students filed out, I saw something small and metal gleaming near the chair Hannah had vacated. Her multi-tool, amid a clump of blond hair.
I took the tool so I could return it, then hurried away to find her.
By the time I found the nurse’s office, Hannah had already left. Maybe because whatever was wrong with her, the nurse couldn’t fix it. I looked everywhere for her, until I finally decided to try the dorm. She was right there inside our room, typing away on her computer as if nothing had happened. Only now, her hair was all the same length.
I eyed the scissors on the desk, and the blond hair that littered the trash can. “You okay?”
She glanced at me like this was perfectly normal. “I’m fine,” she said with little emotion. “I’d been meaning to cut my hair for a while now.”
She stated it like she made all the sense in the world. And if something was wrong, she wasn’t likely to tell a girl she’d just met and who’d be leaving soon.
I put the offer out there anyway. “Okay. But if you need to talk . . .”
Was Hannah frightened of something, too scared to talk? Was she going crazy here at Montford? Had something like this happened to Sarah? If only I could remember.
I settled onto my own bed, pretending to read. I hoped maybe she’d leave at some point, so I could inspect her room. Professor Grassi suspected drugs were behind Hannah’s weird behavior, and I had to admit that fit. A lot of illicit drugs caused insomnia too, which could explain her fatigue. Drugs could even explain Hannah’s occasional changes in speech and heart rates.
Was it really that simple, though? Holland was involved here somehow, I was sure. Was he using teenage subjects to see how drugs affected them? That didn’t really fit in with his android project, but maybe this was step one in some larger scheme. Maybe he needed drugs to make them compliant first, and then went from there.
Something pinged on Hannah’s desk. She fumbled in her bag and withdrew a cell phone, then read a text.
A room search would have to wait for when she left. In the meantime, I’d take a stab at hacking into her cell phone.
First step—identifying the server.
I reached out to tap in to her connection. Like an invisible stranger grabbing a free ride from an unsuspecting train.
The rebuff was instant: a flash of notification, before equally invisible walls sprang up to stop me.
Private network: CRA.
I tried again, with the same result.
Private network: CRA.
I leaned back against my pillow. Well, that was odd. Instead of Sprint or Verizon or some smaller cell carrier, Hannah’s service was linked to her own private network.
What if the other grant kids’ phones were linked to the same one?
I’d have to try to log in to Hannah’s phone the old-fashioned way. Via manual connection.
But for the next two hours, she never budged. Not even to use the bathroom. It wasn’t until dinner came that she got up to leave, but I had to go too. Meals were my best—and only—opportunities to see all the grant kids together in one room.
If Hannah noticed any of the strange looks and whispers, they didn’t faze her. She was back to her usual self, with her ever-present cup of black coffee. After pumping Hannah for information on why she’d freaked out and cut her hair, Celia kept up a constant stream of meaningless chatter. Hunter and Samuel sat a few tables away with J.D. and his gang. Claude and Ben were one table over, telling jokes in a foreign language that my android brain translated automatically: Mandarin.
There was a ping, and Hannah dipped her head to check her phone. I saw J.D. dig his phone out of his bag.
Ben and Claude were bent over theirs a moment later.
Here was my chance.
I followed the signals in the room as they looped and twisted into an intricate tangle of networks. Again, my feed filled with all the usual suspects: AT&T, T-Mobile.
But as I traced the networks to the grant kids’ phones, they all shared one trait that none of the other students did.
Their phones were all part of the same VPN.
One private, secure network, for four kids. Five, if you counted Sharon, who wasn’t here.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to ensure their communications were secure.
Maybe if we figured out who was texting them, and what, we’d be a step closer to solving this mystery. But