I gasped, my heart drumming, and thrust the card into my hoodie. There were too many people out here. “We need to get back to the RV.” We dashed along the sidewalk, indignant shouts in our wake.
Once we were safely locked inside the RV, I tugged out the card again, the dots on its surface gleaming in the dark—a couple dozen points spread out in distinct clusters, a tiny crosshair in the center. No indication of what anything meant.
Matt put the RV into gear and pulled into traffic. “We should probably take it to your mom. How pissed do you think she’d be if we woke—”
“Whatever is that sound?” Garrett asked, crouching behind our seats.
“What sound?” Matt asked.
“That … rumbling.” Garrett motioned toward the dash.
“That’s, uh, the engine?”
Garrett’s jaw loosened. “Don’t tell me this is a combustion vehicle!”
“Of course it is.”
“This is so incredibly exciting! I’ve always harbored a fantasy of riding in one.”
My breath quickened at movement on the card’s display. Dots streamed across its surface like a river of sand. “Guys.”
Street lights flashed against Matt’s frowning profile. “What?”
“The dots are moving.”
“So?”
The dots had started moving when we drove off. “Stop the RV.”
“What? Why? Don’t we need to get that thing somewhere safe?”
“Pull over!”
The brakes shrieked as Matt swerved to the curb. Garrett had to brace himself to avoid tumbling into the windshield.
“They’re not moving anymore!” I said.
Matt shifted in his seat. “Okay….”
“This is a map. The dots were streaming back—in the opposite direction we were going. It’s gotta be tracking something—multiple somethings.”
“I don’t believe mapping is a feature of the Talisman,” Garrett said, rubbing his knee.
Matt gave me a dubious look. “Why would there be a map without, well, a map? Where’re all the streets and stuff?”
“Maybe there’s some way to …” I tapped around the display until a grid of familiar streets sprung up behind the dots. “There we go! You see this cluster right here?” I pointed at the card. “And this other one over here? Whatever they are—dumpster portals, robot charging stations, fricking 7-Elevens—they might explain why Ko Prime wanted to talk to my mom. Why she brought this card all the way from the other world.”
Matt pounded the steering wheel. “So let’s get your mom’s help. I thought that was the whole point of teaming up with her.”
I sighed. “It was. But we just spent all day doing grunt work searching trash instead of retracing Ko Prime’s footsteps and finding real leads like we’re doing now. But if we do both, we cover more ground before we run out of time.”
“Perhaps we can briefly drop by one of these clusters on the way home,” Garrett said. “If anything appears untoward, we’ll leave.”
Matt folded his arms, headlights strobing his glower through the windshield.
“Please, Matt,” I said. “I really need you with me for this. Let’s just have a look. This could be where Ko Prime was going with the card. Where she lost the Talisman, assuming this isn’t it.” Of course, there was a chance this wouldn’t pan out. But I owed it to Mom to chase down every legitimate lead.
“Now you’re just making shit up. For all we know, she was raptured directly out of her nest near that warehouse.”
“Raptured into a dumpster with her face split open, two days later? We need to find out what happened before that. Look, let’s at least drive by the nearest cluster of dots, okay?” All I was asking for was a little detour.
Matt swung his head, making a show of being put out. “Then we take this to your mom and Laramee right after? Tell them what we found? Last time we went off on our own, we almost got shot.”
Garrett frowned. “Would telling them be wise? They might very well take away the card.”
Matt was clearly drawing a line, and I wasn’t doing this without him. “No,” I said, “Matt’s right. We’ve taken this far enough on our own.”
He fixed me with an even stare. “So you agree?”
I held out my hand, chin raised.
Matt slid a moist hand into mine, and I gave him a perfunctory shake—praying this card held some fricking answers.
#
The RV clattered through town toward the nearest cluster of dots on the map. My pulse ratcheted higher the whole way. I just didn’t want to get my hopes up in case this thing was an otherworldly credit card.
What Mom had said about Otokotronics’ genetics program kept rattling through my head, how I’d maybe had a clone running around Las Yerbas. At least until her untimely demise after terrorizing a pizza shop. I really needed to find out what Ko Prime had done with the Talisman—before Summers took Mom away or Otokotronics sent in the cavalry this weekend.
I turned toward Garrett’s bot behind us. “Your dad used to be an exec at Otokotronics, right? Does he know about any, uh, cloning they did?”
“Allow me to text him. Father loves explaining things. However it’s quite possible he is in bed.”
“Garrett,” Matt said, sliding his Slurpee into a cup holder, “you don’t have to talk like a robot with a stick up its butt. It’s just me and Ko.”
“This is how I …” Garrett’s bot grew still. “Years ago, when I didn’t speak well enough, some boys at the Academy would shove folded paper under my fingernails. You see, Father is new money, so I didn’t have the schooling at first….” He put on a rictus smile. “It’s not a problem anymore.”
My gut clenched. What had this poor kid been put through? “Oh, Jesus, Garrett.”
Matt paled. “We had no idea.”
“It looks like Father is up. He doesn’t get much sleep these days. His time at Otokotronics eats at him.”
I chewed my lip as the RV jetted past a strip of townhouses pressed together as if huddling for warmth.
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“So Father’s only idea is about a rumored division of … etiquette onyx called … consecutive chord? My apologies, I think he’s using speech-to-text again. Okay, his idea is about a rumored division of Otokotronics called Executive Guard…. They reportedly have advanced bots that look just like them—duplicates of individual agents for performing missions across portals…. Ah, I see. So the bot transits and the agent stays safely … be hanged? No, behind. Stays safely behind…. Father thinks you’re less likely to get some terrible personality disorder during long-term missions if you look like your bot.”
“How does that explain Ko Prime though?” I asked. “Bots don’t bleed, but she sure did. Plus, I’m not in Otokotronics Security and I’m assuming neither is she.”
“Uh, now he’s asking me what this is all about. Oh no. Oh dear. Father will realize I’m using his bot and not just gaming in my room. He will be so upset.”
“It’s okay, Garrett.” I felt rotten about putting him in this position. “Tell him it’s for a school project.”
“I think we’re here,” Matt whispered as the RV crept to a stop in a light industrial area.
The crosshair on the stone card was nearly on top of the dots now. Outside, body shops and warehouses lined the street. A gravel lot stretched between a couple smaller buildings, security cameras sprouting from rooflines like robotic pupae.
I opened a map on my phone, comparing it to the card’s display. The dots had to be in one of those buildings, a couple of RV lengths across the gravel. Only it was impossible to tell which one from here.
“Oh nuh-uh.” Matt shook his head, apparently reading my mind. “We’re not getting out here.”
“We need to give my mom an address, right? Otherwise we drove out here for nothing.”
Matt flung the gearshift into park, cutting the engine and putting on a tight smile. “We had a deal. We shook and everything. We came, we saw, there’s nothing here. So this is when we bring the card to your mom and Laramee. We can at least give them a neighborhood.”
My fingers whitened on the door handle. The street was lifeless, just rattling roof fans and a distant freeway. Creeping around outside probably wasn’t the hottest idea. But I didn’t want to admit defeat given everything coming at us.
Something clattered behind us in the RV. “My apologies,” Garrett said. “I seem to have stepped in your underwear.”
I craned back to see Garrett’s foot in a laundry basket. “Wait, Matt, are you living here?”
He gave me a sullen look. “My dad thinks I’m at my mom’s, and I told Mom I’m living with my dad. Neither of them are talking and both are assholes. This is why I don’t wanna piss off your mom. I’m just tired of people yelling at me.”
My heart caved in on Matt’s behalf. “Jeez. I’m so sorry.” It must’ve been pretty bad at home if he’d rather live here and shower at the Y. But I totally got it. Having the freedom to make your own poor choices instead of being saddled with someone else’s—like I was now with Mom’s. “You don’t have to worry about my mom yelling at you.”
“Maybe, but I still have to worry about this RV. My dad blames me for my sister leaving—as if she’s done so poorly since rehab. Couple weeks ago, he posted an ad to sell her motor home after I fell off it and broke my wrist.” He waved his cast at Garrett. “Drugs and automotive paint don’t mix. But then this guy shows up to buy it, cash in hand, and I guess I’d had enough. Grabbed the keys and Dad’s company gas card, didn’t look back…. She’s gonna want this RV when she comes home.” He met my gaze. “Without any bullet holes in it.”
Garrett shook boxer briefs off his dress shoe. “Perhaps we can linger a few minutes to ensure none of those dots move. A compromise.”
That would have to be good enough for now.
Matt sniffed, rolling down the window. “I’m setting a timer.”
“Wonderful!” Garrett clapped his hands. “Would anyone care for a round of cards while we wait?”
“I’m good.” I waved the map device with the dots. Somebody needed to keep watch.
“I’m in,” Matt said, too loud, leading Garrett into the back of the RV.
After eight minutes of an apparently enthralling game of Go Fish at the RV’s tiny dinette, Matt and Garrett were chattering away like old friends. Blessedly, they kept the video game talk to a minimum. I tuned in from the front seat as Garrett recounted being teased at his fancy academy—racial slurs about China’s involvement in some war, by kids not knowing or caring his family was from Japan.
This academy sounded terrible. I was pretending not to listen though, watching birds squabble on a roof outside and feeling super conspicuous sitting in this giant RV. Also kind of willing anything to happen before we had to go running back to Mom, hat in hand.
“Queens?” Garrett asked.
Matt ruffled his cards. “Go fish. So in real life, do you look anything like your dad’s bot? With a jawline like that, I’d imagine you do pretty well with the ladies.”
Garrett cracked a goofy smile. “Oh, hah. I … value my independence.”
“So, dudes?”
“… Not really.”
“Then what?” Matt frowned at his cards. “Ace?”
Garrett blinked. “Go fish.”
The thrum of rotors suddenly cut through the fan noise outside. Across the empty lot, above a wrecked coupe outside a collision repair shop, there hovered a six-rotored drone the size of a lawnmower.
My mouth went dry. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but there’s a giant flying drone watching us.” Robots weren’t enough? Now there was aerial surveillance too? No obvious weapons, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way.
Matt leapt to the driver’s seat, gawking through the windshield. “I fucking told you.”
But a door in the building across the lot swung open, a familiar athletic figure backlit in the doorway.
“Does your mother know you’re here?” Officer Laramee bellowed over the gravel as the drone withdrew.
Laramee? Here? I willed the hammering against my sternum to ease, opened my door, and leapt to the sidewalk beneath a buzzing street lamp. “Does yours?” I shouted, rounding the hood to cross the street and tromp through gravel. Had we somehow uncovered an ex-union hideout?
“We’re really doing this?” Matt followed me to pick his way across the lot, kicking rocks from his sandals by the sound of it.
Laramee glared back from the doorway.
“I didn’t realize gravel is such an impenetrable barrier for you,” I said to Matt.
He harrumphed, and we crossed the lot in silence. I drew to a stop at Laramee and his scowl, shoving my hands into my hoodie’s pockets. “Laramee, you’re like everywhere I go.”
He leaned against the open door, his long face wrinkling like he’d stepped in something unpleasant. “I could say the same about you.”
“Care to explain what’s going on?”
His gaze skipped along the rooflines. “Not here.” He held open the door to a hallway of concrete and corrugated metal.
Matt strode inside, turning back with palms raised. “Don’t look at me. We have to go in or we drove out here for nothing, right?”
Petulant really wasn’t a good look for him. The dot cluster had to be inside, but what was Laramee doing here? With him on our team now, I didn’t get a vibe like he was trying to kidnap us again. And if I was wrong, there was always the option of a knee to the groin. Or Garrett’s enormous bot stepping in. I turned back to the RV.
Garrett was bouncing in the driver’s seat, his hands sliding around the steering wheel like a kid playing in his dad’s station wagon.
“Garrett!” I shouted.
“I’m remaining here in case you require a get-away driver.”
“I’ve got the keys,” Matt yelled across the lot. “Also, you’re fourteen.”
“I’d still rather wait here and maintain a look-out!”
“That kid really likes your RV,” I said.
Matt grunted, waving me into the hallway where bright construction lights were draped at intervals. Laramee tugged open another door inside, revealing a descending staircase. We tramped down to a low-ceilinged room with pegboard walls and ventilation whistling above. An electronics lab or a well-furnished makerspace, the piney scent of solder in the air. A workbench thick with electronics equipment stretched across the room, microchips and actuators binned on shelves around the perimeter.
Laramee squatted on a stool at the workbench and regarded us coolly, setting aside a printed circuit board like the piecework Mom used to do for that TV repair place. Although, in light of recent events—was it really TV repair? I had an image of her at the kitchen counter with a schematic and a mug of wine, smoke ribboning from her soldering iron, stereo and range fan both going full tilt. I would hover at her elbow, handing her components like a surgeon’s assistant.
I snapped out of the memory to perch on the stool across from Laramee, my heart thudding away. My eyes widened at a robot arm lying on the bench behind him, its side split and electronics spilling out. Olive-colored fake skin was peeled back from fingertips to forearm, revealing a skeletal metal hand that put most sci-fi movies to shame. What was this place?
Laramee clasped his hands. “So what exactly are you kids doing skulking around here on a Friday night?”
Matt leaned against a comically large wire spool. “We found some digital map thing at Mission Pizza, Sir, and it led us right here. I told Ko we should tell you guys, but she’s never been particularly good at teamwork.”
“What kind of map thing are we talking about?” Laramee’s hard gaze bounced between us.
I eye-rolled at Matt and slid the stone card onto the workbench to shine dully under the overheads. Was I being foolish, trusting a cop like this, even one working with Mom?
Laramee gaped at the card. “Where did you get that?”
“We already told you. Mission Pizza. The owner found it in the alley.” I squeezed the sides and the display sprung to life, a cluster of flecks directly under the crosshair. This was it then—the building we were looking for. “Is this the Talisman everyone’s after?”