Immediately we all turned and started outside, but stopped just as quickly. Steel covered every window—every door. The very security measures that were supposed to keep intruders out were keeping us in.
"We can't get out," Tina said, dismayed.
Hope seemed to fade. The dot on Liz's monitor—the signal from the trackers we'd planted in the boys' shoes weeks ago—grew farther and farther away. I thought of my mother's advice, and I knew that, more than ever, I had to be myself.
So I looked at my friends. "Yeah," I said slowly, "we can."
I told myself that I'd been training my whole life for something like this—that we weren't as helpless as I felt, and for the first time that night my heart stopped racing; I took a deep, cleansing breath. Liz handed me her watch, and I peered down at the dots. Mick went in search of CoveOps essentials. Five minutes later we were pushing through cobwebs, smelling the dusty air of my favorite passageway.
Our flashlights cut through the black, and in the distance the sirens sounded like a stereo someone had left on.
I know those shadowy spaces—I can walk them in the dark. Blindfolded. In high heels. But this time something else lay at the end of the tunnel.
As the corridor branched and twisted, carrying us away from the mansion, I looked down at the monitor on my wrist and saw that most of the dots lay between the mansion and town—exactly where the boys were supposed to be. But one solitary dot moved away, so that's the signal—the boy—we followed.
When we exited the tunnel I saw the deserted highway that stretched out in two directions. The flashing dot went farther and faster as we stood there, unable to catch up.
"What now?" Liz asked.
"Anna, run around the perimeter until you reach the guardhouse—get help!" In a flash she was gone.
"Bex," I said, turning to my best friend; but just then my words failed me as I heard screeching tires and saw headlights glowing. One of our vans drove fast in our direction then skidded to a stop. I breathed for the first time in what seemed like days, and relief washed over me. Help is here, I thought.
It was probably my mom.
Or Mr. Solomon.
But then the doors flew open. And I heard Macey yell, "Get in!"
"You stole a Gallagher Academy van," I said, kind of amazed.
Macey shrugged. "Commandeered, Cam," she said. "When I couldn't get into the mansion, and heard the Code Black sirens, I commandeered a van. And yes," she said, as if reading my mind, "that's something that troublemaking debutantes learn how to do before they go to spy school."
Our headlights cut through the black. Mist fell from the sky—a warm, damp reminder that we'd come a long way since winter.
As we drove through the darkness, I didn't feel the rush of adrenalin that usually comes with covert operations. Instead of excitement, I felt a creeping horror that there had been a double agent in our midst. So I didn't let myself think about the boy I'd almost allowed to kiss me; I didn't dare wonder if I'd ever let myself feel that way again.
I turned up the sound on the monitor on my wrist, listened as a soft beep, beep, beep filled the van, faster than before, and I knew we were getting close.
"Turn here," I instructed, and the highway disappeared. We crept over gravel and potholes. "Hit the lights," I said. The van inched along in the dark.
The beeping was faster now, steady. "This is it," said Bex.
The clouds parted; a sliver of moonlight fell onto an industrial complex. Massive metal buildings stood clumped together. Weeds battled with gravel and broken bits of asphalt for control of the ground.
"What is this place?" Macey asked.
"It's an abandoned manufacturing company," Liz explained. "But the school owns it now."
"It doesn't look like there's any security," Macey said.
And then every girl in the van said, "Look again."
Chain-link fence covered the perimeter. Probably a million dollars' worth of motion sensors lay imbedded in the ground. It was a fortress disguised as a ruin, and there wasn't a doubt in my mind that whoever we were following had come here for a reason.
"So we find whoever's in there and get the disc back?" Macey asked as if she isn't technically an eighth grader and two years away from Sublevel One.
"Yeah." I said.
"So I guess it's just like…" Bex started, but trailed off. "Just like last fall?"
On an academic level she was right. It was like our fall final. This was the same training ground, and we were still students, but as Mick started handing out comms units and Napotine patches, I couldn't help missing Mr. Solomon and his cryptic pep talks, the clear-cut missions that outlined the difference between pass and fail.
I couldn't stop thinking that things weren't academic anymore.
Chapter Twenty-six
It's amazing how things come back to you—how instinct and training can take hold.
In an instant Bex was disabling the van's tiny dome lamp so there would be no telltale spark when we opened the doors. Mick disabled the wires that charged the perimeter fence, and one by one we slipped beneath it, retreating into the distant corners of the complex, fading with the shadows and darkness and things that go bump in the night.
When you're approaching a subject in the dark, the thing you have to worry about most isn't being seen—it's being heard. And unfortunately, Liz was feeling chatty.
"Cam, I'm sure Zach's got a really good explanation. I just know he's not a bad guy." That was a nice sentiment—a hopeful thought—and I might have enjoyed it if Liz's foot hadn't been inches away from a nearly invisible trip wire that shimmered in the moonlight.