I shrugged out of my dowdy blue jacket, wishing I’d worn something nicer. Hershey said I could wear whatever of hers I wanted, but I felt weird about it now that she was back. So I was stuck with my own stuff, and the worst of it at that, since all my decent clothes were at the bottom of my laundry basket. “Is yours the same guy as before?”
Hershey smiled coyly. “Maybe. Hey, I have a present for you.” She turned and walked over to the couch, reaching under the cushion and pulling out an oversize hardback book.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The Evil Queen’s yearbook. Class of 2013 was the last one they printed on paper.”
“Where did you get this?” I demanded.
“I figured there might some be clues in there,” she said, not answering my question.
“Hershey, this isn’t a game. We don’t know what this woman is capable of.”
“I’m not scared of her,” Hershey retorted, reaching for her jacket and a pair of dark sunglasses. “She’s just a bully who needs to be put in her place.” She tossed her hair and pulled open the door. “Oh,” she said, turning back around. “North was waiting for that.” She pointed at the small box on his coffee table, imprinted with the Gnosis logo. “It came a few minutes ago.” She blew me a kiss and was gone.
I picked up the box and carried it into the bedroom closet. The door to North’s secret room was cracked. I could see him at his desk chair, leaning back with his eyes closed, bobbing his head a little like he was listening to music. But it was quiet in the room.
“Hey,” I said, ducking inside. North didn’t look up. It was as if he hadn’t heard me. I tried again, louder. “Hey!” This time, his eyes popped open.
“Come over here,” he said, leaning to grab my hand. “I want you to hear this.” He pulled me into his lap. As my body came in line with his, I heard the distinctive sound of Nick’s mandolin coming from a speaker above our heads. I looked up.
“Was that on the whole time?”
“Cool, right? It’s called an audio spotlight. Only the person sitting in this chair can hear what’s coming out of that speaker. Although, apparently, the sound isn’t actually coming from the physical speaker but from ultrasonic waves in front of it. Don’t ask me how it works, though. I’ve read the manual forty times and still don’t get it.” He reached around me to twist the knob on the little gray box on his desk, turning up the volume even more. “But the song’s amazing, right? The guys released their new album today. This is the first track.”
It was one of the songs we’d recorded in the mausoleum. I leaned back against North and closed my eyes.
“I can’t get over how good they are,” I said when the song was over, sliding off his lap. I realized I still had the box in my hand. “Hey, this came for you,” I said, setting it on North’s desk.
“You mean Norvin,” North corrected, slitting the packing tape with his pocketknife. Inside was a smaller, shinier black box, plain except for an image of the Gold and the words BOW DOWN printed in glossy gold foil. “Does it come with an altar?” North retorted as he lifted the lid. I peered into the box. The shiny device was snapped into a clear silicone wristband.
North slipped the band onto his wrist and grimaced. “It’s so tacky.”
I giggled. “All you need is a matching gold chain for your neck.”
North tapped the tiny screen and it lit up. It was 12:35.
“We should probably go,” I said. “I don’t want to miss our train.”
“I want to show you something first,” North replied. “I found Beck’s Lux profile.”
I perked up. “And?”
“And you should look at it,” he said, scooting his chair toward his desk. “You—”
The music suddenly went silent, like someone had turned the speaker off. But the power light on the control panel was still lit. North looked at the ceiling, puzzled. He turned the volume knob all the way up and the speaker started making a loud popping noise. Still no music.
“Did we blow it out?”
“I don’t think so,” North said. “It wasn’t even that loud.” He leaned over toward the far end of his desk where the plug was and the music started to blare. My hands flew to my ears as North quickly reached for the volume knob. But before he even touched it, the music cut out again. North looked down at the Gold on his wrist. Slowly, he outstretched his arm. The music came on again. He brought his wrist toward his body. The music stopped.
“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
“I think they’re canceling each other out,” North said slowly. “But for that to happen, the Gold would have to be emitting sound waves at the exact same frequency as my speaker. Really high frequency waves that we can’t hear. That we aren’t supposed to hear.”
“Why would it be doing that?”
North shook his head. He looked baffled. “I have no idea. Especially since there’s nothing about it in the new terms of use.” He unsnapped the Gold from its strap and tossed it onto a pile of clothes in his closet. The music came back on. He shook his head again and scooted back up to his desk.
His computer had finished booting up. North clicked on a document saved to his desktop, labeled BECK.
“Show me the threats first,” I said. North zoomed in on the bottom right quadrant. My eyes scanned the list. Surprises. Sunsets. Storms. Solar eclipses. “No, the threats first,” I said.
“These are the threats,” North replied.
“But Beck loves eclipses,” I argued. “They’re, like, his favorite thing. And he gets his best artistic ideas at sunset.” North slid his cursor over and zoomed in on the opportunities quadrant. Predictability, monotonous routine, temperate weather, successful people, homogenous neighborhoods, steady income, stable work. My chest tightened.
“No.” I shook my head violently. “This is not Beck.” Part of me was relieved. I hadn’t been able to reconcile Beck’s behavior at the party with the boy I’d grown up with, the free spirit who blazed his own path. Now I understood. “Lux is manipulating him.”
“Of course it is,” North replied. “That’s what Lux does. It steers people into the life they think they want—the ‘happiness’ they think they deserve.”
“But this isn’t the life Beck wants,” I insisted. “You don’t know him the way I do.”
“I don’t know him at all,” North said. “But, Rory, if Beck is trusting Lux, then he’s choosing to. You can’t blame the app for that.”
But I did blame the app. Beck wouldn’t just decide to become a whole different person—a total d-bag, by the way—just because he thought it’d make his life easier. My best friend was less shallow than that.
Help, I said silently, pleading with the voice. Help me figure this out. There was something I wasn’t seeing here, maybe something I couldn’t see. But if I’d learned anything about the Doubt, it was that it could see. Everything I couldn’t. I needed that vision now.
“I know it’s hard to accept,” North was saying. “But the only person at fault here is Beck. He’s the one who decided to listen to—”
Just then North’s screen froze. “Crap,” North said, quickly typing a series of commands. The screen didn’t budge.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” North replied, holding down the power button. After a few seconds, the screen went black and lit up to blue. And stayed that way.
“Yikes. That seems bad,” I said. I’d heard stories about old computer malfunctions, the dreaded blue screen. Gnosis devices hardly broke down.