Constant Fear

CHAPTER 18

The upper hallway of the Terry Science Center was jammed with kids making an orderly exit. Andy was somewhere in the middle of the pack. Students shielded their ears from the piercing alarm while blinking strobes cast everything in a light of urgency. Is this a drill or the real thing? Andy overheard someone say something about a shooter, but he looked and saw it was that kid who was always talking trash. This was probably just another drill. With the recent rash of school shootings, they had drills every few weeks, or so it seemed.

Andy was walking behind Beth MacDonald. It was impossible to ignore the sway of her hips. Some girls wore the uniform especially well, and nobody could rock a pleated skirt and red cardigan like Beth MacDonald. Andy was completely inexperienced in the ways of women, and he had no idea how to make something happen with Beth that didn’t involve a quadratic equation.

As it happened, Lydia Dyer said something funny, which made Beth throw her head back with a hearty laugh. Of course Andy noticed everything about the moment-the perfect lines of Beth’s arched back and neck, her dancer’s physique, the swoosh of her long ponytail sliding from shoulder to shoulder, the sweet timbre of her voice. For a fleeting instant, Beth unwittingly helped Andy forget about his troubles.

Of the two brontosaurus-sized issues confronting him, the missing bitcoins and Laura, it was Andy’s mother who occupied most of his waking thoughts. What would he say to her? Would he even speak? Could he? Should he have let his dad come along, like Jake had wanted? Andy contemplated canceling; but in his heart, he wanted to meet her, get to know her, and maybe even come to know more about himself. He wasn’t even angry that she had created a bogus profile to reach him.

The messages exchanged with Andy when Laura wasn’t being Laura were innocuous, limited mostly to talk about cool bands and interesting or funny websites. Ironically, it was the effort that went into pulling off the ruse that made Andy feel as if his mother cared. The same night Laura showed up at Andy’s house she sent a new friend request that also confessed to her deceit. The Facebook messages she sent him as Laura were cordial, but nothing more. Unless they met in person, a hole in Andy’s history would remain, and what he wanted was a complete picture.

Beth turned and saw Andy walking behind her, which brightened her smile even more. The hormone soup swimming about Andy’s body made him momentarily clumsy. He stumbled in the stairwell and had to grab a railing to regain his balance. Instead of tumbling down the stairs and into the throngs of students marching below him, Andy’s fast footwork put him in lockstep with Beth. She reached out and touched his arm. The contact sent bolts of electricity shooting through his veins.

Lydia rolled her eyes. Like a lot of the students making their way to the exit, she turned her attention to her smartphone. Andy figured Vine was probably already full of posts about the fire drill, with captions like, Here we go again.

“Do you think Mr. Forbes will notice if I don’t come back to class?” Beth said. The stairwell amplified the noise level, and Beth shouted to be heard over the persistent din. Andy didn’t mind leaning in close to hear her more clearly. He was thinking about a joke he could make that would get her to laugh again, when he caught a flash of something yellow at the bottom of the stairwell.

It took a moment to register, and even after the yellow-clad figures came in full view, he still wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

“I don’t think we are going back to class.” Andy pointed at the three figures encased in chemical suits stationed at the bottom of the stairs, urging the students to hurry. A fresh surge behind Andy came like a tide picking up speed as more students saw what he did, and the realization set in that this might not be a drill.

Andy was glad to have his backpack with his insulin, glucose tablets, and emergency glucagon kit with him and not in the classroom. In the fracas, Andy became separated from Beth. He was looking for her when a strong tug on his arm refocused his attention. Andy turned to see who had pulled on him. His eyes narrowed on Ryan Coventry’s snarling face.

Ryan gave another hard yank. There was no resisting. The only direction Andy could travel was the one Ryan wanted him to go: up. Like a salmon fighting a steady current, Ryan shoved students aside to make a space large enough to drag Andy up the stairs with him. Andy fought for a foothold, but Ryan exploited his advantage and Andy could do nothing but stumble along behind him.

The bodies thinned at the second-floor landing. Ryan tossed Andy through the stairwell’s open double doors. Andy’s arms spun for balance as his legs kicked out like a boy on ice skates for the first time, but there was no stopping his fall.

Ryan charged as Andy, still a bit dazed, staggered to his feet. Lowering his shoulder like a battering ram, Ryan plowed into Andy’s exposed right side with the full force of his two-hundred-pound frame. The blow flattened Andy against the unforgiving wall. He made a loud wheezing sound when the breath left him.

“Bet you’re not feeling like a big shot now,” Ryan said, standing over Andy’s crumpled body.

“Ryan, what the hell?” Andy said, still gasping for breath. “We’ve got to get out of here. There’s some chemical spill or something and we’re all being evacuated.”

Ryan’s expression suggested a different plan. “Yeah, that’s why I’m leaving and you’re not.”

Concealed inside a bright yellow chemical suit, Efren moved freely among the real employees from Clean Air Environmental Services. As Fausto had predicted, all it took to look like a person of authority were the proper uniforms and attitudes.

Efren had come to the Terry Science Center, knowing which exit was closest to Andy Dent’s classroom. Fausto had given his team everything they would need to accomplish their mission. They had building plans and, thanks to the help from a man called The Lion, they also had class schedules of all six targets. Efren had memorized Andy’s face, and it was easy to spot the boy on the stairwell behind a pretty blond girl with a long ponytail. Fausto was right, as usual. The chaos was ideal for concealing the abduction; the smile beneath his faceplate was not so easy to hide.

Efren directed a mob of students to the nearest exit, but mostly he was mindful of the classroom down the hall, its door intentionally left open. As Andy passed, Efren would follow. Within a second, he would have his target trapped inside that room, where they would wait for the evacuation to conclude.

That was the plan, until another student had intervened.

Students asked questions as they flooded down the stairs.

“What’s going on?”

“Are we in danger?”

Efren didn’t respond. Instead, he tapped the suits of the two men stationed with him. They were contract employees of Clean Air, and each thought Efren was the same. Efren pantomimed his intention to go upstairs to have a look around. The other men nodded their understanding and consent. Soon Efren was on the move. Students alarmed at the sight of a man in a yellow chemical suit parted to make room for him to pass. Efren found it cumbersome to walk in the suit, and the guns and knives he carried didn’t make it any easier.

Hilary followed the herd, walking with her head bent and eyes fixed on the marble floor. She had barely been paying attention to her French teacher; the break could not have come at a better time. Her thinking was addled, and she worried about her upcoming midterms.

Before joining The Shire, Hilary had been a straight-A student who had no clue where the dean of students’ office was even located. Now she was a felon, several times over. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Hilary couldn’t believe how quickly her life had come undone. She was the third and youngest daughter of Sam and Renee Eichel, of Westport, Connecticut. Nothing in her background even hinted at a future life of crime. No abuse. No neglect. Hilary’s parents were pillars of the community, and both loving and devoted to their daughters.

By any measure, Hilary had enjoyed an enviable childhood. She got along well with her two sisters and partook in lavish family vacations, including trips out west to ski and April vacations spent under the Caribbean sun. Her mother was a big corporate attorney and her father ran a hedge fund, so she had grown up knowing nothing of financial hardship.

All that changed in middle school. In some ways, Hilary had Mrs. Lewis, her seventh-grade social studies teacher, to blame for her recent criminal behavior.

Each year, Mrs. Lewis taught a segment on poverty. For her class project, Hilary pretended to be an unemployed single parent. She was given a fictional minimum-wage job and each day scrounged the Internet looking for an apartment she could afford, a car, day care for her fictional kids, and, of course, a better-paying job. Hilary had found it impossible to get by on such meager earnings. During the project, she learned about various federal-assistance programs; but even with those, her imaginary kids went hungry most of the time. In a few months, Hilary had come to know a good deal about affordable housing, welfare reform, and, most devastating of all, poverty’s heart-wrenching effect on children.

While her sisters seemed bent on following Mom and Dad’s footsteps into the world of law and finance, Hilary had visions of using her passion for technology to cure global poverty. She had been ignoring her class assignment, looking on the Web at internship opportunities with socially conscious companies, nonprofits mostly, when Andy Dent sent her a Facebook message that ultimately changed her life.

The first line of Andy’s message had been intriguing: Your Test. Somehow he’d known that would be an irresistible lure. Hilary read the rest of the message without knowing much about the sender. Andy was in her computer science class, but they hadn’t spoken often. They were friends on Facebook, but didn’t hang in the same circles in real life.

You have been kidnapped by an alien, the message continued. Hilary read on.

To be released, you must send an e-mail to Help@Alien Prisoner.com from Mr. Rubin’s e-mail account. You have fifteen minutes to accomplish your mission. Go! Glory awaits those who escape from this grave peril.

Hilary tried to get Andy’s attention, but he refused to look her way. He was sending a message: Either do it, or don’t. He had nothing more to say on the matter.

The computer lab was crowded as usual and most everyone had headphones on, gazes fixed to the monitors in front of them. Hilary smiled and thought only of winning. She wanted to prove herself. Impressing Andy meant nothing to her, but perhaps he knew she wasn’t the type to back down from a direct challenge. All that mattered now was that she accomplished the task.

Ten minutes later, Hilary sent Mr. Rubin an e-mail that contained an embedded link. She approached his desk and asked him to check her code. Mr. Rubin clicked the link in Hilary’s e-mail and frowned when the requested webpage came up blank.

“You’ve got to do better than that, Hilary,” he had said.

Hilary did not agree. She had done perfectly well, but for a different assignment. Returning to her desk, Hilary opened a Web browser and from there launched the remote access tool she had just secretly installed on Mr. Rubin’s computer via the link he had clicked. The tool gave Hilary control of Mr. Rubin’s desktop from her workstation without her teacher’s knowledge. It was a matter of Hilary making a few clicks of her own before Andy started to laugh.

When he turned and smiled at her, Hilary felt a rush like never before. She had gone bungee jumping, parasailed, and skied double-black-diamond runs, but this was an entirely different sort of thrill. It was utterly intoxicating. She didn’t give boys much attention or thought, but suddenly Andy was quite attractive to her. Later, she would fall in love with him. But that moment was the start of Hilary seeing Andy in a different light.

They talked after class. As it turned out, they had English together, and that was how he’d learned of Hilary’s passion to fight global poverty. She’d shared an essay with the class that had stuck with him. Andy made her an offer, a secret club he wanted her to join. Hilary was intrigued.

After they pulled off their first theft-$1,000 from a kid’s dad who ran a shipping company-Hilary was hooked. It was like Mr. Rubin’s e-mail trick, but on steroids. This was a street drug of a different variety. She justified her actions by convincing herself she was making a real difference in the world, but the thrill of the hack was never too far behind. Besides, her victims were wealthy.

They didn’t notice what was missing. It was all harmless fun, until they took those bitcoins. Now Andy believed someone would notice, and Hilary did not disagree.

As the students marched along, Hilary thought about Andy and his never-ending fascination with Beth MacDonald. Why didn’t he notice her the way he did Beth? She was pretty in her own way. Maybe she and Andy were destined to be the dreaded “friends,” Hilary thought glumly. But perhaps there was another way to Andy’s heart.

If those missing bitcoins were suddenly found, and if she were the one to find them, maybe then Andy would notice her. These were Hilary’s thoughts as she headed toward the rear stairwell of Richmond Hall. Ahead, Hilary heard several loud gasps. Over the din, she heard someone shout, “Chemical spill!”

It was then Hilary saw a man in a bright yellow chemical suit emerge from the stairwell to help direct traffic. There was a crush of bodies as students rushed to be first down the stairs. What had been an ambling march turned into more of a sprint. Whoever was cocooned inside the yellow suit helped the students maintain some order.

Hilary fell into step behind a group of girls she didn’t know. The man in the yellow suit followed close behind her. More kids were coming down the hallway, and Hilary wondered why this suited man didn’t stay up on the landing to help direct them.

Pixie was alone in his dorm room, dressed in his work uniform-Ray-Bans and a plaid cowboy shirt. He sat at his cluttered desk with his headphones on, hunched over a computer keyboard like a maestro caught up in a burst of inspiration. Within arm’s reach was a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, which he kept uncapped. He also had a big bag of M &Ms, in case the Mountain Dew didn’t charge him up enough.

Pixie was working in SketchUp, his preferred 3D-modeling software. His template was a simple rectangle of the exact length and width of the iPhone. He had extruded the depth and then added fillets around the four edges of the rectangular prism and around the top and bottom faces. From this basic template, he could print just about any design.

His noise-canceling headphones blocked out all sound except for the electronic music from Cash Cash’s latest release. He was in the zone, and might not have heard the fire alarm even if the music hadn’t been blaring. His roommate, a heavyset boy named Garth, from a suburb in Chicago, was in class and not around to alert Pixie to the alarm. Pixie should have been in class as well. But he ran a business and needed to fill orders for his custom iPhone cases. He’d decided to skip biology to work.

3D printing had come a long way since Pixie first learned of the technology. Because of fire concerns and energy consumption-it used fifty to one hundred times more electricity than injection molding-Pixie was not allowed to have a 3D printer in his dorm room. But Pixie was never much for rules. The PLA filament used to heat the plastic emitted a burning smell, like cooking on a gas stove. He used fans, and an open window helped to mask the odor.

Pixie had a couple more design tweaks to make on the iPhone case for a Japanese student who loved death metal and wanted angry symbolism printed into the plastic. Pixie didn’t care for that sort of music, but the design was intricate, hard to pull off. It was a challenge.

When Pixie wasn’t hacking into bank accounts or printing iPhone cases, he was writing apps for smartphones. Taped to the concrete wall in front of his desk were pictures of Pixie’s heroes: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and a few other Internet entrepreneur titans. At times, Pixie would gaze at the wall and call to these men for inspiration and guidance as if they were his gods. Maybe someday a kid will put my picture up on a wall. Whenever Pixie let his mind wander into fantasy, he’d imagine what his father would think of him after he became a millionaire-or even a billionaire.

“How do you like me now?” he’d say one day.

But that day hadn’t yet come. So Pixie was alone in his dorm room, skipping class again, working toward his future. Since he couldn’t hear the alarm, it was understandable that he didn’t answer the persistent knocking on his door.

The door opened anyway.

The entrance to the secret stairwell was at the end of a long tunnel and up a flight of well-worn metal stairs. At the top of those stairs was a thick metal door that opened into a locked maintenance closet. Many of the tunnel entrances were concealed in the back of maintenance closets. Inside that particular closet was a mess of mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies. Jake came up those metal stairs, navigated an obstacle course of paraphernalia in the dark, opened the locked closet door from the inside, and then emerged, feeling a bit like Superman stepping from a phone booth in his Clark Kent disguise.

He entered into chaos. Students were scrambling down the hallways, being ushered outside by men dressed in yellow chemical suits. Panic had overtaken civility, and a mash of bodies was trying to squeeze through the double doors of the Society Building. The marble floor and walls intensified the sound, and the noise of the students and faculty reverberated as indiscriminate chatter.

What the hell is happening?

Jake saw a police officer wearing a gas mask and directing traffic. He approached and asked, “What’s going on?”

The officer took off his mask, but looked nervous in doing it. “Big chemical spill near the access road to the school,” he said. “As a precaution, we’re evacuating everyone to the regional high school. We have buses out front to get folks out of here, and we’re asking everyone to leave their vehicles in the lot so we can expedite the evacuation.”

So that was it, then. Chemical spill. Evacuation. Instead of ordering Jake to the exit, the officer put his gas mask back on and resumed his directing duties. It was a Get Out of Dodge scenario, but for a different reason. Andy was fine. He was probably on one of the buses already.

Jake merged into the flow of bodies, but halfway down the hall he skirted off to one side. He seldom worried about folks venturing into the labyrinth, but a chemical spill might necessitate an exhaustive search of the property. Someone could have architectural plans and mandate every square inch be checked for contamination. If so, his sophisticated biometric door lock would certainly attract some attention. Jake could replace the mechanism with a rusty old lock, but it would take a bit of time. Good thing he had all the tools to do the job in the storage room adjacent to the larder.

It might be an unnecessary precaution, but Jake wasn’t a man who left much to chance.

David, Rafa, and Solomon had been together in chemistry class when the alarm went off. They filed out of the classroom along with the others, thinking nothing of it. Another drill, or perhaps some kid who wanted to get out of a test had pulled a fire alarm on his way to the bathroom. Those things happened. At the far end of the hallway, Rafa spotted a man wearing a yellow chemical suit and pointed him out to his friends.

“What the heck?” David said as he brushed a thick band of hair off his face. David was always brushing hair from his face. Solomon and Rafa never tired of imitating him, but they were too preoccupied with the man in protective gear to have noticed.

“Figures we’re at the back of the pack when something really shitty happens.” Solomon’s comment referred to the location of their classroom, which was at the end of a long hallway of classrooms. They would be the last to reach safety.

Meanwhile, the man in the yellow suit moved against the flow of traffic, perhaps headed to one of those classrooms.

“This is the chemistry wing,” Rafa said, loud enough to be heard above the piercing alarm. “Maybe a freshman tried some advanced mixology and screwed up royally.”

The man continued to force his way through the crowd. As he moved, he scanned in all directions. Only occasionally did he motion for students and faculty to hurry to the exit. Rafa and David picked up the pace, but Solomon lagged behind. They slowed to wait for their friend.

“We’re not going anywhere fast,” Solomon shouted while he huffed for breath. He pointed to the traffic jam at the stairwell. “Why rush it?”

Rafa looked disapprovingly at Solomon. “You may be the most out-of-shape human being I know,” he said, only half joking.

Solomon poked Rafa’s sternum hard. “You have insulted my honor, and I challenge thee to a bowl-off.”

David surveyed the pedestrian backup and frowned. “Hey, if this is a real problem, we could be in big trouble waiting to get out. We might be inhaling deadly fumes right now.”

Rafa sniffed the air. “Doesn’t smell bad,” he said.

“You just came from chemistry, dinkus,” Solomon snapped. “Does everything deadly have a smell?”

“I know from your farts it doesn’t always have a sound.”

“Har, har, har,” Solomon said.

David turned to survey the empty hallway behind him. His eyes narrowed as an idea set in. “Guys, let’s go out the fire escape,” he said. “It’ll be faster and way more fun.”

Several corridors branched off the main hallway, and at the end of one of them was window access to a fire escape. Rafa and Solomon nodded their agreement. Better than twiddling thumbs while waiting to get down those stairs.

Rafa pointed to the man in the yellow suit, who continued to march their way. “We better go now before ‘Banana Man’ sees us and makes us wait with the others.”

The three turned and began a fast walk to where the corridor branched. Halfway there, Rafa turned and noticed the man in the yellow suit had quickened his strides. He seemed to be shoving kids aside to get where he needed to go. But where could that be? There was nothing down this hallway except for empty classrooms and… well, the three of them.

Rafa tugged on David’s arm and pulled him to a stop. The suited man no longer showed any concern for people’s safety. He did not point to any exit or corral folks into a more orderly line. No, this individual was dead set on getting to something-or someone-in front of him. Even in the glare of overhead lights, it was easy to see the man’s dark eyes were fixed on the three boys.

The boys retreated a few steps, but they never turned their backs to the approaching man. Dressed in bright yellow, he looked something like a lion on the hunt, salivating over targets that had separated from the herd. He moved. They backed up. He advanced some more. They backed up some more.

“Maybe we should just wait with the others,” Rafa suggested. His voice quavered, because his gut told him something was very wrong.

“Fuck that,” Solomon said. “I’m getting out of here.”

David turned and broke into a trot as Rafa sprinted ahead of him. Solomon’s all-out run was more like the others’ jog, and he immediately fell into third place. A few strides into his all-out dash, Rafa risked a quick glance behind him. The man in the yellow suit pushed harder through the crowd. He was definitely coming for them.

“Faster!” Rafa could barely hear himself over the piercing alarm.

David heard him, though. He found a new gear, falling into step right behind Rafa. Solomon picked up speed as well, but his friends had already disappeared down the hallway up ahead. By the time Solomon reached the corridor, Rafa and David were already at work on the shuttered window. It appeared to be stuck, and they struggled to pry it open.

Solomon went from a run to an amble. He wanted to rest his hands on his knees to catch his breath, but a long, thin shadow materialized on the floor in front of him. He looked back and saw the man in the yellow suit, blocking the only way to the main corridor-his only way out, unless David and Rafa could get that window open. The man’s dark eyes appeared as venomous as a cobra’s bite. He raised his arm, and Solomon cowered in response to the gun in his hand. A suppressor stuck out from the pistol’s barrel like a long, black finger.

Instinct took over. Solomon dove to the floor-duck and cover-and shouted to Rafa and David to look out, but the boys were too preoccupied or didn’t hear. The window, for whatever reason, wasn’t going to budge without some tools. But Rafa and David worked aggressively to force it open.

The screech of the alarm masked the pop of gunfire. A bright flash erupted from the barrel of the gun. Almost simultaneously the wood near Rafa’s hands splintered and sprayed his face. Rafa fell back and landed on his bottom. David dropped to the floor and covered his head with his hands.

A sound rose above the alarm, a high-pitched squeal. The man in the yellow suit dragged a screaming Solomon down the corridor by the boy’s shirt. Solomon kicked and struggled to get free, but the man’s gloved hand was locked on tight. He kept his gun aimed at Rafa and David, and used the weapon as a pointer to direct them into the classroom adjacent to the window.

Frozen with fear, neither boy could move. In response, the man shot again. This time, the bullet slammed into the concrete just below the window, blasting fragments of chipped debris like shrapnel. Rafa and David covered their heads and scurried into the classroom, where they’d been directed.

The man in the yellow suit materialized in the open doorway. He tossed Solomon into the classroom like a bag of laundry. Solomon landed face-first on the grimy linoleum floor and he cried out in pain. The three boys cowered together, arms around each other, while the man in the yellow suit removed his head covering. He smiled at the boys. They shrank at the sight of his gold-metal mouth.

“Hello, kids,” the man said in a thick accent. “You have taken something of mine, and I am here to get it back.”