*
Dryden moved among the flood of kids making their way to the nearest exits. As he did, he heard the message that was spreading through the crowd far faster than anyone could walk. Spreading from person to person like a blast wave from its point of origin—wherever Rachel had begun saying it: It’s not a fire. It’s a gas leak. Get as far from the building as you can.
*
Gaul stood back and watched it all come apart. People were leaving the school en masse and running away. Had they stopped at a distance of a block or two, the Mirandas could have probably kept track of them as a group and noted any stragglers leaving its outskirts. That would have enabled them to spot Rachel and Dryden.
The fleeing kids and teachers weren’t stopping after a block or two, though, or even five. And secondary effects were kicking in now: People in other buildings, seeing the evacuation in progress—third-shift workers, early arrivals—were joining in the flight.
The search area was simply too large, and too busy. It was information overload, for the satellites and for the techs.
“This is fucked,” Lowry said. His hands flew over the keyboard, commanding the birds to widen their frames. “Aren’t kids supposed to just line up outside when there’s a fire drill? That’s how we did it at my school.”
“Dryden thought of that,” Gaul said.
“How would he know he had to? He didn’t know what these satellites can do.”
“He didn’t know,” Gaul said. “But he knew he didn’t know. Get it?”
“No,” Lowry said. He returned his attention to the monitors. To the nearest tech he said, “Set twenty-six to two-by-two kilometers. Slave the others to it. We can get him.”
“No you can’t,” Gaul said. He took out his cell phone and left the room again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Mojave lay in meditative calm beneath the pink sky, waiting for dawn. Dryden kept the Jeep Cherokee at a pace to match the sparse traffic around him, running north out of Palmdale into the desert.
He and Rachel had taken the Jeep from a parking lot more than a mile away from the boarding school. Ten miles farther on they’d switched its license plate with that of another vehicle. Then they’d gone east across Simi Valley and the northern part of the San Fernando, and up through the canyons to the desert. Dryden had chosen the busiest roads available, as an extra precaution against being reacquired by the satellites.
For all that, he was only just now relaxing. Having no way of knowing the satellites’ capabilities, he hadn’t assumed the boarding school trick had fooled them. He’d prepared himself for every oncoming vehicle to suddenly spin out, automatic weapons blazing. For the entire drive he’d kept his mind strictly focused on response scenarios, if/then procedures he would use if needed, based on every form of attack he could anticipate—including from above. These plans had to be revised to fit each passing street.
At last confident that trouble would have arrived by now if it were coming, he allowed the scenarios to fade.
Rachel reacted visibly to the change, as if Dryden had turned down a blaring radio.
“How do you make yourself do that?” she asked. “How do you focus that much?”
“It’s an old trick. It comes with practice.”
They rode in silence for a minute. The desert and highway were still deep in gloom, but the San Gabriel Mountains ahead and to the left had begun to catch the sunrise—a skin of light sliding down over the peaks.
“The drugs they were using on you,” Dryden said. “Did you happen to catch what they were called?”
Rachel shook her head. “The blond man never really thought about the name. Like with his own name—it was already familiar to him.”
“Was it just one certain drug?”
Rachel nodded.
“And he gave it to you in a drip bag?”
Another nod.
“What color was it? The liquid.”
Rachel thought about it. “Mostly clear, but kind of blue, I guess. You could just barely see the color.”
“When they gave it to you, it put you to sleep within two or three minutes, right?”
“Yes.”
“And just before you fell asleep, your hands would start shaking, and you’d get a taste in your mouth, like mustard, for no obvious reason.”
She stared at him. “Yes.”
Dryden nodded. “There are a handful of drugs they use for sleep interrogation. That’s the most common one.” He looked at her. “Your memories will come back, but not right away. It’ll take a week, give or take a day, maybe.”
Her reaction to the news was complex. There was relief in her eyes, but it was replaced almost immediately by something close to fear. Anxiety, at least. Dryden thought he knew why.