The Generators

12. Taya

Jack carefully brushed a lock of his dark hair out of his face, and reached around Luce, who was fast asleep, nestled on his lap, so that he could reach his computer. "Right. I need seven keywords to get into this thing, and then hopefully we get a gold mine of information. But we only have nine chances or guesses. Which means we can't get more than two wrong. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if we don't get this right now, it's over. I mean, they'll patch up the hole, and we'll get shut out. We've really only got one chance."

"Shit," Charlie said, slamming his palm down on the coffee table. Luce stirred, prompting Jack to send Charlie a menacing look.

"It can't be that hard," I said. "Let's start with words we definitely know will be in here. Here's three. Power, Energy, Source."

Jack's fingers danced across the keyboard, we all held our breaths as he clicked enter. When he let out a sigh of relief, it was felt between us all. "Only four left, good work Taya."

"How about "boy"?" Roo suggested, "we know Baylor is planning to use Campion somehow. And "boy" seems general enough."

A few clicks and a nod from Jack meant we only had three more.

"What about mutant and PRRP," Charlie added, craning his neck over to look at the computer screen as Jack typed them in.

A particularly aggressive chime sounded, and Jack's face fell a little bit. "PRRP worked. Mutants did not."

"Why would that be?" Theo thought aloud, finishing his coffee in one large gulp. "I suppose," he began, answering his own question, "These documents are from the Ethics Board, right?"

"Yeah." Jack replied, "straight from the top. It's only because of a little sloppy cybersecurity that I could even dig enough tunnels to find it."

"Well then...it can't be anything that outright talks about the procedure. Because all of the Ethics' Board documents eventually go into the public domain, I mean it'll take about a decade so it won't be much use then. But say, in ten years, someone did find this with all of the details, it would expose them on so many levels. We've got to think about this like a scientific document, a real report from a researcher."

"Try "research" then." Navi put in. "you can't say stolen data, research sounds nicer."

"Research worked."

"Battery?" Roo suggested. It didn't work. Which meant we only had one more wrong guess.

"Come on, guys, we can do this," Theo said as he paced. "It's not stolen data it's research. It's not mutants its PRRP. We can't say anything about data collection, we can't say missions because that implies stolen data. We can't say anything about Baylor using Campion's body as a big battery. I'm at a loss, what are we missing?"

It was quiet for a few minutes. But those minutes felt like hours as I sifted through the information in my head and tried to think of it like Baylor would. We had one more chance, or else it was all over. Battery. The word ran through my mind in a constant loop, something was wrong with it, and I couldn't figure out what. How in the world could battery not be a keyword, that's exactly what Baylor was using him for...right?

Campion wasn't a battery. A battery just held fuel that could be converted into energy. Campion wasn't holding the fuel. He was the fuel; he made it. "Generator," I said slowly and quietly at first just to myself. Thinking it through once more, I said it again this time louder. "Generator. Try Generator."

"I'm not sure..." Charlie, of course, spoke up. "We only have one chance, and you want to use a generator?"

"Just think about it Charlie, Campion can't be a battery because he creates energy where there is one. He doesn't just hold on to it. Plus, a battery can't last like a generator can. A battery runs out. Just think about it, please? Please, I know I'm right." Theo seemed to weigh his options, massaging the back of his neck anxiously.

"She's right," Roo said, looking at me confidently. "Taya is right. If it isn't a generator, then it's nothing."

The clock ticked, the beat thumping through my whole body. If I wasn't right about this, then we'd be another ten steps behind, and we didn't have time for that. But at the same time, imagining what was on those files seemed just as scary.

"Okay," Theo said, grabbing my hand and holding it tight. "I trust you." he gave a nod to Jack, and I couldn't bear to look as he typed each of the nine letters. G.e.n.e.r.a.t.o.r.

"We're in."

In an instant, we were all huddled around the computer screen as Jack skimmed through the information.

"What.the. Hell," Sam said, letting out a low whistle as hundreds of pages, graphs, and diagrams flew by. It made me wish I'd never said anything at all because having to go a long way would've been better than this. We didn't need to see all this; it made my blood curdle. It was horrifying. It made whatever Baylor was doing to Campion now look like the luxury treatment.

"Look!" Navi said, halting Jack's skimming as she pointed to the screen. There was a file from here, The American Civil Insititute, the only one with those thick black redaction lines, the only thing that hadn't been blacked out was a name. Her name.

Magdalenea Benedict.

"Isn't that?" Roo began squinting her eyes to get a better look at the words.

"Yeah. That's Phineas and Virginia Benedicts' daughter. The really sick one." Sam said.

"Like, the Phineas and Virginia Benedict?" Navi squeaked.

"Members of the Board of Ethics, owners of Benedict Technologies, the largest conglomerate in the world," he replied. The Benedicts were the richest family in the world, they owned everything you could think of, and probably more. They made the clothes on our backs, put our food on the table, and were responsible for the rooves over our heads.

"But that can't be right." Navi protested, refusing to believe what was clearly the truth. "They're mutants too, they represent us on the Board."

"They're already doing it, you know." we all turned to see Luce, rubbing her eyes.

"Doing it?" Sam asked.

"Their secret reactor core that powers the Benedict Compound, almost all of the eastern seaboard?" Luce's big brown eyes looked sad as she said it.

"They're-" I shut my eyes and backed away. "They-re-" I was shaking with rage and horror. "They're harvesting their own daughter."

This concludes Act One: Occhiolism. 

xoxo

G.A