The Bar Code Prophecy (9 page)

When Grace reopened her eyes, she was once again in the dank, harshly lit subway storage closet. Eutonah and Eric were with her. “The time ran out,” Eutonah explained. “The helmet runs on a timer for our own protection.”

“Do you know the rest of the prophecy?” Grace asked.

“What you heard is all anyone knows,” Eutonah told them. “During the meeting of chieftains, we used the prophecies to lead us to the stone tablet hidden in the mesa wall. Several of the elders interpreted the pictographs, but the tablet was broken. Somewhere there is a missing piece.”

“What do the elders think it means?” Eric asked.

“You are too young to remember this, but back in the year 2012, many people believed that the Mayan calendar had predicted the end of the world would arrive in December of that year,” Eutonah said.

“Obviously it didn’t,” Eric pointed out.

“The date seemed to come and go without event, but there are many of us who believe it was the beginning of the end,” Eutonah countered. “It was the year Jonathan Harriman invented the bar code tattoo and Global-1 first launched it in Asia. It took only another thirteen years for the tattoo to spread through Africa and then Europe before it got to America in 2025.”

“So you’re saying the Mayan prophecy did come to pass, after all?” Grace said.

“Yes. It just happened very quietly,” Eutonah said with a nod. “But there are those among the chieftains who believe that we are in the final stages of the prophecy.”

“What’s supposed to happen?” Eric asked

“No one knows, but much of what happens in the end will be up to the two of you.”

“Us?!” Grace cried.

“We think Eric is the brother mentioned in the prophecies,” Eutonah replied. “He combines the blood of two great Indian nations. His father was descended from a line of Hopi chieftains. On my side he is descended from powerful Cherokee shamans, spiritual men and women with highly developed gifts.”

“And me because my biological father is Jonathan Harriman?” Grace deducted. “Is he really the Master of Destruction?”

“It might not ever have been his intention to harm anyone,” Eutonah allowed, “but the thing he invented and the company that has grown rich and so powerful because of his invention makes him an excellent candidate for the title.”

“What about the heavenly bodies falling from the skies?” Eric asked.

“We don’t know,” Eutonah admitted. “But we do know this: The Hopi believe that the land we were just now on is the center of the universe, and Global-1 is strip-mining it for minerals. Every day they use gallons and gallons of precious water to make a slurry of liquid chemicals and water because it’s the least expensive way to transport the minerals.”

Grace realized Eutonah’s meaning. “The balance of the world is being upset.”

“Of the
universe
,” Eric amended.

“The moon affects the tides; who’s to say that the mineral content of the Earth doesn’t affect things floating in space?” Eutonah said. “If the center of the universe is destroyed by the greed of Global-1, who knows what could happen?”

Grace suddenly felt that she couldn’t catch her breath. This was all too much. “This is crazy,” she said, panic rising in her voice. “I don’t believe in prophecies. And even if it’s all true, what does it have to do with me?”

“You’re the daughter the prophecy talks about,” Eutonah replied.

“I’m not!” Grace refused to believe it. “I’m Grace Morrow and I have a family that is missing. I have no right to be fooling around with all of this right now. I need to be looking for them.”

“Your best hope of finding them is with us,” Eric insisted as he laid his hand reassuringly on her arm.

“I don’t believe you!” Grace cried, pulling away from his touch. “You’re all involved in this bar code tattoo resistance and that’s all you want me for.” She grabbed the keys Eutonah had placed on the virtual reality helmet case and opened the door. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I have to find my family.”

The moment Grace stepped out, she almost collided with a subway car zooming down the track. It plastered her to the side of the wall, throwing dirt and debris in her face.

As soon as it had passed, she ran down the track and was able to pull herself up onto the platform at the end of the subway car and let herself inside. She slipped into a seat by the back car, panting heavily from the effort.

Commuters slipped wary sidelong glances at Grace, and she realized how disreputable she must look, covered in dirt from the passing train and with her hair knotted and wind-swept from her parachute jump. Her stomach grumbled loudly, reminding her that all she’d eaten since the day before was a granola bar that she’d hastily bought on the way to the subway station.

A dirty, disheveled man bearing a sign entered the train. It read:
THE END IS NEAR
. People moved away from him, seeming unconcerned with anything other than his pungent body odor.

“Brothers and sisters,” the man addressed the crowd in a loud voice as the subway train left the station. “You must understand that we have reached the last days of this evil, corrupt world. Prepare to breathe your last.”

Withdrawing a harmonica from his pocket, the dirty prophet began to play an old song that Grace recognized; in her head she sang the verses, which were about it being the end of the world as she knew it. When he was done, he leaned in close to each commuter, asking that they donate money in repayment for his song. The train was pulling into the next station when he reached Grace. She hoped to escape him but he blocked her path before she could fully rise from her seat. He leaned in so close that their cheeks touched. She recoiled from his awful odor.

“I’m a Postman,” he whispered. “I know where your family is. Follow me out at this stop, but not too closely.”

The subway doors opened, and before Grace could decide if she should trust him, he was moving toward the exit.

In a second she would lose sight of him altogether.

Grace began moving, uncertain if it was the right thing to do. But what choice did she have? If she didn’t act on this, she was at a dead end. Commuters clustered in the doorway, forcing Grace to push her way through.

The subway doors whooshed shut, catching the hem of her shirt. The train began to pull forward. Frightened that she would be dragged along, Grace pulled at the hem with all her strength. The hem tore and ripped the bottom half of the garment, tearing off as the train picked up speed.

Grace searched in every direction for the man who had claimed to be a Postman, and spied him at the top of the station stairs. With a spring, she rushed up the steps, weaving past departing commuters, ignoring their curses and complaints as she pushed past them. When she reached the top, the Postman had moved down the block and was pretending to loiter at a newsstand.

As she approached, their eyes met for just a flicker before he once again moved ahead. Confident now that he would wait for her, Grace relaxed enough to allow herself to take a good look at her guide. From the strength and agility of his movement, she realized that he was younger than he had appeared at first, maybe in his mid-twenties. In fact, not only did he move with the poise and speed of a young person, he traveled with exceptional ease, rolling easily over a garbage can that had fallen in his path and navigating around a dog walker with five dogs without breaking the fluidity of his movement.

Grace was impressed and recalled the catlike ease with which Eric had jumped into a rolling stand when he’d leaped from the subway platform.

The Postman crossed a busy street into a park, and Grace was delayed at the red light. Once she’d crossed, it took her an anxious moment before she saw him lying on the grass at the other end of the park’s diagonal path. She was hurrying in his direction when a shadow crossed her path. Stopping short, Grace faced two black-uniformed Global-1 officers.

“Grace Morrow, you must come with us.”

“Have you found my family?” Grace asked hopefully.

“Just come with us, please.”

“How did you find me?” Grace wondered aloud. Was it really true that without the silver sheet they could track her every movement?

Over the officer’s shoulder, Grace spied the Postman shuffling anxiously. Who knew where her family was, the Postman or Global-1? Who should she trust?

“We were sent to get you,” the Global-1 officer said.

“But how did you know where I was?” Grace repeated, backing away.

“We’ll take you to your family,” the officer said.

When the Postman had said the same thing, she’d followed him. Why did she want to run from these Global-1 officers now? “Where are we going?” she asked them, continuing to back up.

“If you don’t cooperate, we’ll be forced to arrest you.”

“Arrest me for what?” Grace asked.

The officer reached for her and Grace took off running. She ran with every inch of strength and lung power in her, racing toward the Postman but not seeing him. The officers chased, but were obstructed by a line of small children on a camp trip.

Grace sped down the city street, careening around a corner only to be met by a parked Global-1 squad car. As the officers from the car approached, she ducked through traffic, keeping low and ran down the closest side street on the other side. When she reached the end, two more Global-1 officers appeared.

Running off to her right, they didn’t seem to be trying that hard to catch her. It was as though they were so certain she couldn’t escape that they were taking their time, tightening their grip on her gradually. The idea demoralized her, made her feel she was already caught in their trap.

Grace panted as she turned into an alley. Another squad car cruised to a stop out on the street and Grace turned to see she was trapped by a brick building at the end of the alley. No officers yet, but she was sure they were coming.

“On belay.” Grace looked up to the direction of the voice and saw Eric looking down at her from the rooftop. He was about two stories high and he’d thrown down a rope that had a loop tied to the end. “But make it fast,” he added as she stepped into the loop.

Reaching up, Grace gripped the mortar that held the bricks and began to climb. When she was nearly to the top, a piece of brick crumbled beneath her hand and she lost hold. In her surprise, she slipped and swung out from the building.

“Got ya,” Eric assured her from above. “You’re almost here. Refocus and keep coming up.”

Grace found her holds once more and continued to the top. Eric helped hoist her over the ledge while he gazed anxiously up at the sky and then down below.

“They’ve lost us?” Grace suggested hopefully.

“They can always find you,” Eric said. “For the rest of your life, they’re always going to be able to find you.” He held a device the size of a cell phone over her and it began to buzz. “But for now, we’re jamming their signal.” He did a quick comic dance around her singing as he went, “We be jammin’. We be jammin’.” Then he stopped and grabbed her arm. “Now let’s get out of here.”

“We suspected it, but now we’re almost certain,” Kayla said. She sat on the hood of a car parked in the same underground garage that Grace had been in the day before. Grace was standing beside Eric and Mfumbe, all of them leaning against a parked tractor trailer.

“We’re pretty sure you’ve been nano-chipped,” Kayla went on. “We have information that everyone who received the bar code tattoo in the last three months was injected with a microscopic tracking chip. It’s as if they put a molecular-sized cell phone inside you and it’s constantly pinging.”

“Pinging?” Grace questioned.

“Sending signals to a tracking satellite,” Mfumbe clarified.

“Global-1 has been working on this idea for a while. My mother, who was a maternity nurse, saw them actually inserting chips into the feet of infants,” Kayla continued. “We included this in the information we sent to Ambrose Young, and he exposed it in the Senate investigation. Global-1 admitted it and claimed it was simply an anti-kidnapping measure. Global-1 was ordered to shut it down.”

“So now they’re trying it another way,” Mfumbe said.

“I want it out of me!” Grace cried. The idea that something had been put in her body without her permission or knowledge was such a violation. The notion that it was a tracking device made her feel like an animal caught in a net. “Do you mean that Global-1 is following the movements of everyone my age?”

“Not everyone,” Kayla replied. “They’re not interested in locating everyone. But they
can
locate anyone who is your age just by punching in satellite coordinates that they took when you were tattooed.”

“You’re Jonathan Harriman’s daughter. Most likely they want to use you to get to him,” Mfumbe said.

“He doesn’t care about me,” Grace argued. “I barely know him.”

“He might care more than you think,” Kayla said. “My guess is that they want something from him and he’s not cooperating. They want you as a bargaining tool.”

“And it’s possible they know about the prophecy,” Eric pointed out.

“Maybe,” Kayla said. “But maybe not.”

“And that’s why they went after my family? As a bargaining tool, too?” Grace asked.

“We think so,” Mfumbe replied. “When they didn’t get you at your house, they took your family knowing you would come to the police looking for them. Besides that, your adoptive parents might know more about the Global-1 program than they want revealed.”

Again, Grace clung to the hope that they’d gotten away. But it seemed less and less likely.

“You know what? I don’t care about any of this. I only want to find my family.”

“We’re going to find them,” Eric told her. “You and me together.”

“How can you find them?” Grace challenged.

“Finding people is what I do. I’m a Postman. And I’m going to train you to be a Postman, too. I’ve been watching you. You’ve got the stuff to do it. Becoming a Postman is going to give you the skills to find anyone you want, including your family.”

Eric unlocked the back door of the climbing center. “The reason we get to use this place is because the owner is a Postman. He encourages us to train here.”

“Are we going to do more climbing?” Grace asked.

“Maybe later. Today I’m going to start your training as a free runner.”

“A what?”

“It’s kind of like being an urban ninja; you move through a city landscape with the fluidity of water flowing through rocks, with complete ease and total efficiency.”

“The Postman I followed the other day moved like that,” Grace recalled.

“He was just playing,” Eric said. “You should see him when he’s trying.”

“How do you know?”

“I told him where to find you, and I was trailing you,” Eric revealed. “How do you think I just happened to pop up on that rooftop?”

“Then he doesn’t know where my family is?” Grace asked, disappointed.

“I don’t know if he knows. Did he say he did?”

Grace nodded. “The Global-1 cops said they knew, too. Is everyone lying to me?”

“The cops probably were,” Eric concluded. “But the Postman might really know where they are. Your family might be trying to send you a message. If the message was meant only for you, he wouldn’t tell me no matter how much he trusted me. It’s in the Postman’s code, a way of insuring the privacy of other people’s messages.”

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a silver bolero vest. “Put this on,” he said, handing it to her. “Allyson made it for you. It should shield you from the tracking devices.”

Eric took the jamming device from his backpack. “I’m setting this up because that vest isn’t going to do the entire job,” he told her. “Every time that tracker chip circulates out from under that vest, they can find you. Ideally you should be covered from head to toe.”

“How hot and uncomfortable!” Grace remarked.

“I know. Everyone is going to start dressing like medieval knights in armor. It will be coming back in fashion,” Eric joked.

“It’ll be kind of hard to move around.”

“I know. We’ll all be living underground wearing armor. Not much fun. I kind of like sunlight.”

“But people who have no reason to hide won’t have to worry,” Grace pointed out.

“Yeah, only dangerous criminals like you will have to go underground.”

“But I’m not —”

“That’s my point. Anyone who gets in Global-1’s way can be picked up and eliminated.” Eric snapped his fingers. “Easy as that.”

Grace put on the vest as Eric led her down steps and into a very large basement gym furnished with ropes, immense foam cubes, and pits of foam blocks, trapeze swings, an uneven parallel bar and a balance beam. “Ever take gymnastics?” he asked.

“I took classes as a kid and I’m on the team in school. I was supposed to be captain of the team this coming year.”

“I thought so. You move like a gymnast.”

“I’m tall though. All the really good gymnasts are on the shorter side.”

“I bet the balance beam is your best piece,” Eric said.

“It is,” Grace confirmed. “How did you know?”

“The way you move. Grace is a good name for you.”

Eric smiled and seemed to gaze straight inside her. She was suddenly certain he felt something for her, a feeling other than friendship. He was close enough to kiss her and Grace thought he was about to. She wanted him to.

“I’m going to show you a training hologram,” Eric said instead.

“Final level,” Grace replied, hoping he couldn’t tell what she’d been thinking.

Eric went to the wall and clicked a button. Multicolored particles tingled in the air and formed into the shape of the gray-hooded young Postman Eric had spoken to in the subway.

“He’s not actually here, of course,” Eric explained. “But he made the video and is the model for the hologram. His name is Javaun.”

The hologram of Javaun began running very fast around the gym. Grace was amazed as he ran up the side of a padded wall, nearly to the ceiling, and then back down again. Launching himself over the pit of foam blocks, he spun in the air and rolled to a standing stop on the other side and kept moving to the parallel bars, which he spun on, changing hands several times before shooting over to the balance beam, executing a backward walk-over, and spinning to the floor.

“Wow,” Grace breathed, genuinely awed.

“That’s just a training session. Wait until you see it in real life. People think the Postmen have gone away, but we haven’t. There’s more need for us now than ever. In fact, we’ve stepped up our game by adding free running.”

“Can you do all that?” Grace asked.

“Yep,” Eric said with a nod. “And soon you’ll be able to, as well.”

“I don’t think so.” Grace couldn’t imagine it.

“You will, because I’m going to teach you and I’m one of the best teachers around,” Eric insisted.

“Modest, too,” Grace teased.

“No reason for modesty at this juncture. It is what it is,” Eric said.

For the next five hours, Eric and Grace went outside where Grace experienced the most grueling training of her life. Despite her years of experience with gymnastics, she felt like a beginner.

“Grab hold! Pretend you’re a bug on a wall!” he instructed her.

“You can run faster than that! Race up that wall before gravity knows you’re there,” he shouted.

“Roll! Roll! And on your feet!”

At the end of the training session, Grace felt sweaty and broken. “Not bad for the first session. Tomorrow we’ll try some basic urban free,” Eric said.

“How long have you been a Postman?” Grace asked Eric as they returned to the basement, safely underground.

“Just for the last year,” Eric replied. “I love it. It tests your body and your mind to the max. Plus, I’m helping people to not have their every communication monitored by Global-1. That makes me feel good.”

“In what ways does it test your mind?” Grace wanted to know. The ways in which it tested the body were obvious.

“You have to look for the links between people, as well as between places,” Eric replied. “Ever hear of six degrees of separation?”

“No.”

“It’s the idea that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else in six moves. Say I have to get a note to a guy in Brooklyn, New York. I search him on the Internet, and for most people there is a ton of info there. Sometimes I can find the address right online. In that case I just find a Postman heading that way and pass on the message. If I can’t, I start looking for people with the same last name, people who work in the same business, have similar interests, who went to the same school, and on and on. Lots of the time you wind up finding the friend of a friend of a friend who worked with a guy who knows the person’s sister. The Postman’s goal is to do it in no more than six moves.”

“It doesn’t sound easy,” Grace remarked. “How do you know which Postman to contact?”

“You hear things and talk to people. After a while, you’ll get to know. I’ll help you,” Eric assured her.

“Do the Postmen all know each other?”

“Yeah, but it takes a while,” Eric replied. “It’s better if we know Postmen to hand messages off to, but there’s no central directory or anything. You just have to get to know people.”

“What about the Postman who said he knew where my family was? Do you know him?”

“That guy who poses as a subway nut? His name is Darrell. Javaun is a friend of his. They work the subway a lot. I’ll find him for you.”

“Do you think you could?”

“Sure. I’ll ask him what he knows,” Eric assured her. “Grace, you’re going to be good at this. I think you’ll like it, too.”

Grace was excited to try being a Postman, but it still sounded daunting to her. The long hours of training had taxed her to her limit and she couldn’t quite imagine doing it again in the morning. “Can I rest now?” she asked.

“Find a piece of foam and settle in,” Eric told her.

Dropping into a pit of foam blocks, Grace piled some blocks under her head and stretched out. She was aware of every muscle of her body because each one felt hot and stretched to its limit; each joint ached.

Eric piled three mats down and lay on his stomach. “Are you still mad at me, Grace?”

“I don’t mind working hard,” she answered. “I want to learn it.”

“Not about that. I know you’re not mad about that,” Eric said. “But you were angry when you learned I was the one assigned to follow you.”

This wasn’t her instructor talking. Or a Postman. Or a Decode operative. Suddenly, Eric was a guy again — the guy who went to her high school. The guy she’d liked.

The truth was, Grace wasn’t mad anymore. Just sad. Still.

“I thought we were really … friends,” she said, ready to leave it at that.

“We’ve become friends. I really like you, Grace. I think you’re smart and brave.”

“Thanks.”

“And pretty … beautiful, really.”

Grace drew in a long, slow breath.
Beautiful.
He thought she was
beautiful
. She had never thought of herself that way but it was enough that he did.

“I mean it, Grace. I’m not just giving you a line. Being assigned to follow you was like a gift. It’s been the best assignment I’ve ever had.”

“Thanks, Eric … for saying all that. It means a lot for me to know you’re not just spending time with me because you have no choice.”

“I hope you’ll always spend time with me,” Eric said softly. “I don’t like the idea of being separated from you.”

His words made Grace take a short, quick breath of surprised delight. Did he mean that? “Me neither,” she replied, suddenly certain that she meant it. Being with Eric was so natural. His confidence made her feel that everything could be managed and would come out all right in the end. Even with so many things going so wrong.

Eric yawned widely as he stretched. “We should sleep. Tomorrow will be just as hard as today.”

“Can’t wait,” Grace replied without a trace of sarcasm. “Good night,” she added, drifting off to sleep with a smile lingering on her lips.

In the morning, Eric gently shook her awake and handed her a carton of orange juice and a buttered roll. Brushing hair from her eyes, she sat up and drank. “Thanks.”

“Today we’re going to start you free running outside,” Eric said. “You’ll have to wear the jacket.”

“What’s it like outside?”

“Not bad,” he answered, “but there’s a strange light in the sky. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s almost as if the sun is extra bright.”

Pasadena Sun

Pasadena, California — July 14, 2026