Reboot Page 2

  “We’ve got to!” yelled Slack. “If we lose those documents, this whole escapade was all for nothing!”

  “Fine!” Salome yanked the brake sending the car into a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. They all screamed at once, as the car slid with a squeal of rubber onto the shoulder. They were all violently flung forward against their seat belts.

  “How are we going to get it?” yelled Salome.

  Akane sucked in a breath. “I blew it—I’ll do it.” She was out of the car before anyone could protest. With his heart in his mouth, John looked back to watch her, already running hard back down the highway shoulder.

  This time it was Salome who swore. Turning back around, John noticed that Salome wasn’t watching Akane. Her horrified stare was fixed on the rearview mirror, and now John, too, heard a familiar wailing noise.

  “The cops!” yelped Salome.

  John could see the blue and red flash of lights, perhaps a mile back but drawing swiftly closer as cars pulled over to make room.

  “She’s got about twenty seconds,” breathed Slack.

  Come on, Akane! Run! John found himself clenching his fists as he watched her small figure pause briefly on the edge of the road. Then she darted out and flung herself toward a barely visible dark object in the roadway.

  “Akane!” he yelled, though there was no way she could possibly hear him. Another huge Mack truck was bearing down fast on the girl, its horn blaring.

  John barely caught her rapid movement. Akane pivoted and leaped, and as the truck thundered past, she kicked against its side with both feet, launching herself farther into the roadway. Snatching the briefcase as she ran, she sprang for the center median.

  “Don’t make her cross the road again!” gasped John. The way she channeled her AI was awesome, but there was no point overloading it. “Drive, Salome!”

  Salome pulled sharply back into traffic, which garnered a fierce return of angry honking. The blue and red lights were close now; the flashing of them seemed to fill the entire car. John could hardly bear to watch as Akane sprinted back toward the Tesla, the briefcase clutched in her arms. A lot of cars were backing up behind them now, their drivers yelling soundlessly and gesturing, but Salome took no notice. Her face impassive, she slapped the touchscreen control on the dashboard, and the glass roof slid open.

  “Come on!” screamed John, rising to stick his head through the open roof.

  Akane barely adjusted her stride. Closing her eyes, letting her AI take over completely, she leaped into the air, bounced with one foot off the edge of the trunk, and hurtled inside through the open roof. She smashed into John, and he grunted, winded at her impact. Then he felt the briefcase between them, digging into his ribs as Akane rasped a high-pitched squeal of belated terror.

  “Go, Salome!”

  Salome had already laid on the accelerator. In the sudden silence, Akane lay helpless and panting for breath on top of John, so he couldn’t move anyway. He couldn’t see anything beyond the leather of the front seats, and his seat belt felt as if it was about to slice him in half. However luckily, the flash of lights from behind them was dimming, and the sirens faded swiftly.

  “That,” said Slack with his usual talent for understatement, “was close.”

  Akane wriggled off John and shoved herself back into her own seat. Her face was still flushed, but she wore a triumphant grin. John, getting his breath back too, straightened up and high-fived her.

  “We lost them again, but they’ll be alerting other cars,” said Salome firmly. “We need to lose this Tesla now.”

  No one protested. Exchanging glances, they all nodded; she was right.

  Only Slack permitted himself a single, mournful whimper of remorse.

  “Slack still looks sad,” remarked Akane with an edge of mockery as she strode on up the side of the highway.

  “I can’t help it.” Dramatically, Slack flung the back of his wrist to his forehead. “That beautiful car deserved better.”

  The briefcase felt heavier by the second in John’s grip. They’d been walking for miles now, but the glowing hotel sign was finally in sight. “The car won’t come to any harm, Slack. We set it to driverless mode. It’ll be way up west Parks Highway by now, and it’ll find its way to that parking lot near Denali National Park. We programmed it perfectly. Don’t you worry your pretty head.”

  “It deserved to be loved,” moaned Slack. “It shouldn’t be alone.”

  Salome giggled. She was usually so serious and intent that the very sound lifted John’s spirits and he walked a little faster. Beside him, Akane kept pace; even in the dark, with her face buried in her phone, she was sure-footed and quick. It’s not just her AI; it’s all that parkour, thought John. I bet she’s never fallen over in her life.

  Well, except for that time she’d tried to fly from the roof of the Gotokuji Temple in Tokyo. She’d been only four years old then, and she would have died of her injuries without the intervention of John’s father. All four of them had suffered similar accidents—and they’d all been saved by Mikael and his experimental AI genetic treatment.

  Which is why we’ve ended up running from the cops with stolen documents, thought John wryly.

  Akane gave a sudden laugh and looked up from her phone.

  “The police have found the Tesla,” she said. “It ran out of gas. Well, electricity. It’s at a charging station just past Wasilla.”

  “Are you hacking the police computer?” asked Salome severely.

  “Of course I am,” Akane told her. “They’re surrounding the Tesla right now, and they don’t know what to make of it. All their guns pointed at an empty car.”

  “My poor baby,” lamented Slack.

  “I miss her too.” Akane patted his arm as she winked at John. “But I’m sure they won’t hurt her.”

  “And we’re finally getting a bed for the night.” John turned into the hotel parking lot and trudged toward the brightly lit glass door. Despite his aching muscles, he felt cheerful. “I think we can call this mission a success!”

  >

  “This mission is not a success till we get this briefcase open,” declared Akane.

  They were gathered around the shoved-together twin beds in John and Slack’s room, with the briefcase perched on one of the garish floral bedspreads. To John’s fanciful eyes, the case looked downright defiant.

  “To be fair,” said John, “we were only supposed to retrieve the thing. There weren’t any instructions to break into it.”

  “I won’t consider it ‘mission accomplished’ till I get through those locks,” insisted Akane. “No way am I letting this beat me.”

  Akane cursed and growled. “Why couldn’t it be a digital lock? This guy di Lucci’s a dinosaur.”

  “Guys,” said Salome calmly. “The day I can’t pick a lock—any lock—is the day I give up and go live in a yurt with a llama. You’re overcomplicating this.” She pulled the black leather case toward her and crouched till the lock was level with her scowling eyes. “Not everything’s solved with tech.” Her thumbs were busy at the combination locks, deftly spinning and clicking. “Sometimes all you need is a little experience and a bit of cunning and your thumbs—ah!”

  She stepped back as the locks popped open. Slack gave a whoop of triumph, then clapped his hands over his mouth to muffle it.

  “Honestly, Salome,” said Akane, “one of these days I’ll ask you how you learned to pick locks and crack safes.”

  “But today is not that day,” drawled John, his excitement mounting. “Let’s take a look at these documents.”

  Salome leaned forward and snatched up a bulky folder. Her eyes shone with excitement as she flipped it open and began to pass the pages to the others. “I want to know what was worth that whole escapade.”

  John grabbed the file she held out to him. “I take it that it all has to do with Lucci Corp’s expl
oration of the tar fields.”

  Akane was already flipping through a ring-bound sheaf of papers and photographs. “It is.” Her face looked pale; John knew she could speed-read like a rocket, and he frowned.

  “What are you seeing?”

  “I’ll need to go through it all again more carefully, but I’m getting the gist of it.” She stared up at him. “It’s worse than we thought. They’re planning to drill illegally in the Arctic.”

  “They can’t do that!” exclaimed Salome.

  “And they know it. There’s pages in here about contacts with politicians, the leverage they have—blackmail and bribes—the legal loopholes they’re going to use . . .” Akane brandished the file, an expression of disgust on her face.

  Slack glanced up from his own reading. “The worse of it is there’s a colony of Lacs des Loups Marins harbor seals right where they want to drill. They’re incredibly rare.” He jabbed a finger angrily at a sheet of graphs. “This project will wipe out the entire colony!”

  They stared at one another. John felt a sense of helplessness rise inside him: We’re just four kids.

  “No,” he said aloud, suddenly. “We’re the Ghost Network. And we’re not going to let this happen.”

  “Dang straight,” said Salome with vehemence. “Roy Lykos might have originally intended us for sinister purposes, but we’re in control now. And this seems like just the kind of thing we should be stopping.”

  “But how?” Slack spread his hands. “Where do we even start?”

  “I suppose if our Mystery Man wanted this documentation, it means he’s got plans to deal with it,” suggested John, chewing on his lip. “Maybe we don’t have to act till he gives us instructions?”

  “I don’t like that idea.” Akane wrinkled her nose. “Who knows when they’ll come after this briefcase? And I’m not waiting for some dull committee anyway. These drilling plans look well advanced, and we’ve got to do something now!”

  “Wait.” John froze, his knuckles whitening as he clutched the file.

  “John?” Slack turned. “What is it?”

  He couldn’t answer. The sound in his head was like a barely discernable buzzing; he wasn’t even sure whether it was a sound at all. Perhaps it was more of a . . . vibration? Whatever it was, it demanded his full focus. The room around him faded into a blur of dull color. All he could see was the image that appeared before his eyes: a clear, perfectly legible news webpage.

  His eyes drifted to the byline—“by Sentinel Town Hall Correspondent Sarah Lopez”—then back to the headline. It seemed to bear no relation at all to anything he’d ever heard of.

  “Municipal Crews to Strike Monday”

  “Mayor Appeals for Dialogue”

  John blinked, but the webpage stayed right in the center of his field of vision, vivid and clear.

  “John? What’s up?” Akane touched his arm. At the interruption, John shook himself and swept his arm across his face. The webpage vanished.

  He blinked again, hard. “IIDA just got in touch with me again.”

  “In your head?” Slack was a bit startled, but also excited. John’s best friend had been weirded out and a little angry the first time John had received telepathic instructions from the supercomputer that bound their network together. Nowadays, though, Slack was downright thrilled at any contact.

  “Yeah. She showed me . . . um, the trouble is . . . I don’t think it’s relevant. Some local news story from a reporter called Sarah Lopez.”

  Salome set down the papers she was reading. “Sarah Lopez from the Sentinel? I know her!”

  “You do?” John raised his eyebrows. Now it seemed like more than a coincidence.

  “Sure. She did a story on the Center back when she worked for the Western Gazette. I showed her around. We got along great—we had some common interests. We still keep in touch.”

  “But the story didn’t make sense. It wasn’t relevant to us.”

  “Maybe not,” said Salome, excitement rising in her voice. “But Sarah just might be. She’s the environment correspondent now. She does a lot of investigative stuff about companies polluting, that sort of thing.”

  “IIDA wants us to contact her!” John could feel his own heart beating faster.

  “Sarah would pick up this story and run with it in a heartbeat—I’m sure of it.” Salome jumped off the bed. “I should have thought of her before; I’ll message her right now!”

  Having his head constantly open to IIDA took a lot of getting used to, thought John as Salome snapped photos and tapped urgently on her phone. He still felt uneasy about some supercomputer having 24-hour VIP access to his brain.

  But he had to admit that it was an efficient weapon of choice for the good guys.

  >

  “This is incredible!” Sarah Lopez was leafing through the documents, her eyes growing wider by the minute. Now and again she would scribble notes in a Moleskine, then peer in disbelief once more at the folders.

  “I’m sorry you had to fly all the way up here,” said Salome. “With no notice either.”

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t apologize.” Sarah gave her a quick glance. “It’s not like I could take your word and a couple of iPhone photos. I had to see it for real, because this is going to be my first huge scoop. And it really is huge. Lucci Corp is supposed to be too big to fail, but this is share-crashing stuff. There are going to be huge repercussions. But di Lucci deserves it, even if his employees don’t.”

  The young journalist had dark pixie hair, and huge eyes dominated her very young-looking face. She wasn’t much taller than any of the Ghosts—but John couldn’t help feeling awed and a little intimidated by her. Sarah Lopez’s expression was a combination of righteous determination and professional glee. She’d marched straight into their hotel room, dumped her overnight bag on the floor, and seized the briefcase’s contents with barely an introduction.

  She took a deep breath and looked up at last, scanning the Ghosts’ faces. “But how did you guys get ahold of these documents? It’s dynamite—I’m not kidding.”

  Slack opened his mouth to reply, but Salome interrupted him. “By accident,” she said firmly, with a warning glare directed toward her friend.

  “Some accident,” said Sarah with a touch of skepticism, “but I’m not going to pry, because these look genuine to me. I’ll have to have them checked, of course, and have the lawyers approve the story. But thank you. Seems like di Lucci was about to get away with this—if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.” She winked.

  John grinned. Sarah suddenly looked a lot younger and more mischievous.

  “I’ve got to get back to the office now. Give me forty-eight hours,” said Sarah, shuffling the papers together. “The Sentinel gets the scoop, obviously. Soon as it’s published, it’s gonna be on every front page in the country.”

  >

  The next couple of days were a maddening combination of anxiety and sheer boredom; the Ghosts didn’t dare leave their hotel room, and they whiled away hours checking phones and refreshing Twitter. John was beginning to think they’d spend eternity in a hotel. When he woke on the second morning, he decided he wasn’t even going to torment himself with CNN. Clicking on the room TV, he settled very deliberately on reruns of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

  Slack was already awake. Cross-legged on the bed next to John’s, he was chewing lazily on a room service cheeseburger—at this hour of the morning?—but John almost jumped out of his skin when his friend gave a sudden whoop and tossed his phone into the air.

  “It’s up! Every major news site!” Slack shouted triumphantly, catching his phone. Reaching behind his bed, he banged on the wall; in seconds Akane and Salome had run from next door to join them, blinking and still somewhat disheveled. “Look—the New York Times and the Post. The Washington Post. Times of London and India! And the British Daily Mail, check this out! And Buzzfeed
, Vice—the lot! It’s front-page headlines for all of them!”

  “You’re spilling your fries everywhere, Slack.” But Akane was grinning, and she gave him an energetic fist-bump that made him wince.

  “I hope our Mystery Controller intended for this to happen,” said Salome, a little nervously.

  “I’m not worried about him,” drawled Slack. “IIDA clearly wanted it, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “I reckon Mystery Man and IIDA are closely related, at the very least,” said Akane firmly.

  “I know who is going to be upset,” grinned John, “and that’s Carl di Lucci.”

  Salome laughed. “That can never be a bad thing.”

  A sharp double rap on the thin door quickly silenced their laughter. All four fell simultaneously quiet, and they stared at one another with wide eyes.

  “Who’s that?’ whispered Slack.

  “Dunno,” John mouthed, shaking his head. His heart had lurched into rapid, pumping overdrive.

  “You don’t suppose the cops have found us?” Salome looked as if she was about to faint.

  The knocking came again, more impatient this time. Abruptly, Akane shook her head.

  “Whoever it is,” she growled, “they’re not going away.” Straightening her spine, she marched to the door and flung it open.

  She did it so violently that the desk clerk stepped back with an expression of startled shock. Then he cleared his throat and held out a trembling hand.

  “Message came in for you,” he said. “Guy said it was urgent.”

  “Thank you!” squeaked Akane and grabbed the message. She closed the door and brandished the thin brown envelope.

  For a few long moments, they all stared at it.

  “Who’s going to open it?” asked Slack.

  “It’s not fat enough to be a bomb,” said John. Taking a breath, he took the envelope and slit it open with his thumb.

  Pulling out the single sheet of lined paper, he scanned it swiftly. Then he raised his eyes to his friends’.