SmallvilleGuy: Inside and outside the environment, you mean. That’s why you were asking if I can find a way inside?
SkepticGirl1: Seems like the best bet to cover all bases. I can handle the outside. But I need someone inside the sim environment to work with me, and you’re the only one I think can do it. This might be Anavi’s only chance to not be one of them forever. Maybe some of the rest of them deserve saving too.
I didn’t give him time to respond.
SkepticGirl1: So . . . can you help me?
There was nothing to do but wait and see if he’d come through.
SmallvilleGuy: Lois.
SmallvilleGuy: I can’t risk getting caught in there. Even as a character.
SmallvilleGuy: If they traced me somehow and came here . . .
He wasn’t going to help.
I knew this was a possibility. But it didn’t hurt any less because of that. It might have hurt more.
I’d wanted to be wrong.
SkepticGirl1: I’m not going to bother asking who you are this time.
SmallvilleGuy: You don’t know what I’d give to be there for you. To tell you the truth.
I thought back to what he’d said earlier, when he was trying to convince me to do what he just said he’d love to—to tell the others the truth. He’d said my friends would have my back.
He was right. Any real friend would.
Were we real friends? I had always believed that we were. I felt like we were that, at a minimum. He knew more about me—and knew me better—than anyone else in the world. The idea that my sense of what we meant to each other could be fake, that it wasn’t true . . . I was not prepared for that.
SmallvilleGuy: I can’t. I can’t risk it. Lois, I wish I could.
I set down the pizza slice. My eyes were burning, but I took a deep breath. I wouldn’t cry.
SkepticGirl1: If it’s too much of a risk then it’s too much.
SkepticGirl1: I’ll send you the details anyway, just so you have them. You’ll be the only one besides me who knows everything. Maybe what I can do on my own disrupting on the outside will be enough. I’ll just have to go big.
I visualized the inside of Dad’s cabinet. I’d return the bug, but there was something else I’d have to borrow from his stockpile of goodies this time around. I could put it back after all this was over.
SkepticGirl1: I’m taking along a prism flare.
SmallvilleGuy: You’ll be careful, though?
The hits kept on coming. He hadn’t changed his mind, even though he must have known how disappointed I was, and how much I needed him to come through.
But I had to pretend that it didn’t hurt. When bravery didn’t turn out like you wanted, there was always that option. The fact he couldn’t see me would make it easier. Besides, sometimes it felt like I’d been playing pretend my whole life.
SkepticGirl1: I will. I promise . . .
SmallvilleGuy: What?
SkepticGirl1: That I’ll be as careful as I can.
SmallvilleGuy: Not comforting.
SkepticGirl1: We all have our flaws. Yours is being a mystery. And a worrier. By tomorrow night everything will be back to normal.
Except I didn’t know what our chats would be like after this. This situation might change everything between us. And Dad probably still had those military school brochures handy, if the plan crashed and burned.
But SmallvilleGuy couldn’t see any of that.
I had to keep pretending. Everything was fine between us. Just fine.
SkepticGirl1: Unless, of course, I’m a brainless hive mind zombie hooked up to some kind of devil robotron in the basement of a secret lab. Then I’ll have to take a rain check.
SmallvilleGuy: Not funny.
SkepticGirl1: Hilarious, right? Talk tomorrow. Wish us luck.
But he didn’t. He didn’t have time to. I logged off first, not able to fake it anymore.
He’d declined to lend his hand and come to my aid. That meant I didn’t know exactly how tomorrow would play out, how the plan would go. If it would work.
Operation Save the Scoop and Destroy the Hydra.
I finished my pizza and typed SmallvilleGuy the message that I’d said I would—another just in case—describing how I envisioned the disruption inside and outside the simulation. I did it understanding that he wouldn’t risk showing up in whatever the real-sim was the lab guys were running. Understanding that he wouldn’t, but hoping that he would.
No one would ever know I had that hope but the two of us. It seemed harmless enough to hold on to it. In the meantime, I’d have to make my disruption outside the real-sim that much more effective.
I waited until Mom and Dad would be sound asleep and dreaming before I tiptoed downstairs to the study. The key was still hidden behind the picture frame with our family photo. I slipped the bug back into its spot, then removed the small cylinder of a prism flare.
I crept back upstairs and went to bed, but I didn’t sleep much more than a wink. I couldn’t stop thinking.
The problem with having friends was that you might lose them. Or they might get hurt.
CHAPTER 23