Something flutters to the floor.
A photograph.
I pick it up.
A Hispanic man is sitting outside on a folded lawn chair. Next to him stands a pretty woman with her hand on his shoulder. On the man’s knee is a young boy.
The man has his arm around the boy’s stomach, holding him in place there. Keeping him from falling.
I recognize the boy’s eyes.
It’s Francisco, sitting with who I imagine are his real parents.
Francisco before any of this happened. Before he was recruited by The Program. Before he came here and betrayed everything he had been taught.
I turn and catch sight of myself in the mirror in Francisco’s room. I look half crazed in my dirty hoodie.
I open Francisco’s closet and find some long-sleeved flannel shirts.
I take off my shirt and ball it up. I take out one of Francisco’s shirts, slide it on over my bare skin covered in the cuts I’ve taped up. I’m instantly hot, but my arms and torso are hidden from view.
I look in the mirror. For a second I think Francisco has come back and he’s here in the room with me.
But it’s not him.
It’s me.
I turn away from my reflection in the mirror. I close the knife and put it back in my pocket.
As I glance down, the photo of the young Francisco catches my eye.
I should burn it then scatter it outside, let the wind carry the ashes away. This would keep The Program safe and erase the last vestige of Francisco in the world.
But I don’t do that.
I reach down and pick it up. I carefully button it into the pocket of the flannel shirt I’m wearing.
I don’t know why I take the picture with me. It’s a danger to me, a piece of evidence that I should not have on my person. By all counts, it’s a piece of evidence that should not exist in the world.
Still, I want to save it. It’s important to me. I don’t know why.
I jog back to the front of the house, where I left Howard. He’s taken the initiative by going into the commissary and grabbing water bottles and some snacks to refuel us.
He’s zipping them into a backpack when I get there.
“Just in case,” he says.
“Skills,” I say, tapping his forehead.
He smiles.
“Did you find any clues?” he says.
“Not yet. But I have another idea,” I say.
I grab Howard, and we run together through the camp.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE DOORS TO THE WORKSHOP ARE OPEN WIDE.
The workshop itself is empty. No vehicles, no people.
Long workbenches have been cleared in haste, tools pushed onto the ground, huge wire spools speared on rods along the wall, now empty of their contents. The ground is littered with sections of colored wire insulation like the red curlicue I found on the ground the first night here.
What look like large empty metal barrels are stacked throughout the workshop building. I can see these have been fabricated from scratch, welded, and hammered into what look like sections of giant pipes that are open on both ends.
“What are these things?” Howard says.
“Not sure.”
I look down at the cement floor and see remnants of white beads, almost like poly foam.
“Packing material,” Howard says.
I bend down, pick up some of the particles, and examine them. I sniff. They have only the faintest odor, but I have experience with this material from my training.
“It’s ammonium nitrate,” I say.
“What is that?”
“It’s a main component of fertilizer. And fuel explosives.”
I look at the metal barrels, then think back to the line of panel vans waiting outside the workshop. I imagine them loaded with something like giant pipe bombs.
“Explosives?” Howard says. “What are they planning to blow up?”
My mind runs through locations in the Northeast that could be the focus of the attack, the kinds of places we went to on The Hunt earlier this week. National Guard bases, company headquarters, municipal facilities for water or power. A cadre of teen terrorists spreading out through the area, poised to strike.
Multiple targets is a terrifying scenario, but that was Moore’s plan. And Moore is dead.
Lee is in charge now.
He would have a different approach. A bigger approach.
I think about the vans I saw as I drove in earlier. The other night the vans were unmarked. But driving in, they were all marked with the same two words.
NORTHEAST ELECTRIC.
That’s when I remember something Lee said the first night I came to the encampment. The video game system.
It’s not just a game. It’s training.
He told me that he was the one who developed the scenarios.
“You know your way around game systems, don’t you?” I ask Howard.
“I’m taking that as a rhetorical question.”
“I need you to play a game now.”
“Normally I’d be thrilled, but shouldn’t we be saving the country?” he says.
“The game. That’s how we’re going to do it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
I POWER UP THE GAMING SYSTEM BACK IN MY ROOM.
I show Howard how the game works, bringing up the profile for Daniel X, my game character from the other night.
“You’ve got lousy stats,” Howard says.
“I’ve got lousy game stats. It’s life stats that count.”
Howard grins. “Is that a tag line from your spy manual?”
I sigh. “I liked you better when you were a scared kid in the hallway at school.”
“That’s the old me. I’m an espionage guy now.”
I bring up the GAME SCENARIOS prompt screen.
“This is amazing,” Howard says. “They created this themselves?”
“It’s like a training simulator for them.”
“It’s very cool,” he says. “They’ve got some real talent here.”
“Too bad it’s wasted.”
Howard scrolls through the game scenarios.
“Where should we start?” he says. He clicks on one of the scenarios in the middle, but he’s blocked from entering the game. “Actually, I asked the wrong question. We have to start at the top.”
“Why?”
“It’s an ascending level design. You can’t move up to the next until you’ve successfully completed the previous.”
“So you have to win the scenario before you can proceed?”
“Unless you have cheat codes.”
“Nope.”
He nods. “Then I’m going to have to win. But it’s not going to be easy with your character stats. No offense.”
“Enough about the stats.”
“Sorry. I’ll get started.”
“I’m going to watch over your shoulder until I find what I’m looking for.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I won’t know until I see it,” I say.
I’m trained to sort through enormous amounts of visual data, categorizing, sorting, and testing the data against various hypotheses. If the answer is in the game, I trust that I’ll be able to see it.
“Can you play with someone watching you?” I say.
“Are you kidding? Have you ever seen a game tournament?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Well, you’re going to see one now,” Howard says. “Time for Fro-Fro to throw down. Fro-Fro. That’s Goji’s pet name for me.”
“I remember,” I say.
He bites his lower lip, his face set in concentration as he clicks into the first scenario, LAYING PLANS, the one I played the first night in the camp. The schematic of the campsite comes up, and I watch as the ATF attack unwinds on the screen in front of me.