I did a ton of research, sifting through Internet newspaper reports and collecting pictures of those who’d gone missing. I’d stopped there, because my findings didn’t provide me with anything with which to form a hypothesis. At least it hadn’t for my twelve-year-old mind. It’s been five years, maybe I’ll see something new.
The edges of the folder are worn, the paper pilled. I run my fingertip along the bumps before flipping the cover.
Chloe’s picture lies on top, protected in a plastic sleeve. Her seventh grade picture, taken when she was thirteen years old. Her brown hair is straight and shiny, hanging just above her shoulders. I turn the picture over when my heart begins beating irregularly. I know I shouldn’t get so emotional, especially since I’ve seen Chloe hanging around the house, but knowing I’ll never see her again hurts.
In the other side of the sleeve, I’ve collected the details of her disappearance.
Date missing: Sunday, September 19, 2008.
Body never found.
Disappeared between midnight – six a.m.
Location: Castle Pines, Oregon.
Age: 13
That’s it. The only details anyone knows. I was the last person who saw her alive, sitting in the window seat just before I fell asleep. Mom was the one who discovered she was missing, when she came to get her for their morning run and couldn’t find her.
I look to the next picture. Timothy Geyerman. His body was never found. There was no evidence of a break-in. He disappeared in the middle of the night. He went missing two months before Chloe, on July 8, from Boise, Idaho. He was fifteen years old.
Three weeks after Chloe, Susanna Martinez went to sleep one night and in the morning her bed was found empty. Her parents left Oklahoma City and relocated to Florida.
Tiffany Lyons smiles up at me through the plastic. She disappeared from her dorm room in Southern California, a twenty-year-old sophomore. I study her blue eyes, her straight white teeth.
None of the people in the file have any connection that I’ve been able to determine. Not a common geographic location, a comparable age, similar interests. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to will a thread into existence. Nothing comes.
Price
I SHOVE SODA IN FRONT of me, forcing her down the narrow steps. The Time Bureau swallows her, and I motion for Cas to go next. She takes a moment to cast me a nasty glare before leaping down all three stairs and disappearing into the yawning darkness. I’m not worried; a girl like Cascade cannot be afraid of heights.
“Price,” Heath hisses from somewhere beyond my sight. I copy Cas and cross the threshold of the most infamous building in Castle Pines. I haven’t been to work with Dad in a long time, but the Bureau never changes. If I could see, the entryway here would be sterile, shiny, and empty. A set of metal stairs is to my right. Funny how the building that manages time seems to be immune to it.
The door seals shut behind me, and I say, “Time.”
“Twelve seconds,” Heath whispers. “No alarms.”
“Security?” I ask Soda as I log out of my personal account and into the Black Hat persona. Once connected, I blink to activate the night vision feature of my cybernetic lenses.
“Still in Sector H,” she says, her voice strong and sure. “We need to hurry.”
Without answering, I turn toward the stairs. Cascade is already there, her eyes a freaky grid of beautiful green, her f-pat swirling into darkness. The silver on her fingers and wrists dances dangerously with the red light from her palm. I grin at her, and surprisingly, she returns the gesture. I wish it didn’t make me hella happy, but it does. I focus on dashing without tripping and squeeze past her to go up.
Our footsteps echo back to us as we race up the stairwell. Heath will wait for the girls, so I’m not surprised when I hear Soda wheezing behind me. I pause at Sector F and hold up my hand.
“He’s moved to I,” she whispers, and I take off again. Two flights later, we arrive in the already swept and cleared Sector H. Through the only door is one big area, separated by a few waist-high counters with sleeping flatpanels floating above them. It’s a control room—I’ve been here while my dad’s worked the panels.
A message from Chameleon pops into my chat box. Twenty-four minutes.
I whip out my flatpanel and reach for Heath’s. He’s already holding it toward me, while he taps on the biggest flatpanel I’ve ever seen. His job is to upload the flick and transfer it to readable code I can then implant into the Ad Agency’s system.
My job is to get through all the security between here and the Agency, creating a unique and untraceable signature as I do so none of us can be found.
The flatpanel Heath mans hovers in the air and blazes into white light as it awakens. It’s three-dimensional and viewable from all sides. Cascade studies one side of it while Heath touches points on the other, murmuring to her. Probably asking her jammer ID signature so he can add her to the chat. That’s another of his tasks: Make sure we all stay in contact so we can abort if necessary.
Cascade taps and swipes, her slender fingers moving at light speed. She nods to him, and I assume that means these machines are clean.
Soda is Twilight, Heath chats. Cascade coming online in just a minute.
Security in Sector J, Soda chats, and I mute the notification sound so I can focus. With a few quick taps, my personal flatpanel connects to Heath’s via a Bluetooth secure line, a little trick I discovered during one of my late night chats with Newt. Now the two signals will wrap around each other, creating a new, unique signature that’s incredibly difficult to trace.
On my screen, the flick I want to implant into the ad system begins to play. I force myself to look away from the mob, from the alluring green light of the time rift.
On Heath’s panel, I dig through the layers of security of the Time Bureau. The first three are passcodes and easily obtainable with the software I’ve got. The fourth feature requires a fingerprint. I could’ve lifted Dad’s from our house, but it would’ve been way too easy to connect him to the Black Hat—and that’s something I definitely don’t want.
I raise my head to find Cas. She’s at a workstation, her delicate hands gloved and sweeping for fingerprints the Interdepartment Missions crew left behind. We just need the right one, the one with enough clearance to get past this block. I wish she’d chat so I can learn her jammer identity.
I swallow, my throat sticking to itself for a second. I’m about to reveal the most wanted alternate identity in the country to two girls.
Fingerprint needed to advance, I chat.
Time does that freaky bending thing again. Soda emits a startled yelp, and it seems to reverberate forever. She stares at me wide-eyed, the color draining from her face. Likewise, Cascade jerks her attention away from the counter, her head snapping toward me at lightning speed.
Neither of them need to chat for me to know what they’re thinking. Price Ryerson is the legendary Black Hat?
Okay, maybe they’re not thinking the “legendary” bit. Soda looks like she’s about to throw up, and that’s anything but comforting.
Cas, though, stares at me, half of her face bathed in shadows and half brightly lit from the massive flatpanel Heath mans. She’s definitely surprised, even if I can only see one of her eyes.
She gives me a nod of acceptance and returns her attention to her work, stroking her palm along the countertop. Fingerprint from the department dean coming on deck, appears in my chat from Dark Panther.
It’s my turn to spasm in surprise. Cascade Kingston is the Dark Panther—the one who coached me through downloading and using a chaser. The identity who admins the Security boards on the forums.
The Dark Panther is no newbie to jamming. As the Black Hat, I’ve had countless online conversations with the Dark Panther, having held him—her—in high regard since he—she—helped me and Chameleon out of tough spot during a hack that took a wrong turn. I’ve wanted to jam with Cas forever, and now I find out I already have.
I can’t con
tain my smile but keep my eyes on the flatpanels. When the fingerprint file lands in my chatline, I download it and break through the last wall and into the secure Circuit at the Time Bureau.
I navigate through their system, rifling through code until I find the entrance to the Advertising Agency. Heath will thank me later when this entry point is so hard to trace. No one will expect us to have gone through the Time Bureau just to get to the Ad Agency. They’ll still send Hoods, but we’ll be long gone by then. I hope.
I ignore the chats flying through my line. Heath sends the transferred rift flick to my flatpanel, and I swap it into the mandatory message for everyone in Oregon, going live tomorrow.
The whole thing takes less than a minute. I back out of their system, stitching things back together as I go and sending a cleanup pattern to take care of what I miss. It’ll take the Bureau’s top programmers at least twenty-four hours to find the sutures in their code, and even longer to trace the path. By then, the rift flick will have been broadcast to everyone between the ages of five and seventy-five.
Done, I announce over the chat.
Sector S, Soda chats, and I fly into high gear, tossing Heath his panel and rolling mine into my backpack. Heath pockets his flatpanel and motions for Soda to join him. Cascade swipes the vanishing cloth over any surface she might have touched and throws it to Heath. He cleans the screen while I put on a pair of gloves.
Meet at prearranged coordinates, Heath chats and then he and Soda leave.
Sector A, Soda chats a moment later. The fingerprint scan was logged. Authorities en route.
Security checks all after-hours fingerprint logs, something I’d anticipated but hoped against anyway. I use Cascade’s erasing cloth to wipe any fingerprints from the counter where I worked, taking the precious seconds to make sure I can’t be tracked. I pocket the cloth just as the Dark Panther chats me.
We’re….
I shoulder my backpack and turn toward Cas. I want to tell her how awesome she was. How she knew exactly what to do and when. How I would’ve told her who I was if I’d known who she was. I want to talk to her about so many things, but now isn’t the time.
Security is moving fast, Soda chats. Sector C… D… E…. Get out of there!
We’re going up, I chat, reaching for Cascade’s hand. She slides hers into mine and we head for the stairs, since the security detail is clearly in the lift—and only seconds from arriving.
Sixteen flights later, I’m cursing the fact that I don’t have featherweights to speed my escape. Cas breathes heavily as we emerge into the summer night. It’s not as dark as it should be, because flashing purple and blue lights paint the base of the Time Bureau.
I lead Cascade to the lip of the roof and release her hand so I can rummage in my pack. A coil of wire lies at the bottom, and I unearth it. One end has a metal ring, which I pound into the building. Heath promised the hammer, though tiny, wouldn’t break, and he delivers once again.
“We’re jumping?” Cascade asks, her palm back to blazing with blue light.
“It’s more like zip-lining,” I say as I find the other end of the wire. It also has a metal ring attached, and I lift my shirt and clip it to the harness belt I’m wearing. “We’re,” I clear my throat and severely regret not discussing this particular part of the jam.
“We’re going together,” she says. “And you only have one belt.”
“Yeah.”
“How does this zip?” she asks, touching the wire a few inches from where I’m holding it.
“Pressure,” I answer, because I can’t get my voice to say more than that.
“It’ll hold both of us?”
“Yes.” It held me and Heath. Of course, we only leapt from his roof, but Cas weighs a lot less than Heath. We’d made it to his tree house with only slight injuries. “Sorry we didn’t talk about this part.” I hope she’ll hear the pleading undercurrent in my voice.
A loudspeaker crackles to life on the ground. “Search the roof,” someone says, and that makes up Cascade’s mind.
“I’ll get you back for this.” She jumps into my arms, wrapping her legs around my torso and gripping me with the strength of a python. “Don’t you dare drop me,” she hisses in my ear, and I take it for the threat that it is.
Only twenty feet separate us from the roof of the next building. I steel myself for a hard landing, run as best as I can with another body wrapped around mine, and put all my trust in the zip-line wire.
Flying through the night without breathing space between me and Cascade is more thrilling than I imagined.
The landing is twice as hard as I anticipated. Pain smarts through my feet and ankles, along my knees, and my back feels ripped in two from the jerk on my waist.
I fumble to release the clip from my belt; air has a hard time entering my lungs despite the fact that Cascade relaxes her grip on my body.
She stands and reaches down to help me to my feet. I lean on her, still trying to get a decent breath.
“That was amazing,” she says, and the pain flooding my body lightens.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” I reply, taking her hand in mine again.
By the time my house comes into view, I feel equally alert and exhausted. I’d taken painkiller shots for the bruises after Cascade and I had successfully descended through the city office building and out the north door. Not a single scrape adorned my body. My jeans hadn’t ripped. My gloves protected my hands. But my waist had purpled before Cascade and I had arrived at the soccer tournament.
She hadn’t let go of my hand, even when we climbed the stands to our seats and sat next to Soda and Heath. If either of them noticed, they didn’t say anything. I’d wanted to gently extract my hand and remove my gloves so I could have skin-to-skin contact, but I didn’t.
We hadn’t talked about the jam. We waited out the game with idle chatter about our senior projects. Because Cas was the first drop-off, I didn’t get to say good-bye the way I wanted, the way I’ve been envisioning for months now.
I’d waited under Soda’s aspen as Heath kissed her goodnight.
Heath and I had separated with a one-word farewell: “Tomorrow.”
I’d limped the remaining two blocks to my house. The sight of it now unsettles me. So many dark windows and too many shadowy eaves. It hulks in the night, too quiet to feel safe.
I feel restless, like even the vast sky is too containing. A choking sensation washes over me as I think of going inside, subjecting myself to Dad’s scrutiny though he isn’t here.
My eyes wander to my bedroom window, which is just as foreboding and dark as the rest of the house. I climb the front steps to the porch, which wraps around the side of the mansion, away from the garage. I go that way, passing directly underneath my bedroom window and around to where the hallway turns toward the room I crept into earlier. I put my hand on the brick as if I can x-ray through the exterior and see what’s going on within.
Five feet below me, our lawn rests in gray moonlight. The complete silence releases some of the tension from my shoulders. A window well very much like the one I scaled to get out of Dad’s compound hugs the house. I’ve seen it before, many times, since it’s my job to mow the lawn. There’s always been a window there.
But now, there’s no window.
I leap the porch railing, cursing under my breath as a fresh wave of pain bolts through my abdomen. The earlier tenderness of my ankles also spikes when I land, but I ignore it and creep toward the window well.
I kneel and look over the edge. It’s deep, too deep to see the bottom, at least this late at night. I hold my hand up and allow the blue light of my Receiver to puncture the darkness.
It still doesn’t quite reach the bottom, but I can make out gravel down there.
I definitely see the outline of the doorjamb. The door stretches toward the ground, smooth and glossy. I’m not in the market for such things, but I spend a more-than-healthy amount of time on the Circuit. I’ve seen doors like this.
I
t’s bullet-proof and electricity absorbent.
I lean away, my heart suddenly too big and beating too fast to be contained in my chest. I wonder how this door has been concealed in the past, because I’ve seen a window there. Not a door. I’ve lived here for a decade, and never once has Dad contracted any construction. This door existed before we moved in.
This secret is old.
My first thought is to whip out my flatpanel and suction it to this entrance. It’ll have a code, but I’ll have the software to get it.
I sit back and really think through my impulse. I can’t enter this door right now. I already burnt out the security hub in the kitchen. Anything more, and I might as well chat my dad right now and confess everything.
I study the door, wondering when it was constructed and whose faces it’s seen. I wonder how it was made to look like a window.
I realize I’m clutching my flatpanel, and I quickly slide it back into my pack. I can’t go in tonight—doing so would be suicide, and I’ve already risked my life enough for one night.
Ten minutes later, I set my status to asleep, actually wishing I was sprawled in my bed upstairs. But I’m not. I’m tucked against the side of the house, with the bullet-proof door to my right and the porch to my left. No one will find me here.
I first hail Newt, but an automated message comes back. Offline until morning. We’ll catch up then.
I’ve received this message a few times in the past. He told me once that he has a normal life, and he can’t spend all night every night linked-in. I’d agreed, but now, when I need him to perform the wavelength scan he promised, I find myself becoming hella annoyed. I lean my head against the house and exhale.
I can’t make Newt come online, and I’m not even in my bedroom for him to run the scan anyway. I close my eyes, which makes my head swim a little because I’m so tired.
But I have more to do tonight. I hail Monroe next. He’s been working for my dad for years, arranging all of our transportation to various community and political events. He’s smart, and beefy, and the perfect guard when we go out. He’s the only guard who’s ever tried to talk to me, to get to know me. At first I wasn’t sure why, but now I’m glad I’ve got someone who understands what I’m doing and can protect me when I do stupid things.