Sophie Littlefield - Banished

After a long moment, Anna nodded slowly. I could tell the decision had been made.

We’d won this round, Kaz and me.

We were going with Prairie.

“I’ll guard him like my own,” Prairie said softly. “Hailey too. I will do everything I can to bring us back from this unharmed.”

Anna nodded. And then we were gone.

Kaz drove. Prairie sat up front with him, not saying much. She had slicked her hair back into a ponytail and was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, with an old pair of Anna’s sneakers. Dressed that way, she looked more like a college student than the elegant woman who had first appeared in Gram’s kitchen.

Kaz drove smoothly along Lake Shore Drive, the way we’d come only last night. Tonight the moon-nearly full-hung over the water near the horizon, its reflection shimmering beneath it. When we got to Evanston, I suddenly wished the drive had been longer. I didn’t feel ready.

Prairie murmured instructions. She took us through a neighborhood of stately old homes that got smaller as we drove farther from the lake, until they were mostly squat little bungalows. We crossed the commuter train tracks and I could see Evanston’s downtown ahead.

On the next block there was a cluster of low-slung modern office buildings. “Pull in,” Prairie said. “Park over here, by the Dumpsters.”

Kaz did as she directed.

We were shielded by a row of trees, the Civic nosed in under low-hanging branches. There were plenty of cars in the lot, customers of the Thai restaurant and the Laundromat across the street.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Prairie said. “The data is on computers in the secure lab. The prox card will get us in the main part of the lab-”

“Do you think Bryce could be in there?” I asked.

“Possibly… but what’s more likely is he’s got extra security guarding the place, with instructions to bring me in if I come poking around. By force, if necessary. Although I doubt there would be anyone here in the middle of the night.”

“Let me go,” Kaz said. “Alone. They won’t be expecting a man.”

Prairie shook her head. “No. I have to go with you.”

“What about me?” I demanded.

Prairie closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were clouded with doubt. “There will be a guard in the lobby,” she said. “A night guard. Unless they’ve hired someone new, it will be an older man who likes to nap on the job. Still, he’s a danger. He can trip an alarm that will shut the whole place down and bring security running from off-site. And Bryce may have paid the guard to contact him first.”

“You want me to distract him?” I asked.

Prairie looked uncomfortable. “I don’t see any other way. I thought maybe you could pretend to have some emergency, I don’t know, like maybe you’re hurt or something. As soon as we’re in, you get out. Figure out any excuse, tell the guard you were mistaken, whatever you need to do. And then you come back and wait where you can see the car.”

She dug into her pocket and handed me a cell phone. “This is Anna’s. Kaz’s number is on it. Press and hold the three key and it will dial him direct. Call if you see anyone coming in the building after us-anyone at all. Or if there’s any kind of trouble.”

I didn’t like being left behind, but I didn’t see an alternative. “What are you going to do to the computers?”

“I have full administrative access to all the servers. Paul gave it to me, along with the master keys. We’ve got to hope that Bryce never found out. I’m sure he locked me out, but he might not have changed the admin log-in. I just need to get in and start the wipe-disk program.”

“How much data is there, anyway?” Kaz demanded. “Because it takes hours to wipe a big disk.”

“I-I’m not sure.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaz said, his voice edgy and low. “It’s going to be fire.”

We both looked at him.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw it. A vision… Tonight will end in fire.”

“YOU HAD A VISION?” I demanded, but Prairie interrupted.

“Fire? Oh my God… I should have thought of that.”

“What?”

“The walls… all around the inner offices. They’ll burn.”

“I brought some stuff from the garage,” Kaz said. “To use as an accelerant. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mom-she would have lost it if she knew-but it should help spread the fire-”

“No, what I mean is, the walls are flammable. Bryce had us working with volunteer subjects who claimed to have predictive powers. We had a few who kept hitting it off the charts. Seers, you know? I was sure of it. And Bryce was researching ways to block their visions.”

“For the military application,” Kaz broke in.

“For the what?” I was lost, but the two of them were practically running over each other’s words.

“Like if the other side had Seers? You’d want to block them, right? You wouldn’t want them to be able to sense your next move.”

“Only, it’s very hard to do,” Prairie said. “The only thing we found that seemed to impair the subjects was iron. But it wasn’t like Bryce could put up iron walls in the lab, so he found this guy who came up with a way to embed iron filings in polyurethane foam. The kind you spray? You know, that expands? Only, it’s like a hundred times more flammable than wood, so he hired these guys off the books to spray it in all the drywall one weekend last fall.”

“That’s perfect,” Kaz said.

Perfect for destroying the building, I thought-but not for getting out alive.

“What sort of accelerant did you bring?” Prairie asked.

“I got a couple of cans of lighter fluid and some paint thinner. And matches.”

“Okay, good.” Prairie sighed. “You’ve got this all figured out, haven’t you?”

“Uh… yeah. But don’t tell Mom. She’d ground me for the rest of my life.”

We got out of the car, Kaz carrying his backpack filled with supplies. I stayed back, leaning against the car while they slipped off toward the building. They kept to the edge of the parking lot, as though they were strolling along the street toward downtown. When they got to the building, they cut over and edged along the front wall, barely visible in the shadows.

It was time. I took a deep breath and touched my fingers to my necklace. The red stone felt warm to my touch. I closed my eyes for a second and tried to empty my mind of everything other than what I had to do.

Then I sprinted across the parking lot and slammed into the glass doors at a flat-out run, smacking my palms against them and shoving. I didn’t take a chance on looking for Prairie and Kaz in the shadows. The doors swung open and I was into the building’s lobby. To the left was a bank of elevators, and to the right was a curved desk where an older man with a brown uniform sat reading a folded newspaper.

He looked up, his eyes wide with surprise, as I ran through the lobby to his desk. I leaned on it, panting.

“I need help!” I yelled. “A car-it was driving by-it hit someone. It ran up on the sidewalk by the parking lot. I think they’re hurt bad.”

The man lowered the newspaper more slowly than I figured the situation called for. “You’re saying there’s some kinda accident out there?”

“Yes, please, can you come out? I need-”

“They got procedures,” the man said gruffly. I read the name on the gold rectangle that was pinned to his shirt. Maynard . “I got to call-”

“There’s no time!” I was shouting now, fear making me loud and careless. If he called for help, it would ruin everything; the police would come and Prairie and Kaz would never be able to get into the lab. “Please!”