“Come on,” I scoffed. “You think there might be files at his house? He would never take that kind of risk. Especially if he’s throwing parties there.”
“You keep forgetting that the man’s totally nuts. Mandel could have a stack of alumni files on his bedside table so he can read himself to sleep every night.”
A memory flickered in my head. The first time I visited the academy, Mandel told me that he’d read my father’s file. There was something about the way he said it—like it wasn’t just some document he’d stumbled across in the course of his duties. He talked about that file like it was one of his favorite books.
“You’re taking me to the party so I can check out his bedside table?”
“I know it’s a long shot, but it’s worth a look, right? I can charm the alumni while you snoop around. Even if you don’t find any files, you might find a computer or something.”
“Or Mandel’s private collection of pickled brains.”
“Even better.”
I sighed. “And here I was thinking this was going to be our first date.”
That’s when I had to kiss her again.
• • •
Turns out Mandel’s bedroom isn’t the treasure trove we hoped it would be. There’s nothing in it but a bed. A white Persian cat is asleep on one of the pillows. I hope Mandel wakes up tomorrow with a disfiguring case of ringworm. I step into his bathroom and take the opportunity to pour some Scotch down the sink drain. If the bottle is still full when he finds me, he’ll know I’m not drunk. I’m a big fan of little details, so I empty my bladder into his toilet as well. My aim sucks, and I don’t bother to flush. After I’m all zipped up, I head down the hall. Slowly. I don’t want to miss anything—and when Mandel checks the data from my tracking chip, I want him to think I was wandering aimlessly. Which, as it happens, is just what I’m doing. There’s nothing of interest here. In some rooms, there’s nothing at all. When I reach the top floor of the building, I find it’s completely empty. There’s an enormous skylight in the ceiling and a puddle of moonlight on the floor. Seems like a good place to pause for a drink.
I take a few swigs of the whiskey. I still don’t have a taste for the stuff. But I’ll drink it out of duty. I glance around and wonder why Mandel didn’t set his decorator loose in this room. The light must be great during the day. But the walls look like they haven’t been painted for years. There are dark rectangular patches where bookshelves or furniture recently stood. And then it hits me. The dark patches are the height and width of filing cabinets. The files exist. This is where he kept them. And now they’ve been moved to another room just like it.
The painter’s studio. That’s why he asked me to rob the house he was secretly purchasing. He could have gone with a professional thief. Or fought the artist’s lease in court. But he didn’t want anyone connected to the academy to know about the building. So he chose a dumb kid for the job. A kid who wouldn’t ask any questions. One who was about to be locked up for a while. I was a pawn before I even knew I was playing a game.
I take another gulp of Scotch to celebrate my brilliant breakthrough. I think I know where the files are—and if I’m right, I know exactly how to get them. I’m feeling nice and tipsy, which is great, because I suddenly hear footsteps on the stairs. Mandel finds me sitting on the floor with a half-empty bottle of Scotch in front of me.
“What are you doing up here?” he demands.
“Letting Joi shine.” I do my best to slur the word shine. “Want some?” I ask, holding up the Scotch bottle. “It’s not as good as the last stuff I got off you, but it’s better than nothing.”
Mandel just gazes at me with that crazy smile.
“Oh, come on, you know I don’t have cooties.” I shake the bottle at him. “Your doctors would have put me to sleep if I did.”
I don’t think he’s buying the act. I need to find some way to convince him.
“I want you to know that I’m ready,” I say. I take a gulp of liquid courage. “The switch has flipped. I can beat him now. Just give me my chance.”
At the very least I’ve amused him. “Stand up, Flick. Time for you to go home.”
The alumni have gathered to watch Mandel return with his runaway guinea pig. I give them all a big, sloppy smile right before I purposely slip and bounce down the last few stairs.
“If any of you wondered why I brought Flick as my date, I think the answer should be clear by now,” Joi quips to the crowd. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is my only competition.”
• • •
Joi and I stand three feet apart in the academy’s elevator. Or rather Joi stands. I slump against the wall. When we reach the dorms, we head in our separate directions. The lights are out on the balcony, and I don’t bother turning any on in my room. I just lie down on my bed and kick off my shoes. Five minutes later I hear bare feet padding across wooden floorboards. I left the door open a foot, and a shadow slips inside. The door slides shut, and I smell Jasmine and cocoa butter. Joi left her chip and her dress behind in her room.
CHAPTER THIRTY
* * *
THE NO-STAR TEAM
We started out with a perfectly good plan. Joi would request permission to leave the academy to visit the Police Museum for a look at its Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum archive. As soon as she got there, she would deposit her chip somewhere inside the museum and take a cab up to Charles Street. Then she’d break into the painter’s studio through the roof. If the files were in the apartment, she’d fill her backpack, pick up her chip from the museum, and return to school. Then we’d find a way to put the files to good use. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but at least it felt simple. Easy. But it was doomed from the start.
Joi’s first request to leave the academy was denied. Mandel didn’t deign to give her an explanation. Her second request met a similar fate. I figured my drunken performance at the alumni gathering must have been less than convincing. Then I discovered the truth in the men’s locker room.
I was changing out of my gym clothes after Brazilian Jujitsu when I plopped down on the bench to tie my shoes and nearly landed on Gwendolyn’s lap.
“What the . . .” I don’t know what was more shocking—finding her there or seeing her up close for the first time in weeks. Her hair appeared to be thinning, and her face was covered with scabs and raw sores.
“Enjoy your little sleepover?” she hissed. When she reached up to scratch at a scab, I knew the wounds had been made by her own fingernails.
“Excuse me?” I glanced around the locker room. The last of my jujitsu classmates was heading for the door. I almost called out and asked him to stay.
“I saw the witch sneaking out of your room the other morning. Did she do any of the stuff I told her you like?”
“You’re sick,” I said, turning my attention back to my shoelaces.
“I’d love to know how she managed to fool her chip. Mr. Mandel checked the tracking data. He still thinks Joi was in her room that night. But I know what I saw.”
“No, you don’t,” I assure Gwendolyn. “You were hallucinating. Those pills are eating your brain. You need to stop taking them.”
“I told Mr. Mandel to keep his eyes open. I told him you and the witch are together again.”
“Oh yeah?” I tried my best to sound uninterested. “And what did he say?”
“He said Joi’s the Dux. She can sleep with whoever she likes.”
“Then I guess that’s it. Sorry to hear you wasted your time.” I finished the last knot on my laces and stood up. When I looked down at Gwendolyn, she was smiling. Her gums were bleeding, and the sight was gruesome.
“You haven’t let me finish. Joi can do whatever she likes. But the same rules don’t apply to losers like you. I’m not sure what you did to upset him, but the headmaster isn’t your biggest fan anymore. If I were you, I’d watch my back. And I’d definitely stop screwing the witch.”
“Is that what this is all about? You’re jealous because you think I’m wi
th Joi?” I grabbed my belongings and slammed my locker. “That’s almost touching, Gwendolyn. I had no idea you really cared.”
• • •
That afternoon, I dragged Joi up to the roof during lunch. Whether or not he believed Gwendolyn, Mandel was going to be watching us both for a while. Leaving school was out of the question. I was totally prepared to start all over from scratch—and find a way to destroy the academy without using the files. Joi thought coming up with a completely new plan would take too much time. A fresh batch of recruits would soon be moving into the Suites downstairs. The culling upstairs had already been postponed for almost a month. Mandel wouldn’t be willing to wait much longer.
“I’ll just ask Curly to get the files,” she announced.
I could only hope she was joking. “Please tell me you know someone else named Curly. ’Cause if you’re talking about the cocker-spaniel-looking kid I know, I’ll just go ahead and jump off this roof right now and save Mandel the trouble of killing me.”
“I know why you think Curly can’t do it,” Joi replied. “And that’s exactly why I think he can. He’s young and cute. Even if everyone on Charles Street saw him breaking into the building, no one would ever suspect he’s a thief.”
“Fine. But how would you get word to him?” I asked, still praying I could put an end to the idea.
“I’ll send a message to Tina’s Facebook page.”
“Tina’s got a Facebook page?” I sputtered. “She doesn’t even have a computer!”
“They let her use the one where she works.” I could see Joi’s expression growing dark.
“Works?” Since when do hookers get computer time?
It was almost as if she’d read my thoughts. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Flick. Tina’s been a nanny for almost a year now. She used to work nights for a family with twins, but she took a daytime gig after I asked her to look out for the colony kids.”
“Tina’s a nanny? And you left her in charge of the colony? The girl who buys everyone booze?”
“That was one time, Flick. On Christmas Eve. And it wasn’t booze. It was beer.” Joi was getting seriously pissed.
“Okay, okay,” I said, backing off. “But how do we send Tina a message if neither one of us has Internet access?”
“We’ll ask that girl Lily to help.”
“Lily?” It took me a minute to put a face to the name. “You mean the Android who told us she has the Facebook source code?”
“There was a reason I got to know everyone here, Flick. I wasn’t just being friendly. I figured I’d need help at some point. And you wouldn’t believe what some of the students can do.”
“Just because Lily says she can hack Facebook doesn’t mean that she can! She’s number thirty-something, remember?!”
“You know what I don’t understand, Flick? Why you’d just assume that Curly, Tina, and Lily are worthless. I can’t remember ever seeing you speak to any of them for more than ten seconds. So how the hell do you know what they can or can’t do?”
“I don’t think they’re worthless.” It wasn’t a lie. I wouldn’t have used the word worthless. I would have used the word weak. But I wasn’t interested in hearing another of Joi’s lectures. “I just don’t want to get too many people involved.”
“Yeah, for a while you didn’t even want me involved. Why do you want to do everything yourself, Flick? Is it because you think you’re the only one who can do it right?”
No, I wanted to tell her. It’s because most people who’ve helped me have ended up beaten, fired, or worse. I’ve had to live knowing that Jude died trying to save me—and that I wasn’t worth his sacrifice. If I’d only refused my brother’s help, he and my mother wouldn’t be dead.
I can’t be responsible for any more deaths. And I won’t beg favors from a bunch of kids who are already struggling just to stay alive.
“Look, Joi,” I said, trying one last angle. “I’m willing to take your word about Curly and Tina. You know them both better than I do. But we can’t go around asking other students for help.”
“Why not? If it weren’t for the kids in my Incubation Group, I couldn’t have made it upstairs. Max would have butchered us all if we hadn’t protected each other.”
“That was down in the Suites! You’ve seen for yourself what happens to students once they’re sent upstairs! One way or another, the academy turns them into sociopaths. If they don’t change, they die. It doesn’t make any difference how many times you’ve interviewed them. We still have no idea which Androids we can trust—so we can’t trust anyone. Monsters exist, and this school is full of them.”
“The only monster here is the one who’s in charge. There may be a handful of students who are criminally insane, but the rest are just regular kids who’ve lost all hope.”
“Are you willing to bet your life on that?”
“Yep,” Joi said. “Yours too.”
• • •
And that’s how we ended up with a no-star team of Ghosts, Androids, and Urchins. I don’t like it one little bit. Each and every one of them is a potential weak link. To make matters worse, Gwendolyn is watching, and Caleb appears to be shadowing us too. I don’t know if he’s still scheming to seize the Dux title—or whether Mandel put him up to it. But Joi and I haven’t been able to return to the roof. Whenever we visit the lounge, Caleb is always lurking nearby. So we’ve been forced to polish our plot one secret note at a time. I’ve eaten so much paper in the last week that there must be a whole tree lodged in my lower intestine. Today it feels like a full-grown conifer.
It’s Friday, July the third. Our operation kicked off quietly four days ago. We’ve had no confirmation that the first two stages of the plan have met with any success. On Monday, while an instructor watched her every move, Lily attacked Facebook with a virus—a virus with one rather unusual feature. Thousands of users downloaded a piece of spyware designed to collect all their passwords. But Tina received a message.
Joi is convinced that Tina picked up our note. But the next step of the plan was always the one that worried me most. I spent an entire evening crafting detailed instructions for Curly—how to get up to the roof, how to crack any locks, and how to get out without being caught. Joi provided a list of alumni whose files might contain high-value data. If Curly managed to locate the files, he should have placed them inside a black bag. That black bag was supposed to be put inside a white file box—and delivered to the academy today at exactly 11:15 a.m.
There are too many goddamned ifs. We don’t know if our instructions were received. We don’t even know for certain if the files exist. And if Curly gets nabbed stealing academy secrets, Mandel won’t have any trouble tracing him right back to the colony. And then we’ll all be dead.
I’m glad I skipped breakfast. If I hadn’t, there might be a puddle of liquefied bacon on the floor of the Hidden Treasures classroom. Joi is six seats away from me. She looks like she’s actually enjoying the Exxon-sponsored documentary on natural gas drilling that our own Ms. Smith appears to have narrated. Joi’s head tilts back, and I watch her sniff the air. I smell it too, an acrid chemical odor. The television screen goes black, and the monitor disappears into the ceiling. Ms. Smith grabs the remote control and clicks the power button several times in frustration. She’s about to check the batteries when alarms begin to wail outside.
I don’t hear the phone on Ms. Smith’s desk start to vibrate, but I see her pick it up and scan the screen.
“Nothing to worry about!” she shouts over the alarm. “There’s no fire in the building—just a smoke condition on the second floor.”
Joi catches my eye. The next stage of our plan has been set into motion. Three stories below us, a chipmunk is causing a commotion in a chemistry lab. In Violet’s two months as a leisure studies major, she’s shown zero interest in manufacturing street drugs. But Joi claims the girl has a talent for chemistry. I had my doubts, but I thought starting a lab fire might not prove too taxing. Then Violet decided to improve m
y idea. She said she could put together a combination of chemicals that would react with moisture in the air to produce a thick fog. We’d still need smoke to set off the sprinklers, but the fog would linger long after the fire was extinguished. I thought it sounded too complicated, but I was outvoted. Until this very moment, I was sure Violet would turn out to be the weakest link of them all. But it looks like she’s held up just fine.
The alarms grow louder when Ms. Smith opens the classroom door and steps onto the balcony. The entire class streams out behind her.
The smoke has activated the sprinkler system on the bottom three floors of the building. Those students lucky enough to have classes on floors four and five are leaning over the balconies, cackling as their classmates downstairs get drenched. The atrium is like the eye of a hurricane—calm and dry. The Mandel Academy’s flaming brass balls twinkle in the sunlight.
“Get in the elevator!” Mr. Martin’s voice booms from below.
Ella has his Secrets and Sabotage class this period, and she must have delivered the line I gave her. Are there sprinklers in your office, sir? That was my single contribution to this craptastic plan. All those boxes lining the walls in Mr. Martin’s office must be filling with water. Just as I expected, he’s herding his class to the ground floor in a last-ditch attempt to keep all his dirt from turning to mud. A dense, white fog from the chemistry lab is now cascading over the second-floor balcony. I watch as dozens of file boxes are carted out of Mr. Martin’s office while the atrium fills with smoke. We hear fire engines approaching, and the front doors of the school swing open. Hopefully an intruder has slipped in with the firemen. A colony kid carting a file box. The last thing Joi and I need are fifty academy students keeping watch.
“Okay, everyone,” Joi shouts at the students hanging over the balconies. “If you’re not in Mr. Martin’s class, get to your rooms! Use the elevator on the right. Send the other one downstairs in case the firemen need it.”