Oscar slung an arm around his shoulder. “You tell me? In addition to bomb and programming school, did they have a poison school?”
“Not that I know of, but it’s possible. Almost anything is.”
“Hey.” Oscar squeezed him. “We’ll find her.”
Luca hadn’t realized he was letting the worry he felt come through his words. He’d tried to put it aside, to separate his fear so he could focus. Or maybe Oscar just knew him that well.
It had barely been a week, but for Luca, it felt as if he’d known Oscar and Selene his entire life. He’d held nothing back from them and since he’d joined the Trinity Masters, they’d done the same. This was a relationship unlike anything he’d ever imagined. Perfect. Pure.
Ridley returned with an armful of stuff, dropping it on the far end of the table, away from the box. “If you need anything else, call us.” He pointed at the phone mounted by the door, near the emergency exit diagram. “You have a cell phone too, right?”
“Yeah.” Oscar was sorting through the supplies. “This is perfect, thanks, man.”
“No problem.” Ridley smiled. “Hope you find something useful.”
When the door closed behind him, Oscar ripped open one of the clear plastic packages and shook out a set of white coveralls. “Suit up.”
Ten minutes later, they were covered head to toe in white Tyvek suits, gloves, goggles, and respirators. They’d draped the table in plastic and even taped up the HVAC return so if they did unleash something, it wouldn’t spread to the rest of the hotel.
“We don’t have a way to test for any poison,” Luca pointed out as they stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at the box.
“Technically we do. If we fucking die, there was poison.” Oscar sounded uncharacteristically cheerful. “Ready?”
Luca nodded.
Oscar flipped the latches that secured the lid of the storage box and yanked the top off and—nothing happened. Of course it didn’t. Even if the box was full of poison, they wouldn’t see it.
Oscar took out the first laptop, turned it over in his hands, and then set it to the side. After the third computer, Luca was too antsy to just watch, so he grabbed the fourth one. All in all, there were six computers in the box. As he walked around the table to set the last one down on the plastic, Luca frowned. He turned the computer over to confirm what his sense of touch had told him. This computer was missing the plastic panel that covered the battery compartment. Newer computers didn’t have battery compartments, but these did.
Oscar must have seen him looking at the back. “Yeah. These have replaceable batteries. Well, technically all laptops do, but these are old enough that it was back before the industry perfected laptop batteries so they wouldn’t wear out fast. It’s also why they’re so heavy.”
Luca touched the patchwork of black electrician’s tape that covered the battery compartment. “I did this.”
Oscar sighed. “Luca, none of this is your—”
“This.” Luca pointed at the tape. “I taped this up, for Joli. This is her old computer. The one she used for school.”
Oscar cursed, but it was a happy fuck. “You sure?”
Luca’s own excitement was building, though he didn’t know why. Maybe it was just that this represented some tenuous connection with his sister.
He put the computer down and opened it. There, right where he remembered, was a sticker of a cartoon cat stuck to the casing just to the side of the trackpad.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Oscar hurried around to him, carrying one of the charging cords that had been in the box. It took the computer several minutes to boot up, during which Oscar drummed his fingers on the table in impatient irritation.
“How old was she?” Oscar asked once the screen lit up. “When she had this computer?”
“Fourteen, fifteen, maybe. Normally they didn’t educate girls past twelve, but because she was so good, and they saw that, an exception was made. She came to school at the compound, but lived with our parents since there were no dormitories for girls. She even took advanced classes online.”
“If we had my laptop from that age, we’d see some shit like crappy attempts at programs, saved bits of code…” Oscar’s fingers slid over the trackpad, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.
“And this might help?” Luca was far from computer illiterate, but he was having trouble figuring out why Oscar was excited, an emotion that had transferred to him.
Oscar didn’t take his eyes off the screen as he spoke. “When