Thirty-Six

Chess

This is crazy, Chess thought.

All of the kids were piled onto the golf cart. Lana was driving, with Kona and Kafi beside her—Kona had declared herself ready to grab the wheel if Lana weakened and started veering toward any house where a TV might draw her in. Rocky and the three Greystone kids huddled together on the second, backward-facing bench behind Lana and Kona. And propped between them, they had a giant duffel bag full of the coins from underneath Lana’s bed.

“Who knows how many we’ll need?” Lana had said, tying it in place.

Finn kept hugging the duffel bag and announcing, “Okay. I feel better now.”

Were the coins affecting Chess, too? Maybe it was a major achievement that he wasn’t jumping off the cart and running over to hide in any of the bushes they passed. Maybe he should feel proud that he’d managed not to start screaming, “This is hopeless! We’re all doomed! We should give up now!”

It was insane that they were driving around in a completely open vehicle where anyone could see them. This was the bad world, the nightmare world, and they knew they were in danger. It made no sense to show their faces in public. If one of the evil leaders—or the police or the military or the security forces the leaders commanded—saw them, the kids didn’t even have a fast vehicle to speed away in.

Chess was pretty sure that the top speed for a golf cart was something like twenty miles per hour.

But as Chess leaned his head back against the duffel bag of coins, the breeze ruffling his hair, he felt less and less like running or screaming. Driving to the TV station felt right.

Were the coins helping him think that? Or was it just what he would naturally think, all on his own?

Anyhow, as they putt-putted along, there weren’t any evil leaders or police officers or military or security forces springing out to capture the kids. The streets around them were eerily quiet and deserted. Flickering images lit up the windows of many of the houses they passed—no, no, don’t think about the TVs in all those houses—but that was the only evidence that anyone else still existed in this world. There were still walls and fences and barbed wire and razor wire everywhere, as if every resident was prepared for riots or warfare. Once they passed out of the luxury of Lana’s neighborhood, the green lawns were replaced by yards of bare, trampled dirt and, here and there, clumps of weeds. The fences looked rustier; the walls around many of the yards had peeling paint and sagging planks. The streets had more potholes, and Lana had to slow down to dodge them.

But if Chess narrowed his vision to the one brave stretch of ivy curling around the pole of a street sign, or the one valiant dandelion blooming in an empty lot—or the cheerful, puffy clouds sailing by in the sky overhead—he could view everything around him as . . . peaceful. The stillness was pleasant.

As long as he didn’t see any evil leaders or police officers or military or security forces springing out to capture them, Chess could feel hope.

It also helped not to think about the scary images he’d seen on the TV screen back at the Judge and the Mayor’s house.

He was absolutely certain now that those images were lies.

“Should we make plans as we’re driving?” Emma asked. “Figure out exactly what to do when we get to the TV station?”

“What we say could be . . . overheard,” Lana whispered. “This whole street probably has listening devices and security cameras. We’ll need to keep . . . the element of surprise.”

This seemed ludicrous to Chess, too. Weren’t they already doomed regardless, if anyone was watching or listening to them right now through any surveillance system?

Maybe the leaders are just planning to capture us once we get to the TV station, Chess thought. Maybe they figure we can’t do any damage before that.

He still didn’t jump off the golf cart or run screaming for the bushes looking for a place to hide.

Even traveling at such a slow speed, they eventually passed out into the countryside. Now Chess could see a tall TV tower in the distance.

“Is that it?” Kona asked.

“Yep,” Lana said, clenching her hands tighter on the steering wheel of the golf cart. She kept her gaze resolutely pointed ahead, as if she’d lose control if she glanced to the left or right.

Finally they reached the base of the TV tower, where a ramp wound around a low, elegant building that seemed to be mostly glass.

“Hope no one’s looking out any of those windows,” Rocky muttered.

Lana pulled the golf cart into a parking space at the edge of the lot. They were somewhat hidden by the number of huge SUVs around them. But no one sat in any of the cars; no one was rushing between the cars and the building. And no guard stood in the booth at the entrance to the ramp up to the building.

“I’m the general manager’s daughter,” Lana muttered under her breath. “I’m just following his instructions. He told me to come here. I—”

“Are you practicing?” Finn asked.

Grimly, Lana nodded.

“You’re the general manager’s daughter,” Kona said. “They wouldn’t arrest you just for trying to go into the building. What’s the worst that could happen—they say, ‘Go away’?”

Chess could think of worse things.

All the kids spilled out of the golf cart. Chess thought they probably looked like a clown-car act at the circus. Kafi was chewing on Kona’s sleeve. Finn’s hair looked like he’d been through a tornado. Emma kept absent-mindedly twirling the string of her coin bag around her finger. Even when it bonked her on the nose, she didn’t seem to notice.

“Maybe if we were wearing nicer clothes, they’d pay more attention to us,” Chess said. Everyone but Lana still wore the same clothes they’d slept in the night before—all shorts and T-shirts, except for Kafi’s sleeper. “We’d look more official.”

“Even if we had tuxedos and ball gowns, we’re still kids,” Rocky muttered. “We’d still just look like kids.”

But he turned resolutely toward the ramp up to the building, his jaw set. So did the girls and Finn. Chess swallowed hard and followed along.

After the hum of the golf cart, the silence of the parking lot felt ominous—like it was a lie, too. A trick. Chess strained his ears, listening for the crackle of some security guard’s walkie-talkie, or some TV executive calling over his shoulder as he walked out of the building, “Okay, good show. But we’ll do even better tomorrow.”

No, the TV people in this world would be like, “Great job making up so many lies! Make up even more tomorrow!” Chess thought.

But he couldn’t hear anything.

They reached the bottom of the ramp, and breezed right past an empty security booth. They climbed up toward the first set of doors.

“We’ll have to be buzzed in,” Lana mumbled. “I’ll give them my dad’s password, and . . .”

The first door hung open, a full inch away from the latch embedded in the doorframe.

“People must have just rushed inside to watch TV, because it had a magnetic pull on them,” Emma theorized. “So they weren’t careful about shutting the door behind them.”

Or it’s a trap, Chess thought.

He didn’t say that, though. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the bag of coins in his pocket and followed as Lana opened the door the rest of the way for all of them.

Now they faced a wide counter that could have been a receptionist’s desk or another security guard’s stand. It didn’t matter, though, because this area was deserted, too.

“We should be able to see the security feed for the whole building here,” Lana said, circling to the other side of the counter. “Yes!”

Chess followed her. He saw a bank of screens embedded in the desk. One showed the parking lot they’d just left. One showed the front door from outside. One showed silent images of people screaming and punching and—

Lana dropped the duffel bag full of coins onto that screen.

“Don’t watch that TV,” she said.

Oh. That one showed the TV broadcast. And it had almost drawn everyone else into watching, too.

Chess took a bunch of deep breaths.

“This is the one we need to pay attention to,” Lana said, pointing to a screen off to the side. It must have been from a security camera in the company cafeteria, because Chess could see signs on the walls that said, “Soup of the Day: Split Pea” and “Daily special comes with two sides.” But this was the only screen showing any people, unless Chess counted the one Kona had covered (Don’t think about moving the duffel bag. Don’t do it. Don’t . . .) Chess rubbed the coins in his pocket and made himself focus on the images from the company cafeteria. Dozens of people were crowded onto chairs around the cafeteria’s round tables. But no one seemed to be eating. They were almost eerily still, everyone just staring and staring and staring.

They were all watching TV. Chess stared, too. Through the security camera feed, he could still see the images on the TV screen in the company cafeteria. On that screen-within-a-screen, people were fighting. People were being thrown to the ground by earth-shattering explosions. People were . . .

Kona sat down on the screen showing the scene in the company cafeteria.

“Hey!” Rocky complained. “We need to watch that! We need to know—”

“You were getting hypnotized again,” Kona told him. “You all were. We don’t need that.”

“It helps to rub the coins around your eyes,” Finn suggested helpfully, demonstrating. “That keeps me from wanting to push Kona and the duffel bag away and see the TV stuff no matter what. Or, I know—we could tape the coins around our eyes . . . Aha!”

He’d dug out the masking tape from the sack they’d brought with them, and began ripping off strips. In moments, he had a row of coins across his forehead and on either side of his eyes.

“Anyone else want some?” he offered.

“I think we’re okay,” Lana said.

And then, in spite of everything, Chess wanted to giggle. Even in their terror, none of the older kids wanted to look as ridiculous as Finn did right now. Even Emma regarded him doubtfully.

“Is this the TV studio?” Rocky asked, pointing to another screen showing a dimly lit room with large cameras on wheeled tripods.

“Yes,” Lana said. “And . . . that’s where we should go.”

“Who knows the most about running a camera?” Chess asked as Lana began leading them down a bland hallway painted—of course—navy blue with an orange border. “We might not have much time.”

“I learned some things from my dad,” Kona said at the same time that Lana shrugged and muttered, “My dad taught me a little. . . .”

Then both girls laughed.

“I guess there are different ways of being doubles,” Emma said.

And how many things would our dad have taught us, if he’d lived? Chess wondered, an old, familiar ache rising in his chest. How much would he have protected us?

He turned to Emma and Finn to see if they were thinking the same way. Maybe Chess would need to comfort them. But Emma had an even more intense look on her face than usual; she was swiveling her head side to side as if trying to observe every detail of the TV office building. She was completely in scientist mode, not I miss my dad mode. And Finn was bouncing along as goofily as ever, the coins taped to his face jiggling as if the tape might come unstuck at any moment. And then the coins might be transformed into something like bungee jumpers, dangling from his face and bouncing along with Finn’s every step. . . .

Chess realized that just looking at Emma and Finn had comforted him. It was like they were coins, too.

Lana led them through a maze of hallways, and then stopped in front of a dark, unmarked door. She lifted her hand toward a keypad above the doorknob.

“I know Dad’s code,” she said. “I think it will still work. But if an alarm goes off, we should probably run in opposite directions, and hope some of us manage not to be caught.”

She began entering numbers. The door clicked. Lana grabbed the doorknob and twisted it to the side.

“No alarm,” Emma breathed.

“We’re not in yet,” Lana said. She seemed frozen, with every muscle tensed. “Actually shoving the door open might be what triggers the alarm. . . .”

“We’ve got this,” Kona said. “We’re ready.”

“Here,” Chess offered, reaching for Kafi. “I’ll take your sister. You take off running for the nearest camera as soon as we’re in.”

So he was in the midst of pulling baby Kafi into his arms when the door swung open and the bright light clicked on around them. Jolted, he jerked his head toward the light. He could make out two sets of glowing red letters below a huge glass lens:

RECORDING LIVE

and

ON AIR

Frantically, he looked around, and caught a glimpse of yet another TV screen off to the side in the TV studio room. This one showed a familiar scene: Finn with his goofy forehead full of coins. Emma looking intense. Chess taking Kafi from Kona. Rocky and Lana both frozen in the midst of striding forward.

“This door wasn’t set up with an alarm to go off if someone tries to break in,” Chess gasped. “It’s set up to film whoever comes in here—and put them on live TV! Everybody’s seeing everything we do!”