Madison struggled with the back of the console, prying it open as carefully as possible. She’d managed to work loose a metal coil from her cot, fashioning it into a makeshift screwdriver. But the tiny screws were proving tricky to undo, and she was panicked by the possibility of stripping one. For this to work, she needed the console more or less intact.
After repeated sessions of begging, she had finally convinced Lurch (as she’d christened the driver) to dig through her luggage for a fleece jacket, her face medication, and her Nintendo DS Lite. Madison now understood why prisoners went nuts in isolation. She almost looked forward to when Lurch cracked the door and slid in a tray of food, or came to empty her bucket. If she wasn’t mistaken he was lingering, too, and by her calculation there had been two straight days without a shot. When he opened the door she jabbered at him, a steady stream of information about her life, her old friends, her parents, anything to get him to stay an extra minute. Despite the fact he still hadn’t spoken to her, Madison was pretty sure he understood English. Maybe she was flattering herself, but if he was forced to kill her, now at least he might feel badly about it.
But Madison wasn’t counting on his generosity continuing. A few times she’d heard a low murmur outside the door, Lurch talking to at least one other person. He definitely wasn’t the brains behind this operation. And if whoever was in charge found out about the DS Lite, chances were it would be snatched back and the needle would return.
The final screw popped loose and rolled away. She scrambled after it, trapping it with her palm. There was a bang on the other side of the door, then the bolt scraped. Lurch jutted his head in, a frown marring his features.
Madison held the console in both palms, leaning back against the end of the cot. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What? Did you miss me?”
He scanned the room, paying particular attention to the floor. After a minute, he grunted and closed the door. As the bolt slid back into place, Madison released a sigh. The screws were digging into her palms, and she tucked them in her jeans pocket. If she’d known she was going to be in the same clothes for days on end, she would’ve worn a sweatsuit on the plane. These were her nicest pair of jeans, but nice didn’t exactly equal comfort. She waited several beats, straining her ears. She knew Lurch was probably rethinking the decision to give her the console, and she needed to move quickly on the off chance he would take it back.
Unlike her father and Bree, she hadn’t gotten the physics gene. Every time she tried to wrap her head around certain theories, it felt like she was being sucked into a black hole. However, from a relatively early age it had been clear that she had exceptional mechanical skills. At six she’d been able to fix most of her friends’ electronic toys when they stopped working, and every year she’d been the runaway winner of the state science fair.
Madison and her father had even built a robot once. She’d been the youngest participant ever in Robot Wars, a series of steel cage matches between remote-controlled robots that ended when there was only one left in the ring. The two of them drove to San Francisco for the competition. They’d named their entry “Maxwell’s Law” (her father’s idea). They had to settle for second place after their robot’s rotary saw fell off in the final round. But her father had been so proud, he told everyone that his daughter had built the machine herself out of scrap metal, he’d hardly been involved.
Madison was startled to find a tear slipping down her cheek. She wiped it away, agitated, and focused on the task at hand. She’d almost left the console at home, not wanting Shane to know that she was secretly hooked on “The Legend of Zelda.” Thank God she’d decided there was only so much a person could sacrifice for true love. She wondered if Lurch had been the one e-mailing her, pretending to be Shane. At the thought she started cracking up, and bit her lip to stifle the giggles. She didn’t want him poking his nose back in, not now.
Handheld consoles had come a long way from when she got her first Game Boy. Thankfully, Lurch didn’t appear to know that. This particular model had been a birthday gift from her dad, a next generation prototype that wouldn’t even be on the market for another year. Like all the newer systems, it had Wi-Fi capabilities for multiplayer online games. Of course, an accessible wireless network had been too much to hope for. She’d done a search immediately, but the only one in radius was secured and she was no hacker. She’d made a halfhearted stab at passwords to amuse herself, typing in Addams Family, Lurch, and, with a pang, Shane’s girl. No luck, she’d need the proverbial million monkeys tapping away for years to crack it. And she didn’t have that kind of time.
Fortunately, there was one more feature of the unit that Lurch had overlooked: a GPS transmitter. It was an add-on that worked by comparing the signals received from several satellites, then running a complex set of computations to triangulate the results and produce a set of coordinates. Unfortunately, the thick metal hull of the ship prevented access to most satellite signals. Luckily Madison had spent the past few months studying an alternative.
In 2006, when GPS devices started glutting the commercial market, the U.S. government became concerned that military receivers might be lost in the barrage of white noise. The military relied upon a GPS system for navigation and targeting, and any compromise of that system could prove catastrophic. To protect themselves they launched new satellites, with “boosted” signals that were only available to the Department of Defense. Madison ’s last science fair project had been disqualified, thanks to her claims to have tapped into the new satellite systems. At a conference with the school principal, her father had explained that scientifically speaking there was no way she could have done it, and her mother had grounded her for a month. The principal still gave her funny looks whenever she passed him in the hall. They all thought she was trying to get attention, still reacting to the divorce.
Well, yeah, maybe she had been. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t done it. After conducting experiments with her iPhone all over the city, Madison discovered a rogue signal. Honestly it hadn’t been all that hard, just time-consuming. And once she had that signature down, all she had to do was find it again.
If she could tap into it and recalibrate her DS Lite’s GPS to send a signal rather than receive it, maybe someone would be able to track her down. She just hoped one of her moron family members remembered the console.
Her tongue jutted out the side of her mouth as she concentrated, squinting in the dim light, carefully manipulating the interior components. Madison was careful to touch the plastic exterior each time to ground it. She’d have to reconfigure the power settings, too-it would be a race against battery life at the end. She just hoped someone out there would be listening.