The Bar Code Prophecy (5 page)

When the speeding truck finally stopped, Mfumbe — and she was now certain it was him — opened the door. Eric and Grace jumped down beside him. A woman in her early thirties, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, descended from the driver’s seat and walked toward them.

They were underneath the Los Angeles freeway. The woman introduced herself as Katie and extended her hand to Grace.

Grace shook hands and trained her eyes on the woman’s face. “Have we met before?” she asked. The woman looked so familiar and yet she couldn’t figure out why.

“You might have seen pictures of me in the papers lately,” Katie replied. “They called me Dusa the Drakian Menace in some of the papers, or at least the ones Global-1 owns, which is a lot of them.”

“That’s it! I saw a story about you on the TV,” Grace recalled. About six months earlier, Grace had sat down beside her mother, who was watching the TV report with avid interest. She remembered the reporter explaining that Drakians were an offshoot of Decode, a much more violent group whose illegal tactics violated the law and made its members subject to arrest.

“I know which show you saw,” Katie said with a bitter smile that rose up a little higher on the right side of her face than on the left. “It was a batch of lies. We like to mess up Global-1 any chance we get because they keep trying to ruin our lives. But we don’t hurt anyone. They didn’t even get my name right.”

“Your name isn’t really Dusa?” Grace asked.

“I called myself Medusa for a while, just to seem scarier to Global-1. It got shortened to Dusa. Then when I thought the bar code tattoo threat was over, I went back to my own name.”

Grace clutched the bar code tattoo on her wrist. The lines still tingled and burned slightly. “How is it not over?” she asked. She knew that the events of her own life were somehow tied to this question, even though she couldn’t say how.

Eric, Mfumbe, and Katie exchanged anxious glances. “We’re not sure, but we think they might be up to something again,” Katie answered.

This didn’t satisfy Grace at all. But she had more important questions to ask. “What’s happened to my family?” Her voice rose with fear. “Why were the police after me?”

“We’re not certain of that, either,” Katie answered.

“But how did you know to get me?”

“There are people in Global-1 who are sympathetic to our cause,” Mfumbe said. “Eric had told us about you, so when your name came up, we knew we had to act decisively.”

Every answer was only leading to more questions.

“Who was it?” Grace asked. “On the inside.”

Mfumbe shook his head. “We can’t tell you. It wouldn’t be safe. Not for you. Not for our informants.”

As if he could sense her frustration, Eric said gently, “We’re still trying to figure most of it out ourselves. The information we got was … vague. We need to know your story, too. Why don’t you tell us what you know?”

This was a different kind of trust he was asking for now, because it was clear that it would have to be, for the time being, an unequal trust. There were things they couldn’t tell her. But at the same time, they needed to know everything.

“Please,” Eric said. “We’re on your side.”

Grace decided to trust him.

“This has to do with it being your birthday,” Katie said once Grace had finished her story about Dr. Harriman and about the police coming to her house. When Grace had said Dr. Harriman’s name, she had hoped there would be a flash of recognition, a confirmation that he was the one who’d tipped them off. But they hadn’t betrayed a thing.

“My birthday?” Grace echoed. “Why should that matter?”

“You’d better come with us,” Eric suggested. “There are some people you should meet.”

“Eric, I’m really scared. What’s this about?” Grace asked.

“There’s no reason to be scared,” Eric assured her. “For what it’s worth, I won’t leave your side. Unless, of course, you ask me to.”

Katie disappeared into the back of the tractor trailer and came back wheeling a motorcycle with two helmets strapped to it. “I have to get this rig out of here,” she explained. “It’s not exactly easy to hide this thing. In case I get stopped, I don’t want them to find you. Eric, take her to the garage.”

“Sure,” Eric agreed as Katie and Mfumbe put down the truck’s back ramp and wheeled the motorcycle down. “Ever ridden on one of these?” he asked Grace.

She shook her head. She was nervous but excited to try it. With the way her day was going, what harm was a motorcycle ride going to do?

Eric handed her one of the helmets. “Climb on behind me and hang on tight to my waist,” he advised.

“See ya back at the ranch,” Katie said as she and Mfumbe returned to the truck’s cab.

“The ranch?” Grace asked. “For real?”

“She’s kidding,” Eric explained. “You’ll see.”

The truck pulled away. Grace and Eric followed and were soon zooming down the roadway. Grace clenched her eyes shut and her arms ached from holding Eric so tightly. Although she’d always wanted to ride a motorcycle, she never thought she’d really get the opportunity. Her parents would never have allowed it. The experience was thrilling and terrifying all at once.

After three blocks, she dared to open her eyes and observe the buildings going by as Eric zipped around corners, eventually turning into an alley between two skyscrapers. At the end of it, a wide garage door stood open. They pulled inside.

Electronic doors closed behind them and the floor they were on began to descend. Grace realized they were inside a large elevator car that was transporting them several levels underground. Finally the car elevator clanked to a jarring stop.

The wall opposite the one they’d entered through opened, revealing an immense underground parking garage. Eric revved the engine and drove slowly into the cavernous space, which was filled with cars, vans, and trucks, including several tractor trailers.

“Where are we?” Grace asked as soon as she and Eric had pulled off their helmets. The elevator left their floor and then returned with Katie and Mfumbe in the truck.

“This is your all-purpose hideout,” Eric said with a grin. “Katie calls it the ranch. Decode trackers can’t find us under here because we’re too deep underground.”

“If a meteor were to hit Earth, do you think we would be safe down here?” Grace questioned, looking around at the immense, dank space with its gray walls and exposed pipes. Every so often the news report about the meteor would pop, unbidden and random, into her head. She wasn’t really worried about it; she simply couldn’t get it completely off her mind.

“What?” Eric asked.

Grace smiled wryly. “Sorry. It’s strange, but in the middle of all this craziness, I can’t stop thinking about the meteor that’s supposed to be heading our way.”

“It’s supposed to pass us, isn’t it?” Eric answered.

“That’s what they’re saying,” Grace agreed.

Eric chuckled with a dark amusement. “I think we have enough other things to worry about right now.”

“Absolutely, but are we deep enough underground to be safe?”

“We’re deep enough to block a satellite signal. That’s all I know,” Eric said. “Don’t worry about the meteor. It seems like there’s one flying by every few years.”

A young woman approached them, walking from across the garage. Grace immediately knew who she was — how could she not? It may have been illegal to have the poster of Kayla Reed openly displayed, because President Waters had declared her an enemy of the state. Still, her image was everywhere, and Grace would recognize the eighteen-year-old’s lean, high-boned face anywhere.

Kayla and Mfumbe faced each other and held hands, clearly a couple. Kayla lay her forehead on Mfumbe’s chest and shut her eyes, as did he. They stood that way for several beats without moving.

“What’s that about?” Grace asked Eric.

“They’re telepaths,” Eric explained. “The early bar code resisters learned to speak with their minds. Many of them still communicate that way.”

“Can you do that?” Grace was afraid the answer would be yes.

“No. It takes too much training. I’d rather be climbing.”

Grace covered her tattooed wrist with her other hand, suddenly ashamed even though the tattoo was supposed to be safe now. It suddenly felt all wrong to be bar coded here in the presence of these resisters.

Lifting her head, Kayla caught Grace’s movement and smiled warmly. “It’s all right,” she said, brushing back her chin-length light brown hair as she broke away from Mfumbe and approached. “You didn’t know, and we didn’t get to you in time.”

“I didn’t know what?” Grace asked.

“You didn’t know not to get the tattoo,” Kayla replied.

Grace waited for Eric to tell Kayla that he had, in fact, warned her. But he kept quiet, kept this secret for her.

Katie and Mfumbe walked toward them. Glancing at her companions, Grace saw that they all wore bar code tattoos on their wrists. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Oh, this?” Kayla took a plastic bottle of clear mineral oil and a cloth from the large satchel she had slung across her chest. She held out her wrist and poured oil from the bottle onto her tattoo, rubbing it with a cloth. Her wrist was instantly smeared black.

“Hey, those things don’t grow on trees, you know!” Katie objected.

Kayla spoke as she continued rubbing away her tattoo. “I need a new press-on. This fake is shot,” she explained calmly. “There’s no more money in the bank account attached to it, and when I tried to use it today, the scanner came up reading
DECEASED
.”

“Are you kidding?” Mfumbe asked. Distressed, he inspected his own tattoo nervously.

“No joke.”

“That is seriously banged out,” Eric murmured.

This is beyond banged out,
Grace thought. Yesterday — this morning — she was working at GlobalHelix headquarters. And now she was in an underground parking garage with the leaders of Decode. Because of years and years of Global-1 messaging, the constant alerts and info blasts the corporation sent to her cell phone, she knew what she was supposed to do: Play along, get information, then turn them in.

Could she do that? Grace felt as though every circuit in her brain was suddenly cross-wired. She liked these people. They spoke to her as though she were one of them. And Eric was one of them, after all. She’d admired him for so long. He was a hero in her school — not to mention this attraction that was between them lately. How could she turn him in?

The answer was that she couldn’t.

Maybe she should just try to get away and not mention them. She could say she was blindfolded or knocked out. But first she had to find out what was going on.

Katie had crossed the wide aisle and climbed into the cab of a tractor trailer. Sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open, she took a metal box from the passenger side and opened it. “This one should be good for a while,” she said, handing Kayla a delicate piece of plastic, resembling cellophane tape, with a bar code imprinted on it.

Kayla took a facecloth from her pack and wet it at a nearby water fountain. Pressing the flexible plastic to her inner wrist, she put the damp cloth over it. When she lifted the cloth, a new bar code tattoo was there on her wrist.

Grace looked to Eric with a questioning expression. “Is your bar code tattoo a fake also?” she asked.

Eric nodded. “We all have fakes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this the other night when we were talking about it?” She remembered how tentative he’d seemed, as though he wanted to reveal something but had decided against it.

“Grace, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure I wanted to involve you in all this.”

“Well, I’m involved now,” Grace said.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Eric’s apology was so sincere it seemed to hurt him. “There are a lot of things I didn’t realize then that I know now.”

“Like what?” Grace demanded.

“We’ll tell you everything we know in a minute,” Katie cut in. Then she turned to Kayla and said, “We’d better tell Jack about your bum fake. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“Is he here?” Kayla asked.

“He’s in the back with Allyson,” Mfumbe said. “They’ve been here all day making changes on the swing-lo.”

“Let’s go talk to him about this,” Katie suggested. “We’ll be right back,” she added, turning to Eric and Grace.

“The swing-lo?” Grace asked Eric as the others walked toward the far end of the garage.

“This garage is where they build them,” he answered.

“But what is it?”

“It’s this cool flying saucer that this guy from Ireland, Jack Kelly, invented. Some mysterious billionaire is funding the thing, so Jack and his business partner, Allyson Minor, are working to get them into production.”

“Why do the others have to talk to them about the fake tattoos?”

“Jack is a genius computer hacker and he works with Decode,” Eric explained. “I heard he’s been writing advanced computer code from the time he was eleven — and he never even went to college. He’s the one who hacks into bank and government files and gets out the information on people who have passed away. A lot of times the dead people have left bank accounts with unclaimed funds in them. Jack is able to convert this info into bar code form and doctor it so the birth dates seem current.”

“So your bar code tattoo has the name of a dead person in it?” Grace asked.

“Yeah,” Eric replied. “It’s not foolproof, but as long as nobody is paying close attention, it enables us to buy stuff and not get arrested for walking around without a bar code.”

Eric took Grace’s hand. All at once, she felt electrified by his touch and soothed by the strength and firmness of his grip. “Come on,” he said gently. “I’ll show you the swing-lo. It’s final level. You’ll like it.”

He led her in the direction that the others had gone. Clusters of people were gathered in different sections of the garage. They spoke in low tones and their discussions appeared serious. Some individuals slept in sleeping bags inside the parked cars, others curled up on the hoods. They looked up sleepily as Eric and Grace passed. A few nodded to Eric, acknowledging that they’d seen him before.

“Who are these people?” Grace asked quietly.