Don't Let Go (6 page)

“Ah, man, you know we’re kidding.” Teo clapped him on the shoulder. “This place is perfect. Hell, punching holes in the wall will actually improve it.”

“Yeah,” Daisy said faintly. “Really great.”

Teo leaned over and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Why don’t you deal with the food, Dais. Peter and me will start on the exit strategy.”

“Sure.”

Noa was still staring down at the doll’s head as if mesmerized. Peter cleared his throat and said, “After that, we should try to get some sleep. Noa, if you want, you can lie down now—”

“I’m fine,” she said, glowering at him.

He held up both hands placatingly. “I’m just saying, you’ve gotten less sleep than the rest of us. We can handle this.”

“I’ll keep watch,” she said. “When one of you is ready to take over, just let me know.”

“I thought I was keeping first watch,” he muttered.

Noa ignored him, moving over to one of the few windows that was still paned with glass. She swiped a finger through the lower corner, removing enough dirt to provide a view of the street.

Peter stood silently for a second, watching her. At some point they needed to talk about how she was shutting them out.
We’re all barely holding it together
, he thought with a surge of anger; why did Noa think she was the only one with a right to sulk?

But there never seemed to be a good time to have that conversation. At least Teo and Daisy had each other. He was all on his own.

“I got chicken,” Daisy announced, shaking him out of his reverie. “We should eat soon, before it gets cold.”

She lugged two grocery bags into the kitchen.

“Don’t open the fridge,” Teo warned.

“Don’t worry,” Daisy snorted. “I’m
never
doing that again.”

“Where was that?” Teo asked. “Austin?”

“Cleveland,” Peter chimed in. “I still think that was a dead cat.”

“Ugh, enough,” Daisy said with a shudder. Wrinkling her nose, she shoved aside the moldy fast-food wrappers cluttering the countertop to make room for the grocery bags.

Like the other places they’d squatted in, the electricity and water were shut off. So they only bought prepared foods that could be eaten without reheating, and that wouldn’t go bad sitting out overnight. Usually, that translated into power bars; but tonight’s dinner smelled delicious. Peter’s mouth watered as Daisy dug out a rotisserie chicken. He never would’ve thought it was possible to get sick of hamburgers, fries, and shakes; but he actually fantasized about cauliflower now.

Suddenly starving, Peter opened the package and tore a leg off the chicken. He took a big bite and practically moaned with appreciation.

Daisy smiled at him. “Good, right?”

“Yeah,” he said while chewing. “Freakin’ fantastic.”

“We’ll have to finish it tonight, it won’t keep.” Her brow wrinkled as she surveyed the rest of their purchases. “Maybe we should have gotten a half chicken instead.”

“Trust me, we’ll finish it.” Peter devoured the drumstick in a few bites. Then he pulled off a chunk of breast meat, shoving it into his mouth as fast as he could chew it.

“Dude, leave some for the rest of us,” Teo protested.

Peter wiped his hands on his jeans. “Go ahead.”

As Daisy nibbled on a wing, she called out, “Noa? You hungry?”

No answer. They all exchanged a look; no one had to say it, they’d all noticed that she’d barely been eating.

Another conversation he needed to have with her. But that would definitely escalate into a fight, and he wasn’t up for that.

His appetite suddenly gone, Peter motioned for Teo to follow him to the back of the apartment.

It took the better part of an hour to punch holes through the neighboring apartments. For the most part, he and Teo worked in silence, only exchanging a few words when trying to decide which wall to hit next. They were lucky this time; they punctured a water pipe in the third apartment, but it was empty and not a single drip leaked out.

“Remember Boise?” Teo said, letting the hammer hang by his side as he stared at the exposed pipe.

“Oh, yeah,” Peter chuckled. That had been the first time they’d tried to punch through drywall, and neither of them had had a clue how buildings were constructed. Through sheer dumb luck, they’d made it through two walls. But in the third apartment, they’d hit a gas line, and the place had immediately filled with noxious fumes. They’d had to quickly relocate to another building in the complex, praying the entire time that a stray spark wouldn’t cause an explosion. Noa hadn’t been pleased then, either, Peter thought, his smile fading.

Teo used his hammer to knock out dangling chunks of drywall. “If we open it up down here,” he noted, “we can duck through. Maybe if we’re being chased, the pipe will catch them in the head.”

“Maybe,” Peter acknowledged. “We’ll have to make sure to tell the girls about it, though.”

“Right. She’s different, huh?” Teo said without meeting his eyes. He carefully knocked away more drywall, widening the hole to about three feet in circumference.

“Who?” Peter said, playing dumb.

Teo swiped an arm across his cheek, smearing the dust. “Noa.”

Peter shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. I mean, we only spent a few days together before this.”

“Well, she’s different from when I met her, but that was for just a few days, too. Then Santa Cruz happened. I’ll go first.” Teo edged carefully through the hole, then extended a hand back to help Peter through.

After stepping inside, Peter straightened. This apartment was marginally nicer than the one where they’d left the girls; not as much black mold, and less trash scattered across the floor. “Maybe we should move in here.”

Teo scanned the room. “It doesn’t have a view of the street, though.”

“Not sure that matters,” Peter countered. “It’s not like Pike’s guys drive to the front door and knock, right?”

“Right,” Teo mused, turning in a circle. “It would make Daisy happy. And actually, this might be better because it’s in the center of the building. If we knock a path in both directions, there’s less chance of getting cut off.”

“That’s smart,” Peter said appreciatively. When he’d first met Teo, he’d been underwhelmed by the rangy kid who was barely fifteen. But the more time they spent together, the more he liked him. Teo only spoke when he had something important to say. He was smart and reliable. In some ways, he reminded Peter a lot of his older brother.

Especially now. Peter could sense that he was deliberately building up to something.

Teo moved through the apartment, ducking a head into each room. “Hey, there’s still a mattress in here!” he said enthusiastically. “Dibs!”

“It’s all yours,” Peter snorted. “Probably smells like piss anyway.”

“Probably,” Teo agreed. “But I’ll take that over sleeping on the ground.”

Peter grunted in assent. They pushed open the door to the final room. The smell nearly knocked Peter back on his heels. He pulled his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose, but it barely made a difference.

“Dead rat,” Teo observed, voice muffled by his own shirt. “Definitely your room.”

Peter whacked him on the arm, which sent them into a brief shoving match. This one ended after a few halfhearted blows; neither of them could afford to waste any energy, and Peter wasn’t really in a joking mood. The farther they got into the building, the more somber the atmosphere grew.

“The thing is,” Teo finally said as they broke through to the next apartment, “I think we might take off on our own.”

Peter didn’t answer for a second. It was funny—when he’d first climbed into Noa’s SUV in Omaha, he’d actually been a little bummed to find Teo and Daisy staring blankly at him from the front seat. Whether he’d acknowledged it or not, part of him had been looking forward to spending time alone with Noa.

But now that it was finally a possibility, that was the last thing he wanted. “Look,” he said, fighting to keep the undercurrent of desperation from his voice, “I know it’s been tough, but—”

“It’s been worse than tough, dude; it’s been brutal.” Teo’s face clouded over. “I know it was hard for her, losing Zeke and the others. It was hard on all of us.”

Peter swallowed, trying to come up with something that wouldn’t make him sound like a total dick. He’d never met the other kids in Noa’s unit, and personally, he could care less about Zeke. In fact, every time someone mentioned the kid’s name, Peter felt like throwing something. Based on how they talked about him, you’d practically think Zeke had been superhuman.

Which made Peter painfully aware of how inferior he must seem in comparison. He couldn’t fight. He wasn’t street smart. The only skills he possessed meant nothing to Daisy and Teo; computers were barely a blip in their reality. “I know it would be better if Zeke were here,” he said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

“I doubt it,” Teo said thoughtfully.

Surprised, Peter looked up at him. Teo ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. “I mean, I’m sure Noa misses him, but it’s more than that. She barely eats, she sleeps for crazy long . . . What did Pike do to her, exactly?”

Peter hesitated before answering. Noa would be enraged if she found out they’d been discussing her; and if Teo and Daisy didn’t already know about her situation, she must have kept it from them for a reason. But by sticking with her, they were risking their lives. And maybe knowing would persuade them to stay. “They operated on her,” he said. “Do you know what a thymus is?”

Teo shrugged. “I didn’t pay a lot of attention in biology.”

Peter laughed curtly. “Me either. Apparently your thymus regulates things; my buddy said it turns off and shrinks as you get older. It pumps out all these white cells that fight illness, which is why Pike’s doctors thought it might hold the cure for PEMA.” He felt a pang, remembering Cody; the premed student had practically been a brother to him. And he’d died mysteriously in a fire after helping them. No matter what the arson investigator said, it hadn’t been an accident; Pike had been responsible. “Anyway, that’s why Noa’s sleep and eating patterns are so messed up, and why she heals super-fast.”

“She heals super-fast? That’s cool,” Teo said. “I didn’t know that. So that’s why they’re still chasing her, huh?”

“Yeah. We think she might be the only one the operation worked on.”

“That’s weird.”

Peter shrugged. “I’m not exactly a doctor. I can’t explain it.”

“But something on those hard drives might, right?” Teo drew back his hammer and slammed it into the drywall. “That’s why we’re hauling them around.”

“Exactly.” Peter joined him, working up a sweat as they punched through to the final apartment. They worked in silence, taking turns whacking at plaster. Finally, Peter straightened. “That should do it,” he said, swiping an arm across his forehead.

“How much longer do you think it’ll take?” Teo asked.

“To crack the encryption? I don’t know. A while,” Peter admitted. “If I had a block of computers, and a few days to sit there and try to get the key, then . . . maybe.”

Teo laughed. “Yeah, hard to believe we haven’t found a stack of laptops in one of these dives.”

“The rats would eat it anyway.” Peter wrinkled his nose at a pile of feces in the corner. The sound of rats skittering around used to keep him up nights. It probably wasn’t a good sign that he’d grown accustomed to it.

Teo tapped the hammer against his thigh. “Pike probably wants those drives back, huh?”

“Maybe. But he might have backups. I honestly don’t know.” Peter had stolen the drives from a secret server farm that was stashed in an abandoned building. Since he’d bricked their other servers a few months before, it would be unaccountably stupid for Charles Pike not to have instituted backup measures for his precious Project Persephone. Still, the more widespread the data was, the more likely someone would stumble across it, which was a huge risk. Deep down, Peter suspected they were literally carrying everything Pike had discovered about PEMA on their backs.

He shifted the pack self-consciously. The key to saving Amanda was in there somewhere, he hoped. Not to mention the lives of hundreds of thousands of other kids. But unless he could log a solid few days at a computer terminal, ideally with a healthy and whole Noa working beside him, they might never uncover it.

Which was precisely why Peter had led them to Denver. He drew in a deep breath and said, “Listen, Teo. I know you and Daisy want to take off. But if you can just hang in there for a few more days . . .”

Teo’s face clouded over. “I don’t know, man. Noa’s getting worse. It’s like she’s not even here anymore, you know?”

“I’ve got a plan,” Peter said, fighting a mounting sense of desperation. “There’s a guy here who can help us.”

“What guy?” Teo asked, his brow furrowing.

“That’s kind of complicated,” Peter said weakly. “But trust me, he’s our best bet.”

Teo stared at the floor for a solid minute. A breeze skittered through, and Peter shivered as it cooled the sweat on his back.

“All right,” Teo finally said. “One more day. But after that, we take off. Daisy’s not handling this well. She needs a break. You won’t even have to give us much cash.”

Peter swallowed hard. Today’s grocery run had depleted their funds even more, and they were running dangerously low on cash, but it probably wasn’t the best time to share that information. He clapped Teo on the back and said, “Cool. One more day. Thanks, man.”

Teo grinned back at him. “So you’re going to set up a bat signal or something like that?”

“Something like that,” Peter said. “C’mon. Let’s see if they saved us some chicken.”

Amanda blinked, and was startled to find herself staring at an enormous tree in bloom, huge white flowers bending toward the window.

She slowly turned her head. She was sitting alone in some sort of solarium, her fingers clasping the arms of a wheelchair. She was dressed in a hospital gown and a soft green robe—her robe, she realized, the fuzzy one she’d gotten for Christmas when she was fourteen years old.

She could have cried with relief. She remembered everything, with perfect clarity. She was in a PEMA ward at Boston Medical. She’d been here . . . how long? Amanda frowned. It was obviously spring outside; a window had been cracked to let in the warm breeze. Her seizure in the library at Tufts had happened in February. So unless this was an unseasonably warm day, at least a month had passed. Or longer?