Etherworld (14 page)

I glance in the side mirror as the guards sprint toward a white van.

“Hurry,” I say to Zoe. “They're going to follow us!”

Zoe doesn't even flinch. She just keeps her eyes trained ahead. “Take my tab and do a search for the closest access tunnel for I-75.”

“Can't I just use the AutoComm for that?” I ask.

Zoe swerves to avoid a patron walking toward the hospital and barely misses hitting him. My stomach practically drops to the floor.

“Forget it. The sync function is broken,” she answers.

I pull the tab off the port where it connects to the console. As soon as I start typing on the touch screen, I hear sirens. While the tab calculates the quickest route to the access tunnel, I check the mirror and see a white van behind us.

Zoe slams on the brakes as another white van yanks in front of us. My harness digs into my shoulders as I fly forward.

“Hang on!” Zoe says as she accelerates, cranking the wheel. The maneuver gets us past the other set of guards, but now we have two vans behind us, and the sirens are getting louder.

The tab vibrates in my hand when it's found the nearest tunnel, complete with a map and a highlighted route.

“Once we get off the grounds, make a right,” I say. “A mile down the road, there's an on-ramp to the tunnel.”

“Good,” Zoe says, but her tiny bit of relief is sucked away when we see that the chain-link gates to the closest hospital exit have been closed off. Her foot eases off the gas.

“Don't slow down,” I say. “Those vans are going to smash into us!”

Zoe shrugs. “What do you want me to do? Drive right through the gate?”

“If we have to, yeah.”

A look of confusion clouds Zoe's face. I can't tell if she's squeamish because she doesn't want to damage her sports car, or if she's worried we're going to get killed performing this ridiculous stunt. But then she narrows her eyes and the coupe starts flying toward the gate.

The sound of metal crushing metal is louder than our screams. The car breaks through and skids off the road. Horns blare behind us, the vans stuck behind the gate. Zoe regains control and speeds away, the headlights from the security vans fading into the night.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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AS ZOE'S CAR BARRELS DOWN THE expressway, I clutch the leather armrests, holding on tight. Even though we haven't seen any sign of the white vans or the police, she's still driving at a breakneck speed.

“Where to?” Zoe asks.

“Thirty-Two Flat Rock Road,” I reply. “Quartz Sector.”

Zoe makes a sharp left, throwing me up against the door. “Why are you helping me?” I ask.

Zoe's eyes flick over to me for a split second, and they're shimmering with energy. “I know you think there's something wrong with Elusion. Yesterday I overheard my dad talking on his tab with some other Orexis stockholder. Things got pretty heated. He was on some rant about something called nanopsychosis. Saying that he wasn't going to dump his shares until there was real proof Elusion caused it. I don't think I've ever seen him that angry.”

Finally, word of Elusion's dangerous flaw is making it through the corporate ranks. “Did you ask him about it?”

“Hell yeah, I did. But of course he blew me off, like he always does. So I said I was meeting some friends in Elusion, and he yanked my Equip away from me and forbade me to use it. When I called Patrick, he was pretty cagey too, but eventually he admitted that you were suffering from this weird sickness. After that, I had to see what was going on for myself, so I texted you.” She looks at me sideways and smirks. “For the record, you don't look sick to me.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I'm not.”

“That's what I thought,” she says. “So are you going to tell me what's going on?”

I begin to talk, explaining everything. She listens, only asking questions when necessary. By the time I've finished, the streets have narrowed and are lined with ugly little steel trailers, evacuated houses, and uncollected trash. We're closing in on the Quartz Sector, the dilapidated area that was hit by a severe storm ages ago and pretty much left to rot.

Zoe is quiet, her gloved fingers gripping the steering wheel. For a minute, it seems like she's trying to gauge her feelings, or trying to figure out whose story to trust. “We have to help those people who are still stuck in Elusion,”

My thoughts reel back to the night Avery, Josh, and I went in search of Nora—how we rescued Maureen, the frail girl in the basement of that broken-down house, who repeated my father's words back to me. And how Claire disintegrated in the rapids, screaming out in pain.

“Are there any more details on that girl who was just found?” I ask.

“Why don't you check the Net? You can use my tab.”

I reach for her tab, which is on the floor near my feet. The car chase must have sent it flying out of my lap. I try to access the search function after waking it up from sleep mode, but there's a pass code preventing me from getting past the home screen.

“Oh. Type in ‘Bitchypants,'” Zoe says.

I raise my eyebrows at her and laugh a little. “Seriously?”

“It's an inside joke,” she shrugs, without saying the name of the other person who's in on it.

I put in Zoe's pass code and then look up a reliable news site on the Net.

The headline pops on the screen:
College star athlete succumbs to unusual brain injury.

My hand begins to shake as I click on the link. A well-dressed male reporter stands outside the gate of a beautiful mansion surrounded by palm trees. The volume is muted, and I'm about to adjust the settings when the image of the reporter recedes and a graduation picture appears on-screen.

It's a girl with white-blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and bright green eyes.

Claire.

“Did you find something?” I hear Zoe say.

I don't respond. I just stare at the picture of Claire, imagining all the things the reporter must be saying about her in his rehearsed yet sympathetic voice-over: what a great athlete she was, how she loved doing anything to challenge herself, and what a loyal friend she could be, even to someone she hardly knew.

My head falls forward.

“You okay?” Zoe asks. I'm shuddering, my body shaking along with my hand. A wave of sadness threatens to sink me, but I can't let it, because then I won't be able to help anyone.

“Yeah,” I respond, giving her a quick reply. If I say any more, I'll lose it.

Zoe respects my silence, leaving me alone as I do a quick scan, checking on the progress of the other Etherworld survivors who followed Anthony. There are a slew of updates, including one posted late last night about how the authorities are still searching for the kids Claire was last seen with, Wyatt Krissoff and Piper Lewis. There are mentions of Cole Rankin and Anderson Schmidt, the two kids from Miami—who are still in comas—and reports from physicians who still haven't found anything definitive connecting these brain injuries to the use of Elusion, but are warning parents not to let their children access the app until they know for sure.

And then I see a fresh headline that makes my stomach churn.

Daughter of Original Elusion Inventor Admitted to—and Escaped from—Psych Ward of Inner Sector Medical.

I click on it and watch the video of Patrick leading me into the medical pavilion. Thankfully, my face is only partially visible, which means the public might find it hard to identify me. But all anyone would have to do to catch a good glimpse of me is look my name up on the Net and download any number of social media photos, like the ones that were taken at the Elusion release party at the Simmons estate a little over a week ago.

Now there's a target on my back, on top of everything else.

“Finally.” Zoe slams on the brakes and undoes her harness in one sharp movement. “Let's go.”

My head jerks back up and a few stray tears land on my knees. I wipe off my wet cheeks and get out of my harness, and I'm staring now at the front door of Josh's trailer. I was just here a couple of days ago, but it feels like a lifetime. He and I were still strangers then, trying to determine whether or not we could trust each other. And now I'm praying he's here with Avery, up and around and plotting how we're going to break into Orexis again.

“Come on, Regan,” Zoe urges, as she reaches into the trunk and grabs a canvas tote.

“What's that?”

“Clothes,” she says. “You need to get cleaned up and changed.”

“Thanks.”

As we sprint up the steps, I envision a reunion with Josh that begins with him smiling, then grabbing me and pulling me into a tight hug. My pulse is skyrocketing as the front door slides open.

“What the hell happened to you?” Avery asks. As usual, she's wearing her vintage army jacket. Her red, curly hair is tied in a messy knot on top of her head, and her glasses are slipping down the tip of her nose.

I never thought I'd say this, but thank God she's here.

“She was in a psych ward, among other places,” Zoe answers for me.

“Guess what? I don't care,” Avery says, and my gratitude is suddenly reduced to zero.

“Well, what have you been doing all night?” I counter. “You didn't answer any of my texts.”

Avery crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I stayed at the hospital for a few hours, waiting for that girl to come out of surgery. I thought if she woke up, she might be able to tell us something about Nora. I didn't realize that there wasn't a signal on my tab until—”

“Wait, you didn't have a signal that whole time? When did you get my messages?” My voice is really high-pitched, like I'm trying to squeeze the words out of my tightening throat.

Avery casts her eyes down to her scuffed black boots, so she doesn't have to look at me when she makes her admission. “About twenty minutes ago. I'm sorry. I would have been here sooner, but . . . I didn't know.”

“Are you saying Josh is still unconscious?” Zoe asks, because I'm standing here in stunned silence.

Avery nods.

I push past Avery and into the trailer. The InstaComm is blaring some ninja movie marathon, which Josh was probably watching before he surprised Patrick and me in Elusion. There's an unfinished MealFreeze sitting on the kitchenette counter, right next to the photocube I looked at when I first came here.

“Did you try pushing his emergency button?” I ask Avery. He's been under trypnosis five hours longer than me. I have no idea what that means for his cortisol levels and if they're high enough to cause the stimulus overdose that my dad warned me about.

“Yeah, but it didn't work.”

“You didn't disconnect him, did you?”

“No way. When I was at the hospital, I overheard some doctors saying that they thought Maureen's brain injury might've been caused by taking off her Equip abruptly instead of weaning her off trypnosis slowly,” Avery says. “I don't know if they're right, but I didn't want to take a chance and do something that could make things worse.”

As I run to Josh's room, Avery shouts, “Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”

Zoe begins retelling the whole saga I recounted in the car, but when I see Josh lying on his bed, his eyes covered with the visor, an IV drip in one arm, the other dangling off the mattress, I can't hear anything but my heartbeat thudding inside my ears.

I get down on my knees so I can hold Josh's hand. I move my other hand up to his face, my fingers trailing down the side of his cheek. He doesn't respond to my touch at all, and for a moment I try to convince myself that he's just taking a nap, tired from a long day.

Any minute now, he'll wake up, I think.

But seconds tick by without any motion, except for the scrambling footsteps that flood the trailer. Soon Zoe and Avery are both in Josh's room with me. When I turn around, I can tell by the frozen look on Avery's face that she's been blindsided by everything she just learned.

“You saw Nora?” she asks me.

“Yes,” I reply.

Avery kneels down next to me. “Is she okay? How did she look? Do you know where she is?”

“The last time I saw her, she seemed fine, but . . .” I swallow hard. “She never told me where she was when she disappeared.”

Avery's shoulders slump forward; her lower lip trembles. We're both silent, not knowing what to do next. Thankfully Zoe is here to keep us moving, even though sitting with Josh feels like all that I can manage.

“Avery, did you hook Josh up to this IV?” she asks.

“Yeah, I was hoping that getting some fluids in him would help,” Avery replies, her voice softer than I've ever known it to be.

“Great idea. Where did you find an IV?” Zoe places her hand on Avery's shoulder, as if trying to help her get her strength back.

“Nora had a few in her room,” she explains. “And I watched a tutorial on the Net to figure out how to use it.”

I think back to the first time Josh took me to the warehouse out by the HyperSoar hangars, where he tried to show me evidence that would convince me that people were becoming addicted to Elusion, overriding the safety mechanisms and hooking themselves up to IVs so that they could stay in there for hours—sometimes days. Nora had been one of them.

I press my lips to Josh's forehead, willing him to wake. “Come back to me, please,” I whisper.

“He hasn't moved or said anything, but his pulse seems strong.” Avery stands back up again, adjusting her jacket as if it will help her regain her composure. “He could be in worse shape, so that has to be a good sign.”

She could be right. I think back to what my dad said when we were at the mines—once the destruction protocol was complete, everyone would be released from Elusion's powerful trance. Josh is going to be okay, I know it. He'll walk away from this once my father's attack plans are carried out. But until then, we'll have to keep him as safe and protected as possible.