Hello Protocol for Dead Girls Read online

  She lifts her chin and stares at him pointedly, and I am so darn proud of her that I can barely handle myself.

  A lot of people are all bravado and big talk until something serious happens, then they crumple like paper. And some people, like Elly, become their strongest only when a heavy burden has been dropped on them.

  She’s a crunch-time hero.

  Jim holds his hands up with their palms out toward Elly. “Don’t lump me in. Yes, this is my employer. But I do also want the best for Jennika.”

  “Why should I believe you?” she asks.

  “You shouldn’t. In fact, don’t,” he answers. “Don’t trust anything.”

  “But if we don’t, how can she get what she needs?” Elly shakes her head in frustration.

  Jim glances around the room and sighs. “Look. There isn’t a lot I can do, but I do want to help. Jennika, do you have full access to all of BomiTech’s networks?”

  “Sure,” I say. “If it’s halfway around the world, I don’t have instant access. But I can get to it, if I know where to look.”

  “That’s what I was hoping for,” he says. “This is kind of a long shot, but I think it might at least point you in the right direction. Two years ago, an off-site facility in Uzbekistan had a similar error. Some critical files were corrupted. The kind of stuff that couldn’t just be forgotten about. So they did some seriously intense forensics and brought in a team of top-level programmers who created a program that could put the data back together. It took a long time, but they did recover the files eventually. If you can get to that program, you could try it on your memories.”

  I think this over. It’s not impossible. Even if it didn’t put everything together for me, it might get me on the right track. I could study the code and learn from it, maybe adapt it to what I need. “And is there some trap in that system, waiting for me?”

  “If there were, I wouldn’t tell you,” he says. “But no. I’m not planning to run this idea by the top brass of BomiTech, if you know what I mean.”

  “So you don’t want them to know you’re telling me this.”

  “Well, they will, probably, find out,” he says. “Eventually. But if you’re quick, you can get there before they do.”

  I know perfectly well that the best way to get someone to do something foolhardy is to put a time constraint on them. To think that there’s some deal too good to pass up, and it’s a limited time offer. But in this case, I’ve already had enough time to do the analysis, and while it’s a risk, this is my best chance of being able to crack my memories.

  “Stand by,” I say.

  “She’s doing it now?” Elly asks in a hushed voice, surprised.

  I search my thoughts and find Uzbekistan’s network and hop the shortest path to it. It’s a more visible path, but I’m more concerned about speed than whether BomiTech figures out what I’ve done after I’ve done it.

  I find the network, drill into it, and start looking for proprietary programs. Something that hasn’t been accessed for about two years. Something sizeable and well-backed-up and documented, and…

  There it is.

  Like it was waiting for me.

  Is it a trap?

  I don’t see any obvious signs of being a trap. I can’t find any subtle ones, either, and since it’s right there for the taking, I reach out and grab it before anyone has a chance to do anything about it.

  “Target acquired,” I announce to Jim and Elly. “Extracting. Stand by.”

  When things go wrong, the wrongs flow from one to the next until you can’t even tell how you got to where you are. That’s how I feel about everything that’s happened to me since that night I was studying in my dorm. The last night of my life.

  Success, like truth, has a certain seamless beauty. Point A to Point B to however many points in the process that lead you to your final destination.

  I have the program to restore my memories, and I can tell just by looking that it’s going to work. All of it lines up with the fragmented nature of my death event file.

  Finally, I’ll know what happened that night.

  While I wait for the answers, I think of Elly and Jim. I like the idea of them being here while I find out.

  Elly has always been there for me.

  The quiet moments of waiting already feel too full to squeeze conversation into, so we remain quiet. Then I think of something.

  “Jim, can you get a security headset for Elly? The kind your security guards have.”

  “I guess?” he says questioningly. “I mean, it’s theft and all, but we’re in this far, so why should that stop us? I’ll fill out a requisition form and pay for it after the fact.”

  “An honest thief,” I say. “I like it.”

  “What’s it for?” Elly asks.

  “It’s a sweet little earpiece Bluetooth kind of deal. Just put the receiver pack in your pocket and the little bit in your ear. No one will even know you have it. There’s a teeny microphone you can put under your collar or something. Then I can talk to you anytime.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I guess. But what—”

  “Process complete,” I interrupt. “The file’s eighty-four-point two percent intact.”

  In Jim’s office, he and Elly stare at each other in silence.

  “Yeah, me too,” I say. “Hang on. Here we go.”

  I access the file.

  21

  As If It’s Your Last

  I stretched, easing the ache in my back, but only slightly. My shoulders ached. My exam the next day was going to be a killer, but I intended to ace it.

  My body was protesting pretty hard, though. “Fine,” I said to it, annoyed. “I’ll go for a walk and get my blood flowing. It’ll be good to clear my head a little, anyway. Then I can come back refreshed.”

  I hoped that was true.

  I could take a walk to the campus store, but I already had a huge pile of snacks, so there was no point. The pond was nice, though. I could walk down that way and enjoy some fresh air. The old-timey-looking lantern lights around the pond made it look pretty in the evening.

  I grabbed the key card for the dorm room I shared with Elly, and went to slip it in my pocket, only to realize I had no pockets.

  Stupid pants with no pockets. Who was crazy enough to even design such a thing? If I’d realized that when I bought them, I never would have ordered them. But since I bought them online, sending them back would have been more trouble than it was worth.

  Elly’s school-spirit windbreaker was on her bed, so I grabbed it and shrugged it on, shoving my key card into the pocket.

  As I closed the door behind me, I smiled. Elly had bought the collegiate windbreaker before she even got her acceptance letter. She’d said it was a matter of pushing fate in the right direction. She’d even had the back monogrammed with her name and expected graduation year.

  It was way too much school spirit, but it was so very Elly.

  Down on the dorm’s ground level, I saw a classmate and smiled hello. Somewhere along the way I stopped and retied my shoe.

  Then I was at the pond, watching a duck’s lazy paddling create ripples that spread out in long lines that stretched quickly then slowly expanded across the entire surface. They reminded me of sound waves, and I imagined a duck butt creating giant sound patterns.

  I laughed, and a cute guy walking by smiled at me.

  I rolled my shoulders and shook my arms out. My muscles felt a lot better already. I rotated my head in one direction, stretching my neck, then rotated the other direction.

  A girl walked by carrying a cup and the scent of coffee hit me. Suddenly, I really wanted a mocha. It would be the perfect treat to myself. Not only would it taste good, but it would help me stay alert while I studied.

  Decision made, I cut behind the chemistry lab, through a courtyard, and between some dumpsters. I’d found all the shortcuts on campus so I could get from Point A to Point B in the shortest possible amount of time. I most often used those routes after I’d overslept.<
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  I walked across a parking lot. I was so close to getting my mocha, I could practically taste all the chocolatey-espresso goodness already.

  Something behind me suddenly propelled me forward and I was dimly aware of the word, “Bitch!”

  I could only see the sky and the top of Granger, but I knew that my arms were pinwheeling at my sides. I was trying to rebalance myself. I suddenly looked down to see my foot catch in a deep crack in the pavement.

  My whole body lurched sideways, over my right hip, and the ground came up at me.

  But a cement post loomed and my forward momentum flung me right into it. My neck and chest exploded with so much pain and shock that when I rebounded off the post and finally hit the ground, I didn’t even notice how hard my head bounced off the blacktop.

  More important was that I couldn’t inhale. I tried so hard and my lungs burned for air, but nothing came no matter how desperately I tried. I grabbed at my chest, and I tried to scream for help, but there was nothing in me to create noise.

  Someone crouched nearby, over me, saying something in a high-pitched, panicked voice, but my need to breathe was so loud that I couldn’t hear him.

  The edges of my vision went gray and my arms fell to my left, causing me to turn slightly to my side. I had no control over anything, not even my hands. My body felt like it was drifting away from me.

  My head rested on the ground at an awkward angle and I didn’t have the energy to care. I could only stare at a plastic-wrapped packet of bright-red licorice candy lying on the ground next to my face.

  I looked at the candy until I couldn’t see anything anymore.

  I usually don’t have to think about how to feel about something. I usually just feel it. After seeing those pieces of my final day, I’m not sure what I’m feeling. It’s all muddled, and kind of muted.

  There’s some sort of satisfaction in filling in the blanks of my memory and knowing more about my existence. But there’s a numb horror at how it happened.

  Was it an accident? It could have been. I don’t know what knocked me forward. Tripping was an accident. That post sure had been in a tragically inconvenient place.

  But maybe it had been intentional. Maybe someone shoved me. Someone did yell, “Bitch,” though I don’t know for certain that it was meant for me. It could have been coincidental. College campuses are full of boisterous people yelling all sorts of things.

  “That’s everything you remember?” Elly asks gently after I’ve told them what I saw.

  “That’s it.”

  Jim says, “The memories were a bit choppy. The gaps must be the parts that couldn’t be reconstructed.”

  “And there’s no way to fix those?” Elly asks.

  “No,” he answers. “It’s not like your brain, which probably has the memory somewhere, but forgotten. If she can’t see it, it’s because it just isn’t there to see. We were lucky to get as much of it as we did.”

  “Jen?” Elly asks tentatively. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just…processing.”

  “Right.”

  An awkward silence falls.

  “So what now?” Elly asks.

  I’m not sure. “Jim can get you that headset for Elly and we’ll stay in touch. I’m going to think all this over and decide what comes next. I’d hoped I’d have all the answers, but there are still two important ones missing. And I might not get them.”

  I want to know who, if anyone, caused my death, and whether it was accidental or intentional. If I don’t get those answers, though, do I know enough to make peace with what happened? Will I have enough of a resolution to my old life to be able to move on with my new one?

  “Right,” Elly says, with more decisiveness than the situation requires. “I’ll wait then. But contact me as soon as…well…contact me soon, okay? I’ll be waiting.”

  “I will,” I promise.

  What’s odd about all this is how calm I feel.

  I should be angry.

  I should be anguished.

  I should be full of grief.

  Maybe I’m in shock. Or maybe I’m still drifting away from my humanity. Either way, I feel…what is this I feel? Purposeful. Determined.

  Okay, and maybe a wee bit vengeful. But just a wee bit.

  There are holes in my memory, and I have a grim feeling that I might not know how to fill those in.

  It’s time to flex my muscles. I’m not the girl I used to be. I’m not a girl at all. I’m information and energy.

  I am code.

  Any device can be hacked if there’s a way in. A printer can be hacked. A toaster, even. And most people don’t know about the electronic doors they leave hanging open, just waiting for someone to come inside.

  So when I stretch myself in the direction of my target, it’s a simple, comfortable stretch. Like getting up out of a chair after sitting for a long time.

  The more I stretch, the more powerful I feel.

  By the time I’ve arrived and am ready, I feel fully in control.

  Ready. For whatever this is about to be.

  I hijack the webcam and suddenly, I can see the room. It’s messy, but not dirty. A figure lies on the bed across from the desktop computer I’m looking out of. I can’t see the surface the computer’s on, but I know it’s a basic desk made of dark-stained wood.

  I remember it well. I spent a lot of time in this room when I was alive. I even helped put that desk together.

  After switching the speakers on, I use my voice synthesizer. “Bryce. Wake up.”

  A head turns. I hear a faint groan.

  I turn up the volume. “Hey,” I say more insistently. “Wake up. We need to talk.”

  With a louder groan, the object of my ire sits up, rubs his hands over his messy hair, and looks around in confusion.

  “It’s not your mom. She went to the store,” I explain. “It’s me. And I need answers.”

  He sits silently, wearing a look of disbelief. “That’s Jennika’s voice.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I say. “We need to talk about what happened the night I died.”

  He puts his face in his hands. “Oh, god, I’ve cracked.”

  It’s simpler for me if he believes this. I can explain the truth later, if it seems like a good idea. For now, I’ll go with it. “Yeah, you’re crazy as shit, man. Your dead cousin is talking to you. It’s that guilty conscience of yours.”

  He groans, still holding his face, and rocks back and forth on the bed. “I should call Mom. I need to get medicated or something.”

  “Drop some psychiatric acid later,” I advise. “Right now, you should probably deal with the war going on between your super-ego and your id.”

  I’m rather pleased that I’ve pulled these terms out of the air. I’ll have to tell Elly about it later, to prove that I actually did listen to her when she talked about her classes.

  His hands slide down from his face and he sits, shoulders slumped, with his blanket at his waist and still covering his legs. “This is an oddly lucid breakdown.”

  “You’re a logical guy,” I say quickly. I don’t really want him questioning the idea that he’s crazy yet. “Logical guys can go batshit crazy, too. That’s why mental health is so difficult to treat. Things seem real even if you know they’re not.”

  I hope that’s convincing. I made it up on the fly.

  “I guess,” he says. “So what do I do?”

  Oh, good, he’s following along.

  I say, “Have you thought about what you did that night?”

  “Thought about it? All I do is think about it. If you’re my brain, you should know that.”

  “Okay, so you’ve thought about it. But you’ve gotten nowhere. I know that because I’m your brain.” That sounded lame, even to me.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” he says. “She’s dead. There’s no fixing dead. I can rip out my hair by the roots, scream my lungs out, and dedicate my life to good deeds and it wouldn’t matter. There’s no amount of repenting that matt
ers, because she’s still dead. I can’t tell her how sorry I am, and I can never give her her life back.”

  That doesn’t sound like he wanted me dead. “So why did you kill me?”

  He starts crying. I hate it when people cry. It makes me really uncomfortable.

  “I was just mad. Jealous. It was just a push. I should never have touched her, but it was just a push. I didn’t know it was you, and I didn’t know you’d fall. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong.”

  “Her?” I’m not sure why he’s referring to me in both the second person and third person. Then I remember the windbreaker. Elly’s very distinctive windbreaker. “Elly. You thought you were pushing Elly. You were mad at her?”

  “Of course I was! I kept waiting around while she dated all those jerks who never treated her right, and when I finally…when the timing was good, I was going to tell her. She always gets bored with a guy before a year goes by, and I was just counting the days until they broke up. I knew it had to be soon, and I was finally going to tell her how I felt. But they just kept not breaking up.” His voice reverberates with hurt and outrage.

  “You were obsessed with Elly,” I say slowly, rethinking the entire friendship he, she, and I had shared over the years.

  How long had he been secretly infatuated with her? I thought we were three best friends. Every time he showed up to hang out with us, or called me to see what we were doing, now goes up in my mind like a flare.

  “Not obsessed,” he denies hotly. “I love her.”

  “And you pushed her.” I can’t hide the disapproval in my voice. “Or at least, meant to.”

  “It was a stupid impulse. It was supposed to be a tap. You know how I am. I came to campus expecting to hang out, but when I called her, she told me she couldn’t because she had a date with that Ben guy. On a weeknight. She never dates on weeknights. She said she thought he was the one, and they’d suddenly gotten serious. I never once thought we wouldn’t end up together. So when I saw the back of her jacket, knowing she was probably on her way to see that guy, I don’t know, my brain short-circuited. I meant it to be a little shove, but she…she was you…I don’t even know what I’m saying. I just wanted to turn her around, I didn’t mean to push so hard.”