"Are you okay?" I ask Mikey and carefully grab his arms to look at his wounds. They aren't as deep as mine, but they aren't any prettier, either.
"Yeah. Now I can finally look cool like you..." He grins and sticks his tongue out. At least his sarcasm-bone isn't broken. "My biggest dream!"
"I bet it is," I say and snatch the bottle from him just as he's about to take a sip, causing him to suckle the air. I laugh and gulp down some water. There's nothing left in the bottle by the time I'm finished.
"Great," Mikey sighs. "At least now we know I'd be the first one to die if we were ever lost in a desert."
"Hm... I already knew that." I shrug and let him slap my shoulder as revenge. I wave his next attempt away. "Stop. You should take it easy. How is your head?"
"Haven't had any complaints," he grins and Frank snickers in the front seat.
I roll my eyes. "Seriously, Mikey."
"It hurts, but nothing crazy. It's like when you sneak around in the snack drawer and bump your head against the cabinets when someone walks in on you." He removes the cloth and leans closer to me. I grimace. The wound is luckily not very deep, but it's bleeding and he will definitely get a scar from the middle of his forehead and into his thick hairline.
"We will take a closer look at it once we arrive," Will says from the passenger seat. "We'll make sure you're alright, both of you."
With that, Mikey puts the cloth back onto the wound and leans his head against the headrest. I direct my attention to the scenery outside to figure out where we're headed.
The car moves at a high speed, and the landscape smears past us. The skyline is visible from the rear window, but the skyscrapers move farther and farther away the longer we drive. We must be headed to some rural area.
"Where are we going?" Mikey asks before I can. "My arms hurt."
I admire him for admitting it. Of course they hurt. I know mine does, but I wouldn't say I was injured even if my head was cut off.
Will pulls down her bandana so it hugs her neck, and turns back to us. She has thin lips and a small, sharp nose. She's older than us, probably in her mid-twenties. "We're going far away from the city. Malcolm has planned this for a while now."
Malcolm.
Regina used that name for Dr. Pratt. It has to be him.
"How do you know him?" I ask and hope I sound curious instead of suspicious.
"He's my ex and we work together," she says and holds my gaze. It's difficult to read her, and I can't tell if she's trying to show dominance or to scare me. Probably both. "We met on the private forum."
And here I thought I couldn't get more confused. "Forum?"
"How little does he know?" Frank whispers to Will, but I hear him.
Will shrugs. "I'm sure Malcolm told him everything he could. They didn't exactly have much time to spare."
My stomach quivers each time Malcolm is mentioned. I'm not sure what I should tell them. What I can tell them. Yes, he is alive, but I still shot their friend into a coma. Every inch of me wants to tell them that he is alive, but I can't. If I tell them, they'll know I've talked with Regina. I'm not ready for the problems that might unfold. As long as I know Malcolm is okay, I can handle their accusing stares. They will learn the truth eventually, but it can't come from me.
Will hands us another bottle of water to share. This time, Mikey snags it out of my hands and grins to himself.
"The forum is where Phantom was created."
Mikey jolts forward so sudden the seat belt tightens over his chest. "The Phantom? Are you serious?" His voice is so high it hurts my ears. "Are you guys Phantoms?"
His gaze darts between me and Will, his smile growing, his eyes widening when they finally stop at Will. "I'm Wormer03!"
"Wormer?" Frank exclaims and glances at Mikey in the rearview mirror. He sounds excited. "You're Wormer? I'm Frankenstone!"
Mikey's gaze moves over to Frank. "What?!" The happiness spreading on his face makes me feel a little better about this situation. "I can't believe we're meeting like this." He shakes his head. "After, what, 3 years of talking over at the forum?"
"So you're a Phantom, too, huh." Will's face lights up. She looks at Frank, who seems to be returning the big smile underneath his bandana. "You helped us take down that disgusting neo-nazi."
"Yeah, when Will almost forgot to delete our zero-days," Frank adds and bumps his elbow gently against Will's shoulder.
I stay quiet like a question sign.
"I'm not a great hacker, okay. I mostly handle the planning and nitty-gritty details," Will says with a slight roll of her dark eyes. "Malcolm is one of the best hackers. DoctorX, if you remember?"
"The DoctorX?" Mikey gasps as if he just broke a firewall, or whatever it is hackers get excited about.
Mikey could giggle like a little kid right now and I wouldn't be surprised. He asks about the other members of Phantom. From what I can tell, Mikey and Frank have been friends online for years. I want to ask Mikey why he's never told me about Frank, but after all my negativity toward Phantom I can't really blame him.
They're discussing some infamous cyber-attacks and hackers, but I have to interrupt. I'm relieved Mikey knows these people and it makes me feel safer, but their conversation only creates more questions. Regina has made it clear what she wants from me, but what is Phantom's goal?
"So what the hell does any of this have to do with me?" My tone is sharper than I wanted, and they break off their conversation mid-sentence.
And we're back to reality.
Mikey's droops back into his seat with a loud exhale and stares out the window. There isn't a single skyscraper to see anymore, not even in the far distance. We drive past the typical Norwegian rural houses with white fences and orange roofs, few and far between, placed among green fields and blooming, full trees. It's all something I've seen before, but at the same time I haven't seen any of it. Definitely the countryside.
"What do you want?" I ask again.
"To be honest, you were never meant to be a part of this," Will starts. Her voice is flat now, the enthusiastic smile vanished from her face. "We've been planning this for months, and we knew this would be our last chance to infiltrate the NIC. Last year, when Malcolm discovered the real reason why they'd hired him, he knew we had to act. He made it a cause for Phantom to destroy their plan and that's what we're going to do this summer." She tilts her chin a little. "And even though none of you were meant to be here, we have to go through with it. We just have to protect the biochip. It's very important."
From the way she says the last bit, the chip seems to be most important part. I don't know how to feel about that. It's like a part of me isn't me anymore.
"The biochip for experiment six was supposed to be implanted into a Phantom, someone Malcolm already had gotten approved as a test subject by the NIC, but when you came along, Regina intervened. She chose you so she could prove a point to your father, despite Malcolm's reluctance. He tried to get you out of it, but she was determined."
"Regina might be the mastermind behind this," Frank says, "but your father approved Project HALO. The government is backing them up as well..." He shakes his head. "They make me sick."
Will casts a cold glance at Frank, as if he said something he wasn't supposed to, but Frank doesn't seem to notice.
"We think your father started to doubt the project, and when Regina saw you being taken into the police station, it was perfect timing for her to make you the next experiment and at the same time show your father how wrong he was about the project," Will says. "Because if she can show that even the CEO's criminal son can be monitored by a chip, how can anyone object to it? If she can control the evil and reckless, how can anyone say no?"
My eyebrows automatically lower at the word evil. I've been called careless, stupid, and even brutal, but never evil. But I guess all those words equal into the same thing anyway: Me.
"Hey, no, I don't think you're evil, okay," Will quickly corrects herself. "But that's the picture Regina wants to paint to the public. There's a reason all the former experiments have been criminals. They thought their sentences would be shortened if they volunteered. The only problem was that the older versions of the biochip never released the vaccine properly."
"Which killed them in the end," Frank adds in a solemn tone.
"Regina will do whatever it takes to make Project HALO successful," Will says. "But Malcolm deactivated your chip, and deleted every trace of the project from NIC's computers and hard drives before he helped you escape, so her plans are already at a halt." Will turns to face the road again. "He saved everything on a flash drive that only he knows where is. Regina will never find it."
I feel carsick all of a sudden.
Why would he tell them about the flash drive but not where he hid it?
My head spins with theories, but none of them are convincing.
The key burns in my shoe.
Malcolm told me to trust no one, not even his own people. There must be a reason why he warned me. A very good one. Why else would he warn me against his own ex-girlfriend and fellow Phantoms? It's not like I can ask Will or Frank why Malcolm doesn't trust them. But Malcolm trusted me with the key, and it's my turn to repay the favor.
I lock eyes with Mikey and shake my head so slowly it's barely noticeable, but he understands.
We can't tell them about the key.