“How do you take your coffee?”
“Surprise me,” he said over his shoulder.
Oh, yeah, I could do that.
When I stepped outside, another beautiful Virginia Beach morning greeted me. The sun blazed low over the ocean like a golden ball, spreading sparkling reflections off the water and looking almost close enough to caress the distant waves.
Nine minutes later, I ducked into the internet café. It was long and narrow, with rows of computers at individual desks arranged neatly along walls painted with graffiti-style art. The bitter aroma of coffee wafted from behind the circular counter in the middle.
I should get the coffee and head straight back to the room, but the computers were calling to me. No matter what was going on with Hunter, Holland was out there, and I needed to know what details he’d leaked to the public, if any. The one thing that had kept me from all-out panicking so far was the fact that the general had a giant ego. Creating a true APB for me would involve admitting to his superiors that he’d allowed their top-secret, billion-dollar experiment to escape. Again. I was willing to bet he’d keep that information locked away for as long as possible, and send his men to find me in a clandestine operation.
But I needed to know for sure.
I settled into a brightly upholstered chair on the far left side of the desk housing the computer and performed a quick scan of the café’s occupants.
A group of three high school boys, laughing and nudging one another as one of them pointed at the monitor. A middle-aged man, dressed in sagging jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, being nagged by a similarly middle-aged woman on his right. A young girl, alone in the back corner. And the twentysomething guy behind the counter.
Weapons scan: No guns found.
None of them looked remotely interested in me.
As I reached for the keyboard, an odd eagerness pulsed through my fingers. Behind my eyes, a red light blinked to life.
Open ports?
My body tensed as I remembered. In order to get Mom out of Holland’s secure underground compound, I’d had to communicate directly with the computer that held me captive. Machine to machine.
The code, glimmering into being—an endless stream of numbers, symbols, letters.
A roar that slithered into me, a presence all around me, one I could reach out and touch without ever moving my hands.
The portal, bursting open under my command.
Open ports, I thought with more conviction.
A roar of energy as a connection was formed, and just like that, a door in my mind flew open. Like a vacuum sucking in air, colors and information burst inside. As if the information had been lying in wait this whole time, hoping for an opportunity.
A spark ignited, deep in my chest. A tiny thrill of excitement.
This time, all of it so, so simple. Like my body, my brain, had been born for this, had been craving this very thing without me even knowing it. Strands of code rushed through my head in glimmering streams, without any of the terror from before. Instead, I practically buzzed with an awakening power.
With ease, I separated the strands, searching for a name.
Mila Daily.
No news reports, nothing that looked ominous. I didn’t even see a record of my enrollment in Clearwater High—how had Mom managed that?
On to the next name, then, the one on my phony passport: Stephanie Prescott.
Nothing.
Nicole Daily.
Nothing.
Feeling my shoulders lighten with each nonproductive search, I decided to search one more name.
Lucas Webb.
My proctor-turned-helper back at the compound. I never would have escaped without him, and how had I repaid him? By getting him shot in the leg and smashing up his classic Camaro, which Mom and I had “stolen” with his help for our getaway.
Lucas. Whose parting words to me had been, “I think you make an excellent human.”
I angled my head away. Surely Lucas was okay. We’d been careful to cover our tracks, to pretend that he was a hostage.
He was fine, he had to be. The alternative was too awful to even consider.
I cross-referenced with MIT, and found him almost immediately. I felt a jolt of recognition in my chest, a flicker of warmth, when I pulled up his college photo. His disheveled hair had actually been tamed, but the shirt was a little rumpled. No smile, just an intense stare into the camera.
His bio flashed before me, and I zeroed in on his mother’s name:
Joanna Holland Webb.
Holland. So, Lucas really was General Holland’s nephew. And even though I’d guessed, back at the compound, shock still held me captive. If anything, the confirmation only made Holland more of a monster. What kind of man designed an elaborate test that revolved around his nephew being tortured?
I shivered, the memory of the wrench in my hand all too vivid. Not a pathway I ever wanted to explore again.
I searched for anything postdated from the time I’d escaped the compound, hoping for some shred of evidence that he was okay. Anything to stem the guilt twisting me into knots.
And I found it. A single tweet, short and vague. I met an excellent human.
An inadvertent smile tugged at my lips, and my lungs collapsed with relief. A signal—the same words he’d told me, back at the compound.
Lucas was okay.
I slumped into the chair, my lips moving in a silent thank you.
Straightening, I searched Washington, D.C., and the date of Mom’s death, pushing away the feeling of anguish that suddenly stabbed at my core.
A headline shimmered into view.
Woman Found Murdered in Downtown D.C.—Witnesses Questioned.
As I sat bolted to my chair, I processed the rest of the article:
An unidentified woman’s body was pulled from the Potomac early this morning. Preliminary reports indicate the woman was in her mid-to-late thirties, Caucasian, and suffered from multiple gunshot wounds. Several locals near the area where the body was recovered claimed they saw a young girl, with short dark hair and between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, leaving the area under suspicious circumstances, wearing a blood-splattered shirt. Authorities are trying to track down more information.
A sketch materialized. A drawing of a face. My fingers pressed hard on the keyboard. A drawing of my face. And a surprisingly good one, at that. Apparently the transient I’d traded clothes with in the wee hours of the morning near the Potomac had a good eye for detail.
The wide deep-set eyes, the strong curve of the jaw … even the smattering of freckles. For anyone who knew me, that sketch was easily recognizable. The words accompanying it were even more ominous. I was the lead suspect in Mom’s murder. That was outrageous. Of all the—
A heaviness pushed against my ribs, filled my chest like hardening cement. Because while I might not have been holding the gun that shot Mom, there was no doubt she was dead because of me.
Holland might not have released that sketch, but I felt his peppermint breath burning down my neck all the same. And now that the police had this much, what if someone recognized me and reported in? What if it got back to someone in the military other than Holland—someone in the military who knew what I looked like,