The Vault of Dreamers (15 page)

Linus had met with Dean Berg in the night. Linus might know something. If I could
find a way to talk to him, maybe that would help. Or I could confide in Janice. I
would have to talk to her in the shower, which would be weird, but possible. Then
again, I wasn’t sure exactly what to tell her. Until I knew more, I had to pretend
that I knew nothing.

I stood to reach in my wardrobe for clean clothes and found my video camera hanging
on the hook where Janice had left it.

Too bad it wasn’t on during the night
, I thought.
With the door ajar
. I gazed slowly around the room again, locating all the button cameras on the windows
and furniture.

Why couldn’t I do the surveillance backward? I was a filmmaker. I could film
The Forge Show
from the inside. In a place where everything was exposed, no one would think another
lens mattered. Or two. I leaned back, letting my mind run. I could have a dozen of
my own cameras if I could get them from the shop, and DeCoster had said we had endless
supplies there.

I let out a laugh.

I could aim cameras wherever I wanted and leave them on all night. It would take work,
and I would need a cover project to justify what I was doing, but I could figure that
all out. I could pretend I knew nothing and be normal, just like everyone else, but
all the while, I could find out what was really happening here at night.

Yes. I had a plan.

*   *   *

After a quick breakfast with no Linus sighting, I headed into the library and down
the steps for Media Convergence. I followed voices and the pattering of a Ping-Pong
ball to the first room on the right, where Paige and Henrik had a game going. A domed
lamp hung above the green table, just begging to get hit by a lob ball.

“Eight, six,” Paige said, and let loose a serve.

To my right, in the longer leg of the L-shaped room, students lounged on a couple
of old, faux-leather couches before a fireplace. Their feet were up on an oval coffee
table, along with a deck of cards, a Rubik’s Cube, and battered boxes of Dominion
and Settlers of Catan. A dozen windows near the ceiling let in a view of passing feet,
which underscored how the room was half-submerged below ground.

In the corner, Mr. DeCoster sat behind an old desk, idly peeling pistachios as he
watched his computer. He had pulled out the lower drawer of the desk and propped his
feet on the edge so I could see the soles of his oxfords. Today, his bolo tie was
made of some dark stone, maybe onyx.

A dozen other computers lined the inner walls, and Burnham was working at one of them
already. I figured he would ignore me, but he glanced over at me once before he began
the ignoring for real. Like that wasn’t awkward.

Janice came in behind me and flopped over one end of a couch. “Sweet.”

“I know. It’s nice down here,” I said, and stretched out in my jeans.

“Hey, Mr. DeCoster. When are you going to start class?” Janice called.

“I already did. Yesterday,” Mr. DeCoster said.

Paige caught the Ping-Pong ball, and the silence hung.

“Well, crap,” Henrik said conversationally.

Janice moved toward a computer, and some of the other students paired up in teams.

“Mr. DeCoster,” I said. “I need some gear from the shop.”

“Fine,” Mr. DeCoster said. “Tell Muzh I said you could browse the shelves.”

That sounded promising. I left my backpack by the couch and headed off.

The shop, like our new room for Media Convergence, was in the basement of the library,
but at the other end of a cement hallway. It had a half door with a ledge at waist
height, and it reminded me of the athletic cage at Doli High where a student could
sign out a basketball. A woman in a helmet stood at a workbench, soldering something
in a vice. When she pushed up her helmet visor with her glove, I saw she was young
with delicate, Indian features.

“Are you Muzh?” I asked, wondering if that was a first or last name.

“That’s right.”

“Mr. DeCoster said to tell you I could browse,” I said.

“Fine,” Muzh said. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Explosives,” I said. “Just kidding. I’m looking for cameras.”

Without releasing her soldering gun, she reached to open the door for me. “Aisle five,
left side. Help yourself,” she said.

She lowered her helmet again, and with the noise of her working behind me, I went
in search of my gear. The shop was a cross between a hardware store and a flea market,
with light fixtures and ceiling fans side by side with garage openers and toasters.
The camera selection filled a wide, compartmentalized shelf, and the gear ranged from
big, shoulder-harness film cameras to old, flip-open phones. I picked up one of the
phones. It didn’t turn on, but it might if it were charged. A smudged cardboard box
had a couple of old-fashioned gadgets and baby monitors in it, some so ancient they
didn’t even have USB ports.

I took the box, adding an assortment of the small cameras. Then I took a slow walk
through the other aisles and picked up some duct tape, on principle. I lingered over
the explosives and fireworks, curious about a small box of glow worm pellets that
promised to turn into black worms of ash with the light of a match.
Stay focused
. I gave the box a little shake and set it back.

When I returned to the front, Muzh took off her gloves. “Any luck?”

“I could stay down here all day,” I said.

She inspected each item, ran a scanner over the QR codes, and called up a list for
me to sign on an electronic pad.

“Does everything work?” I asked.

“Most likely. It all did when it was stored.” She opened the back of one video camera
and blew some dust out.

“What are these?” I asked, lifting a couple of gadgets that looked like old-fashioned
toy phones.

“Walkie-hams,” she said. “They’re an inelegant cross between walkie-talkies and ham
radios. They’re susceptible to rogue interference, but they’re slightly better than
two cans on a string.”

I pivoted one of the little walkie-hams, which was about as heavy as a pack of cards.
“Do you have a normal phone I could take?” I asked. Having one would be great. Other
students could text one another when they had something private to say. I couldn’t.

“Don’t you own one already?” Muzh asked.

“No,” I said. “My stepfather won’t let me. He thinks the government tracks us and
spies on us through our cell phones.”

Muzh nodded slowly. “He’s not alone in that theory. In any case, we don’t loan out
phones.” She gave my box a poke. “What are you trying to do, bug the place?”

“More or less.”

“What for?” Muzh asked. “The last student who took out this many cameras was looking
for paranormal activity. Tell me you’re not that misguided.”

Muzh was brilliant.

“I’m exactly that misguided,” I said. “Do you have any ghost sensors?”

“None that work,” she said dryly.

I bundled the box into my arms. “Thanks.”

“Here, wait,” she said, and handed me a box of old-style batteries and a charger.
“You’ll need these. The old devices guzzle electricity. You’ll have to rotate in fresh
batteries frequently.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck,” she said, and reached for her gloves again.

As I made my way back to class, a heavy door swung open, and a thickset man backed
into the hallway, maneuvering a dolly of boxes. “Excuse me,” he said, pulling it aside
to let me pass. Through the door behind him was a long, beige hallway.

“Is that one of the service tunnels?” I asked.

“That’s right,” he said, letting the door go.

I caught the knob just before the door closed.

“You can’t go in there,” he said. “That’s off-limits to students.”

Reluctantly, I let the door close. There was a scanner beside the knob. The man had
a swipe key hanging from a loop on his hip. I wondered if Linus had such a swipe key.
The man spun his dolly before him and headed away down the hall, and I continued to
the Ping-Pong room with my box.

*   *   *

At lunchtime, I looked for Linus in the kitchen. He gave me a brief wave, but he was
busy with dishes again and couldn’t talk. When I took my tray out to the dining area,
Janice was sitting with Paige. Burnham and Henrik were nowhere to be seen, and I secretly
hoped they wouldn’t show up and join us. I glanced reflexively at the blip rank board
and saw I was listed at 48. It was better than 50.

“Hey,” I said, sliding my tray onto the table opposite Janice’s.

The girls looked up from a phone that lay on the table between them.

“You have to see this,” Paige said. “It’s so cool.”

Janice pushed the phone over toward me. “Paige’s doing a thing on aging dancers, and
she found this face recognition app, Ace Age.”

“It searches the Internet for the face of a famous person, back through time, and
puts the photos in chronological order, with the same eye spacing, so you can see
the person growing up and aging over the years,” Paige said.

“Really?” I asked, angling to see.

Janice pushed a button, and a teen girl’s face began evolving gradually through a
series of shots. Her cheeks and hair had a rippling, flickering quality, but the constancy
of the face stayed strong, right up to the most recent picture of a woman in her midthirties.

“That is so so cool,” I said. I had to see it again. I sat back, amazed. “Who else
have you done?”

“Movie stars. Politicians,” Janice said. “Anyone public.”

“What about private people?” I asked.

“They don’t have enough pictures,” Paige said. “It doesn’t have the same effect.”

“What happens when you try?” I asked.

“Let’s see,” Janice said. “Who do you want to do?”

“You,” I said.

“No,” Janice said, covering her face.

Paige laughed, taking the phone. “That’s good. Put your hands down, Janice,” Paige
said sternly, aiming her phone at Janice.

Instead, Janice ducked her head under the table.

“Okay, then, you,” Paige said, and before I knew it, she swiveled my direction and
took my picture.

“No!” I squeaked.

But Paige leaned back, working the phone with her thumbs. Janice popped back up. She
bumped her shoulder to Paige’s, and the two of them peered at the phone together.

I had no idea what the app would find.

“Cute!” Janice and Paige squealed at the same time.

“Let me see,” I said, holding out my hand.

They didn’t seem to hear me.

“Oh,” Janice crooned. “Little pumpkin face.”

I moaned.

They were silent another moment, watching the phone, and then their smiles faded.
They glanced up at me at the same time, as if they’d never seen me before.

“What?” I asked.

The two girls exchanged a glance.

Then Janice smiled doubtfully. “You were a cute kid.”

“Let me see,” I said.

Paige slowly passed over the phone. The app had frozen on the picture of me that Paige
had just taken, but by tapping the little circular arrow, I could set it back through
the progression from the start. To my surprise, the first picture it found was one
of me in third grade, with two pigtails, frowning in the front row of my class picture.
The close-up in the app only showed my head and shoulders, but I remembered when it
was taken, and how the guy on the riser behind me kept bumping my butt with his knee.
From there, I aged through school photos, and it snagged for a second on one at a
pumpkin farm we’d visited for a school trip. All the other kids had a parent meet
them there, and I kept watching for my mom to show up, but she never did.

After that, the pictures went downhill. A blur of homely middle school pictures merged
into a dozen miserable images from Doli High. They were little better than mug shots.
A slew of happier, more recent ones from
The
Forge Show
couldn’t offset the bleak sequence from before. No wonder Janice and Paige had looked
dubious.

“I guess the Internet has a long memory,” I said. It was weird to think how many pictures
of me were in the public domain, and I wasn’t famous at all, or I hadn’t been until
I’d come to Forge.

Paige reached for the phone. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. She turned toward the kitchen,
where Linus was standing at the salad bar with a big bowl of lettuce.

“Paige, no,” I said.

But she had already snapped his picture and was hunching over the phone, giggling.

“Paige!”

“You want to see or not?” she asked.

My cheeks were burning. I glanced back at Linus, hoping he hadn’t seen, but he was
watching us now. When I shrank down in my seat, he lifted his eyebrows. He switched
out the lettuce bowls and headed back into the kitchen.

I wanted to die. “This is wrong,” I said.

“Get over yourself,” Paige said.

“Tell me there’s nothing on him,” I said.

Janice’s expression lifted in surprise. “Holy crap,” she said lightly. She blinked
at Paige, and then they both nudged close to the phone.

Paige cleared her throat and sat back slightly. “Well,” she said. “They’re tasteful,
at least.”

“Let me see that,” I said.

Paige did not let go of her phone until I tugged hard.

The photos of Linus did not go back far. In the earliest, he was no older than eleven
or twelve, about the age when he’d come to the States, and there were only a few photos
from those early years. Around the time he was thirteen, his face began a seamless
transformation through dozens of pictures. All of them were shot in a distinct black-and-white
clarity that indicated they had come from the same camera. Sometimes he smiled. More
often, his expression was neutral or serious. The app showed only his head and shoulders,
but since his shoulders were always bare, it gave the impression he never wore clothes.

The photos kept advancing toward the present, through countless sessions of the black-and-white
pictures, until they finally jumped back into color and flickered more like mine had,
with his dark hair changing lengths, and he was usually wearing the white shirt of
his kitchen garb. Then the picture stopped on the image Janice had just captured.