The Oracle Year(92)

Leigh recoiled from herself. Of course she hadn’t forgotten—the sight of Miko’s face hitting the sidewalk would be embedded in her soul forever like a tick—but she had just meant . . . it didn’t matter.

Leigh: No. Didn’t forget. I’m sorry. What now?

Will: Still need to go to safe house. H set it up so it wasn’t connected—off grid, bought with cash. Private. Can finish this there.

Leigh: Finish what?

Will hesitated.

Will: Long story. Have to stay hidden until it’s done. If world knows where I am, no peace. Too many questions.

Leigh nodded.

Leigh: Okay. But if you can’t fly, how?

Will looked at the driver, who was ignoring them, concentrating on navigating the slow-moving traffic approaching the bridge across the Hudson. He bent to his phone and went through a long burst of typing.

Will: Need to buy this car. Twenty thousand in bag in trunk. Emergency cash. Can offer to driver.

Leigh responded:

Leigh: He might not own the car. Sometimes they’re just hired by the company.

Will: We’ll figure it out. Will you help me?





Leigh stared at the phone, focused on the last four words, seeing all the opportunity and hazard they offered, trying to understand the magnitude of the situation she had fallen into. She looked up at the Oracle—no, at Will Dando—trying to see him as a person. Trying to decide whether she should leap from the car and sprint down the side of the road.

An hour later, a strange negotiation with their wary, confused driver was concluded, the Oracle was almost nineteen thousand dollars poorer, and Leigh sat behind the wheel of their new car, driving at a decent clip over the George Washington Bridge.

A sign welcoming them to New Jersey flashed by overhead, momentarily illuminated in their headlights.

“We’re almost over the bridge,” Leigh said. “Then what?”

“West,” the Oracle answered, his eyes on the road ahead. “Then up.”





Part IV

Summer





Chapter 36




This is almost over, Will thought.

He had started with one hundred and eight predictions. All but two had been released into the world in one way or another—posted on the Site, sold, used to prove his bona fides, used to escape from the goddamn president of the United States . . . and now just two.

One was the numbers, the final prediction, still incomprehensible. The other was just nonsense, a short phrase including so few details that it was impossible to understand or use. It was set to occur later that day, though, so Will assumed he’d find out what it meant eventually. The Site would probably use it to do something dire—make Hoover Dam collapse, maybe.

Will glanced out the window, watching as northern Ohio streamed steadily past, a nondescript set of flatlands interspersed with toll plazas and interchangeable towns. I-80 was a hell of a road—it would get them halfway to their destination—but not much for scenery. Everything seemed calm, ordinary. Relaxed.

That was not, in fact, the case. It wasn’t just that almost all the predictions had been used. Things were accelerating. In just the past few days, he’d been abducted by agents of the president, the world had learned the Oracle’s identity, he and his best friends had been attacked, and he’d run from his city like a rat scuttling down subway tracks ahead of an oncoming train.

It felt like a moment from his childhood, when he was eight or nine. He’d been riding his bike in the neighborhood and had found himself at the top of a hill. He was new to bikes at that point—his father had only taught him how to ride a month or so before. He pushed off, his speed almost instantly increasing beyond the point where his legs could keep up with the pedals, seeing traffic in the cross-street at the bottom of the hill and realizing that there was absolutely nothing he could do to avoid it other than ditching the bike, but being more afraid of the pavement than the cars, breathlessly waiting to see which catastrophe would end him.

That was this. The Site was the bicycle, and Will was riding it right into traffic. But not just Will. Everyone. The entire world.

He looked down at the newspaper in his lap, frowning.

The front page—every front page—was using the same photograph CNN had run in its original broadcast outing the Oracle’s identity. Will Dando, sitting on the edge of a bandstand at a club, bass on his lap, tuning up before a show. He remembered the gig—a quick one-off in support of a hedge fund guy who could afford to hire a great support band to play under his crappy Dave Matthews-y originals. He’d had a photographer at the show, like it was some epic showcase for the ages instead of a 9 p.m. Thursday slot at the Mercury Lounge.

The pics went up on the singer’s website a few days later. One shot had caught Will’s eye, so he’d copied it and used it as his profile picture on a dating website or three a few years back, not unsuccessfully, either.

Now it was in the corner of every screen, on every landing page, above the fold of every paper, and Will hated it with everything he had.

He skipped past the first three articles—all Oracle related, delving deep into his past, already featuring quotes from people his life had touched in one way or another. He skipped it all. He needed to function, and sinking into the ongoing dissection of his existence would paralyze him, if he let it.