MILA 2.0: Redemption (21 page)

His presence, his being: it was like a magnet, pulling me in. Daniel was only five feet away, but I didn’t care. Not then. I leaned into Lucas, hoping, praying he wouldn’t pull away. He didn’t. Emboldened, I bunched my hands in his shirt, my gaze going to his mouth.

That’s when an alarm blared from his pocket. I sprang back while he looked blank for a minute. Then his jaw went slack.

“What is it?” I knew it wasn’t good.

Daniel turned at the same time Lucas plucked the phone out of his pocket. He nodded at whatever he saw, as though he’d been expecting it.

“What’s wrong?”

The hazel eyes that met mine were steady, despite the pallor of his cheeks.

“That was an alert from my doctor friend, who helped me pretend to be sick for so long. He’s letting me know that Holland sent someone to investigate my story.”

“And?” Daniel prompted.

“Now he knows I’m not really sick.”

Daniel and I stared at Lucas aghast, our expressions probably identical in their fear.

“We talked about this,” Lucas reminded me gently.
“We knew this could happen.”

“I know. I just . . . never thought it would happen now.”

I drew in a breath and focused on not falling apart. Lucas was the one in danger this time.

“My uncle doesn’t like his worker bees to escape him,” Lucas said grimly.

“Does he know . . . everything?” I whispered. Still daring to hope.

That hope shattered the instant I met his eyes. “I imagine he was able to put two and two together pretty quickly. The timing, your escape from the lab. Yes, he knows I helped you.”

He knows I helped you.

So I’d done it again. I’d fallen for someone, only to put his life in danger.

Hunter had been right. Getting close to me was like signing your own death warrant.

There was only one solution. We had to abort the mission. “I’ll tell the others. We’ll leave early, find you a safe place—”

Lucas’s jaw tightened. “Absolutely not. Just because he knows about me doesn’t mean he knows anything about you. You guys are close to finding answers. I’ll be fine.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Daniel reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “I know you want to keep him safe, but those kids in there need you too. We’ll be okay. But
we probably need to get going. Your laptop . . . ?” Daniel prodded.

Lucas nodded. “I need to shut it down. All of it. And warn my brother. I don’t think Holland would find him or even look for him, but just in case . . .”

Just when I thought he was going to hurry off, he pulled me into his arms. His mouth lowered to my ear, his words feathering across my skin, warm and firm. “Don’t worry about me. Just focus on your investigation. In two days, you’ll have what you need. We’ll take down my uncle, then we’ll get the hell out of dodge.”

I returned the hug, but instead of just soaking up his warmth and comfort, I tried to comfort him as well. “Stay safe. And check in. Often. If there’s a six-hour stretch where I don’t hear from you . . .”

“Deal.” He pulled back, stared into my face. Opened his mouth like he wanted to say more, but Daniel barked at him to hurry.

I watched them retreat, all the way through the gate and to the van, before I turned back toward the school on leaden feet.

My fear refused to budge. It clung to me like a second skin.

I hurried back into the main building and headed for the cafeteria, where I ushered the gang to a table in the back corner, by the emergency exit. No one ever sat here because
frigid air seeped in from under the door. The cafeteria was just starting to wake and stir with bleary-eyed students.

Once everyone had grabbed food and gathered round, I distributed the burn phones under the cover of the table, and explained how they were linked to me. Then I filled them in on what I’d found. The coded message on Hannah’s phone, and the meeting we would intercept tonight. The modafinil packets, too.

At that point, Abby interrupted. “Packets? Little white ones, like sugar? Sharon has a box of those, on her dresser. She told me they were fiber supplements, so I didn’t go near them.”

“Are those the same as J.D.’s headache meds?”

Hunter nodded.

“I think we can assume that Claude and Ben have them as well, then.”

“It’s not much in the way of smoking guns, though, eh? Not here. I knew a guy who used to snort NoDoz to pull all-nighters,” Samuel said. “It’s not exactly unusual.”

“Maybe not a smoking gun, but someone went to a lot of trouble to disguise them. If we can figure out which staff member is supplying them, we might find the connection to Holland. Do any of the grant kids seem close to the faculty?”

Mrs. Tate, the PE coach, Mr. Frost, the math teacher, and Mr. Grassi came up as a few student favorites, so we
agreed to try to focus our attention on them. It wasn’t the most scientific plan, but for tonight, it was all we had.

Samuel was eyeing me with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

With my heart pumping pure dread, I filled them in on Lucas.

“He was careful,” I reassured them. “It will take Holland a while to track him down to Montford, and hopefully by then, we’ll be long gone. But I can’t make any guarantees. If you want out, now is probably the time.”

They didn’t even need to think it over. They all agreed to stay. Even Hunter. Who maybe—just maybe—could see why I had to finish what we had started together.

As we headed for our classes, I initiated the countdown until midnight. Yesterday, I’d been worried that we’d run out of time before we could finish our mission.

Now, the opposite was true. Every minute felt like another opportunity for Holland to move in on Lucas . . . and me.

Lucas checked in at two, to let me know he was okay. He’d shut down his remote connection to Holland’s workstation and alerted Tim, just in case. No sign of trouble, he told me. Yet.

If I really was a prospective student, there’s no way Montford would have admitted me. I spaced out during classes. I got lost on the way to PE. So much for class participation—all I could do was think about what would happen after
class. After dinner. After homework and lights-out. Finally, we might get some answers about what Holland was doing here—and what had happened to Sarah.

I feigned sleep as soon as it seemed believable. At eleven thirty, I heard Hannah rustle around on her side of the room. Like she was changing clothes again. Then I heard her pad to the door and open it quietly. When I opened my eyes, I was alone in the room.

I gave her a small lead, then rose. I squeezed the spot on my ear lobe.

Enhance audio?

Yes.

Magnify 10x.

I heard no human activity beyond Hannah’s retreating footsteps. No sign of life from the hallway beyond my room. Just the faint crackle and hum of the heating unit, as it worked to warm the drafty halls.

Stealing a page from Lucas’s book, I linked to the video cameras in the dorm.

Video feed: Intercept.

Loop parameters: 60 minutes.

After a little bit of haggling, I realized that one hour was the longest loop the system would accept. Better than nothing. We’d just have to return in time, if we didn’t want our night wanderings to show up on the feed.

I crept out into the hallway, easing the door behind me.
Once I made it to the safety of the stairwell, I summoned my new text function.

Abby, did you see her?

Three steps later, I had a response.

Yes. Went out south door. Sharon is with her.

J.D. too
, came a reply from Hunter.
Same direction.

That correlated with the blue dot that blinked in my head, marking Hannah’s position. In the bag Lucas had given me, I’d found another prize. A tiny GPS chip. I might not like it when people inserted them into my body, but I wasn’t opposed to sticking one in my roommate’s favorite pair of shoes.

As I watched it move, I knew we’d guessed right. She was headed to the vacant building. They all were.

My team converged on the bottom floor, speaking in hushed whispers. I hadn’t been sure how to group us at first, but Samuel had suggested that we’d probably be less suspicious if we were caught all together, like we were planning some massive prank.

The landscaper would only go for the phony boyfriend story once.

Lucas had checked in an hour ago, and now I had to try to put him in the back of my mind. Whatever happened now was up to me. I was driven by human curiosity, assisted by android functionality. The next time I entered the dorm, perhaps all the mysteries of Montford would be solved.

The campus streetlamps cast eerie shadows as we walked across the field without speaking. I wondered at the absence of security guards in this area. Then it hit me. If there were security guards stationed here, they would see the grant kids, heading for the vacant building. Maybe the dean banished them on certain nights.

Somehow, over the course of the last two days, my fears had shifted. The bomb still terrified me; that was a given. But now I was haunted by another terror: failing to save Holland’s next round of victims.

I checked back in with the blue GPS dot that marked Hannah’s location. Before we’d left the RV, I’d downloaded blueprints of the entire campus. There was no question Hannah was inside the locked building. The coordinates matched up perfectly.

Something else was amiss, though.

Expand.

The grid appeared before me, glowing a ghostly blue. I ran a comparison between the GPS location and the blueprints.

Error: Results incompatible.

The blueprints hadn’t shown any basements on campus. But the GPS didn’t lie. Hannah’s coordinates matched up with this building. But not inside it. Below it.

I stepped toward the building’s security camera, motioning the others back. Positioning myself directly under the
camera felt all kinds of wrong, but I forced my feet to stay put.

I wanted to get this over with and get inside.

I extracted the copies of Hannah’s eyes from my database, then manipulated the code that would allow her eyes to serve as a cloak for mine. I shivered when the program indicated the change had been implemented. The idea of stealing someone’s eyes was disturbing.

I summoned Hannah’s username. The security system responded.

Initiate retinal scan.

The red line of the laser began its downward descent, scanning my eyes from top to bottom. When nothing happened, I started to worry that the program wouldn’t work. If the alarm went off now . . .

Scan accepted.

The door clicked open, and I led the rest of the group inside after determining there were no humans on the ground floor.

Once the door closed, we were swallowed by darkness.

Night vision: Activated.

Samuel snapped on a small flashlight, and the soft glow revealed a surprise.

The room didn’t look like anything special. Or scary. Ceiling-to-floor shelves lined the middle of the room, crowded with boxes of varying sizes. There was a pile of
power tools in a corner: drills, hammers, a jigsaw. Dean Parsons hadn’t been lying, necessarily. It was hard to believe that anything of interest to us would happen here, but I knew that somewhere there had to be a staircase, leading down. I told my team what to look for, and branched off to the left.

If I used my GPS and followed Hannah’s path, it should lead me right where I needed to go.

In fact, it led me right to a row of oversized appliance boxes. Baffled, I turned to tell the others, when I noticed something in the shadows. One of the boxes had been shoved away from the row, as if to make room for something. Or someone.

Bile rose in my throat as I stared at the markings on the floor. I reached down to pull open the trapdoor, but my fingers paused on the carved handle. I didn’t want to go down there again. Or do those tests.

With a shudder, my hand slipped from the handle. I rose and backed away. He was expecting me, but I couldn’t do this anymore.

I had to go home. Before it was too late, and I was in too deep.

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the tiny indentation. Then I turned and ran.

I blinked away the memory and stared down at what was apparently a trapdoor. Whatever it led to was something that had scared Sarah into leaving.

“Over here,” I said.

I dug the handle out of the floor, gently eased the door open, and began to climb down a set of rickety metal stairs. The weight of my body made them sway and creak. I hated going in blind. If someone had followed us, we would end up sandwiched in on both ends.

“Samuel, can you stay upstairs, and let us know if anyone tries to follow?”

“Sure. And if I see someone, I’ll just pretend to be a box. They’ll never notice me in this junk heap.”

With Abby and Hunter right behind me, I headed forward. I could feel the angle of the hallway that extended out before us. It sloped down, gently but significantly.

15-degree angle.

Every step only intensified my anxiety.

Hannah’s path glowed like a beacon in my head.

The walls were cold and concrete, the flooring the same. The tunnel was barren. If I’d ventured in here by accident, I’d have no reason not to turn back.

Finally, from around an upcoming corner, I heard a muffled voice.

There was a change in the temperature. It was warmer here, like something was generating energy.

Temperature increase: 5.2 degrees in 55 seconds.

Something ahead of us was creating heat. And the voices: they were getting louder.

A muffled shriek made us all freeze.

Voice recognition: Match.

Hannah.

I sped up until I reached the corner, then peered around the edge. Abby and Hunter joined me. From where we stood, the floor sloped down even farther, into a wide-open space the size of a large auditorium.

But that wasn’t what caught our attention. Instead, it was the sight of Hannah, slowly climbing to her feet after what looked like a fall. Then she shook it off and reached above her head to grip things as though she were rock climbing, her legs bending and scrabbling for purchase beneath her.

Only there was no rock wall in front of her. There was nothing but air.