Elusion(38)

At first glance, it looks like the exact same copy Patrick and I found in the lockbox, but as soon as I open it, I notice a difference. On the upper left inside corner of the cover, my father has written in neat black script:

Please return to Regan Welch.

“I love that book,” I hear Josh say, and then I notice the warmth of his breath on the back of my neck. He must be reading over my shoulder.

“My dad left a copy of this book in a lockbox. My mom and I found it after he died.”

I turn my attention back to the book, planning to skim through paragraph after paragraph in search of markings or notes. “There was nothing else in there. Just this.” As I start to flip through the beginning, Josh says, “Wait,” and puts one of his hands on mine, sending a charge of crackling energy straight to my heart.

“There’s something on the copyright page,” he adds.

He’s right. The title of the book, Walden, is highlighted in a bold yellow strike, along with the last word in the author’s name, Thoreau.

“Why’d your dad highlight the title and the author?”

I shrug. “Beats me. Let’s flip through the rest of it and see if there’s more.”

I bend the spine of the book a bit so I can flip through the pages quickly and easily. There aren’t any other highlighted portions, but when I reach chapter 3, something falls out and lands on the floor. Josh squats down to pick the object up, his sweater creeping up a bit so I catch a flash of his fair skin above his belt. When he stands up, he hands me a passcard with my father’s ID number stamped on the lower right-hand corner.

“What is my dad’s passcard doing in here?”

“I don’t know. You think he would’ve had it on him when he—” Josh cuts himself off, realizing that he’s about to tread on hallowed ground. “Want me to empty the box?”

I manage a nod as I think back to the day Mom and I listened to the audio files from the HyperSoar Flight Commission, which investigated my dad’s accident. There was a sudden change in weather conditions. A wind sear formed in the stratosphere just as my dad was reentering from the mesosphere, causing an explosion in one of the HS-12’s engines, leading to IMD—instant matter disintegration.

Nothing was left. Not one trace.

But Josh is on to something—no one in Detroit goes anywhere without their passcard. People use them to start their cars, for Christ’s sake. Why would he have left it at Orexis? And how did he even get to the HyperSoar hangar without it?

“Do you think anyone from Orexis knows his passcard was in here?” I ask.

“Probably not. Someone would have had to flip through the book to find it,” Josh replies.

“Do you think it’s the real thing? What if it’s a duplicate?”

“No way. It’s illegal to have a duplicate passcard. If he misplaced it and then found it again, he’d have to turn it in.”

He’s right. The penalty for possessing a duplicate passcard is jail. Why would my dad risk that?

“Maybe he forgot it was in there,” Josh volunteers.

“It’s odd though, isn’t it? That he left the passcard in a copy of Walden—the same book that was in the lockbox?”

Josh nods, his eyes intense as ever. Thinking.

I put the passcard in my back pocket and place the book on the table, where Josh has lined up four digital photocubes. I pick up one and shake it as hundreds of pictures of me flash before my eyes. Dressed up as an old-fashioned rag doll for Halloween, Mom’s hand in mine. Smiling over a bowl of ice cream when I was five. Me and Dad watching a movie on the day he activated our first InstaComm. I hold it close to my chest and look at the other items that Josh unpacked—a small collection of ties my father kept in the office in case he was called into a meeting, a fine-toothed comb, and several multicolored earbuds.

I look over at Josh to ask him if this is everything, and that’s when I see him staring at something too.

A blue pill bottle that bears a strong resemblance to the one we found at the abandoned factory earlier.

“What is it, Josh?”


“Zolpidem,” he says, pointing at the white label. “Do you think this is what Nora and her friends are taking? Starts with the same letters.”

“I think Zolpidem is a sleeping pill,” I say, remembering all the talks my mom gave me about abusing prescription drugs when my always-in-trouble cousin got hooked a few years ago. “Let me see it.”

When I put down the photocube, he gives me the bottle, his brows knitting together in confusion. “That can’t be right. Why would they want something to make them sleep?”

“Maybe you could do a search for Zolpidem on your tab?” I suggest. “Double-check what it’s used for?”

“Sure.” Josh reaches into his pocket and pulls out the device. He types “Zolpidem” into the search engine on his touch screen, and a ton of links scroll in front of us. He clicks on the FDA site and reads the description of the medication. “It says here that . . . ‘the principal function of Zolpidem is to aid sleep, but in very high doses the drug in powder form has been known to wake people up out of a coma-like state.’”

“Aftershock,” I mumble. “If someone is inside Elusion for days, then . . .”

“The side effects are probably much stronger,” Josh concludes, sighing deeply. “So the meds must counteract it somehow.”