Authors: Eva Gray
D
rew lurches out from behind the garbage can, staggers forward clutching his injured shoulder, and stumbles to the ground.
The deliveryman and the guard run toward him to help him. I’m just thinking we should have been more careful and let him heal longer, when he catches my eye from over their shoulders, and I realize he is causing a diversion.
Alonso gets it at the same time and without saying a word we climb the step to the loading dock, run through it, and enter the library.
It’s dim and cool and quiet in here. Very, very quiet. We’re on the main floor in what looks like it was once the entrance area. One side of it is stacked high with NutriCorp boxes.
Alonso points at the other side of the room where there’s a curved desk with a sign reading
CHECKOUT,
and a computer. We start toward it but the voices of the deliveryman and the security guard start getting closer behind us. Alonso shakes his head and I agree. We need to move on.
We pass through a set of swinging double doors and find ourselves in a big room. Carefully stacked and color-coded NutriCorp boxes take up about half the space. The rest of it is a jumble of tables and chairs perched precariously on top of one another.
There are no computers.
Across the room there’s a door ajar to what looks like an office. I point, Alonso nods, and we head toward it. A quick glance tells us there’s no computer, and we’re about to back out when there are voices and one of the double doors swings open.
We slip into the office and pull the door nearly shut, leaving us in the dark. Alonso peeks through the crack to monitor what’s going on outside, and I scan the desk.
There’s a phone and pieces of paper. There’s also a little book of what look like weird crossword puzzles with
hexagons instead of squares to write the letters in. Next to that is a photo in a frame. It shows a man holding a little girl with his arm wrapped around the waist of a woman. They are standing in front of the Field Museum before it was destroyed, smiling hugely at the camera. They look nothing like my parents, and the little girl looks nothing like me, but for some reason seeing that photo makes the ache of missing my parents come back.
I’m not even aware of what I’m doing. My hand reaches for the phone. Then my fingers are dialing the number of my house before my brain can kick in and tell me to stop.
It starts to ring. My hand is trembling.
I have no idea what I am planning to say, or how I plan to say it, since there are people outside the door. I just want to hear my parents’ voices.
The phone keeps ringing. And ringing. And ringing.
No one answers, not Mr. Larson or Mr. Peña or even the voice mail. Which is weird. I picture the phone ringing, echoing through the entry hall and living room and dining room and den and kitchen. Up the dark wood
staircase and along the corridor to my parents’ room and my room and the guest room. Nobody. No one is home. No one knows I’m in trouble.
I know it’s ridiculous but at this moment I feel more alone and lost than I have ever felt in my life. My fingers close around the compass in my pocket.
“They’re gone.” Alonso turns from the door. His eyes get huge when he sees me holding the phone. “What are you doing?” he demands.
I hang up. “It works,” I say, not answering his question. Not looking at him. I don’t want him to see the tears in my eyes. “I tried to call my parents but no one answered. Your turn.” I push it toward him. I hope he didn’t hear the crack in my voice.
He shakes his head. “We don’t have time. Besides, my dad is impossible to reach. He’s always traveling.”
“What about your mom?”
I sense him stiffen. “She’s dead.” I look at him now but before I can say anything he puts his hand up. “It happened three years ago. I’ve dealt with it. No discussion needed.”
I can’t believe that is something you deal with in three years. Without meaning to, I blurt, “Is that why you don’t like holidays?”
He jams his hands deep into his pockets, letting his hair fall over his eyes. “You’re not really into the whole just-let-it-drop thing, are you?”
“I’m sorry. That was rude. Forget it.”
He nods. “I spotted a sign pointing downstairs for the circulation office. You mentioned the library network was to help move books from one place to another so maybe there’s a computer there.”
“Great idea,” I say, probably too brightly because I’m trying to make up for asking him too much.
We leave the office and go down a set of narrow marble stairs. At the bottom there’s a corridor with cube offices on both sides. They’re all empty, and I think that this must be what it looks like for the mice they use in those navigating-a-maze-for-a-piece-of-cheese experiments.
Along the far wall there are offices, most of them empty. But the one with
CIRCULATION
on the door has the blinds up and we see a computer on the desk.
“I think that computer was born before I was,” Alonso says, and I agree. It has a flat screen and a long plastic keyboard with individual keys instead of a tablet, and each piece is attached to the others with cables.
The desk is cluttered with objects, a little stone frog, a cup with pens — PENS! — in it, typed cards, a rubber ball, a six-sided cube with different-colored blocks. It must be a woman’s office because there’s also a compact of eye shadow and a sample of perfume.
“Hello, old friend,” Alonso says, hefting a big book off the floor. He blows dust off the cover. “I have one just like this at home.”
“A dictionary?” I slide into the seat in front of the computer. “Why?”
“It was my grandfather’s,” he says with a shrug. “I used to read it before I went to bed.”
I look up at him to see if he’s kidding, but he’s busy paging through the book. “That’s — that’s really cool,” I tell him.
He closes the dictionary abruptly, like maybe he’s embarrassed. “Yeah, I really only looked at the pictures.”
He puts the dictionary down and points to an oval thing about the size of my palm with a blinking light on it. “What do you think that does?”
“I’ve seen them in movies. Before touch screens and navpads, they used them. I think it’s called a ‘mouse.’ “
He glances around the office. “I feel like we’re in the Stone Age. You know how to drive this thing?”
“I think so,” I say, pulling the keyboard toward me. I hit some of the keys experimentally. Each one makes a clicking noise that sounds loud in the silence of the building, but it works, and the screen comes to life. A box pops up asking me for a password.
Hurdle one.
“Can you get through the encryption?” Alonso asks. He’s playing with things on the desk, picking them up and putting them down.
“I can try but it might take a little while.”
I bypass the password screen by opening up a programming window. Whatever this operating system is, it’s old and slow.
Alonso leans over to pick up the pencil cup and looks underneath it.
The programming window closes abruptly with a beep and the password box comes back up.
My heart is going unusually fast. It’s true that back home, sometimes (okay, daily) I’d go on my computer to do research that involved having to hack around the security protocols and firewalls that my parents have installed to keep me from doing that research. But I’ve never (successfully) hacked into anyone else’s server, not with a friend’s life on the line, and not one running ancient software.
I try all the basic passwords, consecutive numbers, consecutive letters of the alphabet, things my parents use.
A second after I type each one, the computer beeps.
UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT. PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD.
Alonso opens, then closes, the eye shadow compact. He slides open the drawer next to me.
“Can you stop, please?” I say. “That’s really distracting.”
I start trying months of the year. Eight clicks for “December.”
Beep
. Seven clicks for “January.”
Beep
. I
swear the key clicks are getting louder. Five clicks for “March.”
Beep
.
Alonso closes the drawer and stands behind me with his arms crossed, which is not less distracting. “Try ‘clover,’ “ he says.
Six clicks.
Beep
.
He leans down and stares at the keyboard. “Sorry. Clover with a zero instead of the letter O.”
I do it.
We’re in.
“How did you do that?”
He slides open the drawer and points where ‘cl0ver’ is taped to the front of it. “You can’t be expected to find all the answers on your own.”
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” I say.
He points to the screen. “Don’t worry about it. Go.”
The homesite that comes up is for Helping Hands Charities, an organization whose mission is “to improve the lot of the poor and suffering in all lands, through equitable resource allocation and refugee outreach for a better tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t sound evil,” Alonso says. “Although if you squint, the two entwined hands of their logo look a lot like the Alliance symbol.”
He’s right. I type Maddie’s name into the Site Search field but that brings no results.
I click on the different menu items — Food, Shelter, Recycling, Rebuilding, Become a Volunteer — but each one just brings up pages for their different “charitable undertakings.”
“This is sick,” Alonso says, watching the praise from different politicians scroll past in the Press section. I agree, but I’m too tense to talk. As far as I can see, Helping Hands is a completely legitimate organization. Could I have been wrong? Could the libraries not be Alliance havens?
There has to be a way to get past this portal and into the actual nuts and bolts of the network. I click on every possible menu item, looking for a hidden doorway. Every page takes seconds to load. Seconds during which someone could figure out we’re here. Seconds of Maddie’s life.
Nothing nothing nothing.
Clickclickclick
. Even the keyboard feels slow.
My stomach is in knots and I feel tears pricking the edges of my eyes.
There are footsteps above us.
“They’re way up there, we’re way down here. Don’t worry,” Alonso says soothingly. “Wait a second — go back.”
I click the “back” button on the browser to a Recycling Resource Management page.
“There,” he says, pointing to a photo along the side. It shows a group of kids in front of a sign with a bird rising from what look like red ribbons.
“Didn’t that Troy guy mention the phoenix? Well, that’s a phoenix,” Alonso explains. “It’s a mythical bird that dies and then rises renewed from its own ashes.” He fiddles with the cuff of his sweatshirt like he feels self-conscious for knowing that. “There’s, um, a picture of it in the dictionary.”
“Of course.” I click on the photo. Another page comes up, this time about the Phoenix Center Program for
Children in Trouble — “Because the Children are Our Best Resource.”
Phoenix, what Troy was so afraid of being returned to, is a
school
, not a person.
Possibly the school where Maddie is being held.
I click quickly through all the photos, but they are all taken indoors. There’s no way to tell where Phoenix Center is, and none of the information has an address.
The clock ticks on. I curl my hands into fists and bring one down on the keyboard.
The screen vanishes. It’s replaced by a programming box with a flashing cursor.
“What the —”
“We’re in,” I tell Alonso.
Somehow we’ve gotten behind the Web site into the network. I stop being aware of time or where I am as I slip into the main directory of the Alliance in Chicago. There are files on operations and files on supplies and files on weapons and engagement reports and reams and reams of information.
Finding Maddie’s name in this is going to be like finding a needle in a thousand haystacks.
“This is incredible,” I breathe aloud.
“Can you find Maddie?”
“I’m trying.”
The clicking of the keyboard sounds like a sudden rainstorm as my fingers move faster than they ever have. I write a search bot to find any mentions of M. Frye.
I get more than a thousand hits.
I don’t have time for that. I start over with Madeleine Frye.
And there it is.
Madeleine Frye. Phoenix Program HW Branch. Status: AL5. Transfer to Bright Spa in 23:25:11
. As I watch, the transport clock ticks down the seconds and I realize she’s going to be moved in less than twenty-four hours.
“She’s alive. She’s alive and we found her.” I can’t keep the tears out of my eyes.
W
hat’s wrong?” Alonso asks, looking really alarmed. I guess crying girls are a little scary. “Did you lose your compass?”
That makes me smile for a second. “I — I thought she was dead,” I say. “Maddie. I couldn’t figure out why they kidnapped her except to lure us into a trap or as a lesson to our parents, and I thought —”
“That’s why you were so tense the other night when Louisa started asking why they’d kidnapped Maddie,” he says.
That surprises me. “You noticed?”
“You hid it well, but I — I felt like there was something going on.” He nods. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I didn’t know if I was right or it was just another of my crazy theories. And because it would have upset everyone for no reason.”
“You could have told me.”
I am looking up at him and I have that strange feeling again.
“You can always tell me your crazy theories,” he goes on. “It can still be a secret if you share it with one other person. And it will make you feel better.”
“I guess.”
“And maybe they’ll have other ideas. Like remember how Louisa said Maddie’s dad was a communications expert? That could be why she was taken.”
“You’re right,” I say.
I don’t realize I’m staring at him until he makes a point of gesturing at the screen. “But now that we found Maddie, we should probably go. Especially since she’s going to be moved around this time tomorrow.”
It’s true. But I just want to check one more thing. I quickly write a bot to scan for Wren Chavez.
Nothing comes up.
But the amount of information on here is incredible. If only there were some way to insert a wormhole so the Resistance or the army could get access, I think, typing furiously.
I’m in kind of a daze so I only half pay attention when Alonso says, “Can you erase the evidence of your searches?”
“Mm-hmm,” I answer.
“Evelyn,” he says, and I look up from what I’m typing. “We have to move.”
“I just need a few more minutes. You don’t understand. This could change the War. If I —”
“We don’t have time for that. We can’t risk leaving any traces of what you’re doing. If they discover we were looking for Maddie, she’s as good as moved before we get there.”
“Sure, you bet,” I say, still typing. “Just one more thing.”
There are more footsteps upstairs.
“We have to leave,” Alonso says with new urgency that jolts me out of what I am doing.
I stop searching and look for an “erase history” tab but of course that would be too easy, so I go into the main directory and start deleting logs.
This computer moves at the pace of a glacier.
“Come on — we have to go,” Alonso urges. He’s half-in and half-out of the door, squeezing the rubber ball that had been on the desk.
“If there is a picture in the dictionary of ‘slow,’ I bet it would be this computer,” I say. “I’m not quite finished.”
“That doesn’t matter. Listen,” he says. “What do you hear?”
“Noth —” That’s when I get it. All the traffic noise from outside has stopped.
He nods. “There must be police or something out there. I think they must have —”
The phone bleats to life and Rosie’s voice crackles, “GET OUT NOW!”
“This way,” Alonso says, grabbing my hand and pulling me down the hall toward a door marked
EMERGENCY EXIT.
He opens it, but right before we step in we hear footsteps coming in our direction from above.
A woman’s voice echoing from a walkie-talkie squawks, “Fan out and check every floor.”
Alonso puts his finger to his lips, pulls the rubber ball out of his pocket, and sends it bouncing down the stairs.
He pulls the emergency exit door almost closed and we huddle around the corner, close enough to hear a voice on the stairs say, “I’ve got them headed down from B to the subbasement. Yellowsquad, they are headed your way. I repeat: They are headed to SB level; all squads, all colors GO.”
We wait as three sets of heavy boots pound down the stairs. My heart is flying. When they’re past, we push through the
EXIT
door and climb the other direction. We pass the door marked
GROUND LEVEL,
assuming there will be guards there. When we get to two, we pause, but right before I push open the door we hear the faint sounds of a walkie-talkie. Alonso points up and I nod.
At the third floor Alonso pauses and pulls the eye shadow compact that had been on the desk downstairs out of his pocket. I stare at him, my eyes saying,
Are you
sure this is the time to experiment with makeup
? and his saying back,
Watch and learn
. He eases the door open an inch and uses the mirror to see if there’s anyone there, then opens it all the way, motioning me to follow.
This floor seems completely abandoned. The light through the windows gives a gauzy, surreal quality to the row after row of shelves lined … with books. Hundreds of them.
My breath is caught in my chest and the hair stands up on my arms. It is — this place is so beautiful.
I’ve never seen anything like this. I let my fingers run lightly over the spines of the books, tracing lines in the dust, astonished by the sheer weight of them. I feel like I’ve entered a magical, enchanted forest where anything is possible. I almost wouldn’t be surprised to see a unicorn or a gossamer-winged fairy emerge from between the books.
I
am
surprised when we turn a corner and almost trip over a security guard with his feet up on a desk, sleeping. We back into the nearest aisle and move quickly in the
direction we came from, but before we get far Rosie’s voice says, “Do you read?”
Alonso jerks the volume off but not before the guard wakes up. I hear the sound of a chair being pushed back and the guard getting to his feet. “Hey,” he calls after us. “What’s the big idea?”
“Follow me,” Alonso whispers, weaving in and out of the bookshelves. We dead-end at a wall, and turn left. Another dead end. The guard is slow but he’s figured out where we’re heading and we hear his footsteps getting louder.
“Hey, this is Harvey on three,” we hear him panting into his walkie-talkie. “I think I got your intruders cornered up here.”
He’s right. It’s another dead end, but at least this time there’s a door. The top half is a glass panel with
MEN
written on it, glowing gently. Alonso points at the door and I follow him through it, turning the lock with shaking fingers as it closes behind us.
I’ve never been in a men’s room before. There are two stalls with toilets, two sinks, two things that look like
long sinks but I am pretty sure are for something else, and a tall window.
There’s no place to hide.
The guard’s footsteps are coming up fast. The handle of the door turns and he tugs on it, making the glass panel rattle back and forth.
“I’ve got them trapped in the men’s room,” we hear him say.
“What now?” I whisper to Alonso, but he’s not next to me. I turn and see he’s at the window, fiddling with the latch at the top. He springs it and pushes the window open, letting in a blast of cool air. I move closer as he climbs up into the frame. He glances down at me and gestures for me to join him.
From the window I can see the tops of other buildings. At our eye level. We’re high above the ground.
I swallow. “You go. I’ll —” There’s a jingling outside the door, the sound of the security guard trying different keys in the lock. “I’ll keep the guard off.”
“Come on,” Alonso whispers insistently.
I shake my head. “I can’t. I — I’m afraid of heights.”
The expression in his eyes instantly softens. He extends his arm. “Take my hand.” I hesitate. “I promise it will be okay.”
“It might not be. We could fall and fracture one of our wrists. Or break a leg. Or a rib. Or if we jump wrong, we could crack our heads open. I can think of a thousand things that could go wrong.”
“You’re right.” Alonso nods thoughtfully, as though I am not acting like a complete nutcase. “But the only thing that is guaranteed to happen is if we don’t jump, we’ll get caught.” Keys jingle. The door handle jiggles, harder this time. Alonso glances at it, then back at me. He says, “Trust me.”
I reach out and put my palm against his. He laces his fingers through mine and pulls me up next to him.
I’m glad it’s getting dark because I am pretty sure I’m blushing. I feel like someone has pinned my eyes open and I can’t blink.
“Don’t look down,” he whispers into my ear, and now I know I’m blushing. “We’ll jump on the count of three.”
Another key is slotted into the lock.
“I can’t,” I say.
He squeezes my hand. “Look at me.” I drag my eyes from the roofs of the other buildings, some of them
below
us. His eyes are brown pools of comfort. “Evelyn Posner can do anything. Now, let’s count together. One.”
“One,” I whisper. My tongue feels too big for my mouth. “What direction do you think we’re facing?”
He says, “Two.”
“Two,” I say.
The lock clicks open behind us.
“Thr —”
“Gotcha!” the security guard yells, wrapping his fingers around Alonso’s ankle.