Part 4 (1/2)
Wait for my phone call, Dr. Harriman had said. But it was too late for that now. It was too late for her to go home, too late to see if her family had left her any word, any instructions. It was too late to call Emma, too late to do anything without fear of getting someone she loved in trouble.
It was dark in the back of the truck, with scant light trickling in from the outside. She had no sense of where she was anymore, and barely had a sense of who she was with. In the near-dark, she looked at her wrist, tried to make out the details of the Bar Code. But they were as unreadable as anything else about her life. Other people might know the truth of it, but she didn't.
Time pa.s.sed. She had no sense of how much time. She could have checked her phone, but Eric had taken it from her and immediately dislodged the battery and the info-sim card. He'd thrown the phone forcefully out the back of the truck, then smashed the sim card under his foot, grinding it with the heel of his boot.
”You could have just turned it off,” Grace grumbled, upset to see her phone, especially Tilly, so utterly destroyed. For most of her life her Android cell phone had been her link with friends, family, and the world in general. It was on all the time. Grace even slept with it under her pillow. And Tilly, in a crazy way, had become her guide, always tracking her location by satellite so she could direct Grace to the nearest public bathroom, the best restaurant, the closest bank ATM and so much more. Without Tilly's soothing voice, without the phone's comforting connections, Grace felt lost - so lost that her stomach clenched with the stress of it.
”I couldn't just turn it off,” Eric said, still standing by the back door of the truck. ”It emits a signal even when it's not on. Every part of it does.”
The truck swerved just as Eric opened the back door once more and hurled the phone battery out. He grinned, watching it go. ”Final level!” he cheered. He turned back to her, still smiling as he latched the door. ”Got it right into Hollowbrook Creek. Let them try to find that! As long as that phone is in your possession, off or on, Global-1 can find you.”
”Why am I hiding from Global-1 at all?” Grace needed to know. ”What's happening?”
”Does it scare you?” Eric asked, ducking the question, in Grace's opinion.
”Yeah, it does,” Grace admitted. ”Of course I'm scared! I'd be stupid not to be scared.”
”Try not to be,” Eric advised, ”because this is only the start. The wild ride is just beginning.”
When the speeding truck finally stopped, Mfumbe - and she was now certain it was him - opened the door. Eric and Grace jumped down beside him. A woman in her early thirties, dressed in jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt, descended from the driver's seat and walked toward them.
They were underneath the Los Angeles freeway. The woman introduced herself as Katie and extended her hand to Grace.
Grace shook hands and trained her eyes on the woman's face. ”Have we met before?” she asked. The woman looked so familiar and yet she couldn't figure out why.
”You might have seen pictures of me in the papers lately,” Katie replied. ”They called me Dusa the Drakian Menace in some of the papers, or at least the ones Global-1 owns, which is a lot of them.”
”That's it! I saw a story about you on the TV,” Grace recalled. About six months earlier, Grace had sat down beside her mother, who was watching the TV report with avid interest. She remembered the reporter explaining that Drakians were an offshoot of Decode, a much more violent group whose illegal tactics violated the law and made its members subject to arrest.
”I know which show you saw,” Katie said with a bitter smile that rose up a little higher on the right side of her face than on the left. ”It was a batch of lies. We like to mess up Global-1 any chance we get because they keep trying to ruin our lives. But we don't hurt anyone. They didn't even get my name right.”
”Your name isn't really Dusa?” Grace asked.
”I called myself Medusa for a while, just to seem scarier to Global-1. It got shortened to Dusa. Then when I thought the bar code tattoo threat was over, I went back to my own name.”
Grace clutched the bar code tattoo on her wrist. The lines still tingled and burned slightly. ”How is it not over?” she asked. She knew that the events of her own life were somehow tied to this question, even though she couldn't say how.
Eric, Mfumbe, and Katie exchanged anxious glances. ”We're not sure, but we think they might be up to something again,” Katie answered.
This didn't satisfy Grace at all. But she had more important questions to ask. ”What's happened to my family?” Her voice rose with fear. ”Why were the police after me?”
”We're not certain of that, either,” Katie answered.
”But how did you know to get me?”
”There are people in Global-1 who are sympathetic to our cause,” Mfumbe said. ”Eric had told us about you, so when your name came up, we knew we had to act decisively.”
Every answer was only leading to more questions.
”Who was it?” Grace asked. ”On the inside.”
Mfumbe shook his head. ”We can't tell you. It wouldn't be safe. Not for you. Not for our informants.”
As if he could sense her frustration, Eric said gently, ”We're still trying to figure most of it out ourselves. The information we got was ... vague. We need to know your story, too. Why don't you tell us what you know?”
This was a different kind of trust he was asking for now, because it was clear that it would have to be, for the time being, an unequal trust. There were things they couldn't tell her. But at the same time, they needed to know everything.
”Please,” Eric said. ”We're on your side.”
Grace decided to trust him.
”This has to do with it being your birthday,” Katie said once Grace had finished her story about Dr. Harriman and about the police coming to her house. When Grace had said Dr. Harriman's name, she had hoped there would be a flash of recognition, a confirmation that he was the one who'd tipped them off. But they hadn't betrayed a thing.
”My birthday?” Grace echoed. ”Why should that matter?”
”You'd better come with us,” Eric suggested. ”There are some people you should meet.”
”Eric, I'm really scared. What's this about?” Grace asked.
”There's no reason to be scared,” Eric a.s.sured her. ”For what it's worth, I won't leave your side. Unless, of course, you ask me to.”
Katie disappeared into the back of the tractor trailer and came back wheeling a motorcycle with two helmets strapped to it. ”I have to get this rig out of here,” she explained. ”It's not exactly easy to hide this thing. In case I get stopped, I don't want them to find you. Eric, take her to the garage.”
”Sure,” Eric agreed as Katie and Mfumbe put down the truck's back ramp and wheeled the motorcycle down. ”Ever ridden on one of these?” he asked Grace.
She shook her head. She was nervous but excited to try it. With the way her day was going, what harm was a motorcycle ride going to do?
Eric handed her one of the helmets. ”Climb on behind me and hang on tight to my waist,” he advised.
”See ya back at the ranch,” Katie said as she and Mfumbe returned to the truck's cab.
”The ranch?” Grace asked. ”For real?”
”She's kidding,” Eric explained. ”You'll see.”
The truck pulled away. Grace and Eric followed and were soon zooming down the roadway. Grace clenched her eyes shut and her arms ached from holding Eric so tightly. Although she'd always wanted to ride a motorcycle, she never thought she'd really get the opportunity. Her parents would never have allowed it. The experience was thrilling and terrifying all at once.
After three blocks, she dared to open her eyes and observe the buildings going by as Eric zipped around corners, eventually turning into an alley between two skysc.r.a.pers. At the end of it, a wide garage door stood open. They pulled inside.
Electronic doors closed behind them and the floor they were on began to descend. Grace realized they were inside a large elevator car that was transporting them several levels underground. Finally the car elevator clanked to a jarring stop.
The wall opposite the one they'd entered through opened, revealing an immense underground parking garage. Eric revved the engine and drove slowly into the cavernous s.p.a.ce, which was filled with cars, vans, and trucks, including several tractor trailers.
”Where are we?” Grace asked as soon as she and Eric had pulled off their helmets. The elevator left their floor and then returned with Katie and Mfumbe in the truck.
”This is your all-purpose hideout,” Eric said with a grin. ”Katie calls it the ranch. Decode trackers can't find us under here because we're too deep underground.”
”If a meteor were to hit Earth, do you think we would be safe down here?” Grace questioned, looking around at the immense, dank s.p.a.ce with its gray walls and exposed pipes. Every so often the news report about the meteor would pop, unbidden and random, into her head. She wasn't really worried about it; she simply couldn't get it completely off her mind.
”What?” Eric asked.