Quicksilver (23 page)

I drew a sharp breath. The biggest radio antennas I knew of were down in the States—a
long
way down. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

“Is it that bad? I thought it would be an adventure, myself.” He patted the dashboard. “And this seemed like just the vehicle for the purpose.”

“You want to drive all the way to
New Mexico?”

Sebastian made a spluttering noise, and then he started to laugh. The truck swerved, and I grabbed the steering wheel and straightened us out just in time—hello, déjà vu.

“All right, fine!” I snapped. “I don’t have any idea where you’re talking about. Does that make you feel superior enough? Because you seem to enjoy that.”

That sobered him. He sat back, curling his long fingers about the wheel. “I apologize,” he said. “No, we’re not going to Arecibo. We’re not even leaving the province. Have you ever visited Algonquin Park?”

It was the largest wilderness preserve in Ontario, a massive seven thousand square kilometers filled with pine trees, rocky lakes, and bears. Camps and cottages dotted the outskirts, but the interior was infamously remote. Lara had gone on a Girl Guide canoe trip to Algonquin two years ago, and when she got back, she couldn’t stop talking about it. She’d described the haunting calls of the loons that glided by their campsite in the morning, the bull moose they’d nearly bumped into while navigating a swamp, and I’d envied her every moment of it, even the mosquito bites. Because back then I’d still had that stupid chip in my arm and I couldn’t go anywhere.

“No,” I said shortly. “I haven’t.”

“Well, about sixty years ago the National Research Council set up a radio observatory in the middle of the park, including a forty-six-meter antenna on an equatorial mount. The antenna broke down in the mid-eighties, and the government abandoned the site rather than spend the money to repair it. But a few years ago a small space communications company leased the property and fixed the antenna, and now it’s a private venture. So I’ve made arrangements for us to stay at the observatory for a couple of days and use their antenna for our little experiment.”

If calling the experiment
little
was an understatement,
made arrangements
was an even bigger one
.
It wasn’t hard to guess why Sebastian looked so tired—he must have spent days faking some academic credentials and writing a bunch of articles about his so-called research before he called the observatory and introduced himself. Then he’d had to work out all the equations to figure out the technical requirements for the transceiver, write the specs so I could get started building it, and design a complicated piece of software to get the antenna, the transceiver, and the relay to talk to each other. And just when he was as busy as he’d ever been in his life, I’d texted and asked him to get Deckard off my tail.

No wonder he hadn’t replied right away when I told him the transceiver was ready. By then he must have been practically in a coma.

“I had no idea,” I said, and I wasn’t just talking about the antenna. “So how are you paying for all this? You must be scraping the bottom of your bank account by now, and if Deckard and his police buddies used it to find you once—”

“That was carelessness on my part,” said Sebastian. “I should have known my main account was being watched. But I had a couple of other, better guarded accounts as backup. And I always made sure to keep a decent amount in each one of them, since I knew I might have to change my identity at any moment.”

Even so, I suspected that a
decent amount
wasn’t more than a few thousand dollars all together, or Sebastian wouldn’t have needed me to build him a transceiver from scratch. Not to mention that when Alison met him, he’d been working as a janitor and living in a tiny little basement apartment—hardly the lifestyle of a secret millionaire.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“No,” said Sebastian mildly, “I didn’t. It’s being looked after, Tori. That’s all you need to know.”

And there he went playing big brother again. “It’s Niki,” I said. “Like Nikola Tesla, Mr.
Faraday,
and you really need to get out of that habit. Or I’m going to start calling you by your real name, and we’ll see how much you like it.”

Sebastian was silent, his eyes on the road. Then he said, “You know, at times it’s difficult to imagine how you became the most popular girl in your high school.”

“You know exactly how I did it,” I said. “I watched people and did whatever it took to make them like me, or trust me, or feel like they owed me a favor. So they had to stop seeing me as an outsider, and accept me as one of their own. And don’t tell me that you don’t do the same thing, for exactly the same reasons.” I folded my arms. “The only difference between us is that you think you can manipulate me the same way.”

“So there’s no such thing as kindness, only manipulation?” Sebastian shook his head. “That’s quite a cynical outlook, Niki.”

“Oh, please. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Do I? I don’t think you know me half as well as you seem to believe.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine,” I said. “Far be it from me to violate your impenetrable air of mystery.”

Sebastian gave me a sideways glance, and I could see I’d surprised him. “That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“Your vocabulary and diction just jumped several grade levels. That’s deliberate too, isn’t it? You keep your language simple so people won’t be threatened by your intelligence.”

“Well, you see,” I said, “my mother taught me that it’s rude to make other people feel inferior.”

Which was catty, and I knew I’d probably regret it. But Sebastian only looked thoughtful. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Your parents have obviously had a powerful influence on your life. Do you ever resent that? Have you ever tried to rebel?”

“Are we playing Twenty Really Personal Questions now?” I asked. “Because I’d rather stick to Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Sorry,” said Sebastian. “I was only curious. I hardly remember my own parents at all.”

Well, that was awkward. I looked away quickly, counting the telephone poles flashing by the window, and we drove in silence all the rest of the way to Milo’s house.

1 1 0 0 0 1

Milo was waiting at the end of his driveway, casually dressed and with a sports bag slung over his shoulder. “This trip had better be educational,” he said as he climbed in behind me. “Because not only do I have to write an essay about it, but there is
zero
legroom back here.”

“What did you tell your mom?” I asked.

Milo slid to the middle of the seat and leaned between us. “The truth, more or less,” he said. “Left her a note saying I knew this guy who was a scientist, and he’d invited me and another student to help him out with an experiment for a couple of days. Told her I’d cleared it with my physics teacher, which I actually did because Mr. Vanacek is on Facebook all the freakin’ time. So I’m sure Mom’ll be fine with it. Whenever she wakes up.”

“Your mother’s still working nights, then?” asked Sebastian. “Where?”

“Hospital,” said Milo. “She’s a trauma nurse. She wanted to be a surgeon, but, uh … that didn’t really work out.”

We made a fuel stop before we hit the highway, and Milo followed Sebastian into the store to get some snacks. While they were gone, I threw our luggage into the truck bed next to the transceiver, then climbed into the back seat so Milo could have the front. He tried to argue with me about it, but I told him to shut up because I wasn’t being noble, I just wanted to go to sleep. Then I lay down and pulled Sebastian’s car blanket over my shoulders, in case anyone was tempted to doubt it.

As I was drifting off, it occurred to me that Sebastian was even more tired than I was and probably shouldn’t be tackling an eight-hour drive at the moment, Sunday traffic or not. I was wondering fuzzily if I should say something to Milo about it when I fell asleep.

1 1 0 0 1 0

When I woke up, my mouth tasted thick and furry and my face was stuck to the seat. I rolled over, wincing, and rubbed my eyes. How long had I been sleeping? Longer than I’d planned, for sure. The sun was halfway to the horizon, and my left contact lens felt like it had been put in with superglue. Worse, the right one didn’t feel like it was there at all. I was lifting a tentative finger to check when I spotted the thin circle of grey stuck to the edge of my hand.

Great. How was I going to put it back in now? My lens kit was in the bed of the truck.

“… Literally, it means ‘
joined sensation.’”
Sebastian’s voice rose over the sound of the engine. “When two or more of the five senses are interconnected, so that when one is stimulated, the other responds at the same time. When I met Alison, I discovered that she not only had multiple forms of synesthesia—seeing sounds, tasting words, and so on—but that her perceptions were extraordinarily acute.”

I’d propped myself up on both elbows, ready to ask Sebastian to pull over. But if Milo had got him talking about Alison, there was no way I was going to interrupt now. Carefully I lay back down and listened.

“So there was no real reason for her to be in the psych hospital?” asked Milo. “They just put her there because they didn’t know what was wrong with her?”

“Well, they had legitimate reason for concern,” Sebastian said. “There was a family history of schizophrenia, for one thing. Alison’s insistence that she’d seen Tori—sorry, Niki—disintegrate didn’t help either. And at times her reactions could be … violent.”

“Whoa,” said Milo. “How violent?”

“No weapons were involved, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Sebastian dryly. “Even in her worst moments, Alison never hurt anyone on purpose. But being exposed to the relay had a powerful effect on her synesthesia. After Niki disappeared, Allison’s senses were so raw that even the slightest touch felt like an assault, and when it became too much for her, she panicked and lashed out. So you can see why the police, and even her own family, made the mistake they did.”

“And you’re sure it was the relay that did it?” asked Milo. “Because Niki and I were standing right there when you came through, and it didn’t do anything to us.”

“No, but neither of you are synesthetes, let alone as sensitive as Alison. I admit I was skeptical myself at first, but once I’d seen the relay’s effect on her firsthand, there was no doubt.”

And that was another good reason for Sebastian to keep his distance from Alison, now that I thought about it. Especially since he was still carrying the relay around with him, and there was no way—yet—to be sure it wouldn’t go off again.

I played possum for another five minutes, hoping Sebastian would let something slip that I didn’t already know. But soon the conversation shifted to more casual topics, and by the time they’d started talking about the best places to eat in Sudbury, I’d had enough. I sat up, yawning, and asked, “What time is it?”

“Four twenty,” said Milo. “That was a pretty impressive nap you took there. Want some Doritos?”

With the taste of sleep lingering in my mouth, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less. “Ugh, no,” I said. “Can we stop at a Timmy’s somewhere? I need coffee.”

“We left civilization behind an hour ago,” Milo said, tipping his head at the windscreen. Rocky outcroppings and stands of evergreen trees lined both sides of the highway, with a glimpse of blue lake around the next curve. “I don’t think there’s anything for…” He trailed off as our eyes met.

“What?” I asked, and then I remembered my missing contact. Which was really missing now, because while I was pretending to be asleep, it had dried up and fallen onto the floor. So now I had one grey-blue eye and one turquoise. “Oh. Yeah, I know. I lost a lens somewhere.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” asked Milo. “When I had contacts, I couldn’t stand to—” He frowned. “Wait. Who gets tinted contacts to make their eyes look
less
blue?”

“People who are trying not to get recognized, that’s who,” I said. “You had contacts?”

“For a couple years. But they bugged me and I kept getting eye infections, so finally I gave up and went back to glasses.” He studied me, still looking troubled. “But yours … they’re just for show, aren’t they? You don’t have any prescription at all.”

I sighed and swiped the remaining lens out of my eye, rolling it between my fingers and let it fall. It wasn’t like my disguise had protected me from Deckard, and I was tired of wearing contacts anyway. “Yeah,” I said. “And for the record, I also dye my hair.”

“Sure,” said Milo. “Makes sense.” But his voice was subdued, and I could guess why. He’d thought we were close, but he was starting to realize how little he knew about me. How many other secrets had I been keeping from him all this time?

Too many. But even now, I was afraid of telling him the truth. I still wasn’t sure how he’d react.

“I dye my hair too,” announced Sebastian. “Premature grey is so unflattering. Oh, look—is that a porcupine?”

As distractions went, it was a brave attempt, or at least the parody of one. But since the porcupine in question was lying half-smashed at the side of the highway with one paw stuck pathetically in the air, it didn’t help much.

“No,” I said wearily, “it’s a metaphor for this conversation. Can we switch seats now?”

1 1 0 0 1 1

We stopped for coffee and supper at a roadside diner north of the park. I’d eaten as much of my burger as I could stomach, and Sebastian and Milo were polishing off their slices of pie, when I remembered I still hadn’t texted my parents.

Well, no point in putting it off any longer. I pulled out my phone.

–On road trip with Milo and friend (responsible adult—no worries). Back in a couple of days.

I sent that one to my mother, then added a line about Deckard being safely out of the picture for the time being, and sent it again to my dad. Of course my phone clanked and lit up in seconds with Mom demanding to know where I was going and why I hadn’t asked permission first. But when I explained that the trip to the observatory had come up at the last minute and that Milo had cleared it with his mom and teachers before we went, she calmed down.