Page 90 of Captured Immune

I flip the device over and find a small crack down the center.Great.With a sigh, I toss it into the sea of trash behind me. “Good thing I’ve got it all memorized. The password to unlock the message was a song my mother wrote for me to encourage me to keep moving forward in life.”

“Can you sing it?” Arella asks.

So I do. “When you’re lost without me, you’ll always have Andy. When you feel you don’t belong, hug this bear and sing this song. Look to the sky when you feel down. Know that things will turn around. Work twice as hard to the finish line. Now it’s your time to shine.”

“That’s some password,” Arella says.

“Yeah, I know.” After a deep breath, I recite the recorded message from my parents, word for word, and try not to choke up at the end. Speaking the message to someone is like admitting out loud that my parents knew whatever mission they were working on could kill them, and they still chose their job over me. I hate having to verbalize that my parents abandoned me on purpose.

“Are you sure that’s it?” Arella asks when I finish. “Did they leave you a map or something? A follow-up message in a second bear?”

“Maybe they did and it got blown up when the house exploded. I dunno. Either way, that’s all I’ve got.”

Arella bends forward and opens the glove compartment. She’s pretty brave to poke through it with her bare hands. I wouldn’t be touching anything inside this biohazard of a car if I didn’t have to.

“What’re you looking for?”

“Something to write on. Aha!” She holds up a crumpled receipt like she’s won a prize. “Now I just need...aha!” She holds up a pen with the most adorableI did itface. “Sing that song and tell me that message again. I’m gonna write both down.”

“Why?”

“Because maybe once it’s transcribed, we’ll be able to see a secret message.”

I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “You think my parents left me a cypher?”

“They could have.”

“They died when I was seven. I wasn’t smart enough to decode a cypher at that age. My theory is that they gave my Aunt Debbie information that was supposed to help me decode this but that information died with her.”

“Come on, Trey,” she says, slumping her shoulders. “At least let metry.”

“Fine.” Slowly, I tell her the lyrics to my mother’s song. Arella scribbles each word down until it fills the entire backside of the receipt. When she’s done, she sits back to admire her work.

“This is wonderful! Now tell me the message.”

I say every single word exactly as my parents said it, until Arella’s got a backside of another receipt covered in her loopy handwriting.

As we continue down our route, Arella reads the words to herself over and over. I remain quiet while she thinks, admiring her determination to solve this puzzle. If I thought my parents had left me a cypher, I would have done this already. I won’t tell Arella she’s wasting her time though. The more she’s thinking about this, the less she’s thinking about how mad she is at me.

I’m going to make this up to her. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but someday, someway, I’m going to make up for my mistakes.

21

TREY

This starving carhas been begging for me to feed it with gas for the last fifteen minutes. Every minute or so, it yells at me with an annoyingDing! Ding!and a flashing gas-tank icon.

If we run out of fuel, I’ll have to use my powers to hover this car down the road as if I was driving it, because the goddamn sun is up. I’m not confident I can do that. Arella and I on a rubber tire is one thing, but a whole-ass car? And for how long?

I’m so exhausted, I could close my eyes and fall asleep within seconds. I’m so hungry, my body is withering away. My head’s pounding, and I can barely breathe without my ribs throbbing. Using my powers will only weaken me more, and if I get so weak to the point that my powers shit out again, then what? I can’t imagine Arella will let me steal another?—

I gasp when I see it. It’s like a light at the end of the longest and darkest tunnel, right there on the corner of an intersection, next to a Subway. A sandwich sounds amazing right now. I doubt it’s open at—I check the clock on the dashboard—seven in the morning.

Arella peers up from the two receipts she’s written on. “Oh, goodie! A gas station. It’s about time.”

She has no idea.

“You gettin’ anywhere with that?” I pull the car up to the closest gas pump and shift the gear into park. I sense one person inside the general store. A maroon Hyundai Elantra is parked at the side of the building. It must belong to the employee inside.

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