The Gambit (68 page)

Today was a teacher workday. That meant a three-day weekend for me. Halloween was Monday, too. I would get to hang out with my friends. All of us agreed it wasn’t cool anymore to dress up, but we still wanted the candy. We were going to skateboard from house to house. We didn’t need costumes. We would just be skaters.

I opened up a new tab on the internet and typed in YouTube. My history auto-filled it, and it went to my channel. I checked it all the time now. I finally had over two thousand subscribers. I could get ad shares from YouTube, where they paid me monthly. I liked the idea of not even being fourteen yet and having more money than my friends. Thank God for the video.

The day I filmed Owen on CNN, I uploaded it onto YouTube. It had been a week and it already had over fifty million views, and it kept going higher every day. I was blown away by all of this. I had no idea it would become so popular. All the kids at school had seen it, and they knew it was me. I felt like a celebrity.

My Dad told me he didn’t think it was a good idea to put it on the internet, but my mom disagreed. She mentioned something about the greater good, and that not putting it out there for everyone to see would be a waste of our first amendment. I was just glad Mom stood up for me. Random people kept trolling in the comments saying that the video was fake. Then there were others who warned to share the video as quickly as possible because the government would take it down. I had watched it so many times in the past week I thought I finally understood why they were warning me to begin with.

If Owen really
was
innocent, even if he was dead now, they wouldn’t want people finding out. Whoever Veronica was, I was sure she wouldn’t want to be all over the internet. Every time I heard Owen say what he said about the Confinement in the video, the fear it gave me was unimaginable. He said they never meant to let us out to begin with. I didn’t want to go
back
. Those three months gave me nightmares as it is.

For now, everything would be all right. I was going to forget about what Owen said in the video for the first time since it happened. I deserved to enjoy my time off and not worry.

I could smell the chicken tenders cooking downstairs. My mom was making me lunch. My friend Colby was coming over at twelve when he got out of his orthodontist appointment. Maybe he would bring over his new videogame too. That way we could go skateboarding while it was still warm outside and play the videogame in my room after. I scrolled through some more of the comments while I waited for my food to be ready. I kept seeing the word
conspiracy
written in every other comment.

I opened another tab and Googled
Owen Marina Conspiracy
. It pulled up millions of results in a fraction of a second. I began clicking on different articles and reading.

They all said the same thing. That not only was Owen innocent—he was
framed
.

My stomach flopped from the stuff I saw. Why would our government do such a thing? Why would they want to keep us in the Camps? Who knows? I sure didn’t.

I heard the sound of doors closing outside. I stood up and walked over to the blinds and peered through. There were two men in black suits wearing matching sunglasses. I could see nothing but the reflection of the house off of their dark lenses. I wondered if they had the wrong address. Their black GMC Yukon was parked in my driveway. My heart began to race. I ran outside my room and leaned over the railing that looked out on the foyer.

“Mom!” I yelled. No one responded. I heard the sound of the vacuum downstairs. She couldn’t hear me.

“
Mom!
” I put more energy into it, and the vacuum cut off.

“What, honey?”

“Someone’s here!”

Whoever they were, I didn’t have a good feeling about why they were coming to visit.

Lucas appeared as he made it down the last few steps of the staircase. He rounded the corner with two pizza boxes in hand. When he got closer, I saw how much more pronounced the bags under his eyes were. Maybe what he said last night was true, that every time he went to work he felt like he was drowning.

His wife had brought us down some plates of leftovers around six, but she didn’t say much. She seemed uncomfortable around us. I had been anxiously waiting all day for Lucas’s return. I just hoped he had some information regarding Veronica, because every day that passed, was another day closer to the election.

As difficult as it was for me to handle, I watched the news today. That was when I discovered that Owen had been right. The stunt that cost him his life actually worked. According to what I saw today, the morning Owen barged into the newscast, the Convergence Party polls were twenty-nine percent. Republicans were twenty-one percent while democrats claimed fifty. One week later, the Convergence Party had forty-one percent, equal to the democrats, and the republicans dropped three points.

If only he were here to see it.

Perhaps, after
my
little stunt, we would be able to give the Convergence Party the push it needed to defeat the democrats in the election. I prayed so, because after everything I have learned I knew the outcome would be deadly if we didn’t.

“I got one cheese and one pepperoni,” Lucas announced. No one got any right away, but Natasha glanced around at all of us before she stood up and grabbed a slice.

“I can never turn down pizza,” she shrugged.

I wasn’t hungry. I probably wouldn’t be until Lucas told us how his day at work was. We were all restless—at least I was. We were cooped up in here all day watching TV and Netflix. Viktor and Grey played his PlayStation 4.

“So,” I began. “How was work?”

A small smirk began to tug at his lips before he spoke. That alone was enough to ease the anxious pit in my gut.

“It went better than I expected.”

“That’s great,” I gasped. “What went on?”

“I went in and began work like usual. I haven’t been there in a week, so I had to be brought up to speed by my colleagues. Interestingly enough, although they still have you on the wanted list, Rachel, you aren’t their primary concern anymore—Viktor is.”

“I should be,” he laughed. “What changed?”

“Veronica is pretty certain the quote on the billboard in Atlanta was your doing, and she wants you gone. I could tell just by her disposition that she was worried that you are still out there.”

“Good. I want her to be worried. Serves her right after what she did to me.”

“Indeed,” Lucas said. “So, after working around Veronica for so long, I already know her routine. She takes her lunch break half an hour earlier than we do. I walked past the hallway where her office is, and she left her door cracked. I went to her desktop and bugged her computer.”

“Nice,” Grey added.

“It gets better,” he continued. “Veronica typically only works for eight hours. I work for twelve. So, whenever she left, I snuck back into her office and retrieved the information I needed. I found something golden.”

“Which was?” Natasha asked, nervously twirling the black strands of hair that fell from her bun.

“An email from the Chairman of the Republican Party, Marc Fleming, reminding her of the meeting Monday morning at ten on the second floor boardroom of the EPA headquarters. It is to debrief on everything that has happened up to this point, and then a brief on what the plan of action will be after the election is won.”

“That’s great!” Viktor exclaimed. “Now we know where she is going to be.”

Lucas’s smile began to fade, and he glanced around at all of us.

“There is one downside, though…”

“What?” I asked.

“My CIA ID can get me into the EPA, no problem, except it will cause attention to whoever is using it. If Veronica is in the building, I am sure security will be tight. What we really need is an EPA ID. It would allow us to slide by unnoticed.”

“How do we get one?” Natasha asked.

“Well, that’s the problem. I just hope the person I have in mind is willing to help. She was actually the person who gave me the information to fax Ian in the first place. It took a little coaxing, but it didn’t take long to get the truth out of her. Veronica had threatened her since Black Monday if she were to tell anyone. She was sworn to secrecy. Veronica gave her sole access to the room where the actual files from the Black Monday cleanup were kept. Her office is
also
on the second floor, the same floor the meeting is being held.”

“Who is this woman?” Grey asked.

“Her name is Megan Walling—”

Grey began to cough as if he was choking, and Lucas stared at him perplexed before continuing.

“When she finally told the truth, she broke down in tears. She told me she felt guilty about what they were doing to Owen, framing him for a crime he didn’t commit. She said he was her ex, ironically enough.”

My forehead scrunched up and my eyebrows quirked. His
ex?

“Wait, are you serious?”

“I am,” Lucas replied. “At least, that is what she told me. She said they were in love.”

Grey finally composed himself enough to speak.

“He’s serious. I met her when they were still in college together.”

Jealousy seethed through my veins. The only thing I recalled him telling me about his ex was the day I met him, when we were driving to Briana’s, before we totaled my car. He said he only had one girlfriend since he was twenty-one. He never told me how long, or that he was in love. I wondered what she looked like. Was she prettier than me?

My thoughts spiraled on.

“It’s perfect,” Briana spoke up, and we all turned to her. “You have to get her in on this, Lucas. I can take her ID and put Rachel’s picture on it. That would get her past reception initially, right?”

“Presumably,” he said.

“Then, if Megan is working the day of the meeting, she can use her own iris, or her own palm to get Rachel into wherever she needs.”

Lucas nodded, and a smile began to emerge.

“You are exactly right,” he said.

I pondered Briana’s suggestion. I knew Owen loved me, as I did him, but the thought that at one point he
loved
Megan made me cringe. Why would I want to even be in the same room with her?
Stop
—I told myself. We needed her help to take down Veronica.