Greater risk.
My decision, then, is simple. I have to talk to Father or Mother.
So I choose the greater of the two risks and prepare to go outside.
I explore the room, looking for anything that might be helpful to me. When I open the closet, I find a row of forest-themed camouflage pants and brown T-shirts. I select something in my size and slip it on. I put my iPhone into a buttoned pocket on the camo pants. I make sure to wear my special glasses.
I walk down the hall to the door. I turn the handle. It’s locked, just as Lee said it would be. But I know the code. I type it into the digital pad.
A moment later the door lock clicks open, and I step outside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE MOON HAS DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY BEHIND THE CLOUDS.
I walk out into a dark so profound that my eyes are useless.
No matter. I will use my other senses. I listen for the distant metallic pounding coming from the workshop. I track the way it bounces off the mountain side and triangulate that back to where I am standing. In this way, I can echo-locate the mountain and move toward it, making my way to the edge of the encampment.
I have one primary objective.
Ascend.
Ascend until I can get a signal on my iPhone, until I can inform The Program of my location, and together we can develop a contingency plan for this mission.
Ascend.
But I must remain undetectable as I do it, or my mission will end tonight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IN THE DARKNESS, I USE WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THE GAME.
I head behind my building, walking silently across dirt and grass, my arms in front of me feeling for obstacles. Several times I note sentries moving in the darkness, but I drop into a crouch and wait for them to pass, moving on their assigned rounds.
The moon moves out from behind the clouds, and I can make out the great mass of the mountain in front of me. I see that I am near the perimeter, the open zone between the edge of the encampment and the forest on the other side. It looks like a clear shot into the forest, but that would be too easy.
I pause at the edge of the perimeter and study the scene before me.
The wind blows, picking up leaves from the forest and scattering them down into the open zone. I catch a glint of red off of one of the leaves.
I pick up a handful of dirt from the ground below and rub my hands until it breaks up into fine particles. I move forward slowly, blowing dust in front of me as I go.
That’s when I see them, quadruple red lines marking a an invisible laser perimeter. The lowest line is maybe seven inches off the ground, the rest spaced at eighteen-inch intervals above it. Too low to crawl under, too high to jump over. A system like this will link to a monitored computer hub somewhere inside a security building. In a forest setting, a regular laser perimeter would be riddled by false alarms—falling branches, animals, any number of things would break the beam and cause an alert. So this system must be sophisticated enough to screen out false positives, so if a raccoon runs across the line, it won’t trigger the alerts that will call out the sentries.
I could take my chances and move through the beams low and fast, replicating the characteristics of an animal, but instead I blow another shower of dust, scope out the distance between the lowest two beams. If I do this right—
I back up several steps and I leap between the beams, flattening my body so I pass through without triggering the perimeter alarms. I roll up from my leap, then dart into the forest without hesitating.
I stop inside the tree line and listen. There are no guards, no shouts, no sound of a chase.
I am clear.
I move out now, zigzagging from tree to tree, not stopping until I know I am fully hidden by foliage. Then I pause to examine my surroundings, looking for the most viable path up the mountainside.
As I climb, I think about the idea of a central electronic blocking apparatus radiating outward with repeaters placed in the forest around and above the camp. How high would those repeaters have to be in order to cap off all communication? At least as high as the tallest building, plus additional distance to overcome line of sight interference.
Even though I can’t see them, I mentally note the height of the repeaters in the mountainside, and I move forward and up, working to ascend above them.
I’ve made it no more than ten meters when I hear a crunch in the woods below me.
I wait, listening.
A twig snaps, the sound coming from behind and below me. It’s not an animal. The pattern of movement is human.
Someone has followed me from the encampment. I don’t know who or how they’ve accomplished it, but I know.
I am being tracked.
I set off deeper into the woods, moving in a herky-jerky upward spiral, backing down and around my own tracks and making it as tough as possible on the person who is following me. An amateur will show himself quickly in a situation like this, either losing the track entirely or revealing himself without knowing it.
But whoever this is, he is not fooled by the spiral maneuver. He moves when I move, and stops when I stop with only the barest overlap.
I’m impressed. He’s good.
But I’m better.
When I start out again, I feign movement without going anywhere. I stay behind a tree, stepping in place, allowing my footsteps to get louder and softer, using different angles on the tree to bend the sound, drawing the person closer to me. A genius tracker might be able to discern what I’m doing, but anyone at a level below that will fall for it, eventually flushing himself out.
Half a minute later I hear footsteps approaching, and I see the outline of a figure with a hoodie pulled tight around his head.
He stops when he comes close, sensing something is amiss. This may not be the highest level of tracker, but he is close. He waits and he listens.
I allow the tiniest sound to escape, no more than the whisper of fabric against bark like a pant leg brushing against the base of a tree. I want to draw him toward me, let him think that he has located me.
I note caution in his steps as he changes position, circling back around and moving toward the source of the sound from a different angle, perhaps thinking he’s going to surprise me.
It’s a good move. Just not good enough.
I dart noiselessly to a nearby tree and I wait.
I count down the steps until he’s on top of me. Three, two—
The figure passes by, and I step out from behind and grab him, one hand around his chest, another at head level. I clamp down on his chest. I don’t mean to harm him, only take him down, neutralize any threat until I know who I’m dealing with. Then I will decide what comes next.
As I press down, he tries to spin away, and I feel something soft across his chest. Surprisingly soft.
A woman’s breasts.
I release my grip too quickly, and the figure spins back toward me.
“Let go of me!” Miranda says.
I see her face now, an angry scowl outlined by the hoodie, red hair tucked out of sight.
“You snuck up on me,” I say.
“You broke curfew and got out of camp,” she says. “You’re lucky it’s only me who snuck up on you.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Following you,” she says.
We stand facing each other in the middle of the woods. She’s right that she could have called the guards, raised an alarm, prevented me from getting this far.
But she didn’t.
I remember her warning to me in the back of the truck when we had a flat tire. Why did she help me then, and why now?
She adjusts her jacket around her breasts.
“Did I hurt you?” I say.