Soulprint (22 page)

“I think so, too,” I say.

The locker room door flies open, and we both jump. “Cameras off. Computer lab unlocked.” Cameron bows.

“You're so cocky it pains me,” Casey says. “Also, you're the best.”

“Remember that next time you're trying to pull the big-sister act, okay?” She rolls her eyes. “Turn left out of the cafeteria, go to the end of the hall, turn right.” She starts to move. “And Casey? Nothing stupid.”

“Ha,” she says. And Cameron laughs, too. Because we all
know, this thing they've already done? They can't possibly do anything stupider.

And then we're alone in this big empty room that echoes. Cameron clears his throat. “How's the side?” he asks, his gaze just over my hip.

It stings. “It's fine,” I say.

He's looking at my shirt. At the spot where he stitched me up. At the other spot, lower and to the left, where the bullet grazed my skin. But then his gaze moves to my eyes, and there's a danger to his honesty—now it's reflected in his eyes. I read his look. I've never seen it before—never directed at me, anyway. But I understand it completely, and I can't move forward.

I should show him. It's what I would do—what I would've done—yesterday, or a few hours ago, even. But something very sudden has shifted. Something I don't know what to do with. “Let me see,” he says. I'm searching for that girl who pulled her shirt over her head so he could take out the tracker. I'm searching for the girl who took a shower with him on the other side of the distorted glass. And I'm searching for the girl who doesn't understand the need to keep things hidden like that. But all I can think of are the words he has said to me, and there's a feeling in the pit of my stomach like the churning ocean, like the horizon shifting.

I lift my shirt, but only a little, and only on the left side. He comes closer and kneels beside me, examining the mark. His hand is on my stomach, and I can't breathe. His fingers trace the edge of the mark, and I don't know what to do, other than
to continue not breathing. “Yeah, it's just gonna sting. I'll see if I can find some antibiotic cream around. Let me check the stitches. Make sure there's no sign of infection.”

He starts lifting my shirt higher, his knuckles trailing inside, and I push him away. “I want Casey to do it,” I say.

He freezes and drops my shirt. “I'm sorry. Okay.” He cringes and looks down. “I'm sorry,” he says again.

I'm cringing, too, and not doing a very good job of masking it. “No, it's fine. Don't apologize.” I try to backpedal, because he hasn't done anything wrong. It's me, it's the situation. It's him too close and the words he's said and the way he looks at me. It's a wave of nerves where there should be none. I've had Dominic in my room, and I knew what to say, how to say it. I kissed him, even, but the only nerves I felt then were for the weapon in my hand I was about to use. “You didn't do anything, I just …”

“Okay,” he says. “We're fine.” And I think that maybe he doesn't understand why I acted like that. He clears his throat and stands up. Backs away. He runs his hand through his hair, turns to say something to me. Stops himself. No, I was wrong, he understands.

“I'm going to see if Casey needs help,” he says, staring at the locker room door. “Do you want to come?”

“You go,” I say. “I want a shower. I want to put on a ridiculous uniform.”

He smiles, and my heart stops. “Okay,” he says, and then he leaves me. He leaves, and I am frozen. He didn't even pause, didn't ask me not to leave, didn't warn me or threaten me. He
just left me, with an open window, alone. He left me, with the cameras off and at least twenty different exit possibilities. He left me, trusting me to be here when he returns.

I walk to the showers. And after I'm clean, I find the stash of uniforms, and I change into a softball uniform—long shorts, short-sleeved, soft shirt, a hat I tuck my hair through, creating a ponytail. I'm barefoot, and I stay that way. No need for more blisters.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror—how common I look. This is the life I didn't have. The girl with no past, with the normal life, going through high school.

I think of Casey and Cameron somewhere far away in the building. I check the gym office, and I see Casey's blood on the carpet. I take my time scrubbing it out. I look up at the open window and check the floor for any pieces of glass left behind, but it appears that someone has already cleared them up.

I wipe down the computer and anything else I have touched with another shirt, like Cameron has taught me.

And after, I go to find them.

I remember cameron's directions—left out of the cafeteria, right at the end of the hall. School is not how I pictured, or maybe it's different when it's completely empty. It's more like how I imagine an empty jail, or some asylum, and everything about me echoes still. Lockers line the walls, and the wooden classroom doors are shut and closed off. There's a window in the center of each door, and the classrooms beyond look sterile and dusty. I can hear my own breathing, my own heartbeat. There's no one watching me. No one following my signal from a tracker. No one balancing me on a tightrope. I don't hear Cameron or Casey. I don't hear anything. I move faster, anxious to not be alone anymore.

I see them through the window of the door, which they've kept closed. But it's the only classroom with a light on right now. Casey's hands fly across the keyboard, and she pauses to adjust the cables she has running from the hard drives, in some sort of maze, to the computer. Cameron sits at the desk beside
her, leaning forward with his head resting in his hand, his eyes skimming his own computer screen.

It's so silent, I'm scared to break it.

I raise my finger and tap gently on the glass. They both still jump, startled to see me there. I raise my hand, and their faces relax. Casey tilts her head to the side and grins. I know what I look like—someone unlike myself. Casey waves me in.

She looks at Cameron as I enter the room. “You left her just wandering the school?”

“No, I was taking a shower. Now I'm done taking a shower,” I say.

I see his eyes flick over me quickly and go back to his computer. He keeps his gaze fixed on the screen. I walk behind Cameron and look over his shoulder as Casey goes back to her work. He's reading articles about me. About us. “What do they say?” I ask.

He closes the article before I have a chance to read further. “They can say anything they want. You know that, right?”

“I know that.”

“Doesn't mean it's true.”

“I know.” God, what must they be saying about me?

But he doesn't show me that article. Instead, he clicks on another tab, pulling up a different article, this one detailing the events of our escape—as much as they've figured out, at least.

He pushes the chair beside him out with his foot, and when I sit down, he hooks his ankle around the chair leg and drags it closer, so we're sharing the same space.

The article has a lot of the escape details right, though
they're missing Dominic completely. But they've found the sets of breathing equipment. They know there was a fourth person, but if they have any guesses, they're not being reported. Honestly, I'm not sure whether it's better or worse that they don't know. They've traced us as far as the sewer, and then after that we all but disappear. There've been reported sightings all along the East Coast, and at bus stops and gas stations all throughout the country. If Dominic has managed to reach civilization by now, it doesn't appear he has turned us in. “We're like ghosts,” Cameron says.

“Except ghosts that have to stay hidden,” I say.

The article also details the increased police presence, the helicopters perpetually scanning any region with reported sightings. I haven't heard any helicopters flying overhead recently—maybe we're really safe here. Or maybe it's just the insulation of the building. Part of me doesn't want to find out.

The other articles we read are about what I might potentially do once I'm out. Whether June has left me instructions somehow. Whether there's a second shadow-database. Whether I will continue what June and Liam started. Even if the only thing June left for me is the information she might've copied seventeen years ago, that's a lot I could still do damage with. The article is open for comments at the bottom, and the first commenter manages to sum this all up with the following rather ominous line:
What she might do, one can only guess; where she might go, one can only dream
. About as vague and factless as the article itself.

A-plus reporting right there.

“Cameron, come here,” Casey says. He leaves me at the screen, and I quickly pull up the recent Internet history, searching for the article he didn't want me to see. I want to know what they're saying about me. All of it. I pull up the article and quickly scan the words, but it's not about me at all. It's about him and Casey and their missing sister, Ava. It's about how Casey attended a specialized school—how promising she was—while Cameron and Ava remained home, raised primarily by their grandmother until she passed away, and then by the mother he never speaks about. It mentions that Cameron spent time in a juvenile detention center for auto theft.

The article paints Cameron as a criminal, and Casey as a genius, and Ava as absolutely nothing—a figment of our imagination. A girl who is gone, and is therefore irrelevant now.

According to the article, Cameron got out after serving three months, and he reported Ava missing soon after. At which point Casey dropped out of school, and I guess that's when Cameron went into hiding, taking Casey with him this time. And for what? For this?

“Come see, Alina,” Cameron says, and I close the window and plaster a blank look across my face as I approach.

Numbers scroll across the screen, in lines grouped in three or four, like the printouts in the hideaway underground. Some are starred, just like in the printouts. “Spreadsheets of numbers, that's the only thing on this one.” She switches hard drives and pulls up the next files. She selects the first one, and it's a science journal, dated over twenty years ago: “Generational Linkage of Violent Criminal History in Souls.”

My eyes skim the article. I recognize the material, though I've never read the original article. It's the data, and the statistical analysis, the grant funding, the science. I take in as much as I can before Casey closes the document. She opens the next, and it's an unrelated paper: “Genetic Influences versus Soul Influences: A Study of DNA and the Soul.”

Every file here is a scientific article: “The Role of the Soul in Sociopaths; Correlation of Areas of Extreme Giftedness and the Soul.” Casey opens each article, quickly scans it, and moves on to the next. On the last one, my eyes skim the authors, and I see: Ivory Street.

I grip the edge of the table. “Go back,” I say. “Open the last article again.” She opens the file before, and there she is, right under the title. I point out her name in the list of authors.

“Holy shit,” Cameron says. “Ivory Street.”

We scan through every one, and her name is in every author list. “Why did June have this?” Casey asks. “Do you think that because this Ivory Street person conducted this study, she had access to the database?” Casey gets so excited, she pushes her chair back from the desk. She starts talking with her hands. “Someone had to have access, right? To do the study, somebody needs access. Do you think June got access from her? Maybe she didn't just break in.”

I look at the name on the screen, and I wonder. Maybe it's easier to break a person than to break a code.

I don't know, but Casey's eyes are wide and hopeful. There's a pattern here, and I need to find it. There are similarities within the documents that my mind trips over as I skim through
them. “Give me some paper,” I say, nudging Casey out of her seat.

“Um,” she says, but she doesn't object. She pulls a ream from the nearby printer. I don't know what I'm doing exactly, but something's taken over me. Like June, stumbling upon this herself. I picture her doing this very same thing. I'm closer. I'm close. I can feel it.

“Okay, I guess, um, you do whatever it is you're doing … and I'm going to find this Ivory Street.”

Cameron pulls up a chair and props his feet on the bottom of my own. “What are we looking for?” he asks, his voice low, like he's in on a secret.

“Honestly? I don't know,” I say. “Get me a pen. Or a pencil. I need one.”

He pulls out the drawer beside me and shows me the collection. “Oh.” I pull one off the top and get back to work.

I'm scanning the documents, jotting down notes for myself—author names, funding sources, data analysis programs, population samples—when Cameron taps the brim of my hat with his finger.

I'm jarred back to reality, but at first my eyes don't leave the screen.

“So, question,” he says. “And it's kind of important. You're left-handed?”

I stop writing. I put the pen in my left hand down. “Not exactly.”

“I'm confused. I thought these papers”—he gestured toward the screen—“I thought that science proved that left- and
right-handedness were almost completely tied to the soul. And June was right-handed, if I'm remembering correctly.”

“Just because I'm right-handed doesn't mean I have to use my right hand.” I flex my fingers, transfer the pen to the other side, where it does feel easier, and say, “When I was ten, I started pretending that I didn't have a right hand. Now it's habit.”

“When you were ten?”

“Yeah. When I realized my whole life was bullshit. That I was stuck. That it was … a prison. So I thought if I could convince them I wasn't June, that they were wrong, they'd let me out. To my ten-year-old brain, this made sense. If science says it's passed down, and if I'm not right-handed, then I can't be her, right?”