The Variables

“Grant!” she exclaimed. “I’d hug you, but...”

Grant smiled and shrugged. He leaned in for a hug anyway. When he pulled away, his clothes were damp and there was a wet circle on his shirt where Cass’s head had been.

“I couldn’t believe when I heard,” she continued. She tugged her swim cap off and her hair fell around her shoulders. “You’ll have to tell me all about it. Sounds scandalous from what I can tell...”

“Oh, yeah?” Grant asked. Lucy thought she saw a glimmer of sweat on his brow. Maybe it was from the humidity of the pool.

Cass wiped some water out of her face and her smile faded. “Well, my father took the call. Sometimes I’m privy to certain things.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Lucy interrupted. “Grant needs Ethan.”

“Have you—”

“We don’t have time to check his usual places,” Lucy said. Kymberlin was the size of a small city. There was no way Lucy and Grant could search for him without knowing where to look. “Earlier today you said you used the cameras to find me and my mom...”

Cass shook her head. “I shouldn’t...I’m sorry.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Steady drips plopped off her body and landed on the cement below their feet. “Once Huck learns that I even know where the camera room is...”

Grant stepped forward and put his hands on Cass’s bare shoulders. She stood straighter under his touch and didn’t back down, her head up high. “You’re privy to things. I’m privy to things. Can we just say that today, perhaps, both of us need to help each other out a bit?”

She bit her lip and shook her head and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ve already helped you out...” she said in a dry voice, and she looked over to Lucy, who stood awkwardly on the sideline. “There’s only so much I can do before I’m rendered useless. You have to understand.”

“Ethan,” Grant asked again, unwavering.

“He won’t be able to help you either,” Cass replied. She ducked out from under Grant’s hands and walked over to a small metal bench. She retrieved her towel and wrapped it around her body. Her hair had separated into wavy curls and she bunched it all together and wrapped it up into a ponytail. She had a small bag with her and she reached in and dropped a key on the ground and then walked away.

When she reached the door, she turned and smiled. “It’s so nice to see you, Grant. I’m retiring to my place for the night if you have a moment to stop by and say hello. Oh...and have you seen the Remembering Room yet? Lucy should take you. And after you’re done...you should go to the end of the hall. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

She pushed both doors open with a flourish and left, wrapped only in her towel; her bare feet created a wet path out into the hallway.

When she was out of sight, Grant reached down and picked up the small key.

Lucy walked over and took it and held it in her palm.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Grant turned. “I do,” he replied. “She’s scared. And she should be.”

Lucy led them past the door to the Remembering Room and to the end of the hallway. She had seen the door before, but hadn’t thought to ask what was on the other side. Inserting Cass’s key, they pushed the door open and found themselves in a smaller room. The place smelled like fresh paint and melted plastic; it was warm and suffocating and dark. Lucy turned on a light near the door and it flickered on. The only thing in the entire room was a curtain and Lucy’s breath caught as she walked over and began to open it slowly.

Behind the curtain was a two-way mirror, and it looked down into a control room. Four or five men and women operated the controls. Moving cameras. They zoomed in on areas, zoomed out. Rotated cameras. Followed people as they walked down the sky bridge. Occasionally, the camera would pause and one of the operators would pick up a walkie-talkie and give directions—dispatching guards, or help, or cleanup.

“No cameras in the homes,” Lucy noticed, sca

“But in the hallways. All public areas,” Grant noted. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Why does Cass have a key to this place?” Lucy asked and she peered closer. She could see a camera of Cass walking down the bridge to her room.

“It’s a master,” Grant said, but he was distracted as his eyes sca

“But...”

Grant looked at the mirror and spotted an intercom button. He pushed it and he could see the operators look up toward them; Lucy walked up to the glass and tapped it. “Can they see us?” Grant shook his head. He motioned for her to be quiet and he leaned close to the intercom.

“I’ve been sent to look for someone,” Grant said. Lucy looked at the faces below. They were talking to each other. Someone clicked through to the room.

“We aren’t authorized to take orders from the observation deck without a visual confirmation,” someone said back to them. “You can enter the side door and show your credentials.”

Lucy swore under her breath. She kept her eyes glued to the screens.

“I’ll stall,” Grant said. “You keep looking.”

“There are hundreds of cameras.” Lucy took a step forward.

“I’m Ethan King,” Grant said to them.

At the mention of her brother’s name, Lucy looked over to Grant, her eyes wide. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “That’s not stalling!”

The observers were silent. Someone leaned over and talked to someone else. There was a flurry of activity. Someone shook his head and snapped to an operator at a desk near the front. The woman punched in a code and pushed a camera button and zoomed in. There was Ethan. The camera said “North Tower: Floor Sixty-Two” and he was sitting on a stool at a sports bar. Lucy didn’t know exactly where it was, but that would get them close.

“We can confirm you are not Ethan King. Want to try that again?”

Someone nodded toward the deck and a larger man began walking up a small staircase toward the back of the room.

“That’s ridiculous,” Lucy said. “I can’t believe that worked—”

Grant tugged her toward the door. “It only works if they don’t send someone to this room after us,” he said.

With their hearts pumping and the adrenaline coursing, Grant and Lucy booked it down the hallway and caught the elevator at the exact moment one of the observers popped out into the hallway after them, his walkie-talkie squawking. When the doors had shut, Lucy leaned into Grant, and grabbed his hand. She felt like they could conquer anything.

The elevator hit the surface and kept soaring upward. She couldn’t calm herself. It felt like the time she had been caught toilet papering a teacher’s house. Mid-throw, the lights had flipped on and her eighth-grade math teacher stormed out of his house with a water gun. It had been a sleepover idea gone wrong, but once they were back at their house, the girls had giggled under the covers until they couldn’t breathe. Excitement, mischief, and the exhilaration of getting away had kept them from sleeping until the wee hours of the morning.

Their teacher hadn’t identified them, but the girl’s parents, who had been hosting the sleepover, made the girls all pay for the missing toilet paper. It was a story Lucy told with pride.

“This isn’t how I imagined your first night back,” Lucy said. “Can you tell me what this is all about? Why are we ru

“I’m supposed to be dead,” Grant replied matter-of-factly. “If it weren’t for Blair, I would be.”

Lucy froze. She couldn’t find the words to reply. “I don’t...don’t...understand. But Copia...”

“Doesn’t exist,” Grant replied.

“All those people?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?”

“Your father created a secondary virus. It was unleashed it on the Copia crowd while they watched a video from Huck.” His eyes went glassy and he stared at Kymberlin whooshing past them. “That’s what he had been working on…why he never told me what we had been doing in the lab. He knew, Lucy. Your dad knew everything.”