Jalen sat alone in the safe house and hit send on a text to Hi Kyto: Morning. Still feel like playin hooky?
The reply was quick: Yeah! Definitely.
OK, be by in half an hour.
Do I need to bring anything special?
Good shoes. We may go off the trail a bit.
Jalen stood and walked around in circles as he waited for a response. Minutes later, the phone buzzed again.
Hey, I need to stop at Red Trident. Let’s push our trip until noon.
No problem, Jalen texted back. He thought about what this meant, if anything. The rehearsal was planned for 4 p.m. Eastern. If she can’t meet until noon Pacific, that’s 3 p.m. on the East Coast. She’d be away from her computer at noon and hiking during the attack. She’d be cleared. But it would be close. If she pushed the trip back any further, it would be possible she could launch the system to record the attack and go hiking.
But there was another fear that gripped Jalen, an idea about Encyte that had not yet been shared, which he felt had been overlooked and which he, in fact, was afraid to even mention, lest it come true. What if Encyte was more than one person? It made sense. Why couldn’t Encyte be more than one person? What if Hi Kyto worked as part of a team?
Jalen paced around the room, circling and hypothesizing, wishing to god that Wyatt was still with him.
The Valor campers, in military formation, filed out of the hangar toward the bright yellow school bus that was already running on the tarmac. Bringing up the rear was Cass, dressed in a pantsuit and a red wig, hair pulled back in a bun like she’d seen in pictures of the Fairfax band instructor. There were twelve in total, their ages ranging from eleven to sixteen. After a seven-hour flight with the world’s best makeup artists, their own parents wouldn’t have recognized them, though from a distance, the proud parents of twelve band campers would.
“Let’s move quickly, guys,” Viktoria said as the bus doors hissed open and the Valorians climbed inside. Though it was against decades of Valor protocol to send Junior Rovers into the field—particularly ones who had not completed a first summer of training—with only seven hours to execute, Eldon had no choice. So the members of Group-A—Mary Alice, Rory, Samy, Pierce—were joined by the Junior Rovers, the freckle-faced Cody leading the team.
Viktoria hopped in the driver’s seat, and the bus pulled out, heading for Fairfax Middle School. Along its way, it passed another school bus, one loaded with the real band campers en route to a secure facility where Mr. Yellow and a team of local police would be waiting. The real Fairfax band members—grumpy and confused—were informed that this was a safety drill. All of them were completely unaware that kids their same age had just voluntarily taken their place in a potential slaughter.
Mr. Yellow stood in the cool vacant warehouse, under the fluorescent lights, answering their many questions:
Yes, you have to participate in the drill.
Yes, you will get your instruments back at the end of the day.
No, you cannot call your parents.
“Where are the Henrysons?” Mr. Yellow asked, looking over the dozen kids for the twins.
A well-dressed, good-looking brother and sister raised their hands. “Right here,” the boy said politely.
Mr. Yellow stepped away from the group and whispered into the radio. “We got them. They’re safe.”
“Roger that,” Eldon said from the school parking lot where he and Avi were stationed in a tactical van outfitted with communications linked directly to the school’s IoT infrastructure, the Tor browser, and Red Trident.
Once the Valor kids were in position, Eldon again briefed the local SWAT and FBI teams on what would be taking place in less than fifteen minutes. “There will be one female shooter with a weapon loaded with blanks … Be alert. We don’t know what’s coming. There could be other forms of attack: drones, planes, hidden bombs … just about anything could come through those doors.”