Ridley Pearson - Power Play

The Overtakers were spying on them. It gave him the chills. He’d been IMing with Willa on a regular basis, writing stuff he didn’t necessarily want anyone else seeing.

“Never underestimate their capabilities,” Wayne said. “We all have learned that lesson too many times.”

“Where are you?” Philby blurted out. “Are you all right?” Wayne looked old and tired. He must be worried sick about Wanda, Philby thought.

“Unimportant. Do as I say. Do what I ask. Good luck. We’re all counting on you.”

The window went black, the connection lost.

“Mr. Philby?” It was Mr. Chambers from the front of the class. He was not in a charitable mood.

Philby slipped off the headset expecting suspension and possible detention.

“No videos. You know the assignment. Voice is okay. No video.”

Philby realized that Mr. Chambers so trusted the school’s firewall that he couldn’t for a moment believe that anyone had managed to breach it. He must have assumed that the video on Philby’s screen was something Philby had created.

“Sorry, Mr. Chambers.”

Philby and Hugo met eyes, and Philby thanked him with a quick nod of his head. Hugo smiled and went back to work. He could see the curiosity on Hugo’s face-he wanted to know what had required the diversion. Philby would have to invent a pretty convincing story: Hugo was not easily fooled.

Philby’s heart raced. Wayne. Wanda. The Stave Church. The Overtakers were reorganized, still out there.

For the past several months he and his friends had not worried about such things. They’d actually had lives again.

But now, in a few short minutes, all of that had changed.

Again.

Philby compartmentalized his ideas. His mind worked like a filing cabinet. He held ideas in drawers, opening one or two while closing others. He didn’t think about it; it just happened. Once he had hung up from the chat with Wayne, he put all those ideas into a drawer and slid it shut, marking it as urgent . He’d been able to go about his classwork. But now, while other kids occupied the time between classes with hallway chitchat, Philby concentrated on the contents of that mental filing drawer. He made a list of what had to be done and in what order, with an emphasis on efficiency.

First, he would text Finn about Wanda. Next he would send a group text to all the Keepers about meeting at the Stave Church at eight pm. Then, once home, he would take his laptop over to Hugo’s house to get off his home network, where the Overtakers might be monitoring him. He would access the DHI server remotely and lock it down, making sure there was no chance that the Keepers might cross over unexpectedly after going to sleep. Crossing over was not the danger; it was getting stuck as a DHI, failing to come back, what the Keepers called the Return.

Philby spotted Willa up the hallway. In that instant, he became just another ninth grader with a crush. She was standing at her locker, one hand on its metal door, the other at her side while staring into space. He suddenly tensed. His legs felt like lead.

He recalled the exact day this change in his attitude toward her had occurred. They’d been sitting at a table at the Marble Slab with the other Keepers when he’d been overcome with a feeling of curiosity. It was something he still didn’t understand. But what it amounted to was: he wanted to be around her, to know more about her, to spend time with her. She was smart, funny, and thoughtful. Maybe not drop-dead pretty like Charlene, or the brooding kind of beauty like Amanda, but interesting-looking. Intriguing. More important to him was that they thought the same way. Often came to the same conclusions without any kind of communication. Like they were connected.

“Hi, there,” he said, reaching her locker.

“You ever know you’re looking right at something but can’t see it?” At the moment, Willa was looking right at him .

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“My sheet music is in here somewhere.”

One thing on which they differed: she kept her locker a mess; his was neatly ordered. He studied her locker carefully, reached in and withdrew the sheet music. Her eyes filled with appreciation.

“You’re awesome!” she said.

He wanted to hear her say it again.

“Wayne just video-chatted me in the lab,” he told her.

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m not kidding.”

The locker door slammed into place and she locked it. Philby could sense both Willa’s apprehension as well as her misgivings. He could see her think. She had an intensity that he totally got.

“But that’s not possible,” she said.

“I know. Isn’t it cool?”

“It had to be some kind of trick. The school’s firewall-”

“-was breached. Wayne breached it.”

Spencer Randolph was staring at them from across the hall. A gifted athlete and popular tenth grader, Spencer always seemed to be hanging around Willa.

“Don’t look now,” Philby said, trying to make it sound like he didn’t care, “but Spence can’t take his eyes off you.”

“He always does that.” Willa blushed. Philby didn’t like seeing her blush over Spencer Randolph. She looked back at Philby. “Why would he do that?”

Philby felt confused: Because you’re smart? Because you’re a Willa kind of pretty? “He probably wants to go out with you,” he said.

“Wayne, stupid!” she said. “Not Spence. I know all about Spence.”

“You do?” How had he let that slip?

“Why would Wayne go to all that trouble just to get a message to you?”

“That’s the thing,” he whispered. “He said it had to be here at the school, that it couldn’t be at my home, or Finn’s, or any of ours because he thinks the OTs are monitoring our home computers.”

“What!? But we…I mean, you and me…” Willa stammered.

“Yeah, I know. We have to stay off our computers. And no crossing over. Who knows what they’re planning?”

“Just when I was starting to feel normal again.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing.” He added, “Normal, if you overlook that when we go to sleep we wake up in the Parks as our holograms.”

“We’ve all been overlooking that for a couple of years now. I don’t even think about it, you know? It’s just…a part of me.” Willa added, “We need to tell Amanda and Jess as well.” The Keepers had applied the hologram technology to Amanda and Jess months earlier. Philby could remotely cross them over as DHIs as well. But this meant they were now at risk along with the other Keepers. It didn’t seem exactly fair.

“Yeah. They’ll need to know.” Philby told her about the Stave Church at eight pm. He left out the part about Wanda for now. He wanted Finn to deal with that, as Wayne had asked. “I’m going to text the others, not IM. We have to assume that whatever we do online from home could be monitored.”

“That’s way creepy,” Willa said.

“Yeah.”

“But what about texting?”

“Probably safer than anything on the Internet. I don’t see the OTs hacking Verizon.”

“No. That’s true.”

The hallway bell rang, signaling another class for both of them.

Spencer had not gone away. The longer he stared, the more Philby felt like kissing Willa right there in the hall for everyone to see. Not that he would ever do it.

He shook his head and coughed out disgust at himself.

“What?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Philby wounded her by saying that. Hadn’t meant to. He longed for a rewind button, another chance to say something different. But Willa was already on her way down the hall, her back to him. Spencer peeled himself off the wall and came up alongside of her, and Willa’s step seemed a little lighter.