Don't Let Go (9 page)

They descended for a long time; after fifty steps, he lost count. The staircase abruptly ended in a plain concrete corridor lined with emergency lights in metal cages. They barely illuminated the space, and cast everything in an eerie red hue. Peter strained his ears, debating whether to turn left or right. Sounds echoed strangely down here, and his own breathing seemed abnormally loud.
Left
, he decided, and started off in that direction.

He was about to turn back, convinced he’d gone the wrong way, when the corridor branched and he spotted light up ahead. Peter scurried toward it, inordinately relieved. The door at the end of the hallway was open; through it, he heard voices.

Stepping inside, his jaw dropped again. If he’d been startled to find a staircase in an old shed, what confronted him now was mind-boggling. A large, round room, twenty feet in diameter, with an enormous gas fireplace set in the center. It was furnished like a ski lodge, with plush carpets on the floors, framed film posters on the walls, and comfortable overstuffed chairs and sofas.

“Wow,” he said.

“I know, right?” Teo exclaimed. “A real underground lair! How cool is this?”

“I’ve still got a gun,” Loki grumbled, but he sounded pleased.

“Do you have anything to drink?” Daisy asked. “I’m really thirsty.”

“You’re not guests,” Loki snapped. “Clock’s still ticking on whether or not I kick you out.”

“So can I have some water while you’re deciding?” Daisy said, rolling her eyes.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

Daisy’s face darkened. Peter quickly intervened, saying, “Some water sounds great, actually. If you don’t mind.”

Loki collapsed into a huge brown leather armchair, the shotgun still clasped loosely in his right hand. He waved toward the corner, looking irritated. “There’s a wet bar over there. Might have to wash a glass, though, princess.”

Daisy stomped toward the sink with Teo at her heels.

Noa motioned to the chair across from Loki. “You mind if I sit down?”

“Suit yourself,” Loki said gruffly. “No promises, though.”

Noa settled on the edge of the chair and spent the next five minutes bringing him up to date on everything that had happened over the past seven months; although as always, she skipped the part about ending up with an extra thymus. Listening to her description of the attack on the Santa Cruz compound, Peter experienced a familiar twinge of jealousy. Noa always faltered when she explained how Zeke had died on a beach while helping the rest of them escape.

When she’d finished, Loki sat there staring at her, his chin propped on one hand. “So you’re Persefone now,” he finally said.

“Sort of,” Noa acknowledged.

“Huh.” Loki grunted. “I saw your posts. Some of what you claimed sounded kind of . . . out there. But you did some good work.”

“Thanks,” Noa muttered.

“We can bring the whole thing down,” Peter interjected. “We have hard drives from Charles Pike’s private server farm. But we haven’t had the processing power or the time to find the decryption key.”

“And you want my help.” Loki’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinized Peter. “Gotta say, I’m still pretty ticked off about that stunt you pulled, tracking my IP.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry about that.” Loki’s mood seemed to be turning again, and Peter was regretting speaking up. Maybe he should leave the talking to Noa for a change. “Listen, we wouldn’t have come here, but these guys keep finding us—”

Loki sprang out of his chair. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, they keep finding you?”

“Well, yeah,” Peter said, flustered. “Like, almost every night, no matter where we are—”

“And you led them here?!” Loki abruptly stormed from the room, vanishing down the corridor.

Noa shot him a withering look, then jumped from her chair to follow, muttering, “Nice going, Peter.”

“Hey, he deserved to know,” Peter said defensively. “You guys stay here, okay?”

Teo glanced at Daisy, then said, “Sure. Good luck with crazy mountain man.”

Rushing into the corridor, Peter caught a glimpse of Noa running in the opposite direction from where they’d come in. She broke left, vanishing into the darkness.

Peter raced after her.

The corridor bent twice more before ending at an enormous metal door. When Noa caught up to him, Loki was hunched beside it, frantically punching numbers into a keypad. The keypad beeped, and he spun a wheel on the front of the door that looked like it belonged on a ship. As the door groaned open, a deep-blue glow emanated from within.

“What is this place?” Noa asked with awe as she followed him inside. It was another round room, smaller than the one they’d just been in. But this one was filled floor to ceiling with computer consoles and monitors. It looked like a government command center in an action film.

“It’s an old Titan missile silo,” Loki said, dropping down into a swiveling Aeron chair. “I bought it a few years ago.”

“Wow,” Peter said from behind her. “Now this is what I’m talking about!”

Noa knew exactly how he felt. Her eyes swept greedily across the room, taking in the array. The things she could do with all that processing power . . . it was a hacker’s dream come true.

Loki ignored them. He was rapidly tapping away at a keyboard. Images shifted across the mounted monitors: Noa realized she was looking at wide, panoramic views of the landscape aboveground. Loki must have cameras hidden in nearly every corner of the compound. His eyes danced across the screen as he muttered, “Sector One, clear. Sector Two looks okay, too. . . .”

The security images flashed past in such rapid succession it was dizzying. Finally, Loki spun around in his chair. He didn’t look pleased. “You said they come at night?”

“Yeah, usually,” Peter said. His eyes flicked to Noa, and she shook her head slightly. Sharing the fact that just yesterday, Pike’s men had showed up on a busy college campus in broad daylight might compel Loki to bring out the shotgun again.

Loki scratched his beard. “And you’ve checked for trackers?”

“Always,” Noa chimed in. “We keep changing cars, too, and there’s no way they could have bugged our clothes or packs.”

Loki looked past them toward the door. Thoughtfully, he said, “Those other two. You trust them?”

“Absolutely,” Noa said firmly. “If we get caught, they do, too. And terrible things will happen to them. They know that.”

Loki drummed his fingers on his knee, still glaring at them.

“Listen, man. If there’s any way we could plug in just one drive,” Peter pleaded.

Loki snorted. “Yeah, right. That might be how they’re tracking you.”

“No way. We built Faraday cages for them,” Peter said, slipping off his backpack. “Here, check it out.” Carefully, he pulled a drive out of his pack. It was bulky, wrapped in several layers of aluminum foil and cardboard.

Loki took the drive gingerly, like it might bite. He set it down on the desk in front of him and lurched out of the chair, lumbering toward a metal cabinet in the corner. After opening it up and riffling around inside, he came back with some sort of gadget.

“Is that a bug detector?” Peter asked. “I saw something like that once, in this spy store back home.”

“Does he ever shut up?” Loki muttered. He ran the scanner over the drive, then flipped it and did the same to the other side. His forehead wrinkled. “Nothing.” He sounded perplexed. “Kind of hinky, but it seems to do the trick. And they’re all wrapped up like this?”

“Every one of them,” Peter responded, a hint of pride in his voice.

“How many?”

“Forty-two,” Noa said. “We split them up, so we’ve each got about ten.”

Loki scratched his beard again and said musingly, “So how the hell do they keep finding you?”

Noa shrugged helplessly. The same question had been dogging her for weeks. The four of them were almost never apart; they didn’t even use cell phones anymore for fear of being found that way.

Loki peered up at her from under bushy eyebrows. “You said they had you, right? Back in Boston?”

Noa drew in a deep breath. She didn’t really want to go into what had been done to her on that operating table. “Yeah, but if they’d implanted a device in me, they would have found us before. It’s only been a problem recently.”

“So what’s changed?” he prodded.

“Nothing, really.” Noa shrugged, her eyes unconsciously sliding to Peter. He was standing in front of the monitors with his hands jammed in his pockets, that same lock of hair dangling over his right eye. “I mean, Peter joined up with us, but . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Peter blinked, as if confused, then raised both hands as realization dawned. “Whoa, hey,” he protested. “You know I wouldn’t sell you out, Noa. I would never—”

“Maybe not intentionally,” Loki interrupted. “But they might have put a tracker on you.”

“That’s nuts,” Peter scoffed. “It’s not like they ever even had me—” His eyes suddenly widened, and he said, “Oh, crap.”

“After Rhode Island,” Noa said slowly. “You woke up in a hospital, right?”

“Yeah, but it was just a regular hospital,” he said weakly.

“One way to find out,” Loki said gruffly, getting to his feet. He motioned for Peter to extend his arms out to the sides. After a beat, Peter complied, but he didn’t look happy about it. He stood stiffly as Loki ran the scanner over the front of his body. Noa held her breath; the machine remained silent.

“This room should block any signals,” Loki said, moving on to Peter’s back. “The walls are lined with copper mesh, and they’re built to withstand a nuclear blast.”

“Kind of a more high-tech Faraday cage,” Noa said.

“Exactly.”

The scanner suddenly started emitting a series of high-pitched beeps. Loki’s hand froze with the device an inch from the base of Peter’s spine.

Peter’s voice quavered as he said, “No.”

Loki gingerly lifted up a corner of Peter’s T-shirt and bent to examine his back. He waved Noa over, saying, “Check it out.”

Reluctantly, Noa crossed the room. Peter looked absolutely terrified. The expression on his face sent her back to the moment when she first discovered the incision on her chest, and found out that strangers had been operating on her,
handling
her, without her permission. It was the worst kind of violation.

In the dim light of the room, it was hard to see what Loki was pointing at. She bent lower and squinted: There was a tiny, thin scar on Peter’s lower back, just over a half-inch long.

“But if it’s been inside him this whole time . . . Peter’s right, they usually only come at night. And it doesn’t seem like they know exactly where we are.” Noa’s mind was spinning—in a way, this was still her fault. She’d given Peter permission to join them. And because of that, Pike had nearly captured them time and again.

Loki hefted the backpack by the straps and peered at it. “How often are you wearing this thing?”

Peter shrugged, his arms still raised. “A lot.”

“All the time,” Noa said slowly, working it through. “He only takes it off—”

“When I’m sleeping.” Peter met her eyes.

“That’s why they only come at night.” Loki nodded, looking satisfied. “Rest of the time, those little cages you built for the drives blocked the signal pretty effectively.”

Noa was almost overwhelmed with relief; they’d finally figured out how Pike was tracking them, and there were no traitors in their midst. At least, not willing ones.

Destroy the bug, and they could evade him once and for all. They could find a real safe house, and stay for more than a couple of days. “We have to get it out,” she said resolutely.

“Yup,” Loki agreed. “I’ll go get a knife.”

“Wait, what?” Peter dropped his arms and backed away. “Hell no. I didn’t sign up for home surgery.”

“Peter,” Noa said, trying to sound reassuring. “Look, I know it’s scary. But this way they won’t find us anymore.”

“Maybe we can shut it off somehow,” he said desperately. “Or I’ll just stay in here. This room is safe, right?” he said, whirling toward Loki. “You said it would block any signals.”

“Sure.” Loki shrugged. “No bathroom, though. That’s down the hall.”

“So I’ll wear the backpack when I use it.” He sounded relieved. “No big deal.”

“And what? You stay down here forever?” Noa cocked an eyebrow.

“Just until we get the data off the drives,” Peter said weakly. “We’ll figure something out by then.”

Loki was rustling through the cabinet again. He dug out an old fishing tackle box and sifted through it. After a minute he straightened, brandishing a scalpel in a sterile plastic sheath. “Ha! Knew I had one somewhere.”

Peter had retreated to the far wall. “No way, man. Keep that thing away from me!”

“All right, let’s just take a minute,” Noa said calmly. “I know you’re freaked out, but think about it. Do you really want to walk around with some sort of P&D device lodged next to your spine? What if it’s more than just a bug?”

“Jesus.” Peter sank down on his haunches and clutched his head in both hands. “Like what? A bomb?”

“Well, we don’t know, right?” Going over to him, she set a hand on his shoulder. “Trust me. I know how scary this is.”

He tilted his head up to meet her eyes. “I know.”

“But in your case, it shouldn’t be hard to get out. It’s probably close to the surface. Like removing a splinter.”

“Gotta get through scar tissue, though,” Loki chimed in. “That’s gonna be a bitch.”

Noa threw him a scathing look. He hunched his shoulders and grumbled, “Just want the kid to know what he’s facing.”

Peter had blanched even whiter. “What if it blows up when you try to take it out?”

Noa chewed her lip; that hadn’t occurred to her. If there was some sort of fail-safe mechanism, that could be very, very bad.

Loki snorted. “Hell, doesn’t matter if that thing is packed with C4. It needs a remote trigger, and that’ll be blocked, too. Just like the signal is now.”

“See?” Noa said, trying to sound reassuring. “Nothing to worry about.”

Peter didn’t answer. He was rubbing the small of his back with one hand.

“Listen, Peter. We’re going to figure this out,” Noa said soothingly. “And we won’t do anything tonight. After some food and sleep, I bet this won’t seem as scary. Loki, do you have anything to eat?”