Doomed (30 page)

I nod, and I’m shocked that somewhere deep inside, I actually believe him. Because if one thing’s become abundantly clear in the last few days, it’s that Theo doesn’t know how to fail.

“Here, throw the glass in this.” I reach for a nearby trash can and hold it out to him, but Theo doesn’t notice. He’s looking at something he picked up from the wreckage.

“What’s that?” I ask.

He hands it to me, a triumphant look on his face. “A letter. Addressed to you.”

I take it with shaking hands, start to open it. But at that moment, Eli bursts through the door. “A bunch of unmarked black vehicles just pulled up to the front door. We need to move. Now!”

Before I even process Eli’s words, Theo’s up, grabbing the backpacks and my hand. Then we’re running. Down the hall and three flights of stairs. Out the back door.

I start to flee into the parking lot, but Theo holds tight to my hand as he drags me against the building. We race along the perimeter, Theo in front, me in the middle, and Eli in back, until we get to the corner, where Theo stops dead. Flattening himself to the building, he peers around the edge. “Damn! There are four of them at the truck—including that jerk from your house, Pandora.”

The information has me reeling, as there’s only one “jerk” Theo saw at my house—Mackaray. “That means they’re Homeland Security,” I tell them. “What are we going to do now?”

“The only thing we can do,” Eli says, heading back the way we came.

Theo and I exchange frantic looks, but we follow him. If
he’s got a plan to get us out of this, I’m more than willing to go along. It looks like Theo is, as well.

We get to the other edge of the building, and after checking to make sure it’s safe, Eli slips around it. “What are you doing?” Theo snarls. “You’re getting us closer to them—”

“
Shhh.”

Eli creeps all the way to the front edge of the building, and Theo and I follow him, even though I’m also beginning to doubt his sanity. We wait, plastered against the building, as eight agents stand around staring at the window we broke earlier. Guns come out, and then most of them are slipping through the same hole we used to get in.

I want to run now, while they’re inside, but Theo holds me steady against the building, his hand around my wrist. “What are we waiting for?” I demand, and Eli grins at me. It’s a wicked, wild thing, filled with a strange elation I don’t understand.

“Grand Theft Auto, anyone? For the second time?” He grabs my free hand and we’re running again, straight toward the Homeland Security vehicles instead of away from them.

“Get in!” he yells, yanking open the driver’s-side door of the first one.

I don’t let myself think as Theo and I pile into the back. Eli’s pulling out before we even get the door closed, flooring it as he drives right past the agents investigating our truck.

It’s not the brightest move, but it’s the only one we’ve got. Not to mention gutsy as hell. Go, Eli.

Our escape doesn’t go unnoticed. “Get down,” Eli yells, and Theo shoves me face-first onto the seat, covering me
with his body. Shots ring out, and the back windshield, right where I’d been sitting, shatters.

“Shit!” Eli swerves back and forth.

“Hit the gas!” Theo yells.

“I’ve got the thing floored,” Eli shouts back. “Just shut up so I can concentrate.”

The next few minutes pass in a blaze of absolute terror. I can’t see anything—Theo has me completely covered—but I can hear plenty and that makes everything worse.

Sirens sound as the remaining Homeland Security guys come after us, shots ringing out as they pursue us through the empty business park.

“Where’s the road, where’s the road?” Eli mumbles to himself as he sends us careening around a corner so fast the SUV takes it on two wheels.

“Up ahead, half a mile,” Theo tells him.

“We’re not going to make it that far. It’s only a matter of time before they hit a tire.” He yanks the car to the left around another corner, and Theo loses his balance, pancakes me.

I can’t breathe with him crushing my rib cage and my face pressed completely into the seat, and I struggle against him.

“Sorry, Pandora,” he says a minute later as he pushes himself up.

“No problem,” I answer, before I realize how absurd we sound. Nothing like manners in the middle of a life-or-death crisis.

We hit the main road just as more shots ring out. They hit the side of the car, slamming into the metal.

“How are we going to get out of this?” I whisper to Theo, afraid of distracting Eli.

“I don’t know.” His hands are clenched, and I know it’s hard for him to sit back here with me, leaving our fate in Eli’s hands. But Eli’s doing a good job, taking turns at breakneck speed, dodging back and forth between the few cars that are on the road.

Homeland Security is still behind us—I can hear their sirens—but they don’t seem as close. Eli whips around another corner and hits the brakes, hard, as he strings together every curse word I’ve ever heard in the most imaginative way possible. We’ve hit a solid wall of traffic and people. There’s a huge demonstration—or riot, I can’t tell—going on. Sitting here, in this car, makes us easy marks.

Theo drags me out before I can even sit up. We’re running again, backpacks on, as we weave through a huge crowd of angry people. They’re screaming and protesting, throwing things at police officers, and I’m trying to figure out why they’re so upset—beyond the obvious, I mean. But when I try to look, Theo barks, “Keep your head down!” So I do, and I realize that he and Eli are slouching deeply, too, trying their best not to stick out in the crowd.

Eli takes the first side street we come to, turning right, and then left again a couple of streets up, so that we’re running parallel to the crowd but not actually in it. Hopefully the feds will think we’re still out there, trying to get lost in the teeming mass of humanity. They only saw Theo and Eli sitting down in the car—maybe they won’t realize just how hard it is for the two of them to blend in.

Eli and Theo are looking down each street we pass, and
then, as if by mutual agreement, we make another quick right. I see why immediately. The whole street consists of apartment building after apartment building, and the curbs are lined with vehicles. “We need another car,” Theo tells us.

“Okay.” I look around the car-lined street. “Which one?”

“See if you can find one that’s unlocked,” Theo says. “Easier to keep attention off us if the window isn’t smashed in.”

“But not too new. The older ones are easier to hot-wire,” Eli adds.

“How the hell would you know?” Theo demands.

“I told you, Grand Theft Auto. It’s not just a game. It’s a way of life.” The grin he throws us is cocky and self-deprecating at the same time.

“And here I thought you were obsessed with Pandora’s Box before the last couple of days,” I comment.

“It’s not an either-or situation. GTA’s where I learned to drive like that, too.”

“I’m impressed.”

We’re moving while we talk, checking car after car. I lift up on the driver’s-side handle of an old blue Chevy Blazer, expecting to find it locked, but this one actually clicks open. “Hey!” I call. “I’ve found—” But Eli and Theo are already there, pushing me to the side.

“Do you really know how to hot-wire it, Eli?” I demand.

“No, but it can’t be that hard, right?” He pops off the panel.

“It isn’t.” Theo shoulders him out of the way. Bends down and grabs on to two wires. Twists them. The engine roars to life.

The relief I feel is painful, overwhelming, and for a second my legs turn to rubber. Strange, isn’t it, how when the fear is rushing through you, your legs are strong and steady. It’s only after it’s gone, after you realize that everything is somehow going to be all right—or as all right as it can be—that all the fight goes out of you.

“We need to book it,” Theo tells us, getting into the driver’s seat. I climb in behind him.

“I’m not even going to ask how
you
knew how to hot-wire this thing,” Eli says, as he settles in the passenger seat next to him. For once, there’s no anger in his tone.

I grin. “Boy genius, remember?”

“With a murky criminal past.” He snickers, turns back to face the front. “Don’t forget to put on your seat belt.”

“A little late for that warning, isn’t it, Speed Racer?”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”

“You did good,” Theo tells him. I know it’s as close as he can get to an apology for the fight in the hotel room, and a glance out of the corner of my eye tells me Eli realizes the same.

“But we’ve still got a lot to do before we’re home free.”

Eli groans. “Same old Theo.”

Theo ignores him. “Eli, get the map out and tell me where to go. We need a way out of this mess, and it needs to be side and back roads. We don’t want to take the chance of being on the highway, even if we’ve changed cars. It’s too dangerous. And Pandora, get out that letter from your dad. Get to work on figuring out what the code is, and then start on the game. Once we get out of Albuquerque, we need to know which way to go. We can’t afford to waste time, or gas.”

“How
is
our gas situation?” Eli asks as he unfolds the map.

“Three-quarters of a tank, which is something. It gives us a little breathing room.” He makes a sharp left turn, so that we’re again running parallel to the demonstration.

I reach into my pocket for the envelope. Pull it out with shaking hands and just stare at it for a minute or two. I know I have to read it, but everything inside me is screaming not to open it. To leave it alone. The last time I read something from my father I’d brought us here.

“Look at it this way, Pandora,” Theo says from where he’s watching me in the rearview mirror. “We have seven days until the world explodes. How much more could you screw up?”

Amazingly, it’s exactly the impetus I need to start reading. So as Eli directs Theo on a path that resembles a slalom race more than it does a coherent route out of town, I unfold the letter and begin to read:

Dear Pandora,

Since you’ve gotten this far (and congratulations on that, by the way), I figure you must have a lot of questions for me. I know I have a lot for you. Things look complicated now, but if you see this game through, you’ll realize that it’s all really very simple. That we, the human race, have managed to make so many of our own problems through the years and that unplugging everything is the only way to make it right. I’m just trying to make it right.

Do you remember the day this photo was taken?
We’d run away from home for a few days to have an adventure. You were so serious, so earnest, when we left Austin early in the morning. You hugged your mother and told her not to worry. We were doing Walker business, and she wouldn’t understand. It was all I could do not to laugh. Truer words, Pandora, have never been spoken.

I took you to Orinoco to see the solar array, and you giggled, said it looked like something aliens would build. You were too young to understand, but you had a good time anyway. Eating M&M’s—except for the green ones. Those you gave to me because you said they tasted “weird.” I still love green M&M’s. And I love you, Pandora. I can’t wait to see you and can only hope that by the time you find me, you’ll understand just how necessary this game is.

I know you can do it.

Good luck and I’ll see you soon.

Your father

I read the letter twice, getting angrier by the second. Understand? He wants me to understand what he’s done? Wants me to believe that he loves me? What a joke! Fathers who love their daughters don’t turn them into portents of destruction. Nor do they pit them against the most dangerous agencies in the United States.

And what does he mean by “see you soon”? Is Theo right? Are these clues leading me straight to him? Just the thought infuriates me—if he wanted to see me again, there were a billion better ways to go about it.

It hits me suddenly, what the code is. Something that both my father and I remember from our first visit to Orinoco.

I whip out my laptop. It opens to Pandora’s Box right away—it’s not like there’s anything else out there, after all—and I waste precious minutes taking my avatar through the motions until I stumble on the level two AR gate Theo had been searching for yesterday.

When the code comes up, I type in “M&M’s” and wait for it to open. It doesn’t. Damn. I was so sure … I glance back at the note and this time I try “Green M&M’s.” The gate opens and the ten-minute countdown begins.

“What’s going on?” Eli says, leaning over the seat to see the game. “Did you get a new power?”

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out.” I play with a few buttons, but nothing hits me. “I don’t think so.”

“You must have. How else are you supposed to deal with all those fumes escaping from the cracks in the earth?”

I’m too busy checking things out to answer. I take a quick run around, try to see what’s been going on since I’ve been here last. There are more players filing in after me than there were last time, though I’m not sure how they got through without the code. Maybe the gates are left open once I plug in the information? I hope so, because that means soon there will be even more people to help us.

Although, to be honest, none of the players seem to be doing so well right now. They’re stumbling around, falling down. Some are even lying on the ground, though I don’t know if they’re supposed to be passed out or dead.

I take a few steps, spin in some circles, but before I can get very far my knees go out from under me. I fall down, and no matter how many buttons I push, I can’t get up.

“Come on, Pandora! Get back on your feet,” Eli says from where he’s watching in the front seat. “You’ve only got eight minutes.”