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Ryder rolled over.
Barefoot, he hurried down the hall. It was ten minutes past four o’clock. There was so much to talk about. There was a lot of noise inside Cherry’s room. The door yanked open. A frigid breeze blew past him.
“Where have you been?” she hissed.
“Sorry. I—”
She shoved the phone in his face. He flinched and squinted. A map.
“Get dressed,” she said.
Ryder ran back to the room and came back in winter gear, his laces dancing around his boots. Cherry was at the window, the phone lighting up her face.
“Wait.” He grabbed it from her. “We can’t turn this on when we’re out there.”
He studied the map. One of the dots was Cherry’s room. The other one was in the forest, north of the trees. It was labeled HO-HO-HO.
“What’s that mean?” he said.
“We’ll find out when we get there.”
Snowy specks flew through the window. They left it cracked open for their return. The snow was thin outside her room. They were going to need it to snow to cover their tracks.
They took a long route into the trees, sprinting at full speed and stopping only once to check the phone. Subzero air was burning his chest. He struggled to breathe, snot running down his chin. There wasn’t much snow beneath the trees, but it was still difficult to run.
She suddenly stopped. He rested his hands on his knees. Cherry held the phone inside her coat and checked the map. It was so dark that even the light leaking from her collar lit her face.
“That’s it.”
Ryder couldn’t see the dark building at first. There was a porch and chimney. The windows were black. This wasn’t the barn they were exploring. Somebody lived there.
The old man.
Maybe he was the one sending the notes and was calling them for a chat, but he wasn’t on the front porch, and the lights weren’t on. He’d had the horse loaded up with packing gear the other day like he was heading out.
He’s not home.
Cherry was already on the porch. There was no snow leading up to it and the ground was frozen. There were plenty of tracks leading in and out, so anything they left behind wouldn’t be noticed.
“Kick your boots,” she whispered.
He knocked bits of snow off. She was cupping her hands to one of the windows. There was no light inside or fire.
No green eyes.
She crept to the door. Ryder’s heart was beating louder than her footsteps. She slipped her boots off. He was still trying to calm his breath when she turned the doorknob. The hinges creaked.
We’re doing this.
He wanted to know the truth, but doubt had nailed him down. He liked it better when they were meditating in a warm and safe room with nature music.
“Come on.”
It was cold inside. The cabin was simple. There was a bed and a table and a small kitchen area. The fireplace was filled with ashes and a blackened log. An elk head was staring from above the mantel.
“What are we supposed to do?” he whispered.
She shrugged. “Look around.”
They crept around in their socks. There wasn’t a single item of technology in the cabin. No tiny lights, no television or laptop. No phone. A desk was in the corner with pads of paper and notes taped to the wall. Candles were on a shelf. There was a picture of an Avocado, Inc., factory. Another photo on the wall, this one a silhouette of a man on a horse.
Cherry almost kicked over a spittoon. “Gross.”
There was a bathroom next to the desk, hardly big enough to be a closet. The curtain was pulled aside and a composting toilet in the corner. The kitchen had a wood-burning stove that could be used for cooking. But there was a refrigerator softly humming, so there was electricity. That, however, seemed to be it.
“Where is he?” she said.
He told her about the other day when he had taken the horse with all the packed gear.
“Why would he bring us,” she said, “if he’s not here?”
So she was thinking the same thing. Ryder looked closely at the floor. If they were wrong and the old man found one of their footprints, they might never find the truth. They’d have another home.
The cabin was suddenly filled with light.
“What are you doing?” Ryder said.
The phone was lit. “We need to get going.”
It was only on for a second, but the woods were dark enough that a single flash would look like a lighthouse. However, that moment of light revealed a narrow door next to the refrigerator. It was a small pantry with canned goods. There was no light.
“Let me see the phone.”
He stepped inside and closed the door. He lit up the phone. The shelves were dusty and so were most of the cans. The bathroom closet would be on the other side.
He opened the map again.
They were exactly where it told them to go. Maybe they were just supposed to see where the old man lived and that was it. That wasn’t much.
HO-HO-HO.
Maybe it was just more Santa Claus conspiracy, but there were no candy canes in the cabin or Christmas trees or one single wreath. It could be any day of the year.
The floorboards were heavily worn, the wood a lighter color where someone had frequently walked. Who would spend this much time in a pantry? The traffic pattern went up to a blank wall. If someone came inside to get something off the shelf, they wouldn’t walk against the wall.
He tapped on it.
“What are you doing?” she said.
He noticed a can of green beans. It was by itself. The label was clean, but the top of the can was covered in dust. The shelf was dusty, too. The can hadn’t been moved.
So why the clean label?
A green giant was on the label. Ryder had lived with a family that ate green beans straight from the can, didn’t even heat them up. Rick, the foster dad, would imitate the commercial when he opened it. Ho-ho-ho wasn’t about Santa Claus.
Ryder reached to spin it or lift it. All it took was tipping it slightly. White light leaked from a seam along the floor. Ryder pushed the wall with his fingertip.
Light flooded the pantry.
He turned off the phone and pulled Cherry inside. A black staircase spiraled down. Electric light flickered from below.
“Ho-ho-ho,” he said. “Green Giant.”
Ryder peeked through the steps. The room below was larger than the cabin and fully lit. And nothing about it was woodsy. There were multiple computers and several desks surrounded by electrical cabinets and strange equipment.
A circular platform was in the center of the room. It was silver and shining, just like the one in the library where BG appeared. A hologram hovered above it, a figure with the arms out. There were no details, just a mesh outline of a human body matrix.
The wall was covered with monitors.
There were dozens of them. Most were gray images of bedrooms with bunkbeds. Some had moving images from a point of view above the ground—above Kringletown, above the barn. Above the trees.
“Drones.” Ryder stepped closer. “Look.”
He found the one he was looking for. Someone was curled up on the top bunk. The person below him was hanging halfway off the bed. The other bunkbed was empty, but there was someone sleeping on the bottom.
It’s me.
“He’s looping the feed,” Cherry said. “That’s how we get away with it. Once four o’clock gets here, it shows you sleeping.”
“No, look.” He pointed at Soup. His lips were moving. He was grinding his jaws. “The drones are supposed to be off when we’re sleeping.”
Cherry found her drone. The monitor showed her underneath the covers, her pillows stacked on the floor.
The phone started buzzing.
The map illuminated. “We got to go,” he said.
Cherry was first up the staircase. Ryder stopped halfway up to take a picture. He took the time to make sure everything looked normal in the pantry, but there wasn’t time to look for footprints. They didn’t even tie their boots. Snow packed against their socks as they sprinted through the trees.
They fell through her window and crashed on the floor.
Ryder didn’t check the hall before charging out. He jumped into bed fully clothed, throwing the covers over his head. He huffed beneath the blankets, his breath masked by Arf’s breathing. He stayed that way until the sun was up. He was still wide awake.
The old man is watching, he thought. Who exactly is he?