Installment 10

            Double digits. What do you know about that? I made it.

            I know it’s probably really annoying by now how I’m always so surprised that I’m still alive. It probably seems like I’m trying to act like my situation is more dangerous than it really is, or maybe I just want attention.

            Go ahead and believe that. Actually, that’s a great idea. Believe that.

            Even if it isn’t true.

            Anyway…I’m off track. Back to the story.

            Clara had things planned out well, and she was right about the police. By the time it neared ten o’clock, the police had cleared out, apparently deciding that we would not surface here. While we sat in our little back room, waiting for ten, I told Clara about my little escapade. Naturally, she was annoyed -- but also curious as to what I had found out.

            I told her about what Travis said, about me being a tool. And as I said it, a few puzzle pieces came together in my head.

Obviously, Travis Thatcher had me framed. He as good as admitted it. But the question was, why? Why me? What was this program “Back Door?” Why was this complicated system guarding it?

Well, one question was answered: Travis wasn’t working for himself. We knew that for certain. Both he and Larson were working for someone higher up.

“But why would he frame me?” I asked in frustration.

Clara laced her fingers together in her lap. “Well, let’s see what we do know. We know that Travis Thatcher framed you for hacking into his computer system.”

“Which is guarding some program called Back Door,” I added.

“He’s only using you as…what did he say again?”

I tried to remember his exact words. “He said that I was a way to attach a name to an image so that nobody found out about the real image. Or something like that.”

“That sounds like he’s trying to cover up the real hacker,” Clara said slowly.

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s his system. If someone hacked into it…”

I trailed off. Both of us were suddenly hit with how few facts we had. We barely had any information about the alleged hacker, the alleged system, or the alleged program.

Wait…

“We do know one thing,” I said suddenly. “We know that it’s supposed to be a matter of national security.”

Clara frowned. “I don’t know…they seemed pretty loose about you. If it were national security…”

I shrugged. “Clara, listen. If it were national security, real national security, then there would be a huge fuss. But they wanted to frame me, remember? Travis wasn’t even all that secretive about it. And he also said that I would be just as good a fugitive as jailed.”

“But Larson was also freaking out about you escaping,” Clara pointed out.

“He might be just scared of getting into trouble. That’s what it sounded like.”

We both fell silent, pondering the questions and what few answers we had.

I had not told Clara about Travis saying my name after Larson left. It didn’t seem like valuable information, and somehow, it seemed private. Like a connection I had with Travis.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want a connection with the man who framed me. But on the other hand, he had said that I wasn’t any good on my own. I was just a tool, a kid to pin the crime on. So it gave me some amount of pleasure to think that my name meant something to him, that I wasn’t just “the kid.” Then again, he had also said he didn’t like it.

But was he talking about the name?

If I were back in that position right now, I would tell Clara about it. If I could go back and tell her, I would. But I didn’t, because back then, I didn’t fully trust Clara Stone.

I would learn to trust her with my life in the next few weeks.

At ten o’clock, we left the back room and made our way to the now crowded station. Outside, I didn’t notice any police cars. Clara had done it. We bought the tickets using money Clara provided -- when I asked her where she got it, she gave me a look that clearly said not to ask -- and we just barely made it onto the bus before it departed.

This particular bus station was a pretty big bus station. I may have lived in a small town, but obviously the mayor took pride in our bus transportation system. At the time, I was glad. This way, it would be harder for anyone to tell exactly where we were going, in case anyone tried to follow us.

Just before we left, I glanced out of the bus window and, to my horror, recognized a figure standing on the platform, watching us.

“Clara!” I whispered fiercely. Clara glanced over.

“What? What is it?” she asked, confused.

But I didn’t answer. The bus had already begun to move, and the damage was done. There was nothing I could do.

But to my surprise, the lonely figure of Travis Thatcher didn’t run to inform anyone of our imminent departure. He didn’t even look distressed.

Instead, Travis smiled his crooked half smile as Clara and I escaped.

And waved.

-Nathan T. Dalton

Installment 9

            Where was I?

            Honestly, it feels like ages since I last wrote anything. Maybe that’s because it has been ages since I last wrote anything.

I know I owe you an explanation. But I can’t give it to you. I told you why a few posts back -- because until I can be absolutely certain that the benefits of letting you know outweigh the risks of letting the enemy know, I can’t tell you anything about what’s going on right now.

Let me go read what I wrote before. To get my bearings.

            Okay, that’s it. All right. Here we go.

            Travis shook his head, exasperated. “Listen,” he said in a slow voice as if talking to an individual who was not quite capable of understanding English. “The kid’s a name, a symbol. That’s all I ever needed him for. He’s a means of attaching an image to a name so that the real image doesn’t get found out. I don’t really care if he escapes or not. As long as he’s the ‘disturbed and dangerous fugitive’ that everyone talks about and the police chase after but never catch, he’s not a problem. Nobody will believe him, anyway. He has no real evidence about any of this, he can’t bring it to the authorities. Come on, you are the authorities -- at least as far as anyone knows.” Travis cocked his head. “The kid is just fine right where he is.”

            “If he hadn’t beaten you at your own game, you wouldn’t be so quick to let him escape,” Larson muttered under his breath.

            Travis tensed, and for a moment, I thought he might make a move toward Larson. But he relaxed after a second, closing his eyes.

            “Whatever you like,” he said, his voice more jovial than ever. “But the kid stays missing.”

            Larson shook his head. “No. They won’t stand for it. They don’t get it, Thatcher. You might be right, you might be wrong, but they can’t take chances. Especially when the Stone girl went missing recently.”

            This took a moment to process. “Stone…” Travis glanced up. “Stone? As in…Frederick Stone?”

            “One and the same.”

            “He’s dead.”

            “He had a daughter.”

            Travis waved his hand. “Yes, yes, I know. But she went missing? How come I didn’t hear about this?”

            Larson looked Travis straight in the eye. “Because no one trusts you. You know that.”

            “Why, I’m hurt!” Travis said in mock shock. “No one trusts me? After all I’ve done for them?” After a second, he dropped his pretense. “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Like what Clara Stone has to do with Nathan T. Dalton.”

            “They say she came out here. I think she might have helped him escape.”

            Travis was silent for a moment, his expression unreadable. I could tell that Larson shared my same desire to know what he was thinking.

            “The Stones were a problem,” Travis finally said, slowly and thoughtfully. “A big problem.”

            “That’s not really the problem right now,” Larson said impatiently. “The problem is if she helped him escape.”

            Travis shook his head. “No. She could cause problems.”

            “She’s a girl!”

            “Kids are powerful,” Travis insisted, examining his fingertips. “More powerful than we think. Too much of the time, we underestimate them. Clara Stone is a problem by herself. But joined with Nathan T. Dalton…we might have problems that are too big for us to handle.”

            “Still thinking about leaving Nathan as a fugitive?”

            It was a long moment before Travis spoke again. “Maybe…” he murmured. “I’ve got an idea or two.”

            “What ideas?”

            Travis half smiled again. “Mind games, if you like. Creating uneven ground, if you don’t.”

            From the expression on Larson’s face, he didn’t understand it any better than I did.

            “The point,” he said stubbornly, “is that I am going to be in trouble if you mess this up.”

            “The point,” Travis returned coolly, “is that I won’t. Trust me. I’ll handle it.”

            Larson glared at Travis, then turned on his heel and left the hallway.

            Now alone, Travis Thatcher straightened and stared where Larson had left. There was a strange expression on his face. It was only a light discomfort, but it was there, all the same.

            “Dalton,” he whispered to himself. “Dalton.” He spoke my name as if he had said it a thousand times before, but he had only just realized what it meant. Then he shook his head. “Dalton…I don’t like it, anyway.”

            I couldn’t tell whether he was referring to the situation or the name or both. Whatever it was, Travis shook it off and headed after Larson.

            After a few minutes of hardly daring to breathe, I stepped out of the closet. I made my way back to our little back room, glancing fearfully over my shoulder every few seconds.

            And as I went back to find Clara, I promised myself that I would watch out for Travis Thatcher.

            We were talking earlier about things I owed you, among them probably being a longer post -- but I don’t have the time right now. I’ll get back soon.

            No, really.

-Nathan T. Dalton

Installment 8

            Look, I know it was a bad idea.

            At least, I know it now. When I did it, I don’t suppose I thought much along those lines. The general idea was that I was bored and I had to do something to keep myself from rummaging through Clara’s backpack, and if that something involved putting both of us at risk, well, I would do my best not to get caught.

            Like I said, it was a bad idea.

            Clara fell asleep while poring over a notebook. She had obviously latched onto the idea of being an agent quickly -- searching for clues, testing out the equipment she had…everything. But yet with all that, she was taking this seriously -- very seriously.

            I know what you’re thinking. And you weren’t?

            I was taking it seriously. But here’s the thing: I wasn’t scared.

            Not even a bit.

            And the part that did disconcert me was that I was partly enjoying it.

            I had been passed around from foster home to foster home all my life. I couldn’t wait until I graduated and I could legally head off on my own. It seemed that every couple -- or single person -- I was given to was completely incompetent at knowing what to do with a kid. Trust me, I’ve seen all sorts. There are those who give you whatever you want, or they think you want, and there are those who never want to give you anything, and there are those who try to keep a balance but they’re so obvious about everything that it’s clear as day that they don’t really care about you.

            I’ve got an idea. Let’s change the subject.

            No one really ever kept me around for very long, because I was so not normal. But with the sudden arrival of a policeman, a strange girl, and a computer program called Back Door, I was part of something. I had a thousand questions and no answers, I had a vague idea in the back of my mind that this was dangerous, but I mattered.

            As that thought struck me, a memory came flashing back.

            Do you matter at all?

            I threw it off as quickly as it came. I had grown experienced in this task, but not experienced enough, because with the memory of that question came other memories of other questions, questions I would dearly like to forget.

            I focused on the backpack next to the sleeping Clara in order to block out the memories, and I found that, surprisingly enough, it worked very well. Troubling thoughts were replaced with an overwhelming desire to search her backpack and all the gadgets she claimed were within it. And I knew that she would kill me if I did that, so I made a decision to go out and look around to see if the police were still there.

            I snuck out quietly without Clara waking up. We were in a back hallway. I had lived in this town all my life, so I knew that this part of the bus station wasn’t originally part of the station. It used to be a set of offices belonging to some company, but now, it was used as a set of record storage rooms. Apparently Clara had chosen the one empty room.

            I slipped down the hallway, and through another one, trying to remember exactly how we got in. It was a small little complex attached to the bus station, but I didn’t want to walk straight into the waiting arms of the police, and so I tried to be careful.

            Suddenly, I heard a noise. I froze and flattened myself against the wall. I could hear voices coming closer, and I frantically looked both ways for somewhere to go.

            I spotted the door to what I assumed must be a broom closet for a janitor, and I jerked it open, slipping inside and shutting the door.

            The voices came closer, and I realized they were walking through my same hallway -- and I felt a shiver run up my back when I recognized one of the voices.

            “Deal with it? What do you mean, deal with it?”

            It was Larson from the police station, but he sounded far angrier now than he had before.

            “Obviously I’m not telling you to deal with it. I’ll deal with it. I wouldn’t trust you to ‘deal with it,’ anyway.”

            The second voice belonged to Travis Thatcher, and he had the same sarcastic voice I had heard before. I knew it was dangerous…but I couldn’t help crouching at the keyhole to watch.

            “Heavens, Thatcher!” Larson snarled back. He was rubbing his forehead with his hand, looking positively furious. Travis had leaned back against the wall, arms crossed.

            “It’s not that big a deal to deal with,” he shrugged. “Seriously.”

            “Not that big a deal?” Larson exploded. “It’s a huge deal! We let the kid get away! It’s our fault!”

            “So he got away.” Travis spread his arms in a careless gesture. “So what? He can still fulfill his purpose.”

            “Oh, really? How?” Larson challenged.

            “Simple,” Travis insisted. “To me, I mean. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Mr. Drew Larson. Simple in my boat, but complicated in yours.”

            “You and your stupid mind games,” Larson muttered, and for a moment, I saw a genuinely unsettled expression on Travis’ face. Larson had succeeded in unnerving him for a moment, but only a moment, before Travis rearranged his features into the same confident air, and Larson never noticed the change.

            “Mind games?” he said smoothly, tracing a crack in the wall with one finger. “What do you mean?”

            Larson rolled his eyes. “Stories, and lots of them. Everyone knows them. Only a few people recognize them for what they are. But then again, only a few people have ever wittingly played your games, have they? I’m not one of them, Thatcher, so you should explain things normally.”

            Now Travis smiled his crooked half smile -- but it was not a smile of relief. I got the sneaking suspicion that Travis was not particularly happy with Larson’s revelation. “The kid’s a fugitive. He’s just as much use to me as a fugitive as jailed or arrested.”

            It was Larson’s turn to be confused. “What? How?”

            I have to go. I meant to get farther… but I’ll get back soon.

-Nathan T. Dalton

Installment 7

You know, looking back on it, I can see how Clara planned it perfectly. We arrived at the bus station at exactly five o’clock, and everyone was taking a bus. The crowd was so thick you could barely breathe, and since Clara and I were just below the average height of everyone in the place, we were almost unnoticeable.

            The police cars showed up five minutes after we did. Come to think of it, maybe she planned that out too. But by the time we heard the faint sound of sirens, we were both holed up in a small back room.

            I think it was once a staff room for the bus drivers, but by now it was deserted of all human life and furniture.

            “Are you sure no one comes in here?” I asked.

            “Positive,” Clara replied, swinging her backpack off of her shoulders.

            “How?”

            “Because I’ve been living here for the past two months,” she said simply.

            I gaped at her. “What? How has nobody found you?”

            “I sneak in at the right times. People don’t see me in the crowds, and the staff don’t come in here. So I don’t get caught, and with luck, neither will you.”

            For five minutes, I stood listening at the door, and when I finally decided that no one was going to come charging in after us -- at least not right away, anyway -- I turned back to Clara.

            She was sitting up against the wall, closely examining some notebook from her backpack. I thought about snatching it out of her hands, but decided against it.

            “So,” I began. “Do I get an explanation?”

            Resigned, she set down the notebook. “I told you that there wasn’t much of one. I’ll tell you what I know, but really, it’s not much more than you do.”

            “That’s virtually nothing,” I cut in, “So I don’t see how you could know any less.”

            “Fair enough,” she admitted. “Okay. Let’s try this.

            “My parents used to work for an agency -- that is, back when they were alive. They died when I was two…but we’ll get to that. The thing is, I don’t know what agency they worked for, or what their job was, or anything. No one’s ever told me, mostly because they don’t know.

            “Anyway, the deal is that back when I was two years old, my parents were both found dead. Actually, my mother was dead -- my dad was still conscious, but barely. They took him to the hospital, but he was already in bad shape and didn’t have long to live. Apparently he kept saying things that sounded like gibberish to the doctors, and all they remember is him saying the name ‘Travis’ several times.

            “After that, the agency clammed up and wouldn’t release any information about their work or what happened or anything. My parents had set things up so that I would get passed along to my uncle -- he’s not really my uncle, he’s a distant cousin -- if anything happened to them. He never knew anything either, and believe me, he wasn’t cut out to take care of kids. He tried, I guess, but he just wasn’t very good at it.

            “So a year ago, I decided to do some investigating for myself. I dug around in my parents’ old records and found a phone number, some codes, a few passwords. None of them turned up any leads. So I bought a bus ticket and headed out to my parents’ old house. And that’s where I found all this stuff.”

            Clara gestured at the backpack.

            “The sunglasses and everything else. I don’t quite know what all of it does, but I’ve figured out some of it. Apparently the house was barely touched after they died. Anyway, when I was there, I found an email printed out dated from the night before they died.”

            She fished around in the backpack, and finally came up with a crumpled piece of paper. I smoothed it out and read it.

To: Frederick Stone

From: Pseudonym

Re: Operation 497

     You were right. It was Thatcher. 497 is underway -- now. This is our last chance.

     Just in case things don’t go horribly wrong, the kid’s name is Nathan T. Dalton.

     I stared at the email. “You’re kidding.”

            She shook her head. “Hardly.”

            “And this is all there is?”

            Clara nodded. “Uh-huh.”

            I hesitated before handing the paper back. “It’s a complete disconnect! Operation 497? Travis Thatcher? Then they throw my name in there?”

            “Remember that we don’t have the whole conversation. This is just the last word in it.”

            “And who’s Pseudonym?”

            Clara reached back into her backpack. “I found a couple other mentions of the name in this notebook, mostly with strings of numbers after them.”

            “Tracking numbers?”

            “Already tried it. They come up a blank.”

            I nodded. “Go on.”

            “So I looked you up -- just your name, that is. I couldn’t really find anything, but when I decided to stick Travis and Thatcher together…I got some crazy mix-ups. His name is everywhere, but you can’t find any information on him. It’s mentioned in little articles, passing mentions…But imagine my surprise when I finally found something worthwhile. Someone used the words ‘Travis’ System’ on a blog.” Clara passed me a printed out blog post. I scanned over it. It seemed like it was about pretty boring things, but my stomach did a flip when I saw the title of the blog.

“Operation 497?” I said out loud.

Clara nodded. “Since there are a lot of random blog names, I wouldn’t have thought twice, except for that there were also a few other things that didn’t make sense…including the fact that the words ‘back door’ are capitalized for seemingly no reason, and that the writer makes a very obscure reference to a main character in a movie called ‘The Hack Job,’ who’s apparently named Nathan. It could have been a coincidence…but I decided to follow up on it. The post was written from this town. So I caught another bus and came out here. I’ve been living here, in this room -- ” she gestured around the small room that was practically a closet -- “while I’ve been trying to find a new lead.”

“I wasn’t hiding or anything,” I pointed out. “Why couldn’t you find me?”

“Because I wasn’t looking specifically for you,” Clara answered. “And because I was afraid to go into any public place and be recognized. I don’t know if my uncle’s still looking for me. Anyway, I found Travis a day or two before you did. He showed up at the police station. I only know because I happened to be passing the station on my way here when he and Larson were talking outside. Travis told him his name, and I recognized it right away. After that, I hung around the police station a lot to see what I could pick up. A couple days later, they brought you in. I was outside the window, and I heard everything they said. I figured that there must be some good explanation for all this, and since Travis just as good as admitted he was framing you, I thought I’d get you out of there.” Clara leaned back and crossed her arms. “That’s all I have. Do you have anything to add?”

I shook my head, disappointed that there wasn’t more. “No. I’ve never heard of any of this in my life.”

Clara nodded, and I could sense her own regret. “Well, we have far more questions than answers.”

            “We?” I interjected. Clara raised her eyebrows.

            “I sprang you out of the station, Nathan. They’re not going to be happy with either of us. We have to stick together or they’ll catch both of us eventually.”

            I had to agree with her, but there was something about trusting a complete stranger that I was not so eager about.

            “So the plan is to catch a bus tomorrow at ten o’clock?” I said finally.

            “Yes.”

            “And you’re assuming that the police will be gone by then?”

            Clara tried to look confident, but failed. “Of course. They’ll decide we went somewhere else by then.”

            “So we’re here all night? Where are you planning on heading?”

            Clara leaned forward. “See…that’s the problem. I don’t know.”

            I have to post this before I run out of battery. Until next time…

-Nathan T. Dalton