Whew. I caught a break. The taxi service I’d texted had a car waiting at the end of the block, right where I requested. Just far enough from school that they wouldn’t refuse to drive me without permission.
I jerked open the door and slung myself in, brusquely ordering the driver, “Follow that van.”
The van that was pulling far ahead on the street in front of us. If we were going to catch it, we needed to get going . . .
But the driver hesitated, gold chains around his neck and heavy rings clinking as he shifted to get a better look at me. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Look,” I said, “I missed the van and I need to get to the extra credit assignment they’re headed to.”
When he didn’t put the car in drive, the white of the van almost out of sight ahead, I said, “I’m a great tipper. Legendary.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Hold on.”
He meant it literally, since he screeched away from the curb, flooring the gas like we were in a chase sequence. Which we were.
I clutched the grip on the door, but calmed when he caught back up to the van with a few weavings in and out of traffic. We had one advantage: the van’s driver didn’t know anyone was trying to catch it.
“Good work,” I said.
Possibly the only thing that could have made me release my death grip on the door was my desire to hear what was on the recording from Butler’s office.
I pulled out my earbuds and put them in, cued up the recording, keeping my eyes on the van in front of us while it started to play. We were heading into a canyon of skyscrapers, housing what seemed to be tech company upon tech company from the names emblazoned on the buildings. These weren’t the start-ups of someplace like Coast City, but old, well established companies. Big business.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Butler’s voice said in my ears, with overly loud menace. I thumbed the volume down. “I am not happy about your recent activities and the project managers won’t be either. You shouldn’t be drawing so much attention to yourselves. This is supposed to be a simple research partnership to study your team play. You need to knock off the rest of it, now.”
A moment of silence, broken by a chorus of low laughs I was becoming all too familiar with.
“That’s funny . . .”
“. . . it seems to us as long as we keep showing up and doing what’s asked of us . . .”
“. . . then we can do what we want the rest of the time.”
“We’re not always on the company clock.”
“And if sometimes we feel like recruiting . . .”
“. . . they’ll approve.”
The principal made a strangled sort of noise. “Stop that!” he barked, losing his cool. “I can end this experiment now. I was the one who approved the independent study, and I can stop it.”
More whispery laughs in my ears as the van took a turn up ahead. The gold jewelry-bedecked driver glanced back at me and I waved for him to keep following.
“You can’t do anything to us anymore, and we think you know it . . .”
“. . . you made us go . . .”
“But we are not yours, not theirs. We are our own. We are too valuable to stop.”
“Look, just be more discreet,” Butler said. “And leave the girl alone.”
“Which one?” a voice asked, and for once there was no overlapping commentary to go along.
“Both of them,” the principal said.
“Anavi is one of ours . . .”
“. . . so don’t worry about her.”
“No,” I said, “she isn’t.”
“What?” the cabbie asked over his shoulder. “Looks like your school trip’s stopping up ahead.”
There might have been a slight flaw to the story I’d told him. He’d expect me to join them.
“Pull up behind them, but um, leave some space,” I said.
“You’re the boss, legendary tipper.”
On the recording, Principal Butler said, “Wait right there. If what you say is true, then convince her participating is a good deal and do it fast. You need the other girl off your case. Low profile? Keep one.”
That was when I had pulled the phone out from under the door. Static hissed and the voices stopped. I removed my earbuds as the taxi pulled up along the curb of a massive mirrored building, a tall column thrusting into the sky. Bold silver letters across the front proclaimed: Advanced Research Laboratories.
“Vague enough name,” I murmured.
I was familiar with the type, had encountered enough executives of what amounted to Acme Destruction Computer Genome Bioweapons, Incorporated, at chichi receptions over the years. Who knew what this one was into? Besides, apparently, running an experiment with a bunch of jerky gamers. An experiment that had gotten way out of hand.
But I still didn’t know what the experiment was. Butler claimed this was intended to be a “simple research project,” but it didn’t strike me that way.
And the Warheads had said he made them go—yet they didn’t seem like victims.
Maybe they were anyway.