The Arctic Code (14 page)

Luke nodded.

“What does telluric even mean?” Julian asked.

“I looked it up,” Eleanor said. “It just means earth.”

“Yes and no,” Finn said. “Telluric currents are supposedly these bands of energy that crisscross the
earth, under the surface.” He turned to Julian. “Dad's talked about them.”

“He has?” Julian asked.

“If you ever paid attention,” Finn said, with a hint of smugness in his voice. “Some people call them ley lines. They supposedly produce massive amounts of energy. But these are, like, crackpot theories, right? Really fringe stuff. I didn't think anyone believed in them.”

“So why is Skinner looking for them?” Eleanor asked.

“Um,” Luke said, “I'm going to venture a guess it has something to do with his running an
energy
company.”

Eleanor ignored his sarcasm. Could telluric currents be the large discovery her mother had made? What if the numbers she'd sent had something to do with the energy deposit Skinner wanted to find?

“My point is,” Finn said, “Skinner's not in this for our parents. I'm with Eleanor. It's up to us to find them.”

“Okay, we're done.” Julian stood up. “No more of this. You hear me? No more talking about going out there to search. No more talking about ley lines or whatever they're called. No more. Period. You bring it up again, and I'll go to Skinner myself.”

“Julian!” Finn shouted.

“No, Finn, you listen to me! I may not be as smart as you and Dad. I may not know all about computers and ley lines and telluric whatevers, but I am your older brother, and I know a stupid idea when I hear one. Dad is out there, got it? They will find him, and they will bring him home. Our job is to shut up and stay out of their way—or help them, if we can.” He shot a look at Eleanor. “Now I'm going to bed. I suggest you do the same.”

With that, Eleanor watched Julian storm away for the second time since she'd met him. Luke rose from the table soon after.

“Julian's right,” he said. “Skinner's a piece of work, but you kids need to keep yourselves safe above all. I know that's what your parents would want.” Then he, too, went downstairs.

Once again, Eleanor found herself alone with Finn. He glowered across the table from her, and she wanted to help but wasn't sure how or what she should say. So she just stayed quiet and waited.

“My brother's not stupid,” he finally said.

“I know,” Eleanor said.

“He only says that because our dad's a scientist and I get straight As. Like, he doesn't fit in, or something.” Finn rubbed his eyes hard. “I shouldn't have said that
about him not paying attention.”

“You're a good brother. I know what it's like to not fit in. It feels—”

“Let's just go to bed, okay?” Finn labored out of his seat. “I gotta go talk to him before he falls asleep.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Eleanor got out of her seat and awkwardly followed Finn down the spiral staircase. He trudged to the room he shared with Julian, said, “G'night,” and went inside.

“Night,” Eleanor said.

She opened her own door and entered her room. At the sight of her bed, an overpowering exhaustion rolled over her, dragging her down. But on her way there, she caught a glimpse through her window. She killed all the lights in her room so she could see better, her nose pressed against the cold, thick glass, breath fogging it up in waves, blades of icy crystal crawling across the outer pane.

White.

So much white.

Barrow was out there somewhere, that lawless, vile place, while the original Barrow lay buried beneath it under miles of ice. If that ice kept up its terrible advance, all the way to the equator, the whole world would look like this one day. This blank nothingness that erased everything. Even with all its advances,
how long would Polaris Station last? How long would Barrow, or any place, last?

But then she saw something out there. Something not white. A shadow wavering in and out of the blowing snow. Eleanor squinted, straining to see what could possibly be moving out there, where nothing was supposed to survive. A creeping fear moved along her skin, like an ice sheet claiming her. Perhaps what Felipe had said shaped the image in her mind, but she swore she could see four legs. A thick neck and a tail.

A wolf.

And with that wolf something else. The tall shadowy figure of a man.

E
LEANOR BLINKED AND SQUINTED, BUT THE HARDER SHE
strained to see them, the more the figures eluded her, until she finally had to admit they were gone, and might never have been there in the first place, a projection of her own imagination onto the void. She wanted to believe that was the explanation, rather than ghost wolves, but couldn't convince herself of it enough to fall asleep. She lay there in her bed, in her narrow room, inside a sphere as inconsequential as a marble tossed into a snowbank.

She kept replaying the night's previous conversations in her mind, treating each piece of information as the part of a larger whole, studying each of them,
rotating each of them, trying to fit them all together. Before long, she felt that she had assembled them into something that made at least a little sense.

The best theory that she could come up with was that her mother had recently discovered an energy source, a telluric energy source, and the G.E.T. had come in with their crazy Arctic station and basically taken over. Eleanor's mom and Dr. Powers had then gone out onto the ice sheet, perhaps to do more research, and something had happened. What it was Eleanor didn't know, but what she did know was that whatever her mother found, she had decided to send it to Eleanor to keep it secret and safe. Then she and Dr. Powers had vanished.

Assuming that was all true, Eleanor still needed more information. There were too many gaps and unanswered questions, like the meaning of those files her mom had sent, and that number code. Could they hold the key to finding Mom, as the G.E.T. seemed to think? If so, Eleanor's best chance at finding some of those answers might be her mother's laptop. If she could just get a look at it.

It had been a few hours since she'd gone to bed. The rest of Polaris Station would likely be asleep. If she had any chance of getting a look at the computer unobserved, it was now. She could sneak over to the
command module, dig around through the laptop, and put it back before anyone noticed.

Eleanor climbed out of bed and opened the door to her room. The pod had apparently gone into some kind of power save. It was cold enough in the common areas for her breath to become a wisp, and most of the lights were out, rendering the station a dark and frightening maze.

She went barefoot to the tunnel connecting her pod to the command module and paused outside it. A hatch had closed over it, sealing it off. Eleanor found a handle and turned it with a bit of difficulty. The hatch opened with a
clunk
. Inside, the tunnel to the next pod had become a black cave, and even though she knew what lay on the other side, she hesitated before climbing in. After she'd gone a few feet, she heard the hatch swing shut behind her automatically, sealing her in darkness.

The storm hadn't let up at all since the last time she'd crossed the bridge. It ripped around the tunnel, shaking the entire structure. Eleanor, in her sweats and bare feet, without her polar gear, felt more vulnerable to it than she ever had since coming to the Arctic, the closest the cold had come to claiming her. She was shivering within moments and scrambled the rest of the way as quickly as she could.

When she reached the opposite end, she found the
hatch open a crack. She closed it behind her, the pod she emerged into as cold and dark as hers had been. But two levels down the command module glowed fitfully with the activity of its screens and monitors. It was also empty, as she'd hoped it would be.

She skulked, shivering, down the rows of computer terminals to the desk where Dr. Skinner had shown Eleanor her mother's laptop. She found it in the same drawer and lifted the screen to the same familiar log-in. She typed in the password,
EllBell
, and the computer opened itself up.

But now Eleanor had to figure out what she was looking for. She started with a simple search for the word
telluric
. That brought up a few emails between her mom and various scientists in different parts of the world with intriguing subject lines.

When she opened these emails to read them, she found they were all more than a year old, mostly just
debating whether telluric currents actually exist. Nothing about any sort of discovery. Eleanor's search also brought up a few research papers, but they sounded pretty fringe, as Finn had said. Most were written by the same guy, Dr. Johann von Albrecht. Titles like “Earth Energy: Secret Power of the Ancient World,” and “The Great Pyramids: Power Plants of the Pharaohs,” and “Did an Energy Crisis Destroy Atlantis?” Pretty out there. Some of the articles even talked about
aliens
. But as far as Eleanor could see, none contained information that pointed to the situation here in the Arctic, so she moved on.

She searched for
Global Energy Trust
, and this brought up a bunch of files, but when Eleanor dove into them, they seemed to mostly consist of legal documents, drilling claims, and accounting ledgers. Poring over them took up quite a bit of time, which Eleanor didn't think she had to waste, but it didn't result in anything useful.

She tried searching
Arctic
, but that brought up more information than she could possibly sift through. Morning was coming, and she had no idea how early Skinner and the others would be up. She needed to try something else but didn't know what.

In one last attempt, she entered the number code
she had memorized from her Sync. That search brought up a single result, an email her mother had sent to Dr. Simon Powers, Finn and Julian's dad.

Coordinates!
That answered Eleanor's question about the meaning of the code. The numbers did, in fact, identify the site of the deposit her mother had found. That was what her mother had wanted Eleanor to keep secret. That was what Skinner really wanted, just as Finn had said.

The email was dated several months ago. When
Eleanor did a search for any additional messages to Dr. Powers, she found nothing. Apparently, her mother didn't use this laptop much.

A harsh light flashed on overhead, and Eleanor flinched. She looked around in a panic, but it seemed to have turned on automatically. Another light flared, and another, and another, dominoing through the command module. The pod was waking up.

Eleanor deleted the email, signed out of her mother's log-in, and closed the lid. Then she replaced the laptop in the desk drawer and hurried back to the tunnel. She wasn't looking forward to this, but she turned the handle, opened the hatch, and climbed in. The hatch swung shut behind her with a
clunk
, and she started the frigid crossing.

Those coordinates, that site her mom had discovered. They were the keys. She assumed that was where her mother and Dr. Powers had been going when they vanished, and now she knew for certain that would be the place to begin a search for them. For now, only Eleanor had this information, and she had to get there, somehow.

Her limbs trembled from the cold of the tunnel. Her toes and fingers hurt. But she reached the far side and . . .

There was no handle.

Eleanor blinked at the hatch. She thought back. The command module hatch had already been open when she'd reached it. How had she not checked to make sure they opened from both sides? How could she have been that stupid?

She willed herself not to panic but failed a few moments in. She was trapped in a tunnel suspended between two Arctic pods, above the ice sheet, in the middle of a polar storm. She wore a pair of sweats, had no shoes, and it was cold enough in here for hypothermia to set in if she didn't get out soon.

How long until someone opened the tunnel from the other side? It was getting difficult to breathe, both from the cold and the racing of her own heart. She could die in here. The cold had found her. It had waited, biding its time, to seize the first opportunity of weakness she gave it.

For the next few minutes, she banged on the hatch, hoping to wake Luke, Finn, or Julian. But no one came. It was still early, and they were sleeping in their rooms, their doors closed, one level down, unable to hear her.

Her teeth chattered so hard her jaw ached. She tucked her legs up tight and pulled her arms inside her sweatshirt, hugging herself in the fetal position. She had to conserve the heat at her core.

Minutes went by. She didn't know how many. Her whole body began to numb, and she knew what that meant. The fact that it didn't feel as cold anymore terrified her, but soon, that fear gave way to a blurring of her thoughts. Through her fog, Eleanor knew these were all very, very bad signs.

She roused what energy she had and banged on the hatch again. “Help!” she shouted, her voice echoing weakly back and forth from one end of the tunnel to the other. “Help me! Luke! Finn! Anybody!”

Still no one came.

She slumped against the hatch, drained of energy. The storm seemed to be laughing at her outside the tunnel. A savage, pitiless laugh. She closed her eyes, and that laugh filled her, its icy disdain echoing through her bones.

Something clunked near her head. The hatch fell away, and Eleanor fell with it, right out of the tunnel.

“Hold on,” a voice said. “I gotcha.”

Eleanor felt hot hands grabbing her. She looked up as someone lowered her gently to the ground. It was Finn.

The worry on his face roused fear back into her. “Be right back,” he whispered.

Eleanor already felt a bit warmer there, lying on the floor. But she felt even warmer when a moment
later Finn returned with a thermal blanket.

“There,” he said, tucking it in around her. “You're going to be fine.”

“Finn?” Eleanor felt the warmth of the blanket charging inward, driving out the storm, waging a painful battle for her muscles and bones.

“I'm here,” he said, rubbing her shoulders with both hands.

She winced. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “I'll make you wait to tell me what you were doing in there.”

Eleanor felt the fog burning away from her mind. She blinked. “My mom's laptop.”

“What about it?”

“I opened it up.” Eleanor's leg and arm muscles spasmed, coming back to life. “I know what my mom was after. With your dad. I know what Skinner is after.”

“You do?” Finn asked.

Eleanor nodded, letting her eyes close. “And I know where to find it.”

A
short while later, Eleanor sat at one of the tables in the kitchen with a hot bowl of undercooked ramen, the blanket still wrapped around her. Finn and Julian sat across from her while Luke paced the small space.

“Pretty dumb move, kid.” His voice was even, but
Eleanor could tell he was angry.

She found she was even a little angry with herself, but she wasn't about to let him know that. “Was it, Luke? What are you, my dad now? And I would have been fine if the doors had actually opened from inside, like pretty much every other door in the world.”

“They do,” Julian said. “But the outer doors only open by key card. For security.”

“Oh.” Eleanor felt the key card she had in her pocket. The key card that had been in her pocket the entire time. She bowed her head, embarrassed, but also reminded of what a simple mistake up here could mean. “How did you know I was in there, anyway?” she asked Finn.

“I heard you banging,” he said.

“What if he hadn't?” Luke asked. “You'd be dead. You know that, right?”

“Yes, Luke.” A shiver grabbed Eleanor by the spine. “I'm well aware of that.”

“No, I really don't think you are.” He stopped pacing and came to lean over her, his knuckles on the table. “I saved you once. Finn saved you this time. What happens next time, if one of us isn't around?”

“Hopefully, there won't be a next time,” she said. “But it doesn't matter. I came up here to find my mom, and that's still what I plan to do.”

“How?” Finn asked.

Julian rolled his eyes.

“On my mom's laptop,” Eleanor said, “I found an email she wrote to your dad.” She then told them what it read, including the coordinates, which could now be shared without revealing her Sync, and then she filled them in on her theory about what had happened.

“Makes perfect sense,” Finn said when she finished.

“No, it doesn't,” Julian said. “We need to give Skinner those coordinates. Right now.”

“No,” Eleanor said. “We can't risk that.”

“I agree with her,” Finn said.

“Are you kidding me?” Julian said. “This again?”

“The coordinates most likely point to the energy deposit,” Eleanor said. “Let's say Skinner reaches it but our parents aren't there. What then? Skinner will have what he wants. You think he's going to keep looking for our parents?”

Julian snorted. “He wouldn't just give up like that.”

“He might,” Luke said. “Much as I hate to admit it.” He pointed at Eleanor. “If this theory of yours is true, Skinner could easily say he put in a good-faith effort, cut his losses, and move on with whatever he finds out there. Wouldn't be the first time, from what I hear.”