The Sphinx Project (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

No one was on the roads. It was quiet and it was cold. After some time, my ears identified an odd noise. I could hear a small humming. It came from somewhere beneath the car, and whenever there was a noise, there was also electronic feedback.

"Mouse, can you hear that?"

"Yeah."

With one hand on the steering wheel, I used the other, pretending to write something. From the corner of my eye I saw her nod, searching for a pen and paper.

She found a pen in the glove compartment, but not even a receipt for paper. I pulled over to the side of the road and she opened the bag. Selecting a sheet from the piles we'd taken from the labs she passed it to me.

Can you hear feedback when we talk? I think someone's recording us,
I wrote, leaning on the dashboard.

Mouse gestured for the paper.

It was a setup,
she wrote, confirming my suspicion.
We need a new car. They know this one now.

I just bobbed my head in response.

We pulled back onto the road and drove southwest into Georgia, not stopping until we reached Atlanta. It was still the very early hours of the morning when we drove into the parking lot of an all-night supermarket.

Mouse waited in the car and I jogged inside, grabbing a few sandwiches and a roll of electrical tape she said she'd need. I was a little worried. I'd never tried picking a car lock before. Neither had Mouse… That had been Briana's forte.

Once back outside, we watched and waited, munching on our sandwiches until another car turned into the lot. As soon as the owner disappeared into the store, I tossed the tape to Mouse and she sprang into action.

She dashed toward the car, approached the driver's door on the other side. She fiddled with something and it seemed to go well. A smile of satisfaction crossed her face and she opened the door.

The moment of triumph ended instantly, a shrill shriek filled the air and the car alarm went off. Her eyes widened and she sprinted back to our car.

I reversed, the wheels spinning slightly on the wet ground, and put my foot down. As we drove through the gates, the owner cleared the door, yelling and waving his fist at us.

We kept driving until we reached another parking lot. This one seemed deserted.

She approached an older car in hopes that it wouldn't have an alarm. She tried again, but this time no siren screamed as she opened the door.

We moved quickly. We didn't want to be stopped by the cops, while loading an unconscious boy into the back of a stolen car, with a veritable arsenal of military-grade weapons.

We carried Jake carefully to the other car, laying him on his side in back. His long legs made things a little difficult. We tucked a few blankets around him to keep him warm and set to transferring the rest of our belongings.

Once emptied, we checked the car over for anything we might have left behind. A moment before we were going to go, Mouse shuffled under the car to inspect the tracking device.

She came out with a small black box in her hand. A yellow L.E.D. shone brightly in one corner while a red one flashed in the other.

"It's a magnet," she said. "There must be a bug inside the car too. There's no speaker or microphone on this one."

I held out my hand for it and she dropped it lightly into my palm. I stood and took it with me to the corner of the car park. Finding the shiniest car I could, I kneeled down, placing the magnet on the undercarriage of the car.

Once seated in the stolen car, with Mouse behind the wheel, I found Matt's phone. I pushed the power button and the screen lit up. It had the time on it and a small padlock in a green circle. I touched the circle, and an arrow appeared, pointing to the left. I wiggled my finger a little and the green padlock moved with it. I dragged it the whole way across and the screen changed, displaying new icons.

A little green text bubble with a smiley face sat at the lower right corner of the screens with the word
message
beneath it. I tapped it and the text message from Matt appeared. I clicked reply and a small keyboard popped up.

"
Where can we meet you?"
I typed. I pushed send and waited.

The phone buzzed in my hands, a message appearing below mine. It contained nothing but an address.

***

Jake woke up sometime mid-morning during the drive back to New York. The groan that forced itself from his throat interrupted a dream I'd been having that involved Nicole and I. She was sick and in pain, but I wasn't. My eyes were wet with tears. As much as I tried to tell myself it would be all right while I was awake, my dreams told me otherwise.

The thump of Jake's leg hitting my seat as he kicked himself awake tore me from the slumbered imaginings completely.

He seemed to be rather worse for wear, which wasn't very surprising, considering they'd dosed him up with God knew what.

We stopped at a diner, somewhere between Charleston and Harrisburg. Mouse and I ordered chocolate shakes with chocolate chip pancakes. Jake ordered black coffee and scrambled eggs.

When the food arrived and the waitress had stopped hovering, he explained what he could remember.

He was driving back into the city and happened across a checkpoint. Two cars had been parked across the road and armed men had stood waiting beside them. When Jake came to a stop, they approached the car with guns drawn.

They pulled him out of the car and the next thing he knew, he'd been falling with a sharp pain in his neck.

He barely touched his food, merely pushing it about his plate, but he downed his coffee in one long gulp. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah, sure," I said.

"What does your tattoo mean?" he asked, nodding to my wrist.

"Oh." There was no reason not to tell him but it was strange to be talking about it. "The dots represent stars, constellations. Leo and Virgo, to be exact. Together they form the sphinx. They thought it appropriate that the symbol assigned to us be a hybrid creature, like us. Our genes were collected from a variety of animals to make us what we are."

"So what does this mean?" He had unbuckled the thick leather band of his watch and thrust out his own wrist, displaying the exact same tattoo.

I couldn't hide my shock as I gaped at the tiny black marks. Until we'd escaped I'd never thought about the possibility that there were others and now we seemed to be running into them at every turn.

"I don't know," I said softly. "But we're going to find out."

We returned to the car and he curled up in the same position he'd been in before, surrounded by blankets on the back seat. I watched out of the corner of my eye as Mouse passed him a bottle of water she'd picked up on her way out, tenderness evident in her eyes.

I took my turn at driving while Mouse and Jake slept. I kept trying to figure Jake out. Yeah, he was fast. I'd noticed that already. But what else could he do? And why had he been raised in a real family? Why'd they murder his mom?

Mouse woke up as we were drawing into the city. She flinched when I turned into the bright lights illuminating the enclosed parking lot.

"Where are we?" she mumbled, rubbing her eyes with the back of her fists.

"Just a mall. I figure we can clean up a bit and get some food before we have to meet Matt," I explained, unclasping my seat belt. "You want to wake him up?" I asked, gesturing to Jake in the back seat.

He was snoring softly, and occasionally he'd been talking in his sleep, the latest garbled comment was something to do with someone hating whales… Well, that's what I thought he'd said.

Mouse twisted where she was sitting, pushing onto her knees so that she could reach between the seats.

"Jake," she murmured gently, stroking his face with her fingertips. "Jake, wake up."

He scrunched his face, as if her touch tickled. When her fingers continued, his eyes flickered open. He looked as if he'd woken from a dream, a good one. The expression on his face as he gazed at Mouse was so sweet, I thought I was going to be sick. Okay, maybe it wasn't that gag-worthy. It was actually really sweet. A tug of jealousy curled at the corner of my mind.

"Hey," Mouse said, her voice infusing that one word with so much more than it would usually mean.

"Hey," he responded in exactly the same tone.

Jake pushed himself into sitting position, crossing his legs upon the faded upholstery.

"Ready for some food yet?" I didn't enjoy being the third wheel.

"Yeah, food sounds great," he agreed, looking a lot more like his old self. Well, the self from yesterday, anyway… before his dad had shot him.

Grabbing a small pack, I stuffed it with a change of clothes for Mouse and I, and some basic sanitary items and scissors. We rode the escalator leading up into the central food court.

As soon as we stepped inside, I stopped. Everything was suffused with a golden glow that made the mall seem much warmer than it actually was. In the very center, a towering green tree was adorned with baubles and lights. I'd never seen a Christmas tree before.

"Is it real?" Mouse asked in awe.

"I think so. I mean, I can smell tree…"

"It could be air-freshener," Jake said.

We left Jake at the end of the moving steps, pushing open the doors to the women's bathroom while he shuffled into the men's. Unsurprisingly, he still looked a bit unbalanced.

"We really need to get him some new clothes," Mouse said. She was right. The blood-soaked scrubs and the ratty shirt had to go. We'd deal with that after we'd eaten.

Using the sinks lining one of the walls, we brushed our teeth and scrubbed our faces. Washcloths helped refresh our tired and grimy skin. It was the best we could do without a shower. A quick change into fresh clothes and I was substantially more relaxed and refreshed.

"Can you help me with this? It's time for it to go," I asked Mouse, gesturing to the cast on my arm with the heavy-duty scissors. With her help, we hacked away at the plaster until my arm was free. My wrist clicked slightly as I twisted it, but otherwise it was okay.

The food court was easy to find. It smelled heavenly. The different foods produced hundreds of strange scents and flavors, mixed together with a thick layer of grease.

I couldn't pick just one thing, so I went from one stall to the next, choosing small bits and pieces. My plastic tray contained miso soup, chicken wrapped in rice and seaweed, fried pork in a pink sauce with pineapple, a slice of pizza and something called a corndog. I'd never tried any of it before.

Jake was hungry now, which didn't surprise me. He dug into a self-serve Chinese buffet with gusto, opening the case out on one of the plastic trays before piling both sides of the container high with food.

It was seven o'clock and the mall was packed. I almost had to battle a group of teenagers who tried to muscle me out of the table.

From my seat on the plastic bench I could see Mouse searching for me, a little lost. I stood and waved. She saw me immediately and started weaving through the sea of people.

As she seated herself, I saw her eyes following Jake as he, too, attempted to navigate between the tables and chairs.

"Wow, these girls must be cold," he said, confusion on his face.

A quick review of the hall and I could see what he meant. Most had big coats on, but many of the girls displayed bare legs beneath. A lot of them were really made up, too, almost to a point that they looked like dolls. They looked like they used a lot of bronzer.

I didn't understand why they'd wear so much goop on their faces. I scrunched my nose, remembering how the powders and creams had felt on my skin.

I envied them though. They'd never have to deal with their sisters being kidnapped by mad scientists. They'd probably never be shot at. And they'd be able to do anything they wanted with their lives.

I dug into my food, trying not to pity myself. None of us said much of anything until we'd all pushed away our plates.

"Jake, we're going to see some people tonight who, we hope, are going to help us to get our friends back," Mouse explained.

"And what will I be doing?" he asked, looking a little worried.

"That's up to you," she continued. "You can come with us if you want."

"Is it going to be dangerous?" He pushed a limp bean sprout around in the sauce remaining in the container with a flimsy plastic fork.

"I don't know, but we don't think it will be."

He seemed a little skeptical at this, picking the sprout up and trying to wind it around the fork.

"I'll come," he said with a small sigh. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

"We'll look after you, I promise," Mouse said, lowering her voice a little.

He nodded in acceptance.

We waited for Jake to pick out some new clothes before leaving the mall and driving to the address that Matt had sent us. I drove and Mouse sat in the back with Jake.

Every time I looked back in the mirror, there was some little gaze or lingering touch. It was sweet—Mouse deserved to have someone look at her that way—but it scared me to think about how she'd react if something happened to him.

I know I shouldn't believe everything they said, but the scientists had often insisted we couldn't trust anyone else (this I knew was false) or get distracted by members of the opposite sex.

Sometimes I thought they should have fiddled with the genes dealing with sexuality, if that was the case. It would have been much easier for them if the teenage girls they'd created were asexual. It would have prevented so many distractions.

Pulling up to the pavement outside the address, we found an apparently empty warehouse. The number twelve was painted at the top right-hand side of the enormous shed.

No cars were parked here. I pressed my foot down onto the accelerator and moved on. We parked about a block away and walked back through the alleyways.

There was a giant roll-down door at the front of the warehouse, the sort that would allow a big truck to drive right in to load up. Circling the building, we found another door at the back, a small one for people, set into the gray wall, almost obscured by graffiti. We were in an alleyway that had been squeezed between the hulking box of a building we were here to visit and the one that was almost identical behind it.