Simulated a calculated n.., p.28
Simulated: A Calculated Novel, page 28
My equations flicker to the photo Kai sent on the street. We’d missed the show that night because we’d gotten the date wrong. It had been the night before. How did I not pick up on this?
“Don’t worry, Harrison. Kai has the holothumb with SMOKE,” I say, wanting eyes on Kai as soon as possible. “It’ll be fine. They believed Kai. He’ll get the job done. We’ll check it out.”
“Two more things…” Harrison breathes in, killing me with his slow pauses. “Ms. T knows who the hacker is. Noble J. Adams, Tunisian-British mother, American father. Went missing two years ago. Jo. He has been in our system, far deeper than your sims. Ms. T is convinced he’s hacked more than PSS, maybe even government secrets. She thinks he’s dangerous. She hasn’t said it, but we think she’s sending someone out there, to retrieve him. I’m sorry. I know you think of him as a friend.”
My eyes shoot over to Noble—to Mandel—with a pang of dread. What have I done? A sledgehammer to the gut would feel better than this.
“Tell me the last piece of news is better?” I ask, not knowing if I can handle any more.
“It’s worse. We just detected a government biotag in the area. It came on in the last hour. And it doesn’t look good.”
My fingers go numb. My throat is tight. “What’s going on?”
“Not entirely sure. The readings coming from the biotag are connected to the host’s body vitals and they’ve reached the top of something like a ‘red zone’…” Harrison’s voice turns grave. Then he confirms the news I already know. “We think…they’re torturing him.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
My body feels cold as the concrete floor in the Pratt in winter, numb and stiff. A strength I haven’t felt since then also returns. Nothing in me cares about what I saw in that video. All I can think about is saving Kai.
“I have to leave. Now.” I stand up, grabbing my backpack. Noble jumps up at the sound of my voice. “Give me the keys to the Jeep.”
“Jo. What did he tell you about the deal?” Noble is asking, his hands on my shoulders now.
“We’re too late. Whatever the Loyalists are doing it’s happening now. We’re missing it.” Everything is caving in on me. The deal… Kai’s biotag… He’s on his own. Noble’s now a target. My breathing is shallow. But my head is clear.
“There’s more you need to tell me,” Noble demands. “I can see it. I want to help you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “You’ve got to get out of here right now. Ms. T knows who you are. Because of me.” I touch his face, so many mixed emotions, before heading to the door. I won’t ask him to risk himself for Kai—again.
“What else, Jo? Trust me.” Noble blocks the exit, almost not caring what I said. His frequency surges erratically like waves in a storm.
“Did you hear me?” I shout. “She knows who you are. You have to leave.”
Noble spins me around, tenderly taking me by the arm. He pulls me close to him, his face full of concern. “Forget about me right now and tell me what is happening. I want to help you.”
I relent. “They must have used Radar to turn Kai’s biotag on…they know who he is…” My face explains the rest. “I’m going there. I won’t let them hurt him anymore.” A rushed plan forms in my mind. Noble’s face tells me his mind is working on one too.
“All right, let’s do this,” he says. “We’ll help Kai and stop this deal.” Noble flies around the room snatching up a backpack and packing it with tech like a mad man.
My head spins. He’s only ever told me my boyfriend was stupid. “Why do you care about helping Kai?” I ask.
Noble stops to look at me. “I care about you. And he’s important to you.” The frequency skips, locking me to him. But he doesn’t waste time. “I only need three minutes...” He jumps into action, punching in codes and passwords, and grabbing things from drawers. He’s mostly taking software chips and small devices. It’s obvious he has a protocol for this type of scenario. He’s closing down shop as fast as he can, but it feels like molasses. We’ve got to get to Kai before they…I push away images of what I’ve seen in the Pratt.
“What happens if they go through this tent?” I ask, worried now for what they’ll actually find on Noble. “PSS will be able to track you. Imprison you. They’re the best.”
“Maybe, but not better than me.” He pulls out another locked box. “I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve. By the time I’m done, it’ll all look like star gazing equipment and software. No one, excluding present company, could possibly decipher it, at least for a few years. Qadar knows what to do with the rest.”
Every minute we waste, Kai could be inching near death. A rage is burning in me against the Successor. Whoever it is will not make it out of the building. I won’t let them get away with this.
Noble is finally done. He shoots across the room. “Come on.”
We hop into the Jeep and tear down the dark back roads at a ridiculous speed. Thank God it’s nearly midnight and not many people are on the road.
I try to get Bai on the phone but it’s useless. Even my numbers don’t respond to the small kick I give them. But Noble’s equations are going into hyper-speed. I can feel it. It’s all I can do to trust his mind right now, the way he trusted me at Ksar Douz.
“Do we even know where we’re going?” I ask, watching the palms whip past us.
“No. We’re running blind right now. If Radar is being used at all, they’ll detect us coming. We won’t have any tech to give us visual.” His hands tighten around the wheel. “Qadar is useless at the moment. Private Global Forces won’t help. Jo, we don’t have any back up.”
“What are your numbers saying?” I ask, scared to hear.
“We’re outnumbered and we’re not Kung Fu masters.” He’s driving as fast as he can.
“Then why are you still driving?” I ask.
“Because if we put our minds together, we have a chance.” Noble shakes his head and exhales loudly. “Kai might be right. Life with you is trouble.”
The last thing I want to do is bring PSS deeper into this mess. And I certainly don’t want them to know what we’re about to do. But they can still help.
“We’re not totally alone,” I say. “PSS is out of the Radar’s zone.” I get my phone back out. “K2, get Harrison and the team back online.”
Harrison answers immediately. “We’re here, what do you need?”
“Eyes. We need to know where that signal is coming from.”
The Jeep is speeding through town. I brace myself as it races over cobblestone and flies through the narrow alleys.
Pens hops online. “We’re ahead of you—5 miles west from where you are. But we’ll need a minute to get the imagery.”
Felicia cuts in. “I’m on it. It will take some work, but I can probably get something in 15 minutes.”
I grimace. Kai had pointed west in the desert. This whole time he was trying to tell us things were changing. “We might not have 15 minutes,” I say.
“I’m searching for blueprints of the area now,” Harrison says. “I’ll download them to K2 once I find them. I’ll also send body heat scans of the area once Felicia gets a satellite lined up.”
“Sounds good. What are his vitals now?” I ask.
Pens is silent for a beat. “You don’t want to know.”
A lump bulges up in my throat at her answer. Kai’s last message on the street, telling me he loves me. My inability to say the words doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. After having been kidnapped and in the Pratt, love became weighty, like gold. Like if love were real, but you treated it even an ounce less than its true value, it would become worthless. But I know that’s not true. Love is costly and more brave and beautiful than anything I’ve ever known.
“Ok, we’re going to check it out.” I look over at Noble processing everything as he redirects the Jeep.
“You weren’t supposed to go near the deal,” Pens says, a serious tone.
Eddie is in the background. “Not a good idea, Jo.”
I grit my teeth. “Trust me. I won’t do anything I haven’t done before.” At least that wasn’t a lie.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Harrison’s directions lead us to an even smaller town near the lake of Chott el Djerid. There are several large, gated compounds in the area. All of them are luxurious, isolated, and very secure. We don’t know which place it is until we see the outline of the Sheikh’s helicopter in the shadows and moonlight.
Noble pulls the car to the side of the road. “My calculations say this is as close as we can get. Let’s ditch the car and go on foot.”
Everything is quiet, a ghost town out here. We approach the compound from a distance. There’s a large wall made of sandstone surrounding the entire property.
“Harrison, give me the details,” I say.
“Alright. It’s called Dar du Sable Doré. The House of Golden Sand. There are four outbuildings and in the center of the compound, is an old Dar surrounded by gardens and courtyards. You’re looking at 20-30 people inside, and a parking area.”
“Where’s the biotag signal?” I ask.
“It’s doesn’t give us an exact location. It’s in range, somewhere on the compound.”
Noble’s mind is gauging everything around us. “Ten-foot-high wall, two feet thick. We’re looking at a 20,000 square foot compound—half an acre. Fancy. Vehicle tracks are the same as Müller and the Sheikh’s men at the festival.” Noble squints his eyes. “The meeting will be in the center room of the old Dar. But from what we saw at Ksar Douz, most of the men will be guarding from the outside. There’s no telling where Kai will be.”
If they’re torturing Kai, it means someone used the Blacklist tech, or they wouldn’t have been able to turn on Kai’s biotag. But who did Kai give it to? Because if they didn’t believe him and the deal went down, it means the SMOKE didn’t merge with the master-file and now it’s going out to all of their contacts and there will be no way to track those files down. We can’t let anyone leave this compound.
“The Successor is in there. If they think Kai’s a traitor, he’s not walking out alive.” My hands are tapping like crazy, but my gift is silent. “We’re going to stop this. All of it. I don’t care how we do it, we’re going to stop this deal and save Kai.”
We sneak behind a group of date-palms, knees in the sand, twenty feet from the Dar’s outer wall. Noble puts a hand on my shoulder. “Jo, leave getting inside to me. Once we’re in, we need to know who the Successor is. You said it yourself. They know how to get out and start over. And we’re only two people. We’re only getting out alive if we use everything we know to our advantage.”
Resolve hardens in me, solidifying like water to ice. “So how do we get inside?”
“We draw a few guards outside. Then I’ll calculate the rest. But we need them to believe we’re not alone.”
My tapping stops, and my mind becomes sharp. “That’s it.” I say into my watch. “K2, tell Harrison to veil these coordinates. Make whoever is in the building believe there’s an army outside. We also need a blueprint of the compound.” Even without my numbers, a plan forms.
The building schematics arrive instantly on K2 but with a strict warning from the team. “We’re notifying Ms. T right now about the deal and your location. Do not enter the building.”
“We’re going dark now.” I cut off K2 and turn to Noble. “Now for your part. You’re the brains.”
Noble gives the numerical stats. “Ok, from the blueprints and heat scans, they’ve got about ten men doing rotations around half an acre of enclosed property. The most secure room is in the center of the Dar. Ten for ten, the meeting is in there. Numerous possibilities, but according to my equations, our best bet is to sneak around the south entrance and draw them out. Rotations at five minutes a pass, we’ll only have two guards to handle. Then we can disable the vehicles.”
“Once we’re inside, if we don’t get confessions, Bai said his agency can’t do anything. The Successor has to confess. Müller, the Sheik. All of them.” My gift is tingling inside, like its buried under the sand. So deep.
Noble looks at me. “You brought your backpack, right?” I nod. “Good. I have an idea on how we can get confessions.”
As he explains it to me, I nod my head. “Mandel, I always knew you were a genius.” I take off my watch and put it around Noble’s wrist. Then I grope around for small stones on the ground. I pick up five rocks and put them in my pocket. “Now for weapons. K2 has two Tasers left. I have two tranquilizer-earrings. And you still have your pocketknife, right? Can I see it?”
Noble takes out his small pocketknife and hands it to me. “This might slash the tires, but it won’t help with anything else. Jo, they have real weapons.”
I draw in a deep breath. “So do we.”
I cut my fingertips.
Chapter Sixty
A drop of blood mixes with the oily chemicals, forming bubbles on the tops of my fingers.
“A walking weapon, remember?” I smile. “Your brains. My brawn. Never thought I’d ever get to say that.” I give a shallow chuckle. But then I see his face. Reality is hitting him.
“I can’t do this.” He’s staring at me, that same wild look he had when Qadar stood in Ksar Douz in front of Kai. He grabs hold of me, pulling me close to him. His breath is heavy now. “Odds are one thing, a real person is another. Especially you. You already died once. I didn’t bring you to Tunisia for this. Now that we’re here, I can’t put you in danger.”
“Noble, you said my gift is alive. You said it’s there. That means there’s a chance we can stop this. I need you. I need your eyes, your mind. Our plan is to deceive them.” I lift my fingers. “This is only a contingency plan. We can do this.” I lean into him with my shoulder, careful to cup my oily fingertips.
“I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to you.” Noble’s jaw is locked.
“I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to Kai.”
That snaps him back to reality. He shoots me a look, a sobering glint in his eyes. “You’re right. He may be stupid, but we can’t let him die,” he says, a twinge of hurt in his voice. “And we came here to stop this deal. Alone or not, we can do this.” He runs his hand through his hair and focuses on my fingers. “You cannot mix the left with the right until you know your targets. And I never thought I’d ever say this to you, but…don’t touch me.”
Noble and I sneak to the south entrance. There is a door in the stonewall with a lock. Noble pulls a tool from his bag and opens it easily.
“Breaking and entering skills?” I whisper. Ms. T was right. There’s a lot I don’t know about this boy. He shrugs, and we both hold our breath to listen. Hearing nothing, we sneak through the entrance.
Several SUVs are parked in the corner. We stay low and get behind them. Noble takes the knife, which barely punctures a hole in the back tires of each vehicle.
Further in, we enter a beautiful courtyard with a manicured garden, and large potted palms, and a tranquil pool. From behind an arch, we watch as several guards talk to each other, while others patrol the grounds. Noble calculates the guard’s rotations, looking for the perfect moment to make our move. His eyes dart back and forth taking in all the possibilities until he finds one with the highest odds of success. When the guards switch rotation, we dart into the center courtyard to one of the outbuildings. Noble hacks into the compound cameras, and freezes them, also giving Harrison access.
Noble presses his fingers to his lips. When a guard turns to patrol the south, we dodge into a pathway, and press ourselves against a wall. When he comes around the corner, Noble taps K2 and the smartwatch zaps the guard. He falls to the ground in a heap of shaking. Noble pulls him to the side, behind a large pot full of jasmine.
We move further inside where several stone pathways lead to the center of the Dar. Three men patrol the outer path near the wall and two more circle the path in the center. Again, Noble is calculating. He motions for us to move forward, and another military-looking guard comes around the corner and spots us. Before he can alert anyone, Noble uses the last taser on him and he, too, drops like a fly to the ground. A moan too quiet for others to hear.
“We’re in.” Noble’s voice is in a whisper. He points to my earring. “I may need one.”
I show him my fisted hands. “You have to take it out.” He pulls out one of my tranquillizer-earrings, the same one he picked up on the roof of the Bardo. My gut wrenches. “Ready?”
“Yes.” All the while my mind is replaying my sims and my meeting with Montego. I need to find Kai. I need to find the Successor.
The last time I ran to the square in the sims, I was too late. Kai was gone. Just like now. My sims. They were telling me something. My gift was working, like Noble said, putting clues together. So what else did I miss?
Noble fiddles with his tech again. “The Sheikh’s phone is located in the center of the Dar. We don’t know who has the master-file.”
“I’ll figure it out. Give me a few minutes,” I say, but Noble’s slipping up to another guard I didn’t even notice, and before I know it, he takes one of my earrings and jabs him in the neck, catching him and slowing the guard’s fall so it’s soundless.
Because of Noble’s stealth, we’re inside now. Staying down, we creep through beautifully tiled rooms and ornate archways, and dodge behind a pillar. We hear girls’ voices coming from another room. But up ahead the billowy laugh of the Sheikh confirms we’re close.
The room is securely locked and fortified. “I can open this. Give me a few minutes.” Noble bends down, about to break it when his hands pause “Jo, I don’t think…”
“What? We’re running out of time.”
“That’s just it. My numbers…if Kai isn’t in there, there might not be enough time to save him after dealing with the Sheikh.”
“Then I guess this door is my first target,” I say. “Back up.”
I swipe right and left on the locks, and we dart behind the pillar.
