Eve and Adam by Katherine Applegate; Michael Grant

Author:Katherine Applegate; Michael Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781250026484
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

– 22 –

SOLO

I’ve got to get this right.

I pause in a hallway, clenching my fists. My heart’s slamming against my chest.

I’ve got Tattooed Tommy’s poppy-seed bagel ready. What happens next will be vital. If I screw it up …

“Hey, Solo.”

I practically leap out of my skin. It’s Ben, one of the research assistants.

“Where’s what’s-his-name?” Ben asks. “The coffee dude.”

“Jackson. He got food poisoning at the wedding. At least that’s his story.” I try to smile. “I’m filling in.”

“Beats school, I guess.”

“Barely.”

Ben grabs a doughnut. He starts to leave, then, with a guilty grin, grabs another. “Big project. Carb loading.”

I’m so buzzed, so exhausted, I’m wondering if I can pull this off. For the past hour I’ve been pushing the stupid cart around like a zombie, handing out muffins and chai tea while I answer questions in monosyllables. Grunts, practically.

I’ve had too little sleep, too much adrenaline.

But it’s time.

I was going to wait till Eve was gone.

But something about last night, seeing her face when I told her the truth about why she’d healed so fast … I don’t know. She won’t be here much longer, and I feel like she deserves to know it all.

Maybe I just want someone else to be doing this with me. I brush the thought away.

No. That’s not my style.

I wheel toward Tommy.

“Bagel boy,” he says, not looking up from his screen.

His computer’s in use. There’s no way for me to get into it. He’s added an alphanumeric password, almost as long as the one I use, backed up with retinal scan. Hack-proof, unless I can get hold of a supercomputer, ten years, and Tommy’s right eyeball.

“Here’s your bagel,” I say.

I can see his screen. He’s playing fantasy football.

Better than solitaire, I suppose.

“Any feelings on that new Jets quarterback?” he asks. His version of egalitarianism, talking to me about sports. I know nothing about sports and couldn’t care less.

“Not really. Bagel?”

“No, his name’s not bagel, it’s Jibril.” This is a huge joke. So I laugh. My laugh sounds strained and hysterical to me.

“Just put it down,” he says, already bored by me.

I place the bagel beside his keyboard. “Capp?”

“Yeah, put it—”

I don’t even have to pretend to spill the coffee. It happens. Yes, I planned it, but now it just happens.

“Aaahh aahhh!”

Coffee on his lap, his leg, his arm. Tommy pushes back violently, which dumps the last two inches of coffee on top of the rest.

“Idiot!” he shrieks.

He’s up, backpedaling, patting at his clothes, and I’m saying “sorry, sorry, sorry,” and snatching at napkins. He pushes me back, furious, and curses impressively.

Will he?

“Dammit, I have to go change.”

Will he?

Yes. He runs off, muttering, and leaves his workstation on. As soon as he’s out of view, I’m in. I’m shaking. I’ve hacked the systems at Spiker for years, but this is an individual workstation. This is the stuff too personal or too secret to put on the main servers.

I punch in the Adam code.

And just like that, I’m in.

The hard part is transferring the data. There’s no USB drive.

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