met Neela’s. “The microphone!” they said in unison.
The girls sprinted across the room to where Wes continued to lounge and toke.
“Um, Wes,” Neela said politely. “Would it be possible for you to relocate to the—”
Only, Persey wasn’t waiting for him. While Neela was mid-sentence, she yanked Wes’s wheelie chair away from the desk and spun him out of the way.
Wes’s feet crashed to the floor, stopping the momentum of the chair. “What the hell?”
Persey didn’t give two shits about him. With a swipe of the mouse, she woke the computer screen from its sleep state. “There must be some kind of program that runs the mic.”
“Judging by the blue translucent body and matching mouse, I believe this to be an iMac G3, launched in 1998 and probably running Mac OS 8.1. Standard QuickTime 3.0 software for recording through internal or external microphones.”
Another door popped open, but Persey didn’t even turn from the computer. “Arlo,” Neela said. “Four left.”
“What the fuck was that?” Arlo panted. She staggered over to the desk, bracing herself against it. “Are you fuckers trying to kill me?”
“Wasn’t us.” Persey clicked the mouse rapidly, double clicking the “Q” icon on the desktop. “Got it!”
“Excellent.” Neela grinned. “We make quite a team.”
“Check to see if it’s working.”
Neela leaned over the piano keyboard to the microphone. “Um, check one. Check two.”
“This isn’t funny!” Arlo screamed.
Persey jumped. She turned, expecting to see Arlo yelling at her and Neela, but instead, she had found a camera mounted in the corner of the room. Arlo was pointing at it as she screamed, her face red, eyes watery. For the snarky, self-controlled Slytherin, it seemed totally out of character.
“How did you even know it was me, huh? Did you hack into my computer? Steal my password?” Her voice cracked. “That’s illegal. I’ll press charges. You can’t prove I run it!”
“Chill out,” Wes said, blowing another cloud of weed into the air. “You sound like a nutjob.”
“Fuck you!” Arlo cried.
“One minute.”
“Your SAT score!” Persey shouted into the microphone. She didn’t have time to worry about Arlo’s weird behavior. “Type in your score!”
“Your final score,” Neela added. Right. Because there were people in the world who took it more than once. The idea made Persey’s skin crawl.
“Leah, I know you can see us!” Arlo yelled as she pointed at the camera again, only slightly less ragey than before. “I want out of here right now, do you understand? I want this door open or I’m calling my attorney.”
“Type your SAT score,” Persey repeated more slowly, pausing after each letter of SAT. Riot, Shaun, Mackenzie, and Kevin might be having difficulty understanding her, especially if the oxygen level in their rooms had dropped too low. Of course, that was only if her and Neela’s plan with the speakers had worked at all in the first place. If not, they needed to—
Four soft clicks emanated from the back of the room. Persey spun around and saw that the final doors had opened.
The clock stopped.
RIOT SPUTTERED AS HE SLUMPED AGAINST THE OPEN DOOR, tweed vest unbuttoned, his eyes only half-open as if he’d just emerged from a deep sleep. “That’s…the Man,” he panted. “Test scores. Inside job.”
Even that close to passing out, Riot was formulating a conspiracy theory.
Mackenzie had the opposite reaction: she rushed into the loft and collapsed onto the nearest sofa, arm draped dramatically over her head like a swooning 1930s Hollywood starlet. “The. Fuck.”
Shaun was in the worst shape—he crawled out of the room practically on his belly. Red-faced, sweating profusely, he looked to be on the edge of passing out, and the abject fear on his face was the closest thing to an emotion Shaun-bot had shown all day.
All of them looked shaken. Except for Kevin. He sauntered out of his prison cell, smiling, calm, and showing absolutely no signs of distress. No sheen of perspiration or pallor of panic. And it wasn’t the first time that his carefree attitude intrigued (annoyed) Persey.
“Is everyone okay?” Neela asked, her hands clasped before her as she stood up on the balls of her feet, swaying lightly back and forth. “I detect some complexion aberrations, heightened respiratory response. And I’m just worried because the symptoms of cerebral hypoxia due to oxygen deprivation include memory problems, decreased dexterity and fine motor skills, increased heart rate, and blueness of the lips and skin.”
“Save it,” Mackenzie said, pink overtones beginning to ebb from her cheeks. “I can memorize the cerebral hypoxia Wikipedia entry too.”