Bailen pitched the bike into a wooded area. It seemed familiar, like it was from a dream or another life. When the collapsing barn came into view, I knew we were headed for what was left of the old hideout.
“Are you crazy? They could be monitoring the Hive.”
No response. Between us was a silence so deep, I didn’t dare pierce it with another question.
We landed in front of the barn, which seemed more like a lean-to. He rolled up beside it and cut the engine. Most of the windows were broken. Many of the splintered boards hung from the structure by a single nail. If I breathed too hard, it might blow over.
“Are you sure they won’t find us here?”
Bailen huffed, as if that were a real response, then grabbed the kit off his bike and ducked inside. I followed at his heels.
The sight inside rendered me speechless. Unrecognizable tools and debris littered the barn. There wasn’t more than an inch of unoccupied floor space. I couldn’t locate the trap door, even though I knew its exact location. A giant hole in the roof let in what little moonlight penetrated the forest canopy, which lit up a massive pile of wood blocking the path across the barn. I coughed at the stench of rotting wood and mold.
Bailen set the box down and began clearing away the debris. As he moved toward the trap door, an icy chill crawled down my arms, leaving a pit in my stomach.
I’d done that.
Me.
I’d cost them their hideout, their home, and their technology. It had all been my fault, like everything else.
Smack.
Crack.
Smack.
Bailen snatched bits of wood and slammed them onto a pile of debris. He was like a machine, throwing rubble as if each piece removed would clear away some of the pain.
His chest heaved, his arms straining under the weight of a large crossbeam. He grunted and tried again before collapsing onto the heap. I wrapped my arms around his waist. He tried to shove me back, but I squeezed tighter.
“Shh,” I whispered into his ear. “It’ll be okay.”
After much struggling, he collapsed into my arms, breathing heavily.
“I just… I can’t leave it like this.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
We huddled in the wreckage with no concept of how much time passed.
When his breathing slowed, I risked breaking the silence. “Are we safe here?”
He unburied his head from my shoulder, his eyes puffy and red. “Yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
He opened his mouth but closed it as if trying to find the right words. “As long as it holds up. They stripped out everything of worth. They have no reason to think we’d ever return. It’d be suicide.” He focused on the location of the trap door. “There’s nothing left for them to destroy.”
“Do I try it here or are we going into the Hive?”
He shook his head. “Here is good. At least we can run if the authorities show up.”
I leaned against a stack of wood that appeared to have caved in from the roof. A breeze whipped through the small opening in the barn. I shivered, but not because of the cold. Because of what I was about to do. I didn’t know if it would work. If it didn’t, we could have the authorities breathing down our necks in a matter of minutes. There was no way I was going with them. They’d have to haul me out in a body bag.
There was no doubt they had a giant price tag on my head. Who knew if I was worth more dead or alive? Did they even care? I was sure they just wanted my tracker out of commission. Anything to stop me. To keep me from the information that would potentially end the tracker network. The information that would change everything.
Bailen placed his hand on my cheek and twisted my face toward him.
“You can do this.”
I took a deep breath and dropped my head. I had to or the war was over. Whatever shred of freedom the world had left was mine to lose.
No pressure.
“What do you need me to do?” Bailen asked.
“Take my tracker off TROGS.”
He reached for his kit, but I placed my hand on his as he grabbed the latch. “When I tell you to.” I retracted my hand, allowing him open the box.
“I thought you said you didn’t need me.” Bailen winked as he fixed the sensors to my temples.
A smile played on my lips, but I did my best to hide it from him. I would have done it without him if I’d had to, but it was so much easier with him.
He pulled out his laptop and a series of wires, which he stuck to my temples. Then he inspected everything one last time before he returned to his computer.
“Do you want me to run an interference program? Give you some extra time?”
“No, no programs. It has to be me and my tracker.”
“You sure?” He flashed me the saddest expression, like a puppy that had been left out in the cold.
“Positive. I have to do this.”
“Well, the good news is, the barn has some lead shielding. The bad news is, it’s hard to tell how much is still intact. Hopefully, it’s enough to keep your tracker a secret until you can power it off.” His voice sounded almost monotone, like he had lost his zest for technology.
I’d taken all the fun out of it for him.
“Okay. I’m ready,” Bailen said, fingers on the keyboard.
I took a deep breath. “I’m not.” And before I could overthink it, I launched myself at Bailen and kissed him. He squeezed me tightly. I lost myself. For that moment, we were just a guy and a girl kissing in a barn. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing.
Just him and me.
The desperation of the kiss said otherwise. Our lips pressed against each other, choppy and frantic, like we couldn’t get enough of each other. Like it was the end.
Maybe it was.
His hands cradled the back of my head, urging me closer, as if there were still space to close. And somehow, we managed to reduce the nonexistent gap further. I gave him a final squeeze before pulling away. My heart lingered in the moment, but my head said it was time.
“Shut it off.”
A cool chill enveloped me as he hit a single key on the laptop. Files and latent programs slowly brightened into existence in my line of sight. I thought back to when the authorities had shown up at the soccer game. When I’d fled from the bleachers, from Lydia, and from everything I’d thought I’d known about the world. When Peyton had rescued me—no, not rescued—changed my life, brought me to a world that had altered my entire mindset, brought me closer to understanding a world my parents had tried to give me but never could.
At the time, I’d been overwhelmed with a tornado of emotions. Fear of the authorities, fear of what they might do to me, confusion about what was happening to my tracker, uncertain of my next step. I’d pushed it all onto the network, which had forced my tracker to a latent state.
Exactly what I needed to do now, only on a much larger scale. I had to overload my tracker with enough thought and emotion to shut it off completely. I didn’t know what came after, though. I inhaled deeply and when I let it out, I made my decision.
I was all in.
Grabbing hold of every single emotion I’d harbored over the last couple of weeks, my thoughts clouded.
The confusion that surrounded me when my tracker had failed. The uncertainty of what it had meant. The sadness of leaving everything I’d known.
My head exploded in pain. I embraced more and more emotions and the events surrounding them.
Fear of what might happen if I got caught.
Anger at what the authorities had taken from me.
Each memory was more painful than the last. Until I found a time before the big mess. A time before I knew about the Ghosts.
Happiness. A thought of what could be.
Freedom. What sat right in front of me but just out of reach.
Support. What I stood to lose.
Love. Family. And what I’d lost…
“Jake!”
Th
e name ripped from my mouth. The voice that had yelled it sounded foreign. I gasped for air as I shoved every emotion and thought onto the network. The windows changed so rapidly, I couldn’t keep up with the images flying across my vision. I blinked faster and faster until the darkness blended with the blur of information swarming my sight.
My breaths grew short and stunted. My chest rose and fell as fast as I blinked. I felt a soft touch on my shoulder and collapsed in that general direction, everything going black.
I lay in his arms, my eyes squeezed shut, afraid to open them. Bailen weaved his fingers in my hair and removed the sensors. He massaged my temples, sending a wave of calming security through me. We sat in silence while my breaths receded into a normal rhythm. When I felt a soft kiss on my cheek, my eyes flew open. Everything was still black, except for a small, blinking white box in the upper left-hand corner of my vision.
“Did it work?” Bailen whispered into my ear.
I shot up, but the sudden jolt made my head swim. I leaned back into him as a single word appeared in my line of sight.
PASSWORD:
The blinking white box sat at the end of the word, taunting me.
Password? I’d done everything and now I needed a password? I exhaled loudly.
“What is it?” Bailen asked.
I stayed silent, letting his question hang in the air. Another task I’d have to figure out on my own. If Dad had hidden the message and the plans, he’d also come up with the password. It would have to be something he’d taught me. Possibly about technology. But my instinct told me that wasn’t it. He’d spent more time teaching me to be independent. To not rely on technology. But even if I made a wrong turn, I was never alone. There was something I would always have with me.
As the answer became apparent, I thought of the single most important thing in my life. My safety net. My support system. My family.
I thought of the word and nothing else. The letters F A M I L Y appeared slowly, one after the next, in my field of vision.
The white box stopped blinking.
I exhaled.
The screen went black.
“What’s happening, Kaya?” Bailen shook me gently.
“I’m not sure. It asked for a password, so I input one and then everything went…”
The sudden outpouring of images flying across my line of sight stopped me mid-sentence. The files settled into twenty-two rows of ten images and with it, my vision returned to normal.
I thought about the first image and blinked twice. The file enlarged. A series of swirling designs appeared. I collapsed that image and moved to the second. More of the same. I tried the third. It was similar too. So I skipped to the last image. More lines, but not curved. These were straight and jutted out at sharp angles.
“Interesting,” I muttered under my breath.
“What is it? Do you have the plans?”
“I’m not sure what I have, but it seems familiar.” I blinked twice, closing out the final file and minimizing the secret program.
“Is your tracker on?”
I gasped. In all the image deciphering and password uncovering, I’d totally forgotten about the tracking program. I blinked twice, pushing a simple search onto the tracker network. Nothing. I blinked twice again. Still nothing. “I think I’m disconnected. It seems like a separate program running in the background that’s not linked to the tracker network.”
Bailen checked his monitor and typed in a series of different things into TROGS. “There’s no signal coming from your tracker. You’re offline. But we’ll keep an eye on it just in case.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder, focused on what remained of the opposite wall. Some of my painted designs were still there, covered by debris. Others had giant holes in them. But they were partially intact. I traced the curving lines, going back to the time I’d started drawing them, shortly after Jake… I couldn’t finish the thought. I concentrated on the remains of the designs, slowly moving over each line, following every twist and curve. Something about the design was familiar.
I shot up, ignoring my pounding head, and opened up the third file. Pushing to my feet, I moved closer to the image on the wall. I moved the picture of the third file to the edge of my vision and compared it to the wall. I blinked twice and rotated the image on its side then let out a gasp.
“Kaya, what is it?”
I enlarged the image and positioned it over the one I’d painted on the wall. I pointed at the wall, my mouth gaping. “That painting I did, it matches a portion of the file I have here.”
“What? How is that possible?” Bailen moved next to me, studying my designs. He shoved some rubble out of the way, revealing more of the swirling lines. Stepping back, he said, “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”
“See what?” I asked.
The same expression from when he’d solved the secret message appeared.
“Bailen, what’s going on?”
He grabbed my arms, spinning me to face him. “Do all the files look like this?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, some of them have straight lines instead. Why?”
“How many are there?”
“Two hundred and twenty.”
He shook me excitedly. “Do you know what this means?”
“No. Please explain what’s going on.”
“Do you think you can draw them?” he asked. He was like a kid whose parents had just told him he could have candy and ice cream for dinner.
“I think so,” I said. “Bailen, what’s going on?”
He pointed at the wall of the barn. “They’re electronic schematics.”
“Tracker schematics?”
“Yep.”
It was everything we’d been searching for. Everything they’d hoped to find by analyzing my tracker. Everything we needed. The way to end trackers.
“If those files are all related like I think they are, then we should be able to see all the inner workings of the chips—what components go into them and how they connect and interact with the tracker network.” He grabbed my cheeks and planted a kiss on my lips that made my knees go weak.
“Kaya, you did it. You gave us the key to our freedom.”
Thirty
“This is incredible! Your tracker was somehow interfacing with your subconscious on a level above normal tracker operation.” Bailen cleared away more debris from the walls and admired what was left of my doodles. All along, those paintings had been something more. Something much more.
Somehow, I’d accessed the schematics in the Ghost program and not even known it. “What does this mean for my tracker?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” he said. “You’re safe now. I’m still not reading any signals from it. Not even the low-level one we picked up before.” He dusted off more of the drawing. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. How quickly do you think you can draw these? We need a team to analyze them for weaknesses.” The glint of excitement reappeared.
“I dunno. A week. Two at most.” While I was happy for a path to the end, something felt off. The weight on me still remained. It was far from over. A lot of the plan, the future of the Ghosts, and the future of the world, depended on my ability to reproduce what was inside my head.
Bailen packed up his kit then stared at the wall as if trying to commit the design to memory. I flipped through more of the images, trying to gain a better understanding, but it seemed like a maze of lines with no clear path. Why did I have to be the one with the bum tracker holding the secrets to unraveling the network? I wished it were Bailen. He could actually do something with the images.
Bailen grabbed my hand and led me to his bike.
“Are you sure it’s okay to go back?” I asked. “What if my tracker turns on again?”
“I don’t think it will. But we’ll keep an eye on it.”
He climbed on the bike and I followed. Once we were in the air, he jabbered on about the possibilities the schematics held, about how the Ghosts finally had an advantage. Aft
er a while, his voice just became noise—a quiet droning in my helmet. I opened and closed the images on my tracker, searching for the one thing that nagged at me, but I couldn’t quite grasp a hold of. As my brain struggled to pull the information from my subconscious and my tracker, my head swam, overwhelmed with data. Regardless of what was bothering me, I had a lot of work to do. At least I had an excuse to draw.
When we arrived at the Quarry, Bailen hunted down a giant roll of paper and some charcoal.
“Where did you get all this?” I asked as we stepped into my makeshift room.
“I was saving it for a rainy day.”
I threw my arms around him then reached for the paper. It was ages since I’d last seen some. He playfully held the paper out of reach. I clutched his arm, but he flexed it. Bailen raised his arm, pulling me to my tiptoes. I laughed, surprised by his strength. Who would have guessed his lanky arms had that much muscle?
Releasing my hold before he raised me completely off the ground, I stepped back and crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re wasting valuable time.”
“Oh, you think that’s going to work on me?”
I pushed my bottom lip out, trying hard not to laugh.
A giant smile erupted on his face. “You’re right, it will.” He lowered his arm and handed me the paper. I kissed him on the cheek then rolled the paper out on the rocky ground.
Grabbing a broken piece of charcoal, I blinked twice and opened the first image. It was far more detailed than it had originally appeared. Lines crossed and swirled every which way. Duplicating the image wouldn’t be easy. And one wrong line or mistake could cost the Ghosts. It had to be exact.
I placed the tip of the charcoal on the paper and let myself loose. My hand trailed in smooth arcs. Every few lines, I stopped to check my accuracy. All time seemed to stand still around me as I worked.
At one point, I discovered I was alone but didn’t pause long enough to see where Bailen had gone. I had a job to do, and he knew it.
When a sweet aroma filled my nostrils, I noticed the plate of food next to me. My stomach gurgled. I sighed and continued drawing. I couldn’t stop. Not even for food.
A hand stroked my shoulder and I jumped.
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