Simulated, p.26
Simulated, page 26
“How long?” I ask.
“We have roughly an hour to wait until the radar won’t work on our tech. My family is pretty upset at what happened to Qadar. I told them to take him home in an hour. You’d better be right.”
Grimly, I agree. I better be. Inwardly, I’m also fiercely proud. Kai did it. But how long until his moves run out? The deal is tomorrow and there are so many unsolved equations. If we can’t figure out who the Successor is, Kai won’t know who to give it to, and the master-file will be spread around the globe to an A-list of world’s worst criminals.
“So now what?” I ask. “We just sit in this Jeep for an hour?”
“No, we head back to the camp. We’ve lots to do.” He starts the engine and pushes the gas pedal, slow but steady. “Buckle up.”
I grip the car door handle. “Are you crazy? It’s pitch black out.”
Noble scoffs. “The map is in my head.”
I snap my buckle closed. “Of course it is.”
Chapter 53
AT THE EDGE of the oasis Noble parks the car. “Let’s walk the rest of the way, just in case.”
It’s still black as ink, minus the star-dotted sky. My gift buzzes in the dark like I’m in the helicopter again. With each step, I feel disoriented and find myself dodging phantom branches while Noble walks as if it’s daylight.
Without me having to ask, he moves closer and grabs my hand. “I’ll help you. This part is tricky.” He draws me around a labyrinth of rocks and hardened sand. “This way.”
He weaves us through what seems like a maze. His hand squeezes lightly, leading me this way and that. I stay close to him, the same smell of fire-smoke and cardamom filling my senses. At one point, I even close my eyes and follow his movements—it intensifies the frequency between us, which is still alive and undulating.
A normal person would get lost. But not Noble, not with our gift. The numbers map out areas, constructing blueprints forever stamped in the mind. Evidently, it also keeps him oriented like it used to do for me. A flutter shoots through me. It’s the strangest sensation in the world to trust someone who knows what you know and what you’ve experienced.
But apparently neither of us are ready to talk about the elephant in the desert. Kai’s face is still clouding my mind. Watching him fight and risk everything. Noble is right. He thrives on danger. If his father saw him now…
The lights around the pool come into view. The windless night makes the camp feel especially still. No one is in sight. Everyone is at the festival. I welcome the much-needed calm and breathe in deeply.
“All right,” Noble says, slowly dropping my hand. “No one is behind us. I think we’re safe.” We follow the sandy path. I notice all the shrubs poking through the terrain and I miss counting them.
The lights over the blue pool sparkle. When we pass it, I stop. I fiddle with my earring, wondering if the Successor has enough PSS nano-tech to trace the smartdust to this location.
“Don’t worry. They didn’t steal that tech yet. They don’t have Sway either,” he says looking at my lips. I blush again. The lipstick is still on—72 hours. I could use this on Noble and he would tell me everything. He wouldn’t even remember I asked. But I couldn’t do that to him. Noble has a right to tell me his secrets in his own time.
Suddenly I’m embarrassed to be in his presence. Very aware of my messy hair, and the dirty clothes I haven’t changed since I arrived in the desert. I try to act normal, but it’s much harder than expected. Especially now that I know…
“Do you need anything?” Waves of Noble’s frequency wash over me. I can’t get over the intensity of his eyes at Ksar Douz. Right now, they send a sweet and dreadful invitation like the night itself is asking to talk, but you know you only have until sunrise.
The water looks so calm in the pool that I wander over and sit cross-legged on the patio where we talked the first night about the stars.
“You said we had an hour until we could do anything, right?” My eyes say it all. We need to talk.
His face lights up like maybe he thought I’d never ask. He nods, a grin on his face that silences me. He walks over and plants himself next to me. My stomach flips. Attraction is another science altogether. The longer you are near a person, the more you help one another, bonds form, opinions change. We’re both aware that everything will change tomorrow. We don’t have time to waste.
We face each other, both of us trailing our fingers in the water, most likely wishing we could dive in and swim instead of facing all the chaos around us. But for this moment, everything is still.
We stare at each other for several hushed beats, capturing a space and time where unspoken sensations do all the talking. In an untouchable place where feelings collide and thunder, where fires burn in the undefined reaches of the soul. All the words in the world can’t explain what a heart is saying in that place and if they do, they’ll mess it all up. But I know, eventually, words need to be spoken.
So I take a deep breath and touch his cheek, my eyes seeing something out of a dream. “Mandel.” The frequency between us vibrates like a plucked harp string. “You’re real. A person. With a name. And a face.” It’s almost too good to be true. As a girl of thirteen, I dreamed of this very moment. “I need to know, Noble. Everything. I don’t want you to be a mystery anymore.”
“I always promised one day I wouldn’t be,” he says, touching my hand on his cheek. “Digits.”
Chapter 54
NOBLE LOOKS UP at the stars as if they’ve already heard his story a hundred times. He draws in a deep breath, and his eyes shift to mine.
“The day I learned you died was one of the worst days of my life. The world stopped and I started spinning. I had nightmares for weeks.” He shakes his head, and exhales. “I’d already been looking and watching for you since the news announced your disappearance, then abduction.” His brow tightens.
“I’d come so close to creating a facial recognition software that would scour the earth for you. Every text of audio that I had on record. Every photo that was on the Internet.”
I interrupt him. “Is that the same software in the tech-tent?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I was going to find you. It could see anywhere, find anyone. It was almost ready. I had two more adjustments to go, then the news of your ‘death’ came.”
Noble’s face falls, as if he’s reliving it. Back then, I only thought of how my death affected my family. They mourned for months, years. I didn’t think about how it would affect my teachers, my friends, or Mandel…and looking at his face now, it hammers me to the ground. One of Red’s old mantras skitters to mind. “We live knowing our lives affect others.”
Noble’s face straightens. “Grief hit me in a way I never knew was possible. The next day I woke up and everything was a blank slate. My numbers were gone. Silent. Everything you’ve experienced with the loss of your gift. The madness, the blindness, feeling the world stripped bare. Felt like my strength was taken from me. Like I had no protection. To make matters worse, my parents didn’t believe me.” He shudders. My throat tightens thinking about it, and a surge of protectiveness bubbles hot.
He folds his hands into fists. “You don’t need to know what happened after that. But that’s when I ran. My mother’s brother, Qadar, was the only person who seemed safe to me. I found him, told him everything. He believed me. Promised to protect me.”
Noble runs his hand through his hair, surely recalling that kick to Qadar’s chest. His reactions at the Ksar Douz make much more sense. I want to apologize for what I put him through, but he moves on.
“Qadar took me to the last place my parents would look. The desert in Tunisia, out among the stars, where all I could do was heal and dream. Qadar became a father to me. I don’t know if my parents are looking for me or if they even care I’m alive.”
“I always wanted you to run away,” I say, watching him, pondering the similarities he lived through with his parents and me with Madame. “I’m glad you found Qadar. He’s a good man.”
“Yeah. I’m glad Kai didn’t take him out.” He huffs a shaky laugh, more to himself than anyone.
“Me too.” We’re silent for a moment. Kai is an obvious wall between us. But my heart is flying at a hundred miles an hour. At one point in time, Mandel meant everything to me. “Go on. Please.”
He gives me that shy grin. “After that, I tried to adjust to life without equations. I’ll admit, it was chaos. I was so used to performing that I felt worthless. Qadar insisted I learn Arabic, which at first made me feel even worse. It was like I was five years old again, learning to read and write backwards. It didn’t help that the little kids were finishing their homework before me.” He tucks his hair behind his ears then leans back. “But being out here, looking up at the stars, hearing nothing but the sand moving on the dunes and wind in the palms, I forgot about tests and formulas and expectations. Slowly, all that weight was lifted off me and I just explored. That’s when I started to remember.”
“Remember what?” I ask.
“Mandelbrot said ‘for a thinking person the greatest mental illness is not knowing who you are’. I remembered that I loved fractals. Finding order in the chaos. To fix my eyes on what was unseen and find its secret.” He picks up a shriveled palm leaf on the patio. “Like the coral. Like the lightning.”
My skin chills. “Then your gift came back?”
“It flickered for a while, like yours. I took note of what triggered it—long nights peering up at the stars, water rippling, bark on trees. The numbers started to define things in a new way, like Arabic did for me, like a child. I started to trust my gift was there, even if I couldn’t see it. When it came back, I didn’t even notice. One day, I just started to operate in it again, like it’d never left.” He looks at me and puts his hand on my arm. Goosebumps shoot down my back. “That’s why I know it will come back for you, Jo. I can’t explain it, but I see your gift thriving inside you. It’s very much alive.”
“So that’s how you became the NASA Tipper? Out here?”
“Smart girl. I started fiddling with my tech again and as you can see, this place has almost zero light pollution. I researched the energy the planets emit, started tapping into satellites, then I got an idea for star coding. One day, NASA needed help. My gift clicked. I had a solution for them, and I didn’t think twice. I sent an anonymous tip, they tried it, and it worked. So, I kept helping when I could. I liked doing what I loved without the pressure of performance and expectation.”
“Don’t we all?” I smile at Mandel, still marveling that he is the same boy from my blog. “So who knows your real identity? You said you don’t live here year-round. Do you live alone?”
“Not totally alone. I talk to people when I go out. Which I do—go outside. I’m not a hermit. And despite what you might believe, I interact with people a lot. I just don’t like them knowing who I am or what I do. And I’m in Tunisia a lot because of Qadar.”
“So no one here knows you’re the NASA tipper, not even him?” I ask.
“Qadar knows everything. He’s never told a soul. Everyone else thinks I’m smart, but that’s it. They treat me like a normal guy, which is an indulgence for people like us.” He smirks, his lip curled up on the right side. His magnetic eyes make it hard to look away. A shiver shoots through me. My face flushes with heat. Maybe it is better if he doesn’t look at me.
Dang. Now I’m blushing even more. The numbers give me away. He sees it. For the first time, he admits it.
“Jo. I feel the connection we have too. Which makes things really difficult for me. But I would never compromise you and Kai. Honor is something I learned here. Without honor, things are spoiled. The only reason I’m hard on Kai is because I know he’s not right for you…and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
My fists curl in my lap. “Tell me what you know.”
“It’s between you two. He’ll tell you. That much I know.” He looks out over the dunes. I wish I had my numbers right now, predicting what he’ll do next.
“Then tell me how you know all about me,” I say. “When? How?”
He turns back, a painful look of restraint on his face. “Much later, after my gift resurfaced, I snuck back to my parent’s house and retrieved all my tech for the facial recognition software. One day, I plugged in the tech I created for you—yours was the only face that was programmed into it. When I booted it up, it immediately started to alert me that it’d found you.”
“I was shocked, then ecstatic.” He bites his lower lip. “Until I saw you were at some EXPO and it looked like some crazy woman was threatening you. I was about to call the police, but seconds later, you were with a swat team explaining everything. To my horror, I heard everything you reported to them about Madame and King. I also saw you with Kai.”
“I turned it off. Glad you were alive. Not knowing what to do. But as news came out about Madame and King’s arrest, then the economy and Kai’s father’s company…it wasn’t hard to put all the pieces together. No one else could have done that. I knew who it was.”
“Why didn’t you reach out?” I ask.
“You had Kai and I wasn’t ready to reveal myself.” He looks up again at the sky. “I was wary of people. I’d had an anonymous life for almost a year. You’d never responded to my other emails…and I’ll admit, Kai’s some tough competition. Honestly, a year ago I didn’t even know how to look at myself. I certainly didn’t know how a girl like you would look at me.” He turns away, fingers trailing in the water.
I stare at him now, so beautiful and brilliant. Sometimes, it’s a shame we can’t see ourselves through other’s eyes. He turns, feeling my stare. Our gazes mingle, the frequency filling the space between us. I’m certainly looking at him now.
“The more I read about China, the more you inspired me. I started using my tech for good. That’s about when the radicals started wreaking havoc in Tunisia. Montego soon entered the scene. Then, one day, Kai stumbled into the picture. And here we are…”
“How did you know about the frequency?” I ask.
He grabs his head and groans. “Don’t be mad, ok?” he says. “When the news announced you were back in Seattle, you had a small press conference, remember?”
“Of course.” I hadn’t wanted to go, but it was big news.
“I was there, in the room. When you came in and started speaking, the frequency connected me with you. I didn’t know what it was or why it was happening. It was powerful.” He pauses, squeezing his eyes shut. “Like electricity. Like magic. And then it was…”
“Scary?”
“Yeah.” He looks up at me. “But you couldn’t feel it. You flinched for a moment, I thought. But I could tell you couldn’t see or feel what I was feeling. Because you…”
“Didn’t have my gift.”
“Right. I figured it out pretty quickly. I kept thinking of ways to help you. Because I’d been there. I knew you needed someone. But I couldn’t talk to you because Kai was there. The last thing you needed was some weird boy from your past dropping more heavy news on you. Hence the sim invasion…”
I sigh, thinking back to my first interactions with the Coral Hacker. “What about in my sims? How did you make it so I found your emails in phase one?”
Noble shifts his weight on his other side, a red glow on his cheeks. “Even that surprised me.” He finds my eyes. “I can’t control your memories. It’s why I only ever entered phase three.” He smiles. “Phase one was all you. I guess you were thinking about me too…”
I play with my hair to hide my face. It’s true. I was thinking about him a lot. Because of Coral Hacker. The connection I felt to him having my gift. I must have subconsciously connected it to what I felt before with Mandel. I marvel at how our minds know things before we do. The brain logs every small connection we’ve ever had.
“How could I not think about you?” I say, his eyes staring into mine. “You were so important to me. I cared about you. I never got to explain what happened, why I never talked to you again…” I finger my lips, dry from the desert’s air. I look up at him, very aware of his body next to mine. Aware of his hand, close to my fingers. Aware of everything he has done for me. Aware of our connection. And knowing time is short, I become bolder. “Why do you think my death…” I swallow hard, “…affected you so much?”
His dark brown eyes peer up at me under those thick eyelashes, examining my face with an intensity of numerical layers clashing inside of him. I wonder what his equations are telling him about me, what they’re predicting or revealing—perhaps something I am not even aware of. But right now, I don’t care. I wait for him to speak because I have to know. I’ve waited for answers, and answers bring you peace, right? We’re connected in some way. Knowing why will help me see clearly and I’ll know what to do.
He leans in closer, his hand resting on my knee.
“Because in this broken world, you’re my fractal,” he finally says, his eyes dark like the night, but bright like the stars. “I’ve loved you since I was thirteen…and I still love you now.”
A thousand shocks ripple through my chest. Images of Mandel and Kai and oceans and cities and thousands of moments and memories slice through me laying bare every crater of emotion my heart has ever opened. I’ve been near death and I’ve felt new life, but the power of love surpasses them all.
I thought getting answers would bring order to this mystery. Instead, it brings more chaos.
Chapter 55
A JEEP TEARS into the camp, jolting us back to reality.
Farah screeches to a halt with Qadar slouched in the back seat. “Noble! He’s been vomiting since he woke up.” Her face bunches with worry.
Noble jumps up, looking at his watch. “I’m going to help her but then we’ve got to get back online. Meet me in the tech-tent?”
I nod, and hurry over to Farah and squeeze her hand. “He’ll be ok. Just give him another few hours. I’m sorry.”
