Chapter 2

The next morning the four of us sprawled out around the Bunker. It was time to find information about Anthony Oliver. The most obvious place to start was Facebook.

After fifteen minutes I sighed in frustration. "This isn't getting me anywhere. Do you have any idea how many Anthony Oliver's there are on Facebook?"

"Probably fewer than the ones listed in the phonebook," Hi mused. Using the names of Anthony's parents from the news article; Hi was trying to narrow down where in Queens he might live.

"You're both wasting your time," Shelton said. "There's no way you'll find anything like that."

"Then what are you doing, smart guy?"

"I took the picture from the first article and ran it through a facial recognition program. It'll scan the Internet for anyone with similar facial features."

"How does that help narrow it down? There could be a thousand people who have 'similar facial features'. Heck, he looks like a young Nicholas Hoult!"

"Who?" Ben asked, not looking up from his laptop.

"The Beast."

"Still not ringing any bells."

"From X-men? You went with us to see the movie!" I thought back to when I saw X-men with the boys when it first came out. I vaguely remembered a guy that turned into a raging beast. Or maybe that was the Hulk. I got them mixed up sometimes. Marvel wasn't my thing. DC all the way for this girl.

Hi and Ben continued their conversation about the movie, and who Nicholas Hoult was.

Shelton remained uninterested in the debate. I moved to the empty seat beside him, looking to see what he had found.

"Any luck with that program of yours?"

"A little. I can weed out what I know is wrong as it comes up on the search. This is the most promising so far." Shelton clicked on a photo of a group of five kids, two boys and three girls. One of them looked a great deal like the picture of Anthony Oliver we found on the first search.

"It's from an online yearbook. Grover Cleveland High School, in Queens."

"Can you get anything else from it?" I leaned forward in my seat. This might be our breakthrough.

"A caption from the yearbook, but that's about it. To see the whole thing you need to be a student from the school. Let's see…'friends Anthony O., Aiden M., Rachel F., Charlotte M. and Gabrielle C. enjoys a relaxing morning on the front steps'."

"That's all you can get?" While it wasn't much to go on, it was more than we had before.

"Ask me again in twenty minutes. Now we know what school he goes to."

"What are we planning to do when we do track him down, Tory?" Ben asked, ending his debate with Hi. Apparently they had been listening to some degree the entire time.

"Ideally? Get in touch with him and see if his story checks out. If what happened to him is the same as what happened to me, he might know more than we do."

"Or he can be a fruit loop," Hi unhelpfully offered. "We've taken some stabs in the dark, but this is like a blindfolded blind man at midnight trying to shoot a target half a mile away."

"Your confidence is overwhelming, Hiram."

"I'm just being realistic."

"Well, go be realistic over there." Shelton pointed to a chair on the opposite side of the bunker. "You're distracting me."

Hi stopped talking, but remained in his seat.

Waiting for Shelton to finish his hacking magic, I decided to be productive and run another search on virtual reality technology. I'd see plenty of movies that contained the idea of being in a virtual reality, but I never imagined that the technology could be real. Not to the extent that I was in. Thimba's program convinced me that it was real, and I had no way of knowing that it wasn't. To my knowledge, that was impossible.

As I poured over articles I let my mind drift to my time before being kidnapped. A lot of it was a gray blank, but pieces would come back if I sat and concentrated.

I left Bolton early. That day, like many in late spring, was rainy. I remembered feeling the steady rain soak through my blazer as I walked down the street. Everything after that was still a mystery. And it frustrated me to no end.

"Tory?" Hi asked, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"What?" I turned to look at Hi. He eyed me carefully.

"Shelton's got a plan." I refocused quickly. Now wasn't the time to be daydreaming.

Shelton cleared his throat. "So, what I want to do is kinda illegal, but it'll give us everything we need."

"Famous last words." Ben sported a smirk.

"Shut up." Shelton glared icily at Ben. "Anywho. Since I'm pretty sure this is what school Anthony goes to, I can hack into the school's systems and pull his file. Once I have it I will know everything about him."

"Please don't tell me how you do it." Hi held his hands up. "I don't want to be called as witness when they catch you and charge your ass with cybercrime."

"Are you sure you found the right kid? This is some serious stuff, Shelton." My voice quivered with tension.

"It looks like the same kid from the article. But beyond that, no, I have no way of knowing for sure."

The boys looked to me. Moving forward was my decision. If something went wrong, it would be on my shoulders. Deep down I knew that finding Anthony was the key to tracking Thimba. The boys all knew it, too.

"Do what you need to." My decision was final. Shelton nodded and went back to his computer.

While Shelton worked the rest of us slipped outside. When hardcore hacking was going on, it was best to leave him alone.

The sun beat on the back of my neck. We were only a week into summer vacation, but Lowcountry weather didn't heed to my school's prescribed break time. The scorching rays today mirrored what we would be facing the next two and a half months.

"Now what? Shelton's going to be held up in there all afternoon." Hi gazed longingly at the ocean.

I grinned, liking the way he was thinking. The water was an inviting relief from the heat of the day.

Letting out a war cry, if the warrior had severe asthma, Hi stormed for the water. Ben and I followed in pursuit.
I stopped shin deep and let the water lap at my legs. Remnants from the storm the night before, pieces of drift wood and clumps of seaweed, brushed against my calves.

Ben and Hi were out farther, goofing around in the cool water. As I watched them, an unsettling feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. Despite the heat, I felt a chill run down my back.

I flipped around and scanned the beach behind me. Nothing stood out. Besides the four of us, no one knew this bunker existed. So why did I have this chilling feeling that I was being watched?

"Tory! Can you give me a hand?" Back in the water, Ben and Hi were having some kind of wresting match. Well, it was more like Ben and Hi in a headlock. His arms flailed uselessly as he tried to break free of Ben's iron grip.

Forgetting the strange feeling I had, I ran out to join the boys. Chalking it up to paranoia and stress I spent the next hour playing in the water. For a little while longer I wanted to convince myself that everything was all right.

Even though deep down I knew it wasn't.

Not sure how I feel about this chapter. The first few might be slow until things get moving. I don't want to rush into the story, so please stick with me. I've got some great things planned for this story. Hopefully you enjoyed it to some degree.

~Wolfie