I wake up once, during Cameron’s shift, because I feel a body standing nearby, and my senses are on high alert. But he’s not looking at me. He crouches beside Casey, and I can’t hear them exactly, but I can tell they’re disagreeing. I hear someone say, “This is completely screwed up,” and I know it’s Cameron, because his shadow clenches its fists at the same time the words carry through the room.
Then Casey pushes herself upright, and she sticks her finger at him, saying, “I need to do it, we need to do it.”
“No, we don’t,” he says.
It feels as if they’ve repeated these words to each other over and over again, because Casey just lies back and says, “We’re already doing it.”
“It won’t change anything,” he says.
“It changes everything,” Casey says. I don’t even have to strain to hear her, and Dominic’s sleeping bag rustles.
The shadow retreats to the door, Casey rolls over, the conversation is done.
The next time I wake, there’s just the faintest color to the sky, so I can see the mesh wires crisscrossing the solitary window. Casey is sitting with her back against the door with her eyes closed. But I can tell from the tension in her jaw that she’s not asleep. Light snoring comes from the other two sleeping bags. “Hey,” I whisper, and her eyes flutter open, focusing on me. “Can I use the bathroom?”
She checks her watch and stands. Then she looks beyond me. “Dom,” she says. “Time to wake up.”
She waits for them to stir, then leads me out of the room without touching me. Whatever sort of camaraderie we shared yesterday is gone now. We’re all playing our hands. There’s no point pretending anymore.
I have decided the most essential item for survival is a pair of shoes that fit. Blisters are the devil. At this point, I’d rather have Cameron cut a tracker out of my rib again. Okay, maybe not. But still. I slide the shoes onto my feet and already feel the chafing on my heel, my ankle. Dominic is packing an insane amount of material into a tiny knapsack, like a magic trick. And Casey makes a trip out back where there’s allegedly a well for fresh water.
I stare at the front door, open just a crack, calling to me like a magnet.
“Alina,” Cameron says, like he’s already said it. I shift my gaze to him, and he shakes his head, just once. “Heads up.” He tosses me a roll of beige tape from the first-aid kit on the counter. “Wrap your ankles. It helps.”
I do, and he’s right. I end up binding the sneakers as well, tightening them even more, securing them in place. “Thank you,” I say. Then I take another strip and place it in my pocket, folding the pieces of glass inside.
Casey comes back with several canteens. Dominic can barely keep the smile from his face. Casey is anxious as well, checking the lids, lining everything up in neat rows.
Cameron watches her with his breath held.
“Okay, everyone,” Dominic says, scanning all our faces. “Breathe. It’s just a hike.”
Casey laughs, and Cameron relaxes, and even I feel something unfurl inside me.
Because as much as I would like to think about running—as much as I think about the door open a crack and the glass in my pocket—I hear those numbers whispered into my ear, and I want to know. God, I want to know. They’re meant for me, and I want to know what’s waiting there.
I feel like June must’ve felt, in the moments before she got inside the database. All the information, just waiting to be seen. I’m like her after all—truth at any price. No matter what it says about me, about me and June in the same sentence, it’s true.
Dom shrugs the largest pack onto his shoulders and waits for us to do the same. We walk in a single-file line out into the sunlight. Dom, then Casey, then me, then Cameron.
I picture June’s mouth reciting the coordinates to me, and I want to grab her. I want to shake her, and ask her why, and then I want to see what she has left for me.
I guess we’re about to find out.
We’re mostly silent for the hike. Mostly, I think we’re all lost in our own thoughts, because whenever somebody does speak, it takes the others a moment to catch up. Which is what’s happening right now.
“I mean, it’s been seventeen years, it’s not just going to be sitting somewhere in the middle of the woods, right?” Casey asks like she’s been mentally talking to herself. “We’re looking for some instructions she’s left behind, right? It can’t be this easy, can it?” Her voice is breathy and hopeful.
“I wouldn’t call this easy,” Cameron mumbles.
“You know what I mean,” she says. “The Alonzo-Carter Cybersecurity facility hasn’t been compromised since June and Liam—not for lack of trying. So either she’s leading us to a shadow-database she set up to mirror the original, or to some sort of instruction guide to hack it externally …”
“My money’s on some sort of code,” Dom says.
“I don’t know,” Casey says. “Security could change a lot in seventeen years, which she must’ve known. My money’s on some sort of shadow-database.”
“Funny,” Cameron says, “considering neither of you has any money right now.” I laugh unexpectedly, but Dominic scowls at him. “Maybe we’re just being led to the money,” Cameron says, but Dom waves him off.
“June was about more than money,” Dominic says.
June. God, he’s obsessed with her. “How would you know?” I ask. “She’s dead. The only thing you know is what other people tell you about her.”
“And you,” he says. “I know you.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You do realize June wasn’t a programmer, right?”
“Oh, we know that,” Dominic says. “We know that she used Liam to get in. But after she got him killed, she still had access somehow. The blackmail continued until her death. So either she knew how to get in or she had a shadow-database set up, copying the information remotely. Either way, she was in.”
“It’s just a movie,” I mumble, but Dominic stops walking. We all stop walking.
“What did you say?”
“I said, it’s just a movie. We’ve all seen it. But the only people who were there are June and Liam, and they’re both dead, so how do we know what really happened? Maybe Liam set her up to take the fall. Ever think of that?”
“He had a recorder, Alina. When he was shot. That’s how they know.”
The recording was actually released—I heard it in one of the documentaries on her life. There have been several. Some paint June as misguided, or at the very least, a reluctant villain. But this documentary was particularly harsh on her, painting her as borderline sociopathic. This documentary made it seem as if she didn’t even have the potential for good.
That’s another thing scientists have correlated as best they could with the data they had: sociopathic tendencies. It’s not a chance—it’s practically a guarantee, like left-and right-handedness.
Anyway, the recording was of June’s voice, in the same voice I’d heard a thousand times before, where she said that she was not the threat, not the danger, but the message. The bell. Warning people about the potential criminals among us.
But in this recording, her voice was tight and desperate, and her words echoed off the walls. It was recorded in that building where they were surrounded on Christmas Day. It’s the message that landed me in a lifetime of prison.
I did not take any money, she claimed. I did not blackmail or bribe. The truth will not die with me. It will still be here, waiting for me. You cannot end me. I will be back. This is your warning.
And then they left it recording, as they said their good-byes. I would know you anywhere, she says. The voice is hers but strained. Pained.