The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,45
her voice calm. “The phone is going to emit a low-grade signal that’ll scramble the drone’s feed before it can transmit its footage. We’re now a permanent blind spot, as long as I can keep this phone charged. Same with any highway cameras—it’ll make them blink as we drive underneath.” She turned in her seat, giving the hovering black device a wave. “See? Farewell, drone.”
I swung the car into the first deserted strip mall I found, watching in no small amazement as the drone peeled off, turning back in the direction of the highway. We jerked to a hard stop behind a shuttered dry cleaner. I yanked on the parking brake and turned off the engine.
I hadn’t even thought of the newly installed highway cameras we’d find along the way to Virginia. They were a new security measure, meant to help prevent smuggling and crime. They were also programmed to flag any car where the passengers seemed to be intentionally altering or masking their faces. A very useful thing…when you were not the one being tracked.
“You’re sure we’re okay?” I’d seen other Greens pull miracle tech results from a few wires and an empty tuna can, but this was wild, even to me.
Priyanka pretended to look offended, pressing a hand to her chest.
I don’t know why I looked at Roman for confirmation when he had been just as dishonest as her. Maybe because if there was one single thing I believed about them, it was that they would never risk each other’s lives or safety if they didn’t have to. They had every reason to want to escape the camera’s eyes, too.
“It works,” he assured me. “The drones will just signal that they’re experiencing a routine error, and the highway cameras won’t know to switch on to take the photo or video to begin with.”
Breath fired in and out of me, cranking up my pulse. I leaned forward to rest my forehead against the wheel. I shut my eyes, trying to bury the memory of the billboard in that darkness. When I opened them again, Priyanka was holding a plastic grocery bag in front of me. “Please don’t throw up on the upholstery. We have to share this space.”
“Priyanka!” Roman said.
“Don’t pretend like you weren’t thinking it, too,” she said.
I pushed her hand away.
“I’m—” Angry. Confused. Scared. So many different terrible things at once. But I didn’t want to give any of those feelings power by acknowledging them, so I changed the subject. “I’m fine. How did they know to look for me out here?”
“It is an enormous search field…” Roman said, smoothing a hand back over his mussed hair. “They’ve likely been expanding it out from Pennsylvania each day.”
I forced myself to sit up, even as feeling was slow to return to my body.
“Can you tell us where we’re going?” he asked. “If they’re checking the highways, we can just make it a point to avoid them.”
No we couldn’t. Not the whole way. “Virginia. I’m taking us to a safe place there. Somewhere off the grid.”
A place where I’d be able to send the photos of the kidnappers to Vida and Chubs, and start piecing together the connection between them and the bomb.
Priyanka leaned forward between the seats. “I like the sound of that.”
I hated to give them even that much information up front, but sharing some small bit of information might make them think I was starting to trust them. Besides, even if I did get the chance to run from them, Virginia was a big state. They could spend years driving around, searching aimlessly.
“So we are going to have to pass through a zone crossing,” Roman said. “How do you want to do this?”
It didn’t matter how we approached, we’d have to cross at least one zone checkpoint. We were currently in Zone 3. The boundary for Zone 1 ran along the western edge of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia, with Virginia also serving as the southern boundary for Zone 2, which began at North Carolina and stretched down to Texas.
The zones had been important in the early days after the United Nations’ intervention, mostly for administrative purposes. They dictated how supplies were divided and organized, and allowed for smaller, more manageable areas for the peacekeepers to monitor. Now we were only months off from our first real election in more than five years, and the dismantling of the zones would probably be one of the first items the newly elected Congress voted on.