Undiscovered (Unremembered #1.5)(4)

“Maybe he’s wearing a bio-haz suit,” Rustin said.

“Maybe there’s something there they don’t want us to know about.”

They all turned to look at me. Xaria’s face was inches from mine, making me antsy.

“What are you getting at?” Rustin’s forehead was lined with worry.

“I’m saying, I want to go.”

Rustin instantly shook his head. “Did you get spazzed last night by those Mutie Lasers? If they are testing bioweaps there, I’m not going anywhere near it. I don’t need to grow a third arm.”

“A second member might be useful,” Klo said thoughtfully, gesturing crudely to his crotch.

“Ugh.” Xaria scowled, letting out a grunt as she stood up. “I don’t know why I hang out with you guys. You’re so disgusting.” She picked up her tray and took off in a huff. “I’ll see you back in class.”

I was somewhat grateful for her departure. At least I had space to move my arms now. I looked to Klo. “What about you? Are you in?”

He popped the last quarter of his burger into his mouth and chomped ferociously on it. “Sorry. Count me out this time. Rustin’s right. If they put it that far away from everything else, it’s probably dangerous.”

I shrugged and took a bite of my vegetables. “Fine. But I’m going. Right after school lets out.”

Rustin eyed me warily. “Jeez, do you have a death wish or something? Or do you just really need to get glitched?”





4: Girl


I walked for nearly a half an hour through nothing but barren desert landscape before I came to the first security checkpoint. It was a VersaScreen. You don’t see many of these in the Residential Sector of the compound where we live and go to school. Except the one behind the Owner’s Estate so Dr. Alixter doesn’t have to look at the ugly hangars of the Transportation Sector from his bedroom window. Most of the screens I’d encountered were those that surrounded the compound perimeter.

Any layperson probably would have run right into it, leaving a painful welt on their forehead. The synthetic glass is thicker and stronger than most natural metals and can project any holographic illusion you want. This one was programmed to resemble more of the same sparse empty field I’d been walking in, as though it went on for miles and miles.

SynthoGlass is a highly unforgiving substance that feels like a sledgehammer if you crunch into it. Something I learned in my younger years of exploration.

Now I knew the trick to spotting the screens. If you look up at the right angle, you can just spot the rounded top as it curves to complete the illusion. And every one hundred feet there’s a square shape located about shoulder-level that looks like fogged-up glass. That’s where the fingerprint scanner is.

I secured the ultrathin NanoStrip with my mother’s fingerprint stored in it against my fingertip, feeling a tingle as it fused to my skin like a suction cup, and held it up to the scanner. A green light illuminated and a small screen flashed the words Secondary retina scan required.

Annoyed, I dug a small case out of my pocket, removing a second NanoStrip. This one I’d fashioned into the shape of a domed disc resembling a DigiLens. I spit into it, getting it wet, then, blinking to moisten my eyes, I pried my lid open and placed the strip against my eyeball. It stuck and I blinked it into place, feeling my eyes water.

It wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but it worked.

Cringing at the sting, I looked into the scanner and watched the small red laser flash across my eye. The panel illuminated green again, and a doorway appeared in the glass, outlined in electric blue. I stepped through, watching the screen seal closed behind me.

As soon as I was on the other side, I tore the strip from my eye and returned it to the case in my pocket.

I checked the diagram of the compound on my DigiSlate. Dr. Rio’s dot hadn’t moved yet, which made me think he was in some kind of laboratory, as opposed to just wandering around the desert. I had to disable my own tracker in my slate to avoid detection, so I had no idea how close I was to the destination. But my calculations told me it wasn’t far now.

I kept walking, keeping my eyes peeled for security droids and patrolling HoverCams. They were normally pretty silent, but if you listened carefully enough, you could hear their faint buzzing sound cutting through the air before you saw them—or, more important, before they saw you. But something told me that the usual security protocols didn’t exist out here. Which eased my mind slightly and, at the same time, terrified me.

Panting in the desert heat, I reached the top of a large hill and dropped to my belly when I saw what was on the other side. It took my brain a moment to process the large structure standing fifty feet in front of me. It looked so out of place on the Diotech compound. VersaScreens made of synthetically engineered glass, roving robotic droids that hovered six feet above the earth, those were things I was used to. Things I could handle.

But this…

This was a wall.

A plain cement wall that rose ten feet in the air.

At first I thought it might be another screen. But when I threw a small pebble at it, it made a low thunk sound, not the usual high plink that would have indicated SynthoGlass.

And if the wall weren’t spastic enough, just beyond the top of it, I could make out the roof of what looked to be a simple one-story, cottage-style house.