4

FEBRUARY 27th, 2022

JEN II

The lights outside Andy's room have just shut off. Mr. Carroway has had him moved to a sort of interim hospital room where his friend, Miss Melanie Moon stays to observe him and keep him fed.

I've been visiting him, checking up on him, just being with him for the past week. I've been the only one who has besides for Miss Moon. Mom was too distraught with absolutely everything, but that's not really saying much. Mom hasn't done many mom things for a very long time. She hasn't worked—the only reason we've kept afloat was her disability checks and the fact that I'm the only one who has managed to get something stable—I work at the grocery store that's a few blocks down from our house. A lot of the times I feel like I'm my mom's Miss Moon. Any time that I'm not at work or cooking at home I'm here, watching over Andy.

But this behavior of hers wasn't exclusive to her. Andy has gotten a free ride for a lot of things. He used to be so motivated—he was on the debate team, the mock trial—even the newspaper club for a short bit. But lately...he's just stopped. Stopped everything and forced me to be the one who has to worry—who has to care. It shouldn't be his burden, but it definitely shouldn't be my burden.

Its these feelings inside me that mixed and swelled together. I want nothing more than that big dumb idiot to wake up right now, but so I can yell at him and tell him to get his act together. It's not fair that this...Adata—Jack Adata—take him away from me. He's my brother.

It was hard to believe he could be so close to me, yet so far away at the same time. I guess it'd be the same if he were in a coma or something else. Except those who are comatose aren't being held hostage in a virtual prison by some stupid helmet that hardwired its way into their brain. If I could just maybe shake him awake, and everything would be okay, like he just overslept or something. My mind was a whirlwind of questions, most, if not all that will never be answered. Some are like, "Dear benevolent deity that may or may not watch over us, why would you let something like this happen to us now? Why now of all times?" Others are simply "Andy, why couldn't you just choose not to play the damn game this one time?"

"If only he would just wake the fuck up!" I have to hold the wall to keep me up. In between breaths I grabbed my bag from the chair I was sitting in and decided to head home for the night. I hate not being able to do anything to help. If I could just help in some way. Before shutting the door I looked back into the room, "Please come back to us…I miss you more than anything," I said. "I'll get mad at you later. Just come back." I let the words fall flat as I shut the door behind me.

~…~

My mom was asleep by the time I got home. I tossed my bag onto the bench in the front hallway and headed up the stairs. I wish I was so lucky as to be unconscious right now. I pulled out my phone from my back pocket and pulled up the message chain with Jake.

My last message to him was letting him know when I'd be home from seeing Andy. I had my phone off then for obvious reasons. He hadn't said anything back, so I shut my phone's display off and held it down as I made it to the top of the steps. Andy's room was right across the hall from my own—it was hard seeing it when police officers had filled this entire hallway several hours ago.

I walked in my room and set my phone on charge—I lied down on my bed and just took in breaths slowly. Everything always seemed much more real when it was just my mind in the dark. I heard talk that people consider 3-4am the ghostly hour—the time where the scariest phenomena happen in our world. I don't think it was a particular time to be blunt. I think it more a mindset—when everything was dark and your mind isn't distracted by the little details in life. When it was left to its own devices the scary parts of our own minds became clear.

I sat up and adjusted my pillows behind me. I could hear my mom's snores through the wall behind me. Always with the thin wall—I always heard her and what seemed to be everything else in this house. I was able to hear Andy practicing for his debates in his room back then, cursing at himself whenever he messed up or missed a beat. Andy's really self-conscious about how he presents himself. It's almost like he has a second pair of eyes that are watching all of his actions so he can judge. It was kind of funny to hear him get flustered every once in awhile—it makes me know that even though he was good at what he did, he was human.

What I heard from my mom's side was more sad. It was a tense silence that was only sometimes broken by quieted fits of crying. She never liked to show herself upset, but as bad as it was now, it just got worse at night when she believed that nobody else could hear.

Ever since our dad died, she's been like this according to Andy. I only remember the past few years. It felt like eons ago since I was little—like another person had lived that life. I was still little, now, but at the same time not. It was really a weird age, fourteen. You were past the boat of finally being a teenager, but you're still not sixteen yet. Still not eighteen yet, even. It made me feel small.

My mom's room was a lot more loud ever since Andy got stuck in that stupid game. She didn't even try to hide it anymore—she sounded like a wailing animal just waiting to be put out of its misery. I'm not going to lie, I've been a wreck myself, but I realized that we couldn't both be wrecks. Someone has to hike up her jeans and provide for us. It sure wasn't Mom. I haven't been to school this past week—work has kept me so busy. The store was owned by a neighbor of ours, Edy Hankton. He kept one of the two open grocery chains in Aurora alive by employing kids at school who need to help their families out. After I got home from seeing Andy I sat on my bed and began to drift away and then-

Tap. The smallest of sounds, my eyes darted open. I wouldn't even have heard it even if I'd been speaking out loud. I listened, and there it was again. Tap. Tap. I looked around my room, my eyes fixated on my window. I saw pebbles ricocheting off of the glass. Tap. Tap.

More pebbles joined the ones before. Confused, I walked over to the window and propped it up, my arms screaming for rest as I tried to shake myself awake. I looked outside, hanging on the pane by my armpits and reached my head out. I felt a small sting as a pebble smacked my forehead. I looked down and saw Jake standing in my backyard with a handful of pebbles in his grasp. He was dressed in his dark red blazer and a pair of blue jeans, a grin plastered on his face that emanated his love for being a thorn in my side.

"What the hell are you doing? And where did you get that many pebbles in the middle of winter?" I called out to him.

"What, aren't you glad to see me? I mean, you haven't been in school all week or anything!" He called back.

"You didn't answer my question," I said.

"Come down and maybe I will," he grinned.

"What about curfew?" I ask.

"Curfew shmurfew, you do remember who my dad is, right?" He said, laughing.

"Yeah, yeah, I know you'd never actually pull that card," I said.

Jake was very particular about his dad's work. He had some issues growing up with people only being friends with him because his dad was the Chief of Police. Putting that into perspective along with the shit Jake normally has to deal with was also adding onto the pile. Deep down he wants to be as low key about his dad as possible.

"You're right, call it a trump card, then. Now come on, it's cold out!" He called.

"One moment," I said. I walked over to my bed and leaned up with my ear to the wall. I heard silence from my mom's room. I grabbed my coat from my closet and threw it on. In any other situation I'd feel the need to make myself look all pretty before heading out, but it's different with Jake. I felt like I could go out after spending an eight hour day at a grubby grocery store and be totally fine. He has always been a little different. Jake has this disease called Vitiligo where patches of skin on his hand and his hair have lost their color. His hair was completely white and his hands had small patches of almost toneless color. His eyes are a really bright green, almost a natural neon like color. They worked so well at capturing moonlight that they glowed in the dark. He actually reminds me of Andy a bit—pre fuck the world. That's what I always noticed first about him, and what I did when we first met. Everything about Jake stuck out like a sore thumb and that's why he's my best friend. Well, not just for that reason, the main reason was that he stuck up for me in elementary school. That was when I knew he and I would be best friends.

I was back in my elementary school classroom, November of 2016. I was eight years old:

"It's about time you gave it up, huh Jennifer?" Miss Keans said. Her face always looked like it was being pulled back by two clothespins, either that or being wound up like a towel you were trying to wring out.

"Yeah! Give it up! Give it up!" A small Italian boy called out.

"Give what up?" I asked.

"You took Tony's pencil, didn't you?" Miss Keans asked.

"Yeah, I saw you! I saw you take it and now you have it!" Tony screamed.

"Okay Tony, that is enough screaming," Miss Keans said, facing the small child. It only seemed to make him more agitated. His face turned three shades darker. Miss Keans turned her attention back to me, "Now Jennifer, it isn't okay to lie, especially to an adult."

"I am not lying! I didn't take his pencil!" I said, I remember my cheeks getting redder by the second, becoming more flustered with each passing second.

Miss Keans knelt down beside me and her tone became more hushed, "Now, you know how we all have to respect each other's things, right?" Miss Keans said.

"Y-Yes," I said in between sniffles.

"If you don't admit to taking that pencil, then you would be breaking our code of respect, right?"

"But-"

"There are no buts here. You have to-"

"Stop!" A voice called out.

The whole class turned to look at the boy in the back of the class, the boy who, up until this point, had been eternally quiet. The boy who had freaky white hair, the kind you couldn't ask about because it would be rude, but at the same time you were just so curious…

"She didn't take Tony's pencil!" He called out, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve.

Miss Keans turned and stood back up, "Well, what do you mean, Jake?"

"J-Jennifer didn't take Tony's pencil because I did. I didn't know how to a-ask him, so I took it. I am sorry," he said, taking the pencil off of his desk and holding it out.

Tony walks over to Jake and roughly grabbed the pencil out of his hand. He then stuck out his tongue and does anything any kid would do to someone they didn't like, "Pbthththth!"

"Now, Tony, you know that is uncalled for. And you, Jake, you're going to take a trip down to the principal's office. Maybe he can teach you some manners on how to effectively ask your friends how to borrow their pencils."

Jake nodded his head slowly and left the room, trodding with each step seeming like a journey of a million miles. Later that day I saw him out on the playground drinking from a juice-box he had in his lunch sack. I walked over to him, to thank him for standing up for me.

"I didn't take his pencil," He began.

"What?"

"Tony's always losing his things, don't you notice it?"

"Well, he is a little weird with his pencils," I said.

"Yeah, but I was watching him, he tucked it away in his backpack. When he went to look for it he didn't remember as much, so he pulled out the card of it being stolen."

"Why were you watching him?" I asked.

"What else would I do?"

I didn't answer him immediately, if I had the mindset of me now I probably would have pushed him on it, but my eight year old mind didn't think of it.

"If you saw him put it in his bag, why didn't you just tell him he did?"

"He would've called me a liar, that's how he is. You would've gotten in trouble for it just the same."

"So, it was to stop me from getting in trouble?"

"My dad is a cop," he said. "I learned from him that sometimes people lie, they lie to get other people in trouble. I want to be like him when I grow up, I want to stop those who lie, I want to save the people who get in trouble."

"Yeah? That's pretty cool."

The memory faded back into my mind. I smiled back on the two children sitting next to each other in the playground. I opened the door behind me and begin to tiptoe through the hallway, making an effort not to step too hard on the creaky floorboards. I took each step of the stairs as if I were two years old and just learning to walk. Once I reached the first floor I was almost free. I slipped into my shoes and eased the door open. Jake was standing there, his back up against my porch railing. The very same grin I saw out on the playground stood on my front porch.

"Hey, 'Sup?" He laughed, his face grew into a sarcastic grin. I punched him in the arm. "Hey! Ow!" He rubbed his arm. I walked out into my front yard which was completely illuminated by moonlight, Jake followed.

"Okay, what's up? Why the whole Shakespearean act?" I asked.

"Well, I have a jar of pebbles sitting on my windowsill from my trip to New York," Jake said. "You asked where I got those pebbles from, I gathered some in a jar with my mom when we visited New York when I was younger. You remember that trip in the summer of '17, right?"

"Okay, I know you didn't come here to show off some pebbles, what's up?" I asked.

"I was worried. You haven't been in school," Jake said, standing straight.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I've been so busy. With Andy and this whole situation I've had to pick up more hours at Edy's," I said.

"Ah, so it is about Andy."

"Of course it is. I've been meaning to get word to you, but between work and Andy I've just been so busy I can barely even breathe." I said.

"Then you might want to hear this, I think I know somewhere where we can find out some information on his situation," Jake explained.

"How the hell did you find that out?" I asked.

He smirked, placing his hands in his pockets, "How else but dear old dad? Well, okay, not specifically him, he's been really busy lately, but I think if we sneak into his office we might be able to find out some information on that company, Adata."

"What about the other one, Technodome?" I asked.

"I think we might find some info about that too, but I have a gut feeling about Adata," he said.

"Why's that?"

"Nobody has seen hide nor tail of this mysterious Adata. Technodome is all out in the open, but this mysterious producer company is hidden from the public eye, something has got to be going on there," he said.

"I can understand that. How are we going to get there, to your father's office?" I asked.

"I'm a little surprised that you're so open to breaking into the office of the Chief of Police," he said, laughing.

"I assume since you brought up the idea that you had some sort of plan in mind. And I'm willing to do anything to find some answers on how to save my brother," I said.

"Well, you're right on the plan, we're going to take the light rail!" He said, his arms outstretched.

"Would they really let us on this late?"

"It's automated, now, the whole system they've got going on. There's nobody willing to keep up with the job so they set up a system to allow certain people through after curfew."

"And how do you know we'll pass the check?"

He smiles and pulled out a card that's hanging on a chain around his neck, "Dad's ID," he said.

"Lead the way, then." I began. He walked into the darkness and crazily enough I followed. I was done waiting around, hoping for answers to pass me by. It was time I take this bull by the horns and did something about it.

The Light Rail was a replacement for the subway system in our neck of the woods. It was installed here a few years before the government shut down, full development was halted in installing it throughout the country, but the several testing states were still equipped with them. They ran off of light energy from the sun that charged during the day. It transported people to different locations by splitting up their molecules and rearranging them in a different location. It was somewhat like Wonkavision from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I guess they still called it a rail system for nostalgic purposes.

"Come on, are you coming or what?" Jake said as he walked up to the front doors.

"Yes, I'm coming. I was just admiring it a bit," I said.

"What, you've never been here?" he asked.

"No, I haven't had any reason to."

"Well then, you're about to be amused," he said. He went to the door and swung it open. Inside I saw that the walls and ceiling were translucent like glass on the insides and beams of light colored the walls—it was breathtaking. There was a layer of bricks on the outside, so the light was in between the glass and brick. The room itself was rectangular and largely empty except for a small tablet in the back and a door on the opposite end of the room.

"This place used to be a library, that's why there is so much empty space," Jake said, walking inside.

"Library? I thought this used to be the entrance to the old subway."

"Yeah, it replaced the subway, but it's not physically where the subway was. Too much hassle I hear getting the tech to work underground—must have been something with the consistency of the runs."

"So what happened to the old subway?"

"Still there I bet. Don't want to imagine what kind of people are hiding out down there doing lord knows what."

"Jeesh," I said, shivering. "That gives me chills." He held the door open for me as I walked through, escaping the chill outside. "What happened to the books they took out?" I asked.

"Probably gave them away, maybe burned them," he said, gauging my reaction. I stared at him hard. "Just kidding! Just kidding, I don't know. Dad just said that they didn't get to outfit it with furniture yet because they were so preoccupied with getting the actual transport to work. When they did they decided to leave the interior decorating to the workers who came in after their break."

"But those workers never came in," I said.

"That's correct, they quit when everything fell through. That was…nine years ago now. It's so weird, I was alive for it but I barely remember anything even changing."

"I can understand that," I said.

"Anyway, we're wasting valuable time," he said.

Jake walked down the long hallway. I joined behind him, staring at the spaces that books upon books once rested. He took out his father's ID card and swiped it across the tablet's surface. It blinked on and rung a sound of acceptance.

He walked to the wall beside it and then pressed against it as if there was a button there and then a sound chimed. A small slot in the wall opened up and Jake inserted his father's ID once more. It seems to suck it up and after a few seconds it spit it back out. The door beside us opened—inside was a small space about the size of an elevator shaft. We headed inside. The doors closed and a light sealed us on the inside. The ceiling lowered until it was barely above our heads.

To our sides were glowing beams of light that shone as bright as they did in the large room, the floor was a solid white, but covered with a thick layer of glass the walls were made of.

"Is this a dead end?" I asked.

Jake said nothing, but instead he pressed another would-be button on the wall. Blue glowing lines of light streaked across the walls and floor, giving it a more futuristic look than it already had. The room begins to shake, I put my arm to the wall to keep myself from falling. After a few seconds it stopped shaking and I took my hand off of the wall.

"Let's go," Jake said.

"Go? We didn't even do anything!" I said.

"Didn't we?" Jake said and then he walked to the wall behind us and pressed his hand against the wall. A line of light shot up and formed a rectangle on the wall and then it split into two—then they opened in front of us. I was left standing there confused. I began to walk out of the enclosed cube, chasing after Jake.

What I saw was totally unexpected, it wasn't the library-like train station, but a totally new room. Its walls were paneled with various kinds of hardwood, the corners rounded off to extend towards the next wall. The floor was a darker, harder wood, covered in a red carpet.

"Jake, what the hell happened?" I asked. "I expected a huge light show or to feel all discombobulated or something."

"Function over form," he replied, which confused me even more. He noticed and then shrugged. "It's just how the light rail is pretty cool, eh?" He asked.

"How is that even possible?"

"Don't ask me," he said, laughing. "I just know about it—I didn't make it."

"It's one thing to hear about it…but to actually feel it...it's like we didn't even move."

"Ah, but what we feel and what actually happens to us are two different things, right? Now, come on, we're only a few blocks from my dad's office," he said.

"That's not too bad," I said. We exited the light rail station. It was still dark outside. I saw trees beyond trees and then some buildings even beyond the trees. "Where are we now?"

"Glendale, it's only seven miles away," Jake said, and then coughed into his arm.

"We did all of that for seven miles?" I asked.

"It beats walking the whole way." he said.

I look at him funny, "Isn't that a little…off?" I ask, walking beside him.

"In what way?" He asked, looking back at me with a grin.

"I just feel like we could have walked it, seven miles isn't much,"

"We weren't walking seven miles at one in the morning in February," He said.

"It isn't that bad out," I said.

"It is if you're walking seven miles."

I realized that he was going to continue on this, so I let it go. We passed by some buildings on our left that looked like they were abandoned. There seemed to be an increasing amount of them. "What's up with all of the houses here?" I asked.

"We're getting closer to Denver, that's what's happening."

I'd heard of Denver—that it was the kind of place you never went to—even in case of emergency. After the government shut down in 2013 the people the people rioted there and things got crazy. Things kept bubbling up until 2018 when a huge bomb went off. That was the extent of what I'd heard about it, and I never bothered to dig any deeper because why would I?

The police station was a two story white brick building with a dark gray roof. There were flower pots hanging next to the windows on the second floor, but other than that it looked pretty dreary. the building stood three stories tall, taller than any of the other buildings surrounding it. I peeked inside, squinting my eyes through the glass door to see anything, but it was so dark that I couldn't make out much. I was about to walk inside when Jake stopped me by putting his arm out.

"What's up?" I asked.

"It's going to be locked, you wouldn't have access to a locked police station, unless you've got something to share with me?" he asked.

"No, I wouldn't, and I'm going to assume you do with your father's ID?" I asked.

"Of course," he said, sliding the card into a reader that sat beside the door.

It blinked twice and then opened. The lights inside turned on and the doors slid open and we headed inside. It was painted a mint green on the inside with white and yellow checker patterned tiled floors. The receptionist's desk sat right in front of us off to the left; it was a heavy-set wood. Behind the desk was a bunch of mail cubbies, a large American flag (slightly faded), and a door that said "Chief of Police, Randolph K. Carroway". In the center of the first floor were two benches facing opposite ways. Behind the benches lied another door which has a plaque on it, "Interrogation Room". The atmosphere was not friendly, but when would a police station be?

"C'mon, my dad's office was past here, we have to use the door behind the receptionist's desk," he said, worming his way past the big wooden desk. I follow behind him, it seems to get colder as we near the door. He grabbed at the ID card around his neck and swipes it across the scanner beside the door, I can hear it unlock from the outside.

"Do you think your dad will notice us coming in here?" I asked.

He looked back at me, running his hand through his hair, "He actually left town yesterday for a business trip."

"What kind of business does the chief of police need to do out of town?"

"I don't know, he didn't say." Jake turned back to the door and grabs the handle, opening it up. Inside was a square shaped room with a large desk in the center. Alongside the walls were cork boards with various pictures tacked up. I saw a picture of Jake when he was younger beside a photograph of John Lennon. There was a desktop computer sitting on the desk; the tower must have been underneath.

"What we're looking for will be on that," Jake said, pointing to the monitor.

"And how are you sure of that?" I ask, walking around the desk to face the monitor, it was black.

"Because I know that the police department has been trying to digitize all of their records in case something happened. The idea has been in the planning stages for years, but was finally put into action when the government fell. So anything they have on this Adata should be accessible through this computer."

"If there is anything on there," I said.

"If there isn't, then we'll check out Technodome."

"Do you know how to access that information?" I asked.

"I can find my way around," he said, smirking. "I've been brushing up on a lot of things lately. Did you know that the computer systems that they use at Technodome run on the same server as our school?"

"No, I didn't," she said. "Wait...are you saying that you could get into it like you did at the library?"

He flashed me a grin. Our school wasn't a savant according to him when it came to security. Nothing more than a flimsy firewall was what he said when he was able to unlock the computer in the library to all kinds of different websites.

"This is only the first step—it's basically just walking through the front door. If I had an hour or so with it I'm sure I could find all of our school records and not even alert anybody that I did." He was better with computers than I could understand. I was looking at him now in the present, and his grin warmed my heart.

"Yeah," he said. "But that'll only be if we can't get what we need here—" He ducked below to turn on the computer; the monitor flickers on. It only showed a prompt for a name and password.

"Do you know his details?" I turned to him.

He stood back up and dug into his pocket, "Nope, that's why I have this," he said, pulling out a small blue thumb drive. "This has software on it that will crack his password. It runs through all of the possible options until it gets the right one to put it simply."

"That's either really ballsy or really stupid."

"How about a bit of both?" He asked as he slid the thumb drive into the computer. The screen went black for a minute again. It took about thirty more seconds until the screen came back passed the password prompt. Jake's dad's computer was now ours for the searching.

"Now this next part comes from dear old dad, he's told me stories about the programs they used to organize their information on occasion. I don't think he intended it at first. When she left he kind of worked his way to telling his stories to me. He'd vent about what was bothering him or whenever something worked in his favor." Jake put his hands to his side as he coughed, turning his head. "It's why he's so keen on telling his stories. He loves the attention, at times he definitely deserves it, he does a good job here." Even though he didn't like others to know about his dad's work he really was proud of his dad. Hell, I would be too, it isn't easy being chief of police in a chaos such as this. "Anyway, I'm sorry for blabbering," Jake began, scrambling to the computer, pulling the keyboard close towards him, "My father said that the information was held in this program he called The Vault. It was sort of like a virtual recreation of something like an evidence locker, but on a much larger scale." Jake clicked through some menus on the computer, he opened a window that holds even more menus on the inside.

"This looks like information overload to me, how are you going to find what we're looking for? There must be thousands of different things if not more locked away in this so called vault," I said and leaned in close.

"I can do a search of key terms, so if I include something like Adata and Technodome, then I'll condense all of this information to things relating to those-"

"I understand the basic concept of keywords, Jake," I said.

"Right, sorry."

"Don't apologize, search," I said.

He looked over at me with a face I can only look at for a moment without bursting into tears laughing, "Excuuuuuuse me, ma'am?" He asked, cocking his head to the side.

"I'm fourteen. I'm not a ma'am," I said "And I said to hurry up. It's one thing getting in here. It's another to do this and get out quickly."

"I am working," he said. He stuck his tongue out at me and begins typing. I saw the list of objects disappear, words entered and left the screen, it was so fast I could hardly keep up. I was absolutely awful with computers. I've always preferred the less electronic methods. It kept the body in use.

The words stopped on the computer screen, Jake scanned his eyes across the screen, his hand rests just under his chin. "This…actually has information on Adata, a lot of it, actually. It looks like there were some business deals done in the past," Jake said.

"Really?"

"Something with the whole department donating to the company, it said they ran a sect of the American Lung Cancer Association located at the Raffle Place in Denver," he said.

"Nobody in their right mind would situate themselves in Denver. There's absolutely no business opportunity there, but maybe it's the secrecy they wanted?" I asked.

"Maybe this was all guesswork, still. It isn't showing any other offices, just the one in Denver. There was a lot of records here though, there seems to have been some correspondence between the police and Adata," Jake said.

"What does that mean?"

"It could mean anything from good to bad to…I don't even know. It didn't say anything other than the base contact request. It could've been anything from an accidental dialing of the department to an arrest."

"Well, maybe if we go and check it out we might find something?" I asked.

"Are you sure? I was okay with coming here because I know Glendale is safe, but Denver is much riskier business," Jake said, and backed away from the computer.

"Well, is there anything else there about Technodome?"

"No, nothing that isn't redacted," he said.

"Well, I personally haven't seen Denver," I said.

"Trust me, it's nothing pretty to look at."

"Well, then I won't be looking for real estate, but I do want to go and investigate."

He looked over to me. his face screamed uncertainty, but it shifted quickly into a somber smile as he nodded once. "Let's take a trip to Denver, but don't say I didn't warn you."