it was too brutal to discuss with children. It was a dark time. We didn’t leave the house much. Anyone who worked for Global Tracking Systems was a target.”
A pounding at the front door interrupted our conversation. Dad walked to the door and opened it.
“Who’s here?” I asked, peering over the back of the couch.
Four uniformed authorities stood
in our doorway, dressed in full combat gear.
Four
The head officer pulled off his helmet. “There’s a tracker offline at your location.” His three agents fanned out in the room with their rectangular monitoring devices. One agent loomed over each of us. “Our records indicate there should be three trackers at this location. We better not catch any stowaways.”
I flinched. Did this have something to do with the robbery? The thought of some criminal camping out in our apartment made my insides crawl.
Dad loomed over the head authority. He always said it was best to establish who had the real authority upfront, but I always clammed up whenever they showed up. “No, it’s just the three of us. My son is away at college.”
I didn’t know why Dad had bothered to mention Jake. The authorities knew where he was if they wanted to find him. They had records and advanced programs for that stuff.
The agent nearest me grabbed my arm and dug his gloved fingers into my skin. Ouch. Stinging red marks appeared, but I struggled to keep my face neutral. The less I spoke, the faster they’d be gone. He moved the monitoring device over the back of my skull. He pulled it away, tapped the screen, and scanned the device over my head again.
Across the room, the agent next to Mom said, “She’s functional.”
“Him as well,” said the agent with Dad.
Mom let out a long breath, but Dad didn’t react.
Maybe it was all a big mistake. The agent hovering above me still had a vise-like grip on my arm. “It’s this one.”
My stomach churned.
“That’s impossible,” Dad said. “Check again.”
“I did, sir. Multiple times,” the agent said.
I blinked twice, trying to generate a search, but nothing came up in my vision.
He yanked me toward the door, but Dad long strides allowed him to beat the agent to the door and block his path.
“Where are you taking her?” he demanded.
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