“Well, you won’t have to worry about that.”
“Won’t I?”
“Mrs. Nash will take you in. She’s a control freak, but mostly she’s okay.”
“You’re not getting it, Mandy. I want to be caught. I’m good with it.”
Silence.
“That freaks you out,” Mattie said.
“Well, yeah.”
“If I’m caught…when I’m caught, I’ll be returned to Baltimore. To the facility. I can save those guys. I see that now. Until you, Jess, the Keepers, I didn’t understand what we have.”
“You’re saying Jess and I should come, too. That we should all allow ourselves to be caught.”
“I’m not. Just because it’s right for me doesn’t make it right for you.”
“I never want to go back.”
“It’s good you know that.”
“But it never occurred to me that we could break everyone out. They’d catch us. They always catch us.”
“They haven’t caught you.”
“I’m pretty sure they know where we are. Mrs. Nash threatens to send us back all the time.”
“Just because she knows about the facility doesn’t mean the facility knows about you. You and Jess proved it’s possible, to get out, to be free. And if you think about it, you know why.”
“Because we stuck together.” Amanda understood Mattie’s dream then. Her fantasy. But Charlene’s arrival silenced any further speech.
“It’s a ways up,” Charlene’s voice said from the darkness. “And I passed a sign that marks the park’s border.”
“It’s not part of the park?”
“No. It’s just a big house. Stone and wood. Some screened-in porches and screens on the windows. It’s huge. And it’s, I don’t know, kind of fancy in a run-down way. Like it was fancy a long time ago. There were men’s voices. Four? Five? More?”
“Were you visible?”
“Oh, yeah. Philby’s got us powered up and projected. Security cameras, I think. We start showing up maybe a hundred yards away. Really clear pretty soon after. I didn’t press it. All for one, and all of that.”
Her comment drove home what Mattie had been talking about—that the Keepers worked as a team. Amanda thought of the five teens as individuals, hadn’t given the team concept a lot of consideration, but there was no denying it. The Keepers did everything, big or small, as a group. Typically, the real problems arose when they were off on their own.
The invisible Charlene led the way for Mattie, with Amanda on guard, bringing up the rear. At the top, they passed the platform looming out over the ravine—the start of the first and longest zip line. It felt haunted, due to the loud jungle sounds. The constancy of the buzzing and humming of night insects made all the girls jumpy.
When Charlene’s hologram began sparking and reappearing, Mattie fell back several yards, slightly afraid. The same phenomenon overtook Amanda’s DHI. Pieces of the two girls appeared, disappeared, and reformed. An arm. A leg from the knee down. A torso floating in space. Then an arm attached to the torso and legs grew out of it, and there was the complete girl, walking, but shimmering in distorted squares of color like a television in a thunderstorm.
“That is so…awesome!”
“I thought you were freaking.”
“No way! Wickedly cool.”
“Quiet!” Amanda said. “We’re too close!”
They huddled on their knees, still fifty yards from the building.
“Amanda and I will go first. You’ll stay here and wait for my signal. I’m going to try to get a look at them so I can maybe see if either of the two who were in the woods are in there. If they are, we signal and you join us. Remember, they can’t hurt Amanda or me. They can’t catch us. But you? Different story. So the first thing is to keep you safe. If everything goes as we hope, then we’ll go in. Or maybe we can lure one of the guys out so you can touch him. The thing is, you’ve got to be very smart about this, Mattie. You’ve got to know when to take off. Head for the first platform and get going. Don’t wait. Call the taxi right away.”
“But what if you need your phone? I’ll have it. Besides, what if there’s no time to tell you what I’ve found out?”
“Okay. Good point. So we’ll have a code. Once you’ve read this guy, you will use one of two words: Here, or Gone. That’s all Mandy and I need. You can fill us in on the deets later.” Charlene held up a finger and listened. Jungle sounds. She whispered. “Maybe we’ll have Dillard. Maybe not. About a mile down the road there’s a sign advertising this place. Bring the taxi by there every half hour, but stay way away the rest of the time. Don’t stop. Just drive by. You’ll see us if we’re there.”