Eye of the Storm (11 page)

“Okay, it's turning. The storm's turning. I'm going to try to keep the drone inside. Tell me what you see!” I sneak another glance at
Alex, but his eyes don't move from the handheld controls. The computer screen below the control panel shows a blinking blue dot, swirling, flying, inside the storm.

The numbers on the DataSlate hold steady. Soon, I should see . . . what? If there's a field at the edge of Placid Meadows that dissipates storms or deflects them, the numbers should start to show it weakening.

But they don't.

“I'm not sure how long before it's thrown clear. Are you getting stuff?” Alex's voice is tense with concentration. “Jaden, talk to me! We've got maybe another ten seconds. I'm losing the signal. What are you seeing?”

I can't answer. Because I can't begin to process the numbers flying past my eyes.

“I . . . It's going too fast for me to see.” But that's a lie. I can see the numbers, and I know what they mean. As the storm pulls away from Placid Meadows, the wind speeds are increasing. The temperatures are getting higher. And the barometric pressure has plunged to a level I've never even seen before.

I understand, but I can't make myself say it out loud.

This storm didn't weaken when it hit the Placid Meadows perimeter. It turned away, toward someone else's home. And got stronger.

The brave thing would be to ask Dad more about his failed project tonight. Ask him why he thinks his simulation went wrong, why all the number crunching wasn't enough, and what he's doing about it now. Ask him what really happens to storms when they leave Placid Meadows. And maybe that would start to answer the questions swirling in my head since Alex and I flew the drone this afternoon, since I lied to Alex. I told Alex it all went by too quickly, that my DataSlate's battery died before I could process the numbers. I told him we'd need to recover data from the hard drive to see what really happened. I couldn't tell him the truth. Not without asking my father some questions first.

But Dad's eyes are angrier than the clouds as he bursts into the kitchen, and Mirielle's delicate spinach salad just about wilts when he slams his briefcase on the table.

“Stephen, what is it?” She sets down her wineglass and rushes over to press a hand to his cheek.

He brushes it away, pops open his briefcase, pulls out his
DataSlate, and drops it onto the granite counter with a clatter. “We're losing support for Phase Two. Look!”

He turns on the DataSlate—I'm surprised the screen doesn't shatter under his glare—and jabs at it until the document appears. “This is from our investors' group. Sixty days to acquire the rest of the property we need, or we lose our funding. And I've got two holdouts who
will not
sell.”

My stomach twists. I'm pretty sure I'm working with one of the holdouts' kids. And Risha's in love with the other one.

“Can you not offer more money for the farmland?” Mirielle asks, setting a place for Dad at dinner. “It seems to me that—”

“Do you have any idea what we've offered? Ten
times
the market value of their property, but
noooo
. . . these are
family farms
. Well, they can take their worm-bitten apples and their lumpy, seedy strawberries and kiss my—”

“Stephen!” Mirielle is back in her seat at the table, but her eyes shoot lasers over the roast chicken and gravy, and Dad stops. Mirielle puts a gentle hand on Remi's head and looks my way, too. “You are scaring the children.”

As much as I don't like being called a child, her words take the electricity out of Dad's anger at the farmers, and I'm thankful. No wonder Mirielle keeps Aunt Linda's berries a secret.

“Sit down.” Mirielle motions to the chair next to her, and Dad sinks into it like a scarecrow that's lost its straw. She pours him a glass of Scotch.

Dad presses his hands against his eyes. “How am I going to pull this off in sixty days?”

“Isn't there somewhere else you could build? I mean, you can't very well make somebody sell land if they don't want to, right?” When Dad turns to look at me, I wish I could pull the words back, but like Risha's dandelion fluff, blown into the wind at our picnic, they're swirling all around our heads, impossible to catch.

The voice that follows his glare isn't angry; it's measured and calm, like Dad sounds in his holo-talks. “The planned expansion of Placid Meadows will allow another fifty families to live within the secure environment of a StormSafe community. This is about people's lives, Jaden—not about some silly family tradition.”

“I know.” I nod. But I think of Alex and the strawberries his family grows in the sun. A wad of spinach sticks in my throat. “What are you going to do?”

“I'll tell you what I'm not going to do.” Dad takes a drink, then thumps his glass down, hard, on the wood table. “I am
not
losing this project.”

As soon as Mirielle leaves to put Remi to bed, the storm clouds settle back in Dad's eyes, and he doesn't say another word to me. I sink into the old wooden rocking chair in the living room—perfect except that Grandma Athena's creepy photo always stares at it—and read through the files that Alex beamed to my DataSlate. I can't help keeping one eye on Dad, though, pacing back and forth from his office to the kitchen. He's in and out all night. A few times, he blusters out to the porch and stands there, muttering and looking off to the west. The last time the screen door slams, he comes back smiling.

“Jaden, you're still up?”

“I'm reading through some data my camp partner shared with me from last summer.” I hesitate, afraid that talking to him at all will somehow give away what I did this afternoon at the park, who I'm working with, what I saw. “We're working together on the storm dissipation project.”

Dad nods. “Good challenge, that one. You read that abstract I gave you?”

“Yeah. My partner had the same problem when he ran the simulation on his data last summer.” This is where I should ask him more. Instead, I wait to see if he'll offer up details without my having to ask.

“Well, some things aren't meant to be.” He yawns.

“I guess not.” His office door is open, so I expect him to go back there like he usually does, to lift a tired hand to the sensor and make the steel door slide shut so he can work into the night.

But he doesn't. He stretches his arms up so high that his fingertips brush the ceiling and then heads for his bedroom. “Don't stay up too late.”

I say good night.

I listen to the lock click, hear the water in the bathroom, the toilet flushing.

I hear the snap of the white noise machine turning on, the smooth, soothing whoosh that he says clears his mind of all the numbers and formulas so he can rest.

I page through Alex's files one more time, until I'm sure Dad must be asleep.

I start to stand, and the rocking chair creaks.

I freeze.

But no one's watching except Grandma Athena, trapped in her frame.

I turn away from her and head for the open office door.

The room is dark.

Only the tiniest bit of kitchen light creeps in, and even with the door open, all the sounds from outside get swallowed up by this space.

I set my DataSlate on the edge of the huge mahogany desk and look out to the kitchen clock. It's midnight, and I don't know when Remi usually wakes to nurse. Will Mirielle bring her to the kitchen? Just in case, I press a button—no need for a fingerprint scan on the inside—and watch the cold steel door slide closed. The kitchen light snuffs out, but a power switch glows next to the door.

I flick it on. Overhead lights glimmer, and flat screens flicker to life on every wall.

The screen to my left shows real-time images of a row of satellites. Eight of them. I step closer. Are those solar panels attached? Underneath each image is a display panel with numbers, all gradually climbing. They are labeled in kilowatts. I reach out to touch one of the panels, and a new window emerges from the center of the screen.

It's full of constantly changing numbers. Some look like the
data that whizzed past on my DataSlate while the drone was flying in the storm. Wind speeds, barometric pressure readings, and temperatures. Some look like kilowatt levels, measures of energy. Others appear to be geographic coordinates, latitude and longitude. What do they all mean?

What does any of it mean? Maybe I read the data wrong this afternoon. Maybe it's not what it looks like and I'll never have to talk to Alex about what I think I saw.

I cross the room to Dad's desk and turn on the computer.

It hums to life, flashing a blue background at me while the system loads. Over the desk is a screen showing live radar images of the region, from north of the airport, all along the river. A second big storm looks like it just missed us around the time Dad went to bed. It was close to Alex's house, from the look of this track.

I hope Newton was in for the night.

I hope they're safe.

The computer login screen appears. Dad's username, SMeggs, is already in the login box, but it's asking for a fingerprint scan or password.

I have the wrong prints, so I ignore the biometric panel and set my fingers on the keys, hoping for inspiration.

I try the obvious first. What he loves most.

stormsafe. dna-ture. I try it with the hyphen and without.

No.

Then I try mirielle. And remi. jaden.

The message flashes again: incorrect password.

I sink back in the chair. I should have known I wouldn't be able
to just pop onto his computer. The desk has a single drawer, and I slide it open looking for a list or scrap of paper, even though deep down I know Dad's too smart to leave his passwords lying around. Of course he is. The only thing in the drawer is a jumble of computer and DataSlate wires, a couple of storage drives, a bottle of BioWake pills, and the barometer he had in his hand the other day.

It fills my palm when I pick it up, a perfect ring of dark, polished wood with the barometer mechanism showing through a quarter-size glass window. Around the window is a yellowed ring of barometric pressure markings and five weather patterns written in fancy old script.

Stormy.
Rain.
Change.
Fair.
Very Dry.

Why would Dad, with his walls of satellite maps and live radar screens, keep something like this around? Dad, whose motto is “Science will save us,” who won't even read a paper book anymore, is hanging on to an old weather instrument that has words like
fair
instead of data? It's not even in great shape for an antique. It doesn't seem to work at all, and the wood finish is worn away at the bottom and on the sides, as if it's spent a lot of time being held in someone's hand.

I put it back in the drawer and look back at the log-in box on the computer screen.

barometer.

Incorrect password.

I try combinations of all the words that have already failed. remijaden. placidstorm. I even try Mom's name, rebekah, in case his password is left over from a long time ago. Nothing works.

And then as if the walls suddenly dissolved, I sense Grandma's eyes staring out from her photo in the living room. Grandma, who loved science as much as Dad does.

I type athena.

The desktop appears.

I pull up a search box and type in latitude and longitude coordinates from the screen across the room.

35° 24' N 97° 36' W

A map appears on the screen with a marker pointing to the center. I click to zoom in on the satellite image of that spot, but I already recognize enough of the streets and the bend of the river to know what I will see.

The fence. The river and the trees. The daisy and dandelion meadows, and the field with the gazebo.

The barn with the battered weathervane. And the strawberries.

The Carillo farm, where Alex's family works and lives. Why is Dad's satellite focused here?

My breathing quickens, though I still don't know what it all means. I swivel Dad's chair around—I feel too small in it, swallowed
up by black leather and his smell of work, sweat, and Scotch—and face the satellite wall again.

Current output: 00:00

PowerBank: 327.9 MW

35° 24' N 97° 36' W

I stare at the numbers and wait for them to arrange themselves into something that makes sense. I wait for the windows to jerk free and hover near the ceiling, like in the poem.

They don't.

But the more I stare, the more two letters stand out.

MW. The abbreviation for megawatts. Energy.

Energy mixed with geographic coordinates.

Is someone blasting energy—microwave energy—down from the satellites?

Is this the technology that didn't work in the simulations? It didn't work in Alex's trial, and it didn't work in Dad's. The whole concept of blasting energy at a tornado to stop the rotation was deemed too risky, too dangerous for the real world. So what's going on here?

Is Dad testing it anyway? Without government approval? Do the other scientists at StormSafe even know what he's doing?

My brain is churning. I swing the chair back around to face the radar screen. The storm is getting smaller now. What happened before? Did something go wrong when Dad tried to dissipate the storms today? Did he make them bigger by accident? Is that why the numbers from the drone's data readings looked the way they did?

I look down at the computer screen and start scanning the file names. Most of them have only project numbers: RL7421, 139Q, SS451.

Meaningless. And the more I stare at the numbers, the more I want to scream. I take a deep breath and look up at the ceiling that will never float away with a sigh.

When I look back at the computer, a file called Family Photos catches my eye. I click on it and find the same collection of photos running on the Data Frame in the living room. I'm about to close the folder and go back to the numbers when I notice that one of the files in that folder isn't an image. It's text, and it's labeled AGM.