Doomed (12 page)

But we’ve only taken a few steps when someone in the driveway points a flashlight at where we’d been standing a few seconds before. “Hey!” a deep male voice shouts. “Who’s there?” The light moves as he begins to run toward us, looking anything but friendly.

I want to flee, to race back in the other direction. Except Emily’s knee couldn’t take it, and where would we go, anyway? Now that they’ve spotted us, it’s not like we can just disappear. And the last thing I want is to bring this to Eli and Theo’s doorstep—they don’t deserve it.

“Go,” I whisper fiercely to Emily even as I step toward the pool of light under the streetlamp. Maybe I can distract their attention, give her a chance to get away. “Get out of here!”

“And let you face this alone?” she answers indignantly. “As if.”

“Damn it, Emily, hurry. He’s almost here.”

I try to shake her off, but her grip on my hand tightens. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do. I’m not leaving you. Besides, they could just be here to help.”

“Does he look like he wants to help? And why me? Go, Emily!” I rip my hand from hers and take off running, straight toward the police officer. “Hey, who are you?” I shout, trying to get his attention.

Get away
, I tell her fiercely in my head.
Get away, get away, get away.

But Emily isn’t my oldest and most loyal friend for nothing. She hustles after me, calling my name, loud and clear enough for everyone in a two-mile radius to hear.

The policeman stops in front of me, shines his light in my face, and I blink, try to focus. “Are you Pandora Walker?” he asks, his voice deep and serious. He’s young, and a little frightened looking despite the no-nonsense voice. His blue eyes are wild in the eerie glow cast by the lights, and his hair is standing on end, like he’s been running his fingers through it all night.

“Yes.” It takes every ounce of control I have to stop my voice from shaking.

“You need to come with me.” He turns the flashlight on Emily, who has stopped right behind me. “Emily Scott?”

“Yes?”

“How did you know her—”

“Is that your car?” he asks, talking over me and pointing at Emily’s cute little Prius, sitting at the top of my driveway. The front passenger window is smashed, where they must have broken in to get her information. With no Internet, they couldn’t just run her license plate.

She nods, swallows audibly. I can tell she’s terrified, and I’m furious she didn’t try to get away when I gave her the chance. I’m even more furious that we’re in this position at all. It’s ridiculous. I didn’t do
anything
but play a stupid video game.

“What are you doing here?” I demand.

“Let’s go in the house and talk.” He sweeps his arm in a mockery of gallantry as he motions for Emily and me to precede him up the driveway.

“What if I don’t want to go in the house?”

His flashlight, and eyes, run over me. The rain has washed away most of the blood—and my careful hairstyle—but his
gaze lingers on my nose piercing, Social D tank top, and ripped jeans. He’s already decided I’m a troublemaker.

“Then you can sit in the back of my police car while I go inside and let the various agents in there fight over where they want to take you.”

“The house it is,” Emily says brightly, her eyes pleading with me to keep my mouth shut. Which I do, but it bothers me. I don’t like being threatened, especially when I haven’t done anything illegal.

I start walking.

Behind me, the cop pulls out a walkie-talkie and mutters a couple of codes I don’t understand. But the next thing I know, all hell breaks loose.

People flood out of my front door. Men and women in uniform, in suits, in jeans and polo shirts. I don’t know who to look at, don’t know what to do, and I feel myself shrinking back, curling in on myself. Suddenly bravery and self-sacrifice seem completely overrated and I know—with total certainty—that the only thing stopping me from running, from probably being shot in the back, is Emily’s arm linked through mine.

Three people—two men and a woman—break away from the pack. They aren’t running, but they are moving quickly and with an authority that tells me they’re in charge here. Which seems strange. This is my house, my mother’s house, and the idea that all these people have been in there for God only knows how long, pawing through my stuff and finding out every secret we have—which admittedly isn’t many—makes my stomach hurt.

“Pandora Walker?” asks the woman, who gets to me first.
She’s dressed in a gray pantsuit, and she looks pissed. Her mouth is pinched, her blond hair scraped back into a bun so tight it pulls at the corners of her eyes.

I nod, not knowing what else to do.

“Come inside. We need to ask you a few questions.”

“Excuse me, but can I see some identification? Who are you people? And do you have a search warrant?” Emily asks, and I’m grateful all over again that she is with me, though the last thing I want to do is get her in trouble. My brain has all but shut down, so that questions about what is going on are foreign to me. As are thoughts about my rights.

One of the men steps forward, and unlike the other two, he isn’t dressed in a suit. Instead, he’s wearing threadbare jeans and a black T-shirt—much like Eli was. The lack of formality should put me at ease, but it doesn’t. How can it, when his face looks carved from granite, his eyes so dark and intense that it seems like he can see straight through to my soul?

The look he gives me says he’s not happy with what he sees.

“I’m Tom Mackaray, with Homeland Security. This is Frances Lessing of the FBI,”—he gestures to the woman—“and this is Michael Lundstrom from the NSA.”

Jesus. Is there a domestic law enforcement acronym that isn’t represented here? I sway and Emily reaches out, steadies me.

“Where are you two coming from, Pandora?”

“We went out for pizza.” Emily again.

He frowns at her, and I’m shocked to see that his face
really does move, after all. “When I want to hear from you, Ms. Scott, I’ll address you.”

“Yes, sir.” Emily quiets quickly under his scrutiny, not that I blame her. Despite his casual appearance, this man looks like he wants to throw us in a deep, dark hole and toss away the key. Which is a bad thing for so many, many reasons, not the least of which is the phobia I’ve done my best to ignore all night. I’d never last in a cell like that because I’m terrified of the dark.

“So, now that we’ve all been introduced, let’s go inside.” It’s Lundstrom talking, and he’s all but bristling with impatience.

“You still haven’t shown us the search warrant.” I speak up this time.

“No, I haven’t.” Mackaray tries to stare me down, but I’m not budging. Not on this. Maybe it’s a dumb move, but I don’t want to go into the house with these people. Looking into their faces, I’m suddenly aware of just how distant a document the Constitution really is.

Lundstrom grumbles, takes a threatening step toward us. At any second I expect him to grab us and shove us into the house—or to pull a gun and force us in that way. But as long seconds pass, he just stands there, glowering.

Finally, Lessing reaches into her pocket and pulls out a document. As she hands it to me, her eyes go to a spot behind us, and I realize the reason they’re playing so nicely is because we have an audience. My neighbors across the street are watching. And though the world seems to have gone to hell in one evening, I guess it’s still not a good idea to manhandle kids. At least not if there are other options.

I open the envelope and stare at the words on the page. They don’t make much sense to me, but even I know enough to realize that I’m holding the real deal. I skim through until I get to the scary words:

Seize and examine, by persons qualified to do so, and in a laboratory setting, any and all electronic data processing and media devices that may have been used while engaging in cyberterrorism as defined in the Annotated Code of Texas, amended and revised.

Cyberterrorism.

My knees buckle, and I swear I would have fallen if Emily wasn’t there, holding me up.

This is happening. Oh my God, this is really happening. Reading those words makes this real. The FBI and Homeland Security are in my house, accusing me of cyberterrorism and searching for—I find the spot on the warrant that details what they want, which feels like everything. My laptop, my cell phone, my digital TV box, my iPod, my Play-Station, my iPad, and any other electronic equipment they can find.

“Cyberterrorism.” I can’t get the word—and its implications—out of my head.

They think I did this. They think I brought down the Internet and everything else that’s started to fail. Traffic lights. ATMs. Telephone networks all over the world.

It’s ridiculous, completely absurd. Or it would be if three federal agents weren’t currently studying me like I’m a particularly disgusting specimen of bug under a microscope.
Suddenly, I hear Theo’s voice in my head.
Unless you’re the point of origin. Then it makes perfect sense.

Point of origin.
Oh God.

My blood turns cold at the idea of being alone with Mackaray and his pale, furious gaze. I glance at Emily, who is reading over my shoulder, and realize that our last—our only—objection has just disappeared. “Now, are you willing to come inside with us and talk, or should I let Agent Mackaray escort you to his office?” Lessing asks, her mouth even tighter than her bun. “He
is
claiming jurisdiction.”

“No. We’ll come inside.” I step forward, still skimming the search warrant. They have all of my stuff, everything. I left it out in the open before we left, never thinking for a second that my house—my life—was about to be invaded.

I just don’t know what they expect to find. Electronic blueprints for a worm I have almost no knowledge of? It doesn’t make sense. Especially since I barely knew what one was before Theo explained it to me earlier.

The three agents sweep us up the driveway and into my house. The second we hit the front door I’m overwhelmed—and strangely it’s not because of the three people at my side or the two policemen waiting in my driveway.

It’s because my mother’s normally pristine house has been torn apart, piece by piece. Every drawer is open, every cabinet emptied. I glance back down at the search warrant. If what they wanted is in plain sight, why are they looking everywhere else?

The answer hits me as I pick my way through the family room, which has been turned inside out. They’re doing this, ripping my whole world apart, because they can.

I’m shaking when I sit down at the kitchen table, in the chair Lessing points to. A quick look at Emily says she is, too, although from the color in her cheeks as she surveys the damage, I think she might be rallying. Which scares me even worse. I try to catch her eye, to warn her not to say anything else, but she deliberately turns away.

“We want a lawyer. And we’re underage. We need to talk to our parents.”

“Once we realized you had come back with Pandora, I sent someone to get your father, Ms. Scott. He should be here shortly.” Lundstrom eyes her impatiently.

“Good. Because this is ridiculous. You know that, right? He’s spent his whole life fighting these kinds of crimes for you guys, and he’s going to be pissed that you’re accusing me—”

“We’re not accusing you of anything.”

“Oh. Okay.” Emily subsides, the wind knocked out of
her sails just that easily. It’s hard to fight someone if they won’t engage.

“What about me?” I force out the words. “What are you accusing
me
of?”

“Nothing.” This time it’s Mackaray who answers. “We just want to talk to you.” As his eyes sweep over me, lingering on my wet shirt and scraped-up hands, I decide that I hate him. That I won’t tell him anything. Not that there’s anything
to
tell, but still.

“What happened to you?” he asks.

“We fell in the dark,” Emily says when I don’t speak up.

“Are you okay?” Lessing asks.

“They’re obviously fine,” Mackaray answers for us.

“Tom, go take a walk,” Lessing says. She’s leaning against the cabinets, ankles and arms crossed, a bored expression on her face.

Mackaray bristles—it’s clear he’s not used to having his authority questioned—but in the end he backs down. I assume because they think I’ll respond better to a woman. Guess that means they haven’t figured out everything about me yet.

Lessing crosses to the table slowly, hitches a hip up on the corner. Then she leans down so that we’re face-to-face, and I see that she’s wearing a sympathetic expression. I don’t believe it for a second, but I give her props for trying.

“So, Pandora, are you really okay?” she asks.

Do I look okay?
I want to ask. But I don’t, just nod sullenly.

“Good.” She pauses. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

I glance around my demolished house. “Are you kidding me?”

“Why don’t you tell us what you’ve gotten yourself into. Maybe we can help.”

Yes, because so far they’ve been sooooo helpful. I decide to brazen it out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s my seventeenth birthday. Emily came over and we went out for pizza. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Really? You don’t have
any
idea what I’m talking about?”

I don’t want to answer, but she won’t move on. “No, ma’am,” I finally say.

“Hmm. Okay. So where did you go tonight?”

“To Little Nicky’s. On Red Bud Trail.”

“Did you? And what kind of pizza did you order?”

“We didn’t. Things were so crazy there that we left without ordering.” Lessing is staring at me like she thinks I’m lying, but I’m being very careful to stick to the truth. Just not the whole truth. I don’t mention Eli or Theo, because I don’t want to bring them into this when all they did was try to help me. Emily’s already stuck firmly in the middle—I don’t want to do that to anyone else.

For once, the best-friend ESP seems to be working, because Emily doesn’t say anything about the guys, either. Just nods along with my story. Her stomach even growls, right on cue.