Double Digit (20 page)

“Now, trust me, no touching the windows or the door. You’ll be greeted with a most unpleasant kaboom.” He turned to leave.

“Jonas!” I shouted.

“Yes.”

“Where’s the fun? I don’t even get to crack a password or anything?”

“The timer’s already running on the bomb and on these devices. Only I know the password to disarm it. There’s no code to crack, just a password. But even if you thought you could guess it, you’re stuck in here and I have your phones. You’re right, it’s not very sporting, but I’ve had a rough few weeks. Sometimes you just need a quick victory.” He placed another small device on the doorknob before he left, saying, “Checkmate.”

Clarke took the opportunity to smack Scott in the head. Ella sat down and started to cry. Tiki paced. Bass put his arm around me. “We’re not going to die in here. If I can stay calm, can you?” He took my hands. “Seriously, let’s think. We have an hour. We need to communicate. We need to clear everyone out of this building. We need a phone.” Everyone looked at poor Scott again.

“Sorry!”

Ella suggested we tape a sign to the window, but I was scared that even the tape touching it would blow us up. I had no idea how sensitive Jonas’s explosives were.

“What if we try to wave someone down, just to let them know there’s trouble?” Bass walked to the window just as four police cars pulled up in front of the dorm. “The cops are here. How could they know . . . ?”

I stood next to him in time to see Jonas Furnis crossing the quad, with his coat flowing behind him. He stopped and raised his arms like a bird. For a second I thought he was going to take off, the Guardian taking flight and leaving Mother Earth. I was half right. A shot had been fired, and with raised arms he fell forward.

“He’s dead. They must have been following him.”

“Thank God,” the hackers said. I felt no relief as I said it.

“Except he was the only person alive who knew how to disarm the bomb that’s going to kill us in fifty-five minutes.”

“Let’s take this in pieces.” Bass was speaking only to me. “Our first responsibility is to get a message out to clear the dorm.”

Ella started shouting at the door, “Anyone out there? Don’t touch this door, but can you hear me?” We were pretty much half the hall, and everyone else was probably out or still asleep.

Scott collapsed on Tiki’s bed, cradling Clementine in his arms and whispering to her. “It’s okay, don’t be scared. I’m not going to let that bad man’s bombs turn you into nano-pieces.”

Ella put her head in her hands. “All that work. All those tiny little screws. Everywhere. What a waste.”

Clarke chimed in, “You’re a total waste. You even used my old Droid . . .” They all looked at each other and then at Clementine. “Rip her apart, Scott. Or I’ll do it myself.”

Apparently, Scott had used an old Android phone to work as Clementine’s communication system. He painstakingly opened her up and pulled it out. “It’s still charged. Three bars.”

“Dial 911. Or no? Digit, who should we call?” Bass seemed to think I was the authority on these situations. And, looking around, I guess I was.

“Let’s call 911 first.” I dialed and explained in as simple terms as I could what our situation was. I asked to be transferred to one of the police officers outside in the quad. They were putting police tape up around where Jonas Furnis’s body still lay.

I got one of them immediately. “This is Digit Higgins. I’m in McKinsey dorm at MIT. Yes. Free Digit, that one. Yes. I can see the body from my room. That’s the guy. There’s a bomb in this building and it needs to be evacuated. Is there a bomb squad nearby? We don’t have time for that. I’m in my room with five friends, and the windows and door are booby-trapped. We can’t get out unless that bomb is disarmed. We need . . .”

Bass took the phone from me. “This is the RA. Please evacuate this building. Then go to room 205. You will find a dog named Buddy there. He is reasonably friendly, yes. Walk him up and down the halls. He’ll find the bomb. We only have forty minutes left.”

Within five minutes, the building was surrounded by police cars. Dozens of cars filled with dozens of cops, none of whom knew the code to disarm the bomb. Even if Buddy found it, it couldn’t be dismantled without the code.

Sounds of barking made their way down the hall and then stopped. Bass was back on the phone. “Great. Okay. Can you . . . ? Right.” To me: “There’s a keypad on it, all letters no numbers, and a display screen with nine flashing
X
s. We need nine letters.”

Nine letters could be anything. Nine numbers would have given me more to go on, but letters could be just words. Oscar could crack it, but my laptop would have to be connected to the detonator for it to run through all the possible combinations of letters. There wouldn’t be time to go get my laptop where I assumed it was, lying in Jonas’s bag next to his body, and then log in and then train someone over the phone to run it.

Bass was totally calm. “Let’s take this really simply. This is a game to him. The letters won’t be random—they’d have to have meant something to him. And they could be simple because he never thought you’d be able to communicate with anyone. He could have made it really obvious.”

“Kill Digit.” Ella was counting on her fingers. “That’s nine letters. And it’s what he wanted to do.”

“Try it.” Bass addressed the waiting police officer who was presumably just sitting there watching the clock tick away on our lives. “Try ‘Kill Digit.’ Yes, I’m serious. Try it. Please.” We waited and watched the red blinking lights on the window, hoping for a change. “No? Okay, stay on the line.”

Clarke was visibly agitated. “What else have we got? What else do you know about him? His dog’s name? Who wrote
Silent Spring
?”

“It’s not nine letters. His Wi-Fi password was FurnisFire—that’s ten.” My mind was racing through every conversation I’d ever had with him. Bass was right. He would have given me a clue, some sort of a chance. Otherwise it just wasn’t fun for him. All these codes of his that I’d cracked in the past were just codes for their own sake. He could have just come on out with the information:
Pssst, go blow up the Tree of Life at Disney World.
He took some sort of pleasure in making the people around him work for information.

When we were down to fifteen minutes, the police officer (whose name I still don’t know) spoke up. “Listen, guys, I can only stay for another ten minutes, then I’m going to have to get me and this dog out of here.”

“Thank you.” Bass was totally resigned to his fate.

I had no reason not to get onboard. “You guys, I’m really sorry to have brought you all into this. And not to be able to get you out of it. I’ve been playing this game with Jonas Furnis for seven months. He’s dead, and we’re going to be too. I . . . I don’t even know who won.”

“Pretty much looks like he did, Digit.” Clarke was angry, and I didn’t blame her at all.

Scott was busy reassembling Clementine. It was like watching a mortician make up a dead body. Well, I assumed that’s what it would be like. I mean, gross.

Bass took my hand. It was too late for this to seem like romance. I was just a person to grab on to as we watched the clock tick down. We had five minutes less than we thought we did, since the officer was smart enough not to want to stay in the building till the end. “He didn’t know he was going to die. But he knew he was going to win.” I could picture Jonas Furnis walking out the door. And there it was: “Checkmate! Officer, try it. Checkmate.”

I held my breath and squeezed Bass’s hand. From the phone in the middle of the room, we heard, “Got it!” and the lights on the windows and door went green.

Bass and I held on to each other in relief for anywhere between thirty seconds and a week. It was hard to tell. When I finally looked up, Tiki was standing over us with her arms folded, shaking her head. “Girl. Something’s on here. Don’t lie to me.” I hugged her and the shell-shocked hackers.

I handed Clementine’s phone to Scott. “Thank you,” I said to both of them.

Clarke offered a status report on my life. “Well, the good news is that your family is coming in about an hour and you’re going on trial tomorrow morning. Maybe you skip the rest of your homework?”

M
Y PARENTS WERE WEIRD. WELL, EVERYTHING
was a little weird, me included. The entire incident with the bombs had taken place while they were flying, so when the police gave me my phone back, I sent them a text:

Some crazy stuff happened at MIT, but I’m fine. See you soon.

I’m guessing this softened the blow when they pulled up at campus to find my dorm completely surrounded by police cars and the press. The police had confiscated the bombing devices that were on my windows and door and had taken all of our statements. We watched as an ambulance took Jonas Furnis’s body away. Bass insisted that I stay inside my room while he went out and announced to the media that I had saved the lives of everyone in the dorm and had no comment for them at this time. Watching him handle the jungle of cameras and microphones, I could easily imagine Bass out in the world.

When Bass came back up to my room, we were all sitting where he’d left us. What had just been the least safe place in the world now seemed like the only safe place. Bass sat down next to me and put his arm around me. “I can see why maybe you need a break from all this.”

“Makes jail seem kinda relaxing, right?”

My parents knocked on the door and we all jumped. Bass opened the door and said hello. My mom gave him a hug and a kiss, which seemed way inappropriate, and my dad shook his hand.

My mom grabbed me. “Darling! The police told us what happened. Are you all right?”

Clarke answered for me. “She’s all right. She’s used to this. But I nearly had a heart attack. I’ve got to get in shape for this lifestyle.”

I hugged my parents. “Yeah, well I’m done with this lifestyle. Jonas Furnis is dead, his games are over, and I’ve cracked my last code. I’m starting a whole new boring life, dedicated to stuff normal people do . . .”

Ella reminded me, “As soon as you get out of jail.”

“It’s going to be her honor to go to jail. She stuck it to the Man . . .” Clarke said as she led Ella and Scott out of the room. She seemed to have a renewed sense of enthusiasm now that she remembered I was going to be martyred.

Tiki was in her own room, right where she was supposed to be, and I guess Bass realized he was the only one out of place. “I guess I should give Buddy that walk now. I’ll see you tomorrow in court, okay?”

“Thanks.” We both stood there, stuck again.

Luckily my dad was hungry. “Let’s get going back to the hotel to meet your uncle Bob for dinner. Tiki? Bass? Would you care to join us?” They both declined.

We caught up over a perfectly ordinary dinner. It turned out Danny hadn’t come because he’d gotten an audition for a starring role in a new series on the Disney Channel. “Are you joking? He had the idea to become an actor like two and a half weeks ago, and now he’s going to be the star of his own series?” I was surprised but not really that surprised. You have to remember that Danny has a Fast Pass to anywhere he wants to go.

My dad said, “He told me to tell you, ‘Go big or go home.’”

“I’m thinking about going small and staying home from now on.”

“If that’s your choice. Now, Bob, do you have anything to discuss with Digit before tomorrow? Are you all set?”

Uncle Bob was twirling spaghetti around his fork with more concentration than he’d shown my case. “All set.”

“Well, all set how? I mean, I’m pleading guilty, and you have a couple character witnesses, right? Is that it?”

“That’s it. The plea is actually no contest, but there’s another, fancier way to say it. I’ll look it up later. It means that we don’t have to bother with a jury. We’ll just go in with our witnesses and hope the judge goes easy on the sentencing.”

Why did I wish, more than anything at that moment, that I had an attorney who didn’t have to look up the fancy term for ‘no contest’? Like maybe there was an attorney out there who had fancy terms rolling off his tongue all the time, rather than spaghetti on his chin.

“Now, darling, I brought a little cardigan for you to wear over your navy dress. I thought, what if there’s a chill in the courtroom? Or what if a sleeveless dress shows just a tiny too much skin in that setting when all the men are going to be in suits? I’m wearing a suit myself. The one I wore when I played the district attorney in
Trial of Love.
Remember? The skirt with the little kick pleat in the back?”

“I do not remember a kick pleat.” It was hard for me to imagine what I would act like the night before my teenage daughter was going to prison, but it wasn’t this.

After dinner we hung out in the hotel bar for a bit. My parents were on California time, and I wasn’t in any hurry to get to bed and wake up and relinquish my freedom. My dad drank a Scotch on the rocks, which was unusual but not unprecedented. He got a little tipsy.

“I couldn’t be happier that Jonas Furnis is gone. Really gone,” he said.

“Me too. I mean, because he was horrible. But so much of what he said sort of stays with me. It’s like if he had been twenty percent less crazy, he could have changed the world.”

“Well, you’re the one who’s still alive, and you are going to change the world. Unless you decide not to. I’m one hundred percent behind you whatever you do. Just remember I said that.”

“I guess I’ll have a long time to think about what I’m going to do. Prison time and then the rest of college. I think I’m probably a little burned out from all that’s happened, but I wouldn’t mind making my life a little more normal. And smaller.”

“Good luck with that, Digit.” He started to laugh, and my mom rolled her eyes at him like he was being silly.

“I’m serious.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Dad took off his glasses and wiped them clean (they’re real; he needs them to see). “Normal? Maybe. Maybe later. But small? I think the ship has sailed on you ever having a small life.”