Cody rolls his eyes. “That’s right. I forgot, you’re a walking calculator.”
I stare down at the numbers on his ticket.
They seem familiar somehow. But I can’t remember why.
“Why did you select these numbers?” I ask.
Cody sighs and unpauses the game. But I don’t pick up my controller. He continues playing without me. “They just feel lucky to me. Someday I’m convinced they’ll win.”
And suddenly I know where I’ve seen them before. These are the exact numbers that were displayed on the lotto ticket I found this morning. With last week’s date on it.
“Do you play the same combination of numbers every time?”
His gaze is still intently locked on an aircraft carrier that his avatar just boarded. “Yeah.”
“How long have you been doing that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably since I was old enough to play.”
“And when was that?”
He sounds irritated by my constant questioning. “Eighteen. Now will you please get back in the game? I can’t defeat these guys on my own.”
But I don’t touch my controller. “You’ve been playing these exact numbers for fourteen years?”
“Yeah,” he repeats, distractedly.
This jump-starts my heart. “Why these numbers?”
“Like I said, they just feel lucky. Call it a hunch.”
A hunch.
“Cody,” I say, grabbing the controller from his hand.
“Hey!” he protests, but I ignore him and drop it onto the couch.
“Where did you get these numbers?”
He leans back with a scowl. “I don’t know. They’ve always just been in my head.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kaelen materialize in the dining room. My time is up. But I raise my hand in the air, signaling him to give me a second.
I’m onto something. I know it. “For how long?” I press Cody.
He opens his mouth to answer but suddenly nothing comes out except a strange, mouse-like squeak.
“Cody?” I prompt.
“I…” He stumbles, jumping slightly when he, too, notices that Kaelen has arrived. I snap my fingers in front of his face, keeping him focused.
“How long have these numbers just been in your head?”
Cody rubs his hands on his pants, leaving behind a sweaty streak. “I … don’t know.”
I nod. “You do know.”
His eyes drift upward and to the left as he struggles to remember. “I…” He tries a third time.
“Think,” I command him. “Think hard.”
“I … guess since”—his eyes close—“I was about thirteen.”
47
SUBMERGED
I’m out of my seat, running into the kitchen before Cody even opens his eyes again. I tap on the glass countertop, bringing it out of its hibernation.
“Numbers,” I tell Kaelen, who is by my side in a flash. “She left the final clue in a sequence of numbers.”
With a swoop of his hand, Kaelen clears the clutter of virtual pictures, documents, and videos in front of us and opens a blank white tableau. I grab a pen device, just like the one in Cody’s lab, from a holster on the refrigerator door and scribble down the numbers Cody plays twice a week in the lottery.
“Are you sure about this?” Kaelen asks, tilting his head to read what I’ve written.
“Maxxer knows my brain is designed to pick up patterns. It only makes sense that she would try to speak to me in numbers.”
I study the sequence, immediately noticing they are listed in ascending order. “Cody!” I call back toward the living room. “Is this the order you remember them in?”
Silence follows and I lean around the corner of the kitchen wall to see that Cody is still sitting on the couch staring into space, looking dazed.
“Cody?” I repeat.
“No.” I hear his quiet mumble. And then, “The lotto machine puts them in that order when it prints the ticket.”
“So what order do you remember them in?”
He doesn’t reply for a minute. I think he’s gone into shock. Nineteen years of his life he’s been carrying this around. Never knowing what it was. Never understanding why. Never expecting that eventually a girl would appear out of thin air, claiming to be from another century, asking him about a series of seemingly insignificant numbers in his mind, telling him that they mean something. That they lead to something.
I guess I can’t fault him for feeling just the slightest bit stupefied.
But finally, he speaks. His voice faint. Trancelike. He lists the numbers one by one, pausing for long stretches of time between them. As though reciting each digit robs him of every ounce of energy he has left and he has to wait until he can replenish before starting again.