Sneak (21 page)

and rode off the way he had come.

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It took them a little while to settle in, but the Dust now sat on the cracked, dry ground, circling a fire they’d built using dry grass and bush twigs. They sat with a full can of refried beans each. Tyler was playing a game where he’d wait for Eddie to

scoop out a handful of his own beans to eat, and then Tyler’d

pounce, knocking the back of Eddie’s hand and sending the glop flying.

“Knock it off!” Blake said. “Tyler, you’re eating that off the ground. Eddie, you can take your next scoop out of Tyler’s can.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Tyler said.

But Blake snapped back, totally out of patience. “If Peck can

force the lot of us out to a city halfway across the country that none of us wants to live in, you’d better believe I can force you not to waste the first meal we’ve had in two days.”

Peck looked on silently, and Tyler stuck out his tongue at Blake until Eddie smacked him on the chin and sent Tyler’s teeth clamp-ing up on it.

“Thweet!” Tyler lisped around his swelling tongue. “That

wath thuch a good one, Eddie!”

“We have to think,” Peck said soberly. “
Think
where this prison could be. Acheron.
Acheron
. That’s what Logan called it. The captain all but confirmed he was right. But how do we find a place we don’t know anything about?”

Jo spoke quietly into her can. “We know it’s where we’re all

gonna die, if we actually go through with this crazy prison break attempt.”

“What was that?” Peck said.

“Nothing.”

Rusty was asleep already, curled up by the fire. Meg was

off on her own in the dark of the wide prairie stretch, trying to
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catch whatever animals she could find in the nighttime dirt so they might have breakfast in the morning.

“Well, we know the place is cold,” Eddie said. “Captain defi-

nitely said something about refrigerated cells. You remember that?

Maybe that’s a clue right there.”

“I think you’re right,” Peck said. “Thank you, Eddie.”

Eddie smiled, a little shy to have helped such an unpopular

cause.

And Meg came back and dropped a huge spider on Jo’s head.

It was a good thing they were so far out into the wastelands.

Forget surveillance powder—any closer to civilization, and DOME

would have heard that scream by ear.

No one saw Jo again that night.

And privately, Peck wondered,
What
have
I
done?
What
mess
have
I
dragged
us
all
into
now?

He went to sleep with tears in his eyes.

7

It was so late that it was early. Logan sat with his head against the cold metal of the boxcar, looking out through the open side door at the countryside rolling past.

Dane sat at the other end with his legs dangling off the edge, and Logan listened to Dane’s griptone singing softly through the empty space, just barely loud enough to hear over the wind and the rumble of wheels on tracks.

“He’s pretty good at that thing,” Logan said to Hailey, who sat beside him in the shadow of the boxcar wall.

“He’d better be; he plays it enough.”

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“Whatever,” Dane said, with a shrug neither one of them could

see. “I can hear you, you know. I’m right here.”

“I just said you’re pretty good, is all. Sheesh.” Logan rolled his eyes. The two of them hadn’t exchanged a friendly word since the hypothermia scare in the woods.

“Hey—comin’ atcha,” Dane said, and he threw the griptone to

Logan.

It was the size of a lemon, and squishy, with a little hole at its two ends.

“Just speak into it. Anything you want.”

Logan held the ball to his mouth. “Twinkle, twinkle, little

star,” he said, and the words came out of the griptone as a perfectly tuned low C note.

“Okay,” Dane said. “Now squeeze it lightly, just a little bit, when you say the second twinkle.”

Logan did and the griptone let out a painful squeal.

Dane laughed. “Lighter than that. Maybe try pressing one

finger at a time. You can get a little more nuance that way.” And Logan tried it. The second “twinkle” came out as a higher note than the first. “That’s really all there is to it. Once you get a feel for it, you can sing anything, just by speaking. It’s connected to the network too, so you can even download songs or text and make your own melodies with them.”

“Can you communicate with it?” Logan asked. “Over the net-

work? Long distance?” He tossed the griptone back to Dane.

“I guess you could receive a message.” Dane shrugged. “If someone hacked into it or something. But I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.”

“Of course not,” Hailey said. “How silly to think that this

piece of junk might actually come in handy.”

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“Well, Hailey,” Dane said, turning caustic. “I sure am sorry I don’t have my wailing mitts out here to impress you with. Or was that just another fake interest of yours?”

“It was fake,” Hailey said. “An excuse to scope out your house.”

“Guys, will you drop this?” Logan said. “Please?”

“You know . . . you never did apologize for the way you and the Dust bagged me,” Dane said. “Sneaking around like that, crashing my concert, knocking me out with chloroform . . . that last part especially,” Dane said. “Thanks for that.”

Hailey inched out of the shadows into the moonlight shining

through the boxcar doors. “I saved you,” she said. “You’d be a flunkee right now if it weren’t for me. Besides, you sure didn’t seem to mind the attention at the time.”

Dane turned away, looking over the amber ground rushing

past, letting the wind tousle his shaggy hair.

The boxcar was silent for miles and miles.

“Whatever happened to us?” Hailey finally asked Logan. “There

was a time when I thought we were the best friends in the world.”

Dane picked up his griptone again, ignoring her. Logan laughed nervously.

“Remember Underbrush Woods?” Hailey asked.

“Underbrush!” Logan said. “
Man
, that place was great! Best sleepaway camp ever—I still believe that.”

“It was awesome,” Hailey said. “Like, so great.”

“Those camp counselors were the worst,” Logan said.

“Are you kidding? They were the best!”

“Our parents thought they were the worst,” Logan corrected.

“They didn’t watch after us
at
all
.”

“No, that’s true. Remember that night we slept out on the lake, in the canoe—”

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“And they sent the search party out to find us—”

“But not until, like, two o’clock the next day!”

“That’s what I loved about the place,” Logan said. “Cause as

much trouble as we wanted.”

“Some things never change, I guess.” Hailey laughed.

Behind them, Dane hummed some song he’d written for his

old band, the Boxing Gloves, louder and louder, doing his best to tune out his two old friends.

“Hover-dodge league too,” Hailey said. “We could’ve gone

professional if we’d stuck with it just a little longer.” She laughed.

“Whatever,” Logan said. “That was all Dane. You and I were

always just trying to keep up.”

“Yeah, right,” Hailey said, and both of them laughed.

“I remember the day all three of us skipped school,” Logan

said. “You guys remember that?”

“Come on—how could I forget?”

But still Dane didn’t respond.

“Spent the whole day in that playground at Spokie Central

Park,” Logan said.

“That was the greatest playground.” Hailey sighed.

Logan nodded. “Then the Dust met me there for a show-

down in September,” he said. “I’ve never thought of it the same way again.”

“Well. All I remember about skipping school is how much

trouble I was in when I got home. I don’t think my dad had ever been madder.” Hailey frowned. “He hardly ever got that way. But it’s funny how you remember the low points.”

“My parents too,” Logan said. “They took away my tablet for

a month.”

“I remember that! And Dane and I would sneak up to your

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window at night since we couldn’t message you!” Hailey slapped her knee. “Man. Whatever happened to
that
?”

“Nothing,” Logan said, turning to face Hailey and Dane both.

“We’re the same as ever.”

Dane rolled his eyes. “You’re kidding yourself, Logan.”

“No. I’m not. You think we aren’t still the best friends in the world? Look at us!” Logan laughed now—a genuine, hearty laugh.

“We gave up
everything
for one another. We had it
good
in Spokie, guys! We had it really good! And we threw all of that away without batting an eye. Didn’t even flinch! The time came when we

needed each other, and we threw our whole lives out the window to answer the call. If that doesn’t make you two the best friends in the world to me, then I don’t know what does. And you’re both crazy if you don’t see it.” Logan looked back out to the countryside now.

A minute later Hailey put her hand on Logan’s shoulder. She

patted it twice. Dane finally turned toward them, and he frowned from his side of the boxcar.

The three of them sat like that, just staring out at the world rolling by, and they watched the sun rise.

8

The next morning, Erin’s apartment was empty. Not just sort of empty—
truly
empty. The movers had come first thing and taken every last piece of furniture, trinket, and decoration that had once been in the space.

Her father was at work, gathering his belongings there to take with him as carry-ons on the train ride back. And it would have
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been a school day for Erin too, if she hadn’t already been pulled from Spokie Middle.

As it was, she’d never have to set foot in that miserly school again.

So Erin sat on the open floor of her abandoned apartment

alone, basking in the white light reflecting unimpeded off the blank walls, and delved into hacking territory so deep that it was un familiar even to her.

The memo system in DOME’s mainframe computer was heavily

protected, vast, and shockingly unorganized. All morning, she’d been searching high and low for some appearance—any appearance—of

the word “Acheron” in any of DOME’s files. She had just about given up hope of it being a word at all—much less of it being a word within DOME’s database—when, finally, she found it. A single memo from Mr. Michael Cheswick, the man who demoted her father:

Project trumPet contained

acheron imPS SucceSSful

targetS eliminated

detailS to follow on Page

It meant nothing, as far as Erin was concerned. She read the

thing over thirty, forty times. She dissected every last letter. The memo was gibberish.

And then the header caught Erin’s eye.

“toP Secret,” it said.

“for general lamSon’S eyeS only.”

And a wide smile spread over Erin’s face.

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9

On her second visit to the Phoenix house, Grandma didn’t even

bother to knock. She walked right down the sunny street, up onto the porch, and through the door without so much as a greeting.

“Sonya. You’re back.” Mrs. Phoenix was sitting at the kitchen

table, hunched over a sculpture, hands pressed against her ears, cough ing a little. She looked as if she’d been concentrating

in tensely.

“You skipped work again, I see,” Grandma said.

Mrs. Phoenix frowned. “What can I do for you, Sonya?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. About Logan and Hailey. Dianne,

we need to help.”

Mrs. Phoenix looked at her and shrugged.

“What’s the, uh . . .” Grandma waved her hands around the

air. “What’s the situation?”

It took Mrs. Phoenix a moment to catch on. “Oh!” she said

finally. “We’re good. DOME’s not listening. No signs of surveillance right now.”

“That’s lucky.”

“Well, with Hailey gone . . . I was never exactly their prime

target.”

Grandma nodded. “Then that’s our advantage.”

Mrs. Phoenix slumped down in her chair at the kitchen table,

coughing for a while. “Listen, Sonya. Not that I mind the company these days, but . . . your coming here like this . . . I’m afraid I just . . . don’t really see the point.”

Grandma shrugged. “What’s that you’ve you got there?” she

said, pointing at the sculpture in front of Mrs. Phoenix.

“It’s . . . well, it’s nothing,” Mrs. Phoenix said, pushing it away.

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“Nonsense. I didn’t sneak all the way out here just to get the runaround—”

“Oh, give it a rest,” Mrs. Phoenix said. “It’s a radio, all right?”

She laughed. “An actual radio.” She shook her head. “Can you

believe it?”

Grandma sat at the table now, eyeing the sculpture. “A radio,

huh? Doesn’t look like any radio I’ve ever seen . . .”

“Well. It is one, all the same. AM-type. Shortwave.”

Grandma narrowed her eyes. “Shortwave? Dianne, there

hasn’t been a shortwave station since pre-Unity days. Last ones went off the air before you were even born.”