Page 50 of Stay Scared

“How many cameras are doing this?”

“Most of them.”

“How long have they been looping?”

“I’m narrowing the start time.”

His hands move quickly across the controls, though the rest of him stays tight. One shoulder nearly brushes mine whenever he reaches for the second keyboard.

“The substitution began before you reached the red room. Your body camera dropped from our network within the same window.”

“So someone copied your access.”

His fingers stop over the keys. “Access would be easier.”

He opens a diagnostic panel. Every camera reports itself authenticated and active. Temperatures change. Connection times update. The false system behaves convincingly enough to satisfy the one Owen built.

“Can you get the live cameras back?”

“I can reach the cameras. I can’t verify that what they return is live.”

A hard knock strikes the panel behind us.

“Owen, open this.”

Cade’s voice carries through the metal.

Owen presses a control. Nothing moves.

“The lock is rejecting my command,” he calls.

“Evan is fading.”

“I’m tracing another route.”

“Trace faster.”

Cade’s shadow moves beneath the narrow gap near the floor.

Owen pulls up the building map and isolates the ride tunnel. A thin line runs behind the surveillance room toward the old control offices.

“That reaches the midway,” I say.

“It used to.”

“What happened to it?”

“We sealed that access during renovation.”

“Apparently not well enough.”

Owen takes a radio. “Cade, there’s an original maintenance passage behind your north wall. Painted panel beside the ride controls. The latch is low, about knee height.”

Metal scrapes on the other side, followed by the sound of something tearing loose.

“Found it,” Cade says.

“Follow it until the split. Take the wider branch. The narrow one dead-ends behind the old electrical room.”