Part 4 (2/2)
Grace smiled wryly. ”Sorry. It's strange, but in the middle of all this craziness, I can't stop thinking about the meteor that's supposed to be heading our way.”
”It's supposed to pa.s.s us, isn't it?” Eric answered.
”That's what they're saying,” Grace agreed.
Eric chuckled with a dark amus.e.m.e.nt. ”I think we have enough other things to worry about right now.”
”Absolutely, but are we deep enough underground to be safe?”
”We're deep enough to block a satellite signal. That's all I know,” Eric said. ”Don't worry about the meteor. It seems like there's one flying by every few years.”
A young woman approached them, walking from across the garage. Grace immediately knew who she was - how could she not? It may have been illegal to have the poster of Kayla Reed openly displayed, because President Waters had declared her an enemy of the state. Still, her image was everywhere, and Grace would recognize the eighteen-year-old's lean, high-boned face anywhere.
Kayla and Mfumbe faced each other and held hands, clearly a couple. Kayla lay her forehead on Mfumbe's chest and shut her eyes, as did he. They stood that way for several beats without moving.
”What's that about?” Grace asked Eric.
”They're telepaths,” Eric explained. ”The early bar code resisters learned to speak with their minds. Many of them still communicate that way.”
”Can you do that?” Grace was afraid the answer would be yes.
”No. It takes too much training. I'd rather be climbing.”
Grace covered her tattooed wrist with her other hand, suddenly ashamed even though the tattoo was supposed to be safe now. It suddenly felt all wrong to be bar coded here in the presence of these resisters.
Lifting her head, Kayla caught Grace's movement and smiled warmly. ”It's all right,” she said, brus.h.i.+ng back her chin-length light brown hair as she broke away from Mfumbe and approached. ”You didn't know, and we didn't get to you in time.”
”I didn't know what?” Grace asked.
”You didn't know not to get the tattoo,” Kayla replied.
Grace waited for Eric to tell Kayla that he had, in fact, warned her. But he kept quiet, kept this secret for her.
Katie and Mfumbe walked toward them. Glancing at her companions, Grace saw that they all wore bar code tattoos on their wrists. ”I don't understand,” she said.
”Oh, this?” Kayla took a plastic bottle of clear mineral oil and a cloth from the large satchel she had slung across her chest. She held out her wrist and poured oil from the bottle onto her tattoo, rubbing it with a cloth. Her wrist was instantly smeared black.
”Hey, those things don't grow on trees, you know!” Katie objected.
Kayla spoke as she continued rubbing away her tattoo. ”I need a new press-on. This fake is shot,” she explained calmly. ”There's no more money in the bank account attached to it, and when I tried to use it today, the scanner came up reading DECEASED.”
”Are you kidding?” Mfumbe asked. Distressed, he inspected his own tattoo nervously.
”No joke.”
”That is seriously banged out,” Eric murmured.
This is beyond banged out, Grace thought. Yesterday - this morning - she was working at GlobalHelix headquarters. And now she was in an underground parking garage with the leaders of Decode. Because of years and years of Global-1 messaging, the constant alerts and info blasts the corporation sent to her cell phone, she knew what she was supposed to do: Play along, get information, then turn them in.
Could she do that? Grace felt as though every circuit in her brain was suddenly cross-wired. She liked these people. They spoke to her as though she were one of them. And Eric was one of them, after all. She'd admired him for so long. He was a hero in her school - not to mention this attraction that was between them lately. How could she turn him in?
The answer was that she couldn't.
Maybe she should just try to get away and not mention them. She could say she was blindfolded or knocked out. But first she had to find out what was going on.
Katie had crossed the wide aisle and climbed into the cab of a tractor trailer. Sitting in the driver's seat with the door open, she took a metal box from the pa.s.senger side and opened it. ”This one should be good for a while,” she said, handing Kayla a delicate piece of plastic, resembling cellophane tape, with a bar code imprinted on it.
Kayla took a facecloth from her pack and wet it at a nearby water fountain. Pressing the flexible plastic to her inner wrist, she put the damp cloth over it. When she lifted the cloth, a new bar code tattoo was there on her wrist.
Grace looked to Eric with a questioning expression. ”Is your bar code tattoo a fake also?” she asked.
Eric nodded. ”We all have fakes.”
”Why didn't you tell me this the other night when we were talking about it?” She remembered how tentative he'd seemed, as though he wanted to reveal something but had decided against it.
”Grace, I didn't know what to do. I wasn't sure I wanted to involve you in all this.”
”Well, I'm involved now,” Grace said.
”I know. I'm sorry.” Eric's apology was so sincere it seemed to hurt him. ”There are a lot of things I didn't realize then that I know now.”
”Like what?” Grace demanded.
”We'll tell you everything we know in a minute,” Katie cut in. Then she turned to Kayla and said, ”We'd better tell Jack about your b.u.m fake. That shouldn't have happened.”
”Is he here?” Kayla asked.
”He's in the back with Allyson,” Mfumbe said. ”They've been here all day making changes on the swing-lo.”
”Let's go talk to him about this,” Katie suggested. ”We'll be right back,” she added, turning to Eric and Grace.
”The swing-lo?” Grace asked Eric as the others walked toward the far end of the garage.
”This garage is where they build them,” he answered.
”But what is it?”
”It's this cool flying saucer that this guy from Ireland, Jack Kelly, invented. Some mysterious billionaire is funding the thing, so Jack and his business partner, Allyson Minor, are working to get them into production.”
”Why do the others have to talk to them about the fake tattoos?”
”Jack is a genius computer hacker and he works with Decode,” Eric explained. ”I heard he's been writing advanced computer code from the time he was eleven - and he never even went to college. He's the one who hacks into bank and government files and gets out the information on people who have pa.s.sed away. A lot of times the dead people have left bank accounts with unclaimed funds in them. Jack is able to convert this info into bar code form and doctor it so the birth dates seem current.”
”So your bar code tattoo has the name of a dead person in it?” Grace asked.
”Yeah,” Eric replied. ”It's not foolproof, but as long as n.o.body is paying close attention, it enables us to buy stuff and not get arrested for walking around without a bar code.”
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