Tracer
Chapter 36

I finished my Trenton Special still trying to figure out what kind of danger Allison could be in. First of all, how in the world did Number Nine know about the details of Allison’s trip? Okay, maybe not the details, but the simple fact that he knew about her internship and what that entailed coupled with the assertion that she had already been selected for TTOP, made me mad as hell. I mean, the last I heard from Allison was that the decision was yet to come.

Then there was Matt, or Matthew, as he kept calling him. No one called Matt anything other than Matt. Hell, he didn’t even have a nickname – not one that stuck, anyway, and it sure wasn’t Matthew. How lame would that be?

If I hadn’t seen both of them at that warehouse I would’ve dismissed Number Nine as a nutter, but something inside nagged and told me not to dismiss it. There was truth in what the man had said. But then again, how would he know about our pasts, especially Matt’s?

Number Nine said Matt had somehow figured out who he was in a past life, which would explain his secret lab experiments. This made sense at first, but when I thought about it more, I realized that Number Nine never actually said Matt had discovered his past by conducting an experiment in his basement.

Come to think of it, Matt could’ve seen his own fingerprints on the SSA website because the printless condition he has didn’t develop until a few years after his birth. So if he broke into the SSA website like he had done for me, it would show the fingerprints taken at birth and if his fingerprints were there, then his palm prints were also available on some other government database.

Had Matt hacked into the Tracer? I didn’t doubt he had the skill, but if he did, then how in the world did he get away with it? I mean, they were onto us for cracking the SSA website, let alone the Tracer.

Then I recalled what Matt had said that day. He said the Tracer was a trickier database to hack into but had delivered that line with a wink and a nod, which meant he most certainly had done it. I don’t know why I didn’t press him about it then. I guess I was too focused on my life at the time.

If Matt had accessed his past lives list through hacking techniques, then the new question was what the hell was he doing in his secret lab? What was the blue light? Did Number Nine know what Matt was up to beyond the Tracer hacking and, if so, was he funding Matt’s experiment at that warehouse on Franklin Street?

So many questions, so few answers.

I kept my head on a swivel as I made my way to the Metro. Luckily, Eye Patch and the bunch were still licking their wounds and I arrived home event-free. Unfortunately, my dad’s condition had gotten worse, but he refused to see a doctor.

I fell asleep that night as worried about everything as I had ever been.