Chapter 3
SIM AND I SIT IN silence for a long time after Sever leaves the house.
“What does your name mean?” I finally ask, just to break the silence.
She sizes me up, as if trying to determine if I’m friend or foe. I don’t move, don’t give any indication toward either option. She must decide to take a chance on me, because she finally says, “I code sims and apps. I was actually working on an A.I. that matches—” She breaks off and looks away from me, blushing. “It’s dumb.”
Maybe there was something in my expression that made her feel self-conscious, or maybe I actually had nothing to do with her self-doubt. “No, it’s not dumb. I’ve always thought it would be kinda cool to be able to build a sim from scratch. I know a little bit of coding, but not enough to do that.” Mostly, I’m just good at copying other people’s code and adapting it to do what I want.
She nods but doesn’t tell me any more about her A.I. “What about you?”
I try to come up with something, anything, that would explain the name Infinity. I come up empty. “I have no idea.”
Sim looks at me skeptically, as if I’m holding out on her, and I feel compelled to continue. “I really don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out since Sever first called me that.”
Sim’s jaw works, like she’s chewing on my words. “I guess we’ll have to give it some thought.”
Footsteps in the hall pull my attention away from our stilted conversation. I get up, creep toward the door, and peek around the frame to get a look at what’s happening. Two boys at the other end of the hall are fiddling with the window, trying to get it to open. One curses, and they both back away, dropping their hands to their sides. Giving up.
“They’re trying to find a way out,” I tell Sim, and she’s on her feet, standing next to me, before I can blink.
“We should help.”
The boys leave their wing and head for ours. The larger one, Bug, shrugs at us as he passes, but neither says anything. They go to the window at the end of our hall. There’s a lot of tense whispering I can’t quite make out while they struggle with that window. Then they give up and head back the way they came. But instead of heading back to their room, they turn in unison to descend the stairs.
“Let’s go,” I whisper and head out after them. Sim is right behind me. We’re still halfway up when the guys reach the first floor. They try to open the front door, and fail, in the time it takes us to get to them. The other one, not Bug, who is downright tiny next to the giant, gives us a nod of approval and motions for us to go right, into the living room, while they head toward the dining room on the left.
The living room is formal and fancier than anything I’ve ever set foot in, complete with a massive stone fireplace and gilded mirror hanging above the mantel. I’m wound too tight for fancy right now. There’s only one large window in here. And sheer white curtains accenting the picture window, with no blinds. No privacy. Not that there are any neighbors to try to maintain privacy from. But what about the Fab Four? Are they hiding out there somewhere in the field across the street watching us? Laughing at the stupid kids trying to escape the escape-proof house?
But why would they sit outside and watch us? They could just bug the house. And as soon as the thought occurs to me, I realize it’s probably true. If I were in charge of running an operation like this, not only would I bug the living quarters. I’d install cameras, too.
I scan the corners of the room, but nothing seems out of the ordinary. Then, just as I move my gaze from the ceiling to the fireplace, I catch a glimmer of something shiny out of the corner of my eye. Up where the crown molding meets the ceiling is a shiny white disc with a darker center. The whole thing is no larger than a dime, but I have no doubt that it’s a camera. And it’s set in the perfect position to take in almost the entire room and most of the foyer.
Are they watching us right now? What do they think of our little escape attempt? I mentally run through how to tell Sim we’re being watched. She’s over at the window, working at its seams diligently, blissfully unaware of the surveillance built into this place. In the span of a heartbeat, I come up with a million different ways to tell her and shoot them all down because I can’t do any of it without making it obvious to whoever’s behind the camera that I know they’re watching.
“Hey, Sim, I think I have an idea.” She perks up immediately, and I tamp down a spike of guilt. I don’t have an idea on how we might get out of here, but it’s the only way I can think of to get her to follow me without letting on about the real reason until I find a safe place to talk.
She follows me back up to our room, and now that I know what to look for, cameras leap out at me from everywhere. Two in the foyer, at opposite ends, one on the base of the chandelier overlooking the landing, one at the start of our hall, and I believe another one at the other end, though it’s too far away to tell for sure. There’s even one inside our room, above the window. I try not to make eye contact with any of them.
Sim doesn’t ask any questions—even when I lead her into our bathroom, shut the door, and, after scanning it for cameras, turn on the shower. I’ve watched enough TV to know this is what you’re supposed to do in case of an audio bug. Somewhere along our journey, her expression went from intrigued to confused, and now is a solid understanding. She knows exactly what I’m doing.
Cameras? She mouths the word, and I nod my response.
“Where?” This is a whisper from her.
I hold up one finger and point an invisible line through the bathroom wall in the direction of our bedroom window. “Bedroom,” I whisper. I go through each area I saw cameras in, half-miming, half-telling her their locations.
“Lovely,” she says when I’m done. “We should probably just lay low tonight and re-evaluate the situation tomorrow. After we’ve had a chance to scope out the rest of the cameras and search for bugs.”
I agree wholeheartedly. “What about the guys, though?”
Sim shakes her head as she opens the bathroom door. Instead of heading out of the room to warn them though, she heads for her bed. “They’re on their own.”
#
Morning comes too soon. The clock on the desk Sim and I share read 2:00 a.m. the last time I looked at it, and the alarm goes off at 5:15. I’ve functioned on three hours of sleep before, but never as a prisoner. Sim is already out of bed and sifting through her dresser drawers when I sit up. She disappears into the bathroom while I’m still rubbing bleary eyes, and a second later, the shower turns on. I snagged a shower last night—after Sim and I failed to find a way out. I couldn’t stomach sleeping with all the grime from my front yard and beyond caked all over me. Though, I did find a First Aid kit tucked under the bathroom sink. And it gave me a chance to tend to the tiny cuts on the bottoms of my feet.
They don’t bother me as much this morning, but I’m definitely going to be walking a little gingerly for the next couple days, I realize as I set my feet flat on the cold, wood floor and stand. I make short work of dressing. It’s easy to do when all of my clothes look exactly the same. Black, black, and more black. They’re either training us to be spies, cat-burglars, or emo.
I settle for black leggings—as opposed to black jeans—and an oversized T-shirt hoodie. Then I scope out the closet. There are exactly two pairs of shoes in my size at the bottom of the closet, and both are utilitarian at best: a pair of sneakers, and a pair of combat boots. Both black. I settle for the sneakers. It’s more than a little creepy that they knew my shoe size, but then again, they knew how to break into my house to abduct me, and I’m almost positive they are the reason my cell had no service when I tried to call for help.
I’m just lacing up the second one when Sim emerges from the bathroom dressed like my twin. My taller, purple-haired twin. She’s pulled her lavender locks up in pigtails, and for a moment, I’m jealous that she’s at least got some color in her look. “Your turn.”
“Thanks.” I sigh as I pass her and head into the bathroom. It’s still uncomfortably warm and damp after her shower, but of all the things I’ve got to worry about right now, that’s low on the list. I grab a neatly folded towel from a rack hanging over the tub and use it to wipe the fog from the mirror.
And there it is, proof that I’m really here. My right cheek is angry and red with road rash from having my face rubbed against my driveway last night. My golden-brown hair is a matted mess at the back of my head, and I half expect some small critter to crawl out from a nest back there, even though I washed it. I still have yet to find a brush. Clothing and shoes in the perfect size, check; hairbrush, not so much. I run my fingers through the tangle, then down under my chin to where a straight, narrow bruise bisects my neck in half, the lingering evidence that my hood was tied too tightly there. I already know my wrists are raw and bruised, but I raise them in front of me anyway.
What kind of people would do this to another human being? And under the pretense of training for some program. If this is the aftermath of my arrival here, what am I going to look like six weeks from now? I suppress a shudder and reel my errant thoughts back in before my brain is bombarded with terrifying ideas and images.
I do the only thing I can do. I finish freshening up and prepare for my first official day in The Program.