Incarceration

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Harriet! Harriet!" The hushed whisper shakes me to life.

"Grayson?" I ask, still dazed from sleep. "It's the middle of the night. Why are you in my cell?"

"There's something wrong with Wyatt," he whispers.

I bolt upright, immediately awake. "What? What happened?"

"I don't know! My guess would be that he's experiencing withdrawal from whatever drug they had him hyped up on." His voice is urgent. "He needs help."

"Get him help!" The senseless words spill out of my mouth.

"How, Harriet?"

I don't know. I struggle for a response.

"Get medicine! Say it's for me. Make sure they believe you."

"Okay. Okay." Grayson gets up and hurries from my room. My head is hot and my heart beats faster as I watch him go.

Hang in there, Wyatt. I'm working on a way out.

When I'm seated at my monitor in Game Control a new urgency rushes over me. I'm determined to get out as quickly as possible. This has to be the way. Please let it be the way.

I open the first file on the desktop labeled Amar Ajax, find the command bar and begin to type. 4-4-3-5-9-8-2. I hold my breath and press enter.

Nothing happens. Come on! I clench my hands into tight fists. This is the only lead I have! I open file after file after file. Nothing, nothing, nothing. No. Please. No. When I get to my file, I hesitate to type the code. If this doesn't work, all this will have been for nothing. Slowly I begin to type. 4-4-3-5-9-8-2. I press enter.

The page refreshes to reveal a long strand of recognizable computer code. But to me, it might as well have been gibberish. Did it work? I hold my head in my hand as a scroll through the pages and pages of code. Is this what I'm supposed to use?

I have no way of knowing what the document means, but I have an inkling that Iker would. I grab a pencil and a notebook. Carefully, I begin to copy everything, word for word, onto the paper.

When I hand it to Iker in the cold courtyard, he looks up at me in amazement. "It worked? But how did you get the password?"

"It's a long story," I say, avoiding the question. "But here—this is what came up. Do you understand any of it?"

"Yeah," he says, flipping through the pages. "But this is written in a pretty advanced language—not to mention it's a really long program. This is going to take me a while to sort through."

"That's only half of it," I say, shivering in the cold air.

"You're kidding!" Iker moans.

"Do you even know what it is?" Royce asks.

I shake my head.

Royce rolls her eyes. "Iker, can you tell?"

"I think this is your game," he says slowly. "You're a runner?"

"Yeah!" I say, grinning.

"Okay, I think I might know what this is, then. If it's what I think it is, it's definitely our way out."