‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Eve texted you a picture of herself in a nightie.’
‘What?’ He grabbed for the phone, but I held it out of reach.
‘Kidding. She just asked when you’d be home. You know, to rip all her clothes off.’
‘Maybe this giving you my phone thing is a bad idea.’
‘Depends, what kind of pictures
does
Eve send you?’
‘Good thing I’m not the jealous type—’ He stopped himself, but too late, and there was an awkward, thick silence for a few long seconds.
Because I
was
the jealous type, and we both knew it. I tried not to be, but the green-eyed monster part of me had roared out on a couple of occasions, and Hulk-smashed my trust with Claire the last time.
Hence, me travelling alone.
‘I’ll ignore any pictures, I swear,’ I said. ‘I’m texting Eve now.’ I pushed buttons and lost myself in the tech world for a few more heartbeats, and when I came out of it, the strangeness between me and my best friend was mostly gone. Mostly. ‘Done. If she sexts me now, it’s her own lookout.’
He punched me on the arm, lightly. It was the uninjured one, thankfully, but I still felt echoes through to the other side. Ow. Yeah, definitely going to leave a mark. ‘You’re lucky I love you, man.’
‘You’re lucky I don’t stake your undead Dracula wannabe ass.’
He just shook his head. ‘Seriously. You going to be okay out there on your own?’
‘Claire’s out there,’ I said. ‘Alone. So yeah. I have to be, right?’
‘She really can take care of herself, you know. She’s proved it about a hundred times already.’
‘I know,’ I said. This time, my voice came out softer than I intended. ‘That’s kind of what scares me. Because what if she doesn’t need me any more, man?’
That got me a sideways flash of a look before he turned his attention back to the road. ‘She needs you for more than just protection. It’s how it works. You want the strong girl, you understand that she’s with you because she wants to be. Not because she has to be. You know that, right?’
‘I guess. I mean, yeah, but … hard to break the habit.’ I turned toward the window, but all I saw was my blurry reflection in the darkened glass. Michael was looking at me again, I could feel it. ‘How long ’til we get to the bus station?’
‘Another half hour,’ he said. ‘Sleep if you want.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I think I will.’
I didn’t.
But I pretended.
It didn’t occur to me until later, when I was on the bus and headed on a long, exhausting trip across country, that I’d forgotten to text Claire and tell her about my broken phone, and by then …
By then it was too late.
‘Are you nervous?’ the girl standing next to Claire whispered. ‘I’m nervous.’ She sounded it. They were in a fairly large group of incoming students being led around by an upperclassman at night. It was the end of Claire’s first day of orientation, which had been exhausting and full of way too much info to absorb at once; her brain was swimming with maps, people, names, streets, stunningly gorgeous buildings … she still hadn’t met her Special Projects instructor, Professor Anderson, who wouldn’t be available until the morning, but she’d filled up her day trying to learn more about the MIT campus.
But it had been impossible to resist the little orange slip of paper she’d received, that had told her where to meet for the ‘special tour’. And it hadn’t disappointed. An hour of complicated rules, and the Orange Tour had shown them absolutely incredible things … tunnels, rooftops, secrets of all kinds. Claire hadn’t thought she had a head for heights, but it turned out she did … more than a lot of the others on the tour. She’d been able to stand right on the edge of the tallest building, and look straight down. It was exciting. Dizzying, but exciting.
MIT was … unique. Like Morganville, it was pretty much a self-regulating system, with its own history, rules and environment … once you were on the campus, it felt as if the MIT universe was the only universe that mattered. She’d met a ton of people, and they were all a blur. There were at least five upperclassmen leading the tour group, but only one wore a T-shirt that said I’M NOT HERE. His name was Jack, and he was the one who talked the most.
Seeing the cool, creative energy of the dorms taught Claire that it had probably been a huge mistake to stay off campus with Elizabeth, but done was done on that score. She was committed, and it would be too much of a drama to try to beg off now. Plus, she’d already prepaid the rent.
‘Hey,’ the girl whispered again. ‘Are you nervous?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ Claire said. She supposed to normal people there was something spooky about the tour – after all, it was after hours, they were trudging around in the dark, and the upperclassmen leading the tour were doing their best to freak them out. But she couldn’t get nervous about it. She supposed Morganville had raised the bar way too high on that one. ‘We’re safe. They’re not going to let anything happen to us, trust me.’
‘I don’t know where we are,’ the girl whispered back anxiously. She shuffled maps, frowning; like Claire, she had a ton of materials, but unlike Claire, she hadn’t come armed with a backpack to stow them in. ‘Do you know? Because I thought we were heading for Baker House. Isn’t that right?’
‘I think so.’
‘But – we’re way off, right? Look, I think we’re not even on campus … no, wait, we are …’ The girl’s anxiety teetered on the edge of panic, and there wasn’t much Claire could do to help. She checked her phone, supposedly to look at the GPS, but quite honestly, she was checking to see if she’d gotten any messages.
She had. Voicemail from Michael. Again. She’d skipped listening to the last three because she was hoping Shane’s name would pop up … but just as she started to stow the phone away, she saw a text pop up.
It was
still
Michael … but it said,
This is Shane hit me back
.
What?
Claire lagged behind a little, texting back – risky to do on unfamiliar ground, in the dark, but this couldn’t wait.
Y R U on Michael’s phone?
A few seconds, and the text came back.
Broke mine sry.
It sounded like an excuse. A bad one. But accidents did happen.
Was waiting
, she texted back.
Saw vid.
No answer for a long moment, and then he typed back,
I meant it
. That was all. Just that.
And she stopped walking, closed her eyes for a moment, and pulled in a deep, chilly breath. Then she texted,
Miss U.
He responded,
Luv U.
Her eyes stung with tears, and she hesitated for a long second before she texted back,
Ttys
. Talk to you soon.
‘Hey!’
Claire jerked her head up at the urgent whisper from a few feet away, instincts coming alive and screaming, but it was just the girl, the nervous one, still clutching all her brochures and maps and binders. She looked even more paranoid than before. What was her name, anyway? Started with a V. Vita? No, Viva. ‘Viva,’ she said, and the girl nodded. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘We’re supposed to be going to Baker House,’ she said. ‘But it’s not on the map!’
‘Well, it’s supposed to be a secret tour,’ Claire said. ‘So maybe it’s called something else on the map.’
‘But—’ Viva shifted uneasily. ‘I just – I just want to go back. Would you share a cab with me? Please? We can get one on the street up there.’
The rest of the group was walking briskly on, heading through some trees, and they were being left behind. Well, that didn’t seem like a good idea under any circumstances.
Claire put her phone away, shifted the weight of her backpack (which wasn’t much, at least not now – a tablet computer, a couple of books she was interested in, and the load of goodies from orientation. She wasn’t used to it being so light). ‘Let’s just catch up,’ she said. ‘Come on. We can’t bug out now, they’ll worry about us.’ And she jogged onward, looking back to be sure Viva was coming. She was, probably only because she didn’t want to be left alone.
Claire was definitely
not
interested in going back to the house ahead of schedule. Liz had moped about her going to orientation, had fussed about when she’d be back, and then sulked about the fact Claire expected to be gone until late. The drama had been intense. No reason to add to it by coming home off schedule … that would probably lead to a theatrical scene about how Liz’s plans had been spoilt because Claire didn’t do what she said.
Two days in and I already hate living there
, Claire thought.
Probably not a good sign
. But she’d hated Morganville at first, and now … now she really missed it.
And Shane. God, she missed Shane so much. She missed Eve and Michael, and (probably stupidly) Myrnin, too. She’d spent the day providing the mental running commentary from her friends and boyfriend, and from Myrnin when she spotted something excessively and geekily cool. It was getting easier and easier to summon up a mental replica of Myrnin in her head. That was probably worrying.
Cambridge was so
busy
. Even this late, there were loads of cars zipping around, planes crossing the starless, light-washed sky, crowds gathering for mysterious and unknown reasons around shops or parks. The Morganville in her wanted to tell them all to go home and be safe, but she knew that was verging on crazy. The world these laughing people lived in was a very different place.
She
was in a very different place.
The raggle-taggle group of students that their tour guides were leading came to a sudden halt, because in the clearing ahead there was a big group already gathered. There was no apparent purpose to it – just people gathered, talking, some sitting and reading, some playing games, a few paired-off couples so into each other it didn’t matter others existed at all. As Claire caught up (and a breathless Viva caught up with her), the entire group came to a stop halfway inside of the crowd, and their guide held up his hand.
‘Hang on,’ he told them. ‘We’re really close, I just have to check something. Stay here. Oh, and remember what I told you if security shows up. Don’t tell them my name, and don’t tell them where you’re going.’
Viva held up her hand. ‘Um, Jack? I can’t find Baker House on my map …’
‘Just a second,’ he said, but his words were lost in a sudden chorus of phones buzzing, beeping and pinging. People around them fumbled for their devices, and Claire checked hers out of habit. Nothing.
But the people around them whooped, cheered, high-fived and … began to dance. All their phones were blaring out a song Claire recognised. Most of them had some kind of glow-in-the-dark things that they pulled from their pockets, and within seconds it was a full-on instant rave.
Their little group was an island of clueless in a sea of moving, jumping bodies … and suddenly, she didn’t see their tour guides anywhere. They’d just melted into the crowd. Gone.
Viva’s eyes were huge, and she was clutching all her official MIT loot to her chest as if someone might want to rip off her maps and binders. She crowded closer to Claire as a guy with huge holes in his ears and a shaved head began kangaroo-jumping around near them. The noise was deafening.
Claire spotted the campus security uniforms approaching, and pointed, and Viva gasped and looked as if she might faint. ‘Jack!’ she yelled, and turned in a circle, staring wildly. ‘Jack, they’re coming! Jack!’
But their tour guide was nowhere to be seen, and now, as more campus security descended, the flash-rave broke up and students began scrambling away in a hundred directions … leaving their little tour group frozen and stunned.
There was no sign of their guide anywhere.
Claire, whose survival instincts were a lot more finely honed, had been prepared to cut out, but Viva’s shaking hand on her arm prevented her from following the
upperclass
students, and before she could get Viva to flee with her, it was too late. There were three security guards flanking them, frowning and looking very serious.
‘Okay, you know this area’s off limits,’ one of them said. ‘Names!’
There was a confused babble of voices, and he cut them off with an impatient gesture and pointed to Claire.
‘Claire Danvers,’ she said. ‘But we were taking a tour. We didn’t know it was off limits.’
‘Likely story, Miss Danvers. If you were on a tour, where’s your guide?’
‘Um …’ Viva held up her hand. ‘He left? I’m Viva Adewah.’
He made notes. ‘Uh huh. Name of the guide, for the records?’
‘Um, I don’t know. He took off and left us here!’
The three security men exchanged a look, and the centre one made another official-looking note in his book. ‘And where were you headed?’
He got a shifty look and mutters from all of their fellow abandoned group, and Claire sighed. ‘Baker House,’ she said. ‘Which isn’t real, right? And Jack Florey’s not a real person?’
‘Opinions are divided,’ the cop said, and put his notebook away. ‘It’s the Orange Tour, by the way. Long tradition. Sometimes they let us hassle you. Guess this was your lucky night. You’re all from Fifth East?’
‘How did you know?’ Viva asked.
‘Because if you weren’t, you’d have a different guide. Head that way. You’ll get back on track quickly. Stay together. No wandering off on your own. And congratulations. You’re part of the history now – you’ve survived an Orange Tour. Now, don’t let us ever catch you hacking.’
A hack, in MIT jargon, meant a real-world mod … like the most recent one, which had been to turn the Earth Sciences building into a giant Tetris game with coloured interior lights. Hacks didn’t destroy, they just … creatively amended. But Jack Florey had given them the rules of hacks, too – and they sounded remarkably like the rules of surviving Morganville.
No stealing. No destroying property. And never hack alone.
Odds were, most people on this tour would, at some point, be involved in a hack, or at least see a really good one.
But probably not her, Claire reflected, with another little burst of regret. She wasn’t here to be a freshman; she was here to study with Professor Anderson, on a Morganville-approved study course, and Amelie wasn’t likely to be in favour of anything that wasn’t strictly on the curriculum.