System failure, p.1
System Failure, page 1
Other books in the series:
The Ghost Network: Activate
The Ghost Network: Reboot
Published by arrangement with Ferly.
The Ghost Network: System Failure copyright © 2020 by I. I. Davidson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
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“I hope we didn’t make a mistake leaving the tour group.” Francisco frowned at his cell phone. “We’ll have to be careful, Juliana. Stray from the right coordinates and we might never find our way out of this forest. Afonso was pretty clear about that.”
Juliana shoved aside the thick stalks of a heliconia and caught up with her husband. “If Afonso was even his real name,” she muttered. “I’m not even sure he was Brazilian. But we didn’t have a choice, Francisco. We need to find her.”
“I know.” Her husband laid his arm around her shoulders. He meant it to be comforting, she knew, but it only made her feel hotter and stickier than ever.
“If we don’t,” she told him, pulling gently away, “I don’t care if we get lost. She’s all that matters, Francisco.” Juliana wiped the sweat from her eyes. “If this Afonso was telling the truth, you just have to input the coordinates without any mistakes.”
“I’m being careful—believe me.” He gave her a lopsided grin and then walked ahead. “And the coordinates are exactly as he wrote them down. But I don’t see anything . . .”
Juliana hurried after him, brushing spiderwebs out of her way. The truth was that she had to strain to hear what her husband was saying. The level of noise in the rain forest was unbelievable. She had expected wildlife—but not quite so much of it. The racket of what seemed like a million insects was right in her ear; the constant chirping of cicadas, the piping of tree frogs, and the tonk-tonk-tonk of bellbirds resounded and echoed from the dense foliage. In the distance, howler monkeys boomed and hooted.
“It’s worse than Rio at rush hour,” she called lightly.
“What did you say?” Francisco half turned toward her, then snapped his head back ahead in a double take. She saw him punch the air in triumph; his fist caught a broad bromeliad leaf that showered water over him, but he seemed not to notice.
“Juliana! There’s something here!”
“Graças a deus,” she murmured. They’d been trekking through this terrifying jungle since before dawn, and the sun had long ago sunk from the patch of sky barely visible through the thick canopy. She’d been afraid they would find nothing before nightfall, which was supposed to be for cocktails and delicate petiscos, little snacks, on the balcony by their pool at the São Paulo villa. The thought of a long night alone in the vicinity of where anacondas, jaguars, and pit vipers lived made her shudder.
Juliana pulled up the straps on her backpack and clambered over a fallen log to Francisco’s side. His eyes shone as he pushed aside a soursop branch to reveal strands of shining barbed wire. She gasped.
“That’s a new fence,” he said in a low voice. “This has to be the right place, and it’s exactly where Afonso told us it would be.”
Juliana lifted her head to stare up at the top of the fence. It might be new, but it was already entangled with vines and spiderwebs of the forest. Passionflowers drooped from the topmost strands; it made her nervous, as if the fence were making a strong effort to hide its forbidding purpose. “How will we get over that?”
“Follow it around?” he suggested. “We’re bound to find a gate somewhere. Are you ready for this?”
Juliana straightened her shoulders. Her backpack straps dug into her flesh, and her green shirt was drenched with sweat, but none of that mattered. “We have to be,” she said firmly. “I won’t leave here without her. We’ve searched too long to give up now.”
Francisco nodded. Pulling a machete from his belt, he began to hack at the foliage, which seemed even thicker along the fence. Juliana, desperate not to lose sight of the fence, touched every steel post as they reached it, not caring when she scratched her hand on barbs and drew blood. We’re so close now. I can feel it. Her heart throbbed with fear and excitement at the same time.
Panting, Francisco paused and gestured past the fence. “It’s clearer here,” he gasped. “Look.”
Leaning close to the wire, Juliana peered through.
Her heartbeat lightened and quickened. If this was where their daughter had been living, it wasn’t so bad. It was quite charming, in fact. The palm-thatched wicker huts looked straight out of a gap year tourist brochure. A glittering waterfall tumbled from a rockface into a turquoise pool surrounded by flowering bromeliads and orchids; green streams traversed through verdant bushes to and from the lake. Above the pool she caught sight of wooden walkways, suspended on thick ropes between the huts; butterflies flitted between the walkways and the flowers below. A hummingbird darted over to a passionflower and hovered there, feeding. Juliana was sure she could smell the blossom, despite the thick scent of moist soil and decaying plants that permeated the rain forest.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered to Francisco.
“Yes. But still no gate.” He frowned again at his cell phone screen. “This has to be the place. If this was a tourist resort, it would be full of . . . well, tourists.” He shrugged in bewilderment.
“I’m sure she’s here. I’m sure of it! Francisco, we must find a way—”
“What are you doing here?”
The words were soft, spoken in the high voice of a child, but were filled with a distinct menacing tone. Juliana spun around in shock, almost tripping over a root. She stared in shock at the boy who emerged from the trees behind them.
She vaguely noticed his shock of black hair bound back by a tie-dyed bandana and his dark eyes blazing beneath. He was wearing a loose and ragged vest top and jungle-patterned board shorts that were a little too big.
But Juliana’s true focus was on the gun the boy held in both his small hands. It was pointing right at her, and the barrel did not tremble in the slightest.
“I said, ‘What are you doing here?’” the boy repeated, his eyes narrowing. He couldn’t be more than twelve years old, she thought in disbelief. “And who are you?”
“We, uh—” Francisco pushed forward a little to stand in front of his wife for protection. She could feel him trembling, even though she herself was shaking too. “We don’t mean any harm! We’re—we’re looking for our daughter.”
The boy stared at them both in silence. His finger rubbed the gun’s trigger thoughtfully, and Juliana thought her pounding heart might explode.
“Here, I’ll show you, I—” Francisco reached into his shirt pocket.
The boy tensed. He raised the gun slightly and steadied its aim right between Francisco’s eyes. Juliana gave a stifled cry.
“No!” gasped Francisco. “A photo, a picture.” He tapped his cell phone with shaking fingers and held it out to the boy, screen-first. “Our daughter, see? We’re looking for her. That’s all!”
“We’ve lost her, for so very long,” blurted Juliana. “Please . . . we don’t want any trouble. We just want to find her!”
The boy still said nothing. He stared hard at the image, his brow creasing.
If she is here, thought Juliana, this boy must know her. Her daughter was unmistakable—her shining hair, those fierce eyes, the surly but beautiful mouth. Unless she’s changed so much that we wouldn’t recognize her anymore. . . . Something twisted painfully inside Juliana’s chest as she considered this truth.
“This is your daughter?” snapped the boy suddenly. He raised his eyes to glare at Juliana. “You’re sure?”
Of course I’m sure! But Juliana tightened her lips and simply nodded.
An even more suspicious look filled the boy’s eyes now, if that were even possible. He jerked the gun, and Juliana heard Francisco gasp.
“You come with me,” commanded the boy, gesturing with the gun along the fence. “Walk ahead. I’ll tell you where to go.”
Juliana’s back twitched as she walked ahead of the boy. If his finger slipped on that trigger—of a gun that looked too heavy for him—it would all be over. She felt Francisco’s fingers entwine hers and hold them tightly, as they stumbled through the undergrowth along the fence.
When the gate finally came into sight, it was huge and intimidating, barred and locked. However, as the boy urged them forward, it slowly swung open. If she didn’t believe that she might find her daughter here, Juliana would never have found the courage to walk through it.
Some unknown threat suddenly made her spine tingle, and, for a fleeting moment, even took her mind off the gun behind her. She glanced to the side, toward a slow green river that coiled through the camp like a vast snake. Her throat went dry, and she blinked as she tried to peer harder.
Were those lights she could see in the water? A piercing shiver filled her. No. Not lights, surely, not arranged as they were in such close pairs.
And now Juliana was sure of it: they were not lights but eyes that glowed with a piercing hostility. Red eyes, blinking slowly, and lurking just beneath the murky surface.
Eva Vygotsky stared out across the choppy waters of the Bering Strait toward Big Diomede, as the brisk wind blustered her hair and stung her eyes. Even in the late summer, there was a chill in the air, but she didn’t mind. She needed to be far from those adolescent fools in the Center—students and teachers—far from air-conditioning, central heating, and electric lighting. The breeze helped clear her head; she needed the sharp sting on her skin to help her think astutely about that email.
She couldn’t stop herself from looking at it again. Opening up her phone, she clicked the Mail icon and opened it.
Yes, an old-fashioned email and from an old-school establishment: the FBI.
Dear Ms. Vygotsky,
We have tried to contact you for some time, without success, to inform you that we have reason to believe your parents are currently searching for you.
Owing to the ambiguity surrounding your whereabouts, and the time sensitivity of this situation, we have instructed your parents to meet you at a location owned by your legal guardian, Mikael Laine. This location, the Ma’yaarr Complex in Amazonas, Brazil, has been agreed upon by Mr. Laine. You will receive all further instructions from him.
Please make your way to the agreed location at your earliest opportunity. You will be permitted to bring a small group of trusted friends with you; indeed, owing to the nature of the journey, this is strongly recommended.
Should you require any assistance, please make contact with the person named at the bottom of this letter.
Eva let her eyes drift back to the top of the email, and she read it again. Then once more. Her sheer disbelief was making it hard for the words to sink in. It was surprising enough that anyone outside the walls of the Wolf’s Den was aware of her existence. But someone had made contact with her parents? It was too much to fathom that her parents had done the contacting.
She hadn’t seen them in—oh, how long? She’d almost let herself forget their existence. After all, she’d managed to persuade herself that they had forgotten all about her. Why else would they have left her alone in the world for so long? Why would they have abandoned her, alone in a train car on the Trans-Siberian Express, to be found by the first bureaucratic agent of the state who happened along? And then passed along to some tech genius in search of experimental guinea pigs?
Eva gritted her teeth and swallowed the bitterness. It hadn’t been so bad, had it? Mikael and his fellow scientists might have done something very strange to her brain, but at least she’d finally been wanted.
No, she told herself. Stop that. If it hadn’t been for Mikael Laine and his experimental biology, and his Ghost Network gang of DNA-altered superteens, she wouldn’t have met her best friends in the world. Her only friends in the world, to be honest.
Eva shook herself. It was so hard to fight back the negative thoughts, but she had something more important to think about now: this plan, created (as usual) without her knowledge, and (as usual) coordinated by Mikael. Rolling her eyes, she pulled her sweater around her tighter and peered at the email again.
At least it was a plan, a development. School life at the Wolf’s Den had grown almost monotonous in the past six months: study, revision, exams; rinse and repeat till the year-end finals. After their adventures in Morocco, when she and Mikael had had to race from Alaska to meet the Ghost Network as they escaped the clutches of Roy Lykos’s goons at the Scarab’s Temple, the past half year had seemed almost . . . boring.
Maybe it hadn’t been boring for the others. Akane and Slack had been delighted to spend the summer break with their families in Alaska and Tokyo. Salome had been downhearted and pensive on her return from Ethiopia, but only because she was already missing her parents and siblings. And John Laine hadn’t wanted to come home from his vacation at all—he’d had six weeks of normal life in Anchorage with his mother and sister—and hadn’t stopped complaining since. I got to be normal all summer. I got to play Xbox games and shoot people and fight battles, and it was all FICTION. And I had to come back here where I’m nothing but a walking, talking prototype weapon that my dad invented!
Eva smirked to herself. It was a bit bold of John to think he had the monopoly on resentment. After all, Mikael Laine’s process hadn’t even turned Eva into an efficient superbeing. She was no more than a flawed prototype for the others. But if anybody was more bitter than Eva about becoming a DNA-enhanced superbeing, it was Mikael’s actual son. Maybe that was because John remembered his “real life.” Eva had never had a “normal life” to miss.
That thought brought her sharply back to the email. She scowled at it, scrolling it up and down with her thumb. John’s father might have conducted dangerous experimental DNA processes on him and his friends—but only to save their lives after lethal accidents. John, Slack, Salome, and Akane at least still had loving families who cared about them—they hadn’t been dumped in some strange train car.
So why had her parents completely vanished? Where had they been for all these years? Had Eva even crossed their minds at any time? Why would they suddenly reappear?
I don’t belong in the Ghost Network, not really. Mikael’s work on me was only experimental. I’m nothing but an inconvenience. . . . A chill shivered down Eva’s spine that had nothing to do with the sea breeze. But I don’t really belong with my parents either, do I?
But maybe now I can find them and ask them. Her jaw clenched.
Suddenly feeling rather decisive, Eva stuffed her phone in her pocket and hurried back to the stairwell that led to the underground complex of the Wolf’s Den. Anyway, it was time for the opening assembly for the year. The other students already thought she was quite strange; she didn’t want them to notice her missing this important event.
Halfway down the clear Perspex ramp that circled the atrium, Eva spotted Salome ahead of her. Her elegant braided head, held almost arrogantly high, was unmistakable.
“Salome, wait!”
The girl turned, and her happy smile shattered any illusion of standoffish arrogance. “Eva! Where have you been?”
“Outside. Thinking.” Hesitantly, Eva returned Salome’s hug. “In fact, you are the very person I wanted to see. I need to ask your opinion.”
“You know I’m always happy to give that.” Salome winked solemnly.
“Good, because you’re usually wise.” Eva opened the email and handed her phone to Salome. “Look at this and tell me what you think.”
“Wow. I didn’t even know there was a Center in the Amazon. That’s exciting in itself.” Salome then fell silent for long pauses, staring intently at the screen as they walked side by side. At last she glanced up at Eva, her eyes bright.
“This is wonderful news, Eva. Your parents are looking for you. Between the FBI and Mikael, they’re bound to bring you together!” Salome stopped and flung her arms around Eva. “I’m so happy for you!”
“I’m not so sure,” growled Eva quietly. “How do I know these people are for real? I myself wouldn’t know whether these supposed parents of mine are impostors. Would the FBI? Would Mikael?”
“I don’t think either of them would treat this lightly.” Salome clasped Eva’s hands. “You can be fairly sure they’ll have checked their identities, Eva. Look at it this way.” She smiled. “No one else even knows you exist, so why would someone plan a complex hoax to find you? It has to be your mother and father.”
“You really think so?” asked Eva doubtfully. “I’m scared to believe it. What about Roy Lykos?” The former departmental head at the Wolf’s Den had, after all, been the puppet master of everyone who had threatened Eva and her friends so far. “Couldn’t he have masterminded this, like he did in Morocco? And here at school? Lykos has never stopped wanting to control the Ghost Network.”
