Eye of the Storm (21 page)

“Jaden, come on.” They're back at the picnic table, and Risha is motioning for me. Even though guilt is churning in my stomach, I stand up and go to them.

“Let's just do this.” Alex powers up his DataSlate and blinks hard. It's as if he's pulled a shade down over all his feelings about Tomas. “We came here to figure this out. Let's do it.”

Holding the DataSlate between us, he clicks the first folder on the list, and numbers pour out like milk spilling from a cup.

“So what we have here is . . .” His dark eyes are focused, his jaw clenched in concentration. I peel my eyes away from his face to watch the stream of numbers rushing down the screen. “This is data for . . .” He frowns and taps the folder, labeled 6-17-2010.

Inside are four documents: CONDITIONS PRECEDING, STORM DATA, SUMMARY/RESULTS, and APPLICATIONS. I tap on SUMMARY/RESULTS, and a document fills the screen.

An EF4 tornado touched down near Deer Creek, Minnesota, on June 17, 2010, destroying several houses along Otter Tail County Road 143. One fatality was reported, and damage to trees, farms, and vehicles was extensive.

I watch Alex read, and slowly, like stars appearing through clouds, I see him begin to understand. “This data is unbelievable,”
he whispers. “Every detail. Atmospheric pressure, updraft activity. Everything.”

He scrolls through the other folders and shakes his head. “This is crazy. It's . . . it looks like he's been
collecting
storms.” He hands me the DataSlate. “Tell me what you see then.”

What I see . . . makes my head spin. All the dates I had time to look at in Dad's office are here.

5-7-1840

5-27-1896

6-12-1899

3-18-1925

4-5-1936

6-9-1953

5-4-2007

There are more current folders, too. The more recent the storm, the more data fills the folder.

4-1-2019

10-10-2020

3-15-2022

9-1-2031

5-30-2050

It's like turning pages in a history book, past to present, closer and closer to today. When my eyes reach the bottom of the screen, I gasp. The final date in the list is from the day Risha and I hid in the old barn storm cellar. The day Alex's family farm blew away.

I look more closely, and other dates start to stand out, too.

10-10-2020.

That's the date of the worst storm ever to hit Paris. It was a year before city traffic was back to normal, another three before they finished rebuilding the Eiffel Tower.

4-1-2019.

Mom's talked about this one, too—the April Fool's Day storm that hit Vermont when she was in high school.

Alex reaches past me and touches the 6-17-2010 file again. “Jaden,
look
.” His voice shakes with anger as he taps open the documents inside, one after another. CONDITIONS PRECEDING has a narrative of the weather conditions leading up to the storms. STORM DATA has a table of temperatures, pressure gradients, and wind speeds. Where did Dad get all this? And why?
Why?

The APPLICATIONS folder is full of projections for how the data and other information from a storm might be used “in future research and development.”

“Future research and development?” My voice shakes.

Alex pulls the DataSlate from me. He taps through, opening the dated folders. Each one holds the recipe for a perfect storm.

He points to one of the number-filled boxes. “This is
everything
. Everything you'd need to . . .”

It's too awful to be real, but he's waiting, so I whisper the words anyway.

“Everything you'd need to make it happen again.” As soon as I say the words aloud, I know it's true. And that thought that's wormed its way into my brain changes everything I thought I knew about my father. “He's collected all these monster storms . . .”

Alex nods, his jaw set. “So he can bring them back.”

“This doesn't make sense,” Risha says slowly. “It's not like he can
make
the weather. He just sends it . . . away from here.”

“And
toward
somebody else.” Alex's hand goes to the scar on his forehead, and he brushes his thumb against it. “He's turning existing storms into monsters, intensifying them with this historical storm data, and then redirecting them.”

“But why would he want to do that?” Risha says. “There's no point.”

I wish with everything I am that I could agree with her. But I know better. So does Alex.

“No point?” Alex stands so quickly he almost knocks the DataSlate from the table. “You don't think they see a point in sending storms toward the farms?” He flings his arm toward the stairs Van climbed down a few minutes ago. “There's a point.”

She doesn't want to believe it; I can tell from her face. But it's too clear to miss. The more tornadoes hit the farms, the more people have to buy DNA-ture. The more damage, the more danger, and the more reason to give up and clear the way for Phase Two of Placid Meadows.

“It's about the land,” I say quietly. “Placid Meadows, Phase Two.”

“It can't be,” Risha says, shaking her head. “Jaden, there's no way he'd do this. It's not like your father needs the money.”

“It's not about money.” I think about what Aunt Linda told me about Grandma, how she ignored everything except her research. How she even forgot about being a mother. “He's obsessed. Obsessed
with getting that land, with building Phase Two of Placid Meadows.” I almost whisper the words, but I know in my bones they're true.

Risha stares at me. “Who could care so much about a project they'd forget about
people
?”

I know the answer to her question. My father. And a long time ago, his mother, too. But I don't say so out loud. I just shrug.

“I still can't believe . . .” Risha looks at me. She wants it to be a mistake, almost as much as I do. “Jaden . . . your dad's spent most of his life trying to disperse storms, hasn't he? Wasn't he figuring out how to
stop
a tornado's rotation?”

“He
was
.” I can't stop staring at the screen, can't stop my stomach from churning with truth. “It looks like he's moved on.” Finally, I tear my eyes from the columns of numbers and look up at Alex. The words feel like I could choke on them. “The recent storms have all been hitting the farms, haven't they?”

“Four since last month. Worst few weeks we've ever had.” He stares off to the west, where clouds are gathering again on the horizon. “My dad kept saying, ‘Somebody up there ain't happy with us.'” He chokes out a cold laugh. “I guess he was right.”

I push the heels of my hands into my closed eyes so hard that lights dance. Explosions of yellow and blue. I hear more tapping on the DataSlate. Risha's sigh. Finally, I open my eyes and take a shaky breath. “We need to tell somebody.”

Alex's voice is bitter. “
Who
, Jaden? Who do we need to tell? The police your father probably has in his pocket? Or maybe we should report him to
Van
? He's good at taking care of things. And he's been
so
helpful with our work in the Sim Dome.”

“That's it!” I grab Alex's DataSlate and pull my own from my backpack so I can start copying the data. “Let me get this transferred so we have a second copy, just in case. We'll go to the Sim Dome and run the command codes from this file to show what it is. It will prove what my father has been doing with the storms. We'll keep a data record of the whole thing. Nobody will have tampered with those results because no one expects us to have this.” I hold up the DataSlates as the files copy. “If this is really a code to re-create the storm, then we'll have evidence.”

My hands shake as I plug my DataSlate into the computer port inside the clear safety glass of the Sim Dome observation box. “There. It's loading.”

I'm praying this works. And at the same time, I'm trying not to think about what I'm doing to my own father—what the world will find out about him—if it does.

I'm still wearing Dad's fingerprint tissue. It's weird, like part of him is here watching us. Risha stopped me when I started to peel it off, though. She's right; we may need it again depending on what happens.

“It's all set.” Alex nudges me, and I look down at the computer screen.

DATA LOADED

Below it, a green button reads: BEGIN SIMULATION.

My finger hovers above the touch pad. Will this work?

We chose the ten-ten-twenty storm; it will be the easiest to recognize. Once we see how closely it follows the real event, the
triple tornadoes that converged on Paris on October 10, 2020, we'll have a better idea what we're dealing with here.

“Go on,” Alex whispers. He holds up his DataSlate, its red record light flashing. “Let's see what we've got.”

I tap the button, the gentlest tap. But like that old saying about a butterfly flapping its wings and triggering a storm on the other side of the world, a quiet tap is all it takes.

Alex, Risha, and I stand behind the safety glass and watch.

Storm clouds gather in the dome above us first, and the sim lights cast the familiar yellow-gray, just-before-a-storm glow.

“Rotation's starting.” Alex's eyes are trained on the part of the cloud where the vapor has begun to swirl in slow, ominous circles over our heads.

The cloud grows, the funnel forms, and faux trees bend in the wind. Then a swirling, gray rope touches down.

“There's one,” I whisper. It whips through a neighborhood like a moody robber, stealing some houses, leaving others untouched.

“Two.” Risha points to the edge of the town, where a second funnel cloud is forming. This one starts as a loose, smoky swirl; then a tighter, more organized vortex grows up from the ground like a plant that's been nurtured and watered and fed all the right things.

I wasn't even born when the real 10-10-20 storm hit, but I've heard so much about it that seeing these twin tornadoes converge is like watching a movie I've already seen a hundred times.

Swirling dust.

Flattened buildings.

Trees flying through the air, roots first.

All of it.

Now the third tornado forms and makes a beeline for its siblings.

Within seconds, the three have merged into a wide, churning block of chaos. It starts a slow, steady course in our direction, sucking up entire houses so only their flat, chalky foundations remain.

The monster storm is almost to the edge of the Sim Dome, where I know it will be sucked back up into the ceiling.

Alex leans down over the DataSlate and starts poking at buttons.

“What are you doing?” I ask. “We have to let this one finish before you view another one.”

“I'm not calling up another one.” Alex doesn't look up at me; his fingers tap the touch screen furiously. “I'm entering the last command code that was listed in the folder.”

“What does it do?” I ask.

“That,” says Alex, tapping a few more times, “is what I want to know.” He tilts the DataSlate in my direction so I can see the page he's brought up. It says SI CODE.

“S-I?” I stare at the letters, but no words form in my brain.

“
S
for storm?” Risha tips her head. “And
I
. . . I don't know.”

Alex taps INTRODUCE VARIABLE and suddenly, the huge tornado turns back from the edge of the dome, almost as if it's a living
thing and knows what it needs to stay alive. It grows and swirls back through the Sim Community, fueled by destruction, leveling nearly everything it missed the first time.

Finally, on the other side, the growling black cloud climbs back up into the sky.

We are all quiet, staring at what remains.

A few scattered boards. Some flat foundations. There isn't much.

There wasn't much left of the Champs-Élysées or Eiffel Tower back in 2020, either.

But that tornado had slipped back into the clouds after a single pass through the city. This one swept through twice, stronger the second time around. It had grown, intensified.

And suddenly, the letters have words to go with them.

S.I.

Storm Intensification.

Here is the evidence. My father
has
been re-creating storms.

Bringing old monsters back from the dead.

Feeding them numbers to make them stronger, bigger.

Deadlier.

“Intensity. That command intensified the storm.” I shake my head as Alex bends down over the DataSlate again. “Did you hear me? You recorded, right? That simulation proves everything.”

“We need more than one,” Alex says, scrolling through the list of dates, whispering the storm dates one by one. Finally, he clicks on the first folder we opened—for the 2010 Minnesota storm. “Let's run this one.”

He chooses a set of data, but before anything can load, a weather alert sounds its shrill, blaring tones over and over, and the warning appears on screen.

Issued: 7:09
PM
, June 29

The National Storm Center has issued a SEVERE TORNADO WARNING for all of Kingfisher, Oklahoma, Lincoln, and Logan counties. A powerful storm has been identified via radar and is making its way east. This system has already spawned several powerful tornadoes. Residents are advised to take shelter in safe rooms immediately. More information will be released as it becomes available.

Alex taps the screen to pull up the latest radar images.

“Whoa . . .” I suck in my breath and stare at the green and red blob. It's one of the most organized storm systems I've ever seen—on a screen or in real life.

I look out at the battered Sim Community and wonder whose real-life town will look like this tonight. Whose car will lift from the pavement, hurtle through the air, and wrap itself around a tree? Whose house will be ripped from its foundation and dashed to pieces? “Put a track on it.”