“Then you know that my father just risked his life to save us all,” I said. “So I think you owe him a favor, don’t you?”
He smiled uneasily. I waited for him to ask about my father, but he said nothing.
“Did my father ever tell you his theory, about the Europans’ true motives?”
His smiled vanished and he let out a heavy sigh.
“You mean his theory that this invasion is all a ruse?” Arbogast said. “That the Europans orchestrated this whole conflict as some sort of test for humanity? Yes, I know all about it. I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Your father is a great man—a hero. And we all owe him a huge debt. But all these years at war have addled his brain. He’s become delusional.”
“No, he hasn’t,” I replied, too forcefully. “I’ve seen the evidence myself, when we were going up against the Disrupter in Antarctica—it dropped its shield on purpose. They let us destroy it! Look at the footage—you can see it happen for yourself!”
He didn’t respond, but his eyes shifted evasively. He looked as if he spent most of his time in front of a computer instead of with people, and he wasn’t used to being interrogated or put on the spot like this.
“I don’t see the point in this conversation,” he said. “We debated all of this with your father years ago, and I’m not going to go through it again now with you, kid. I mean, look around you! Our enemy’s motives are obviously no longer in question!” He pointed to the giant map of the world behind him. “The Europans just killed over thirty million people—and that was just the first wave of their invasion. The second wave is arriving just over an hour from now. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for it—”
“Sir, if you’ll just let me speak to someone who—”
Before I could say another word, he ended the call.
I lowered my phone and turned to look at my friends.
“Okay,” Diehl said, leaning forward. “That was a giant ball of fail. What now?”
I smiled and held up my QComm. All the names I’d just lifted from Finn Arbogast’s phone were listed there. I scrolled down to highlight the one labeled Armistice Council Members—Conference.
“He already gave me all the help I need,” I said.
“You hacked his future phone?” Diehl said. “How? You can barely use apps!”
“If you must know,” I said, “That super-hot mech driver I met at Crystal Palace showed me how to do it. She also kissed me, FYI.”
“Really?” Cruz said, laughing. “Is she from Canada? The Niagara Falls area, perhaps?”
“I want to know if they boned in zero gravity,” Diehl said. “Spill it, Lightman.”
I ignored their questions and called my father on his QComm. It rang and rang. As I continued to let it ring, I grabbed Diehl’s phone off his desk to dial my mother’s number—only to discover that it was already programmed into his contacts as “Pamela Lightman.”
“Why do you have my mom’s number saved in your phone?”
“Oh, you know why, Stifler,” Cruz muttered through from his video window, his voice dripping with innuendo—this was his version of “that’s what she said.”
“I’ve had your mom’s number in my phone since I was twelve, psycho!” Diehl said. “You have my mom’s number in your phone, too. Get over yourself.”
I nodded, then shook my head vigorously. “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, man.”
I put his phone to my other ear. My mother’s number rang and rang, too, while my father’s continued to ring in the other. A minute passed. Neither of them picked up. Probably not good. I wondered if my dad’s condition had gotten worse and she’d decided to take him to a hospital after all.
After Crom knows how many rings, I finally gave up and canceled both calls. Then I pulled up Arbogast’s contact for the Armistice Council again and tried to make a decision.
I badly wanted to have my father on the line before I called them: The Armistice Council would be made up of world-renowned scientists or EDA commanders or both, and they probably wouldn’t listen to some eighteen-year-old kid. But my father was probably unconscious, and the clock was ticking down. What choice did I have?
I summoned my courage and tapped the Armistice Council contact on my QComm. I watched as the device dialed five different numbers all at once and then connected all of them simultaneously. Then my QComm switched into “conference mode,” and my display screen was divided into five separate windows, each containing live video of a different person, each of whom appeared to be in a separate location.