The Missing Passenger Read online

  PART ONE PLANE CRASH

  In the speech-to-text code, the phrase I don’t remember lowers the probability of a lie. Liars rarely admit to forgetting something. They think it’s a hole in their story.

  —Documentation from Truth, version 2.1

  Ground Zero

  Watch out!” Bess yelled.

  Jarli looked up from his chips just in time to see the plane screaming toward them. Sunlight bounced off the wings, dazzling him. The stink of jet fuel filled his nose. His eyes widened as he saw the emergency exit gaping open above the whirling engines.

  A blast of air hit Jarli like a hurricane, sending him staggering sideways off the footpath. The wind ripped the bag of chips from his hands.

  The wings cast triangular shadows, which swept across Jarli and Bess as the plane hurtled over their heads, dropping toward the street.

  Jarli couldn’t believe it. “They’re trying an emergency landing!”

  “That’s crazy,” Bess said. “They’ll hit someone’s house!”

  The left wingtip clipped a streetlight, smashing the top off it. A blizzard of glass rained down. The right wing hit a power pole with a deafening CLANG, knocking it flat and snapping the cables. Lights went dead in all the surrounding houses.

  “Get down!” Jarli cried. He and Bess hit the ground as a broken power cable whipped through the air above them, shooting sparks. Bess was shouting something, but the engines were too loud. Jarli couldn’t hear the words.

  When he looked back at the plane, he saw that the landing gear still hadn’t come out. With a screech, the belly of the plane hit the street, flinging aluminum splinters in all directions. The wings smashed through hedges, destroying letterboxes and sending wheelie bins flying. One wing hit a parked car, flipping it over and over like in a demolition derby.

  Then the plane plowed into the big two-story house at the end of the street. The building exploded into a cloud of broken bricks and shattered glass.

  Jarli stared in horror, his hands over his mouth. Debris rained down. Dogs were barking all over the neighborhood. The trees, which had been crowded with birds a minute ago, were empty.

  “Crikey,” Bess whispered. “You think anyone was in there?”

  “I sure hope not,” Jarli said. He couldn’t hear any screaming, but his ears were still ringing.

  The hull of the plane had cracked like an egg, spilling jet fuel across the road. Smoke poured from the engines. People would see the black cloud from kilometers away.

  Thirty seconds ago the world had seemed so normal. He and Bess had just rented Snake Man 3 from the old video store on the way home from school. Bess had insisted on walking, despite her crutches. They’d bought hot chips and had been eating them as they strolled back to Jarli’s place in the afternoon sun.

  Now the sky was black, and the street was strewn with rubble. It was like they had been teleported into a war zone.

  Jarli couldn’t just stand there. “Are you hurt?” he asked Bess.

  Bess had grabbed her crutches and was trying to get up. “No. You okay?”

  “Yeah.” He helped her to her feet. “Stay back. Call 911.”

  “What about you? Jarli!”

  Jarli was already sprinting toward the downed plane and the smashed house. Someone could be in there, bleeding to death. There was no time to lose.

  The closer Jarli got, the worse the smoke became. The turbines in the engines were still spinning, creating a cyclone of unbreathable hot air that baked the insides of his lungs.

  “Hello?” Jarli’s voice was already raspy from the smoke. “Is anyone in there?”

  If anyone replied, he couldn’t hear them over the noise of the engines.

  The plane lay inside the wreckage of the house. Jarli ran up the driveway and through the smashed front wall until he reached the wing. Broken glass crunched under his shoes. His head was just below the row of passenger windows.

  He was afraid of what he might see inside. But he had to look. Dread filling his stomach, he climbed onto a pile of rubble and peered through one of the smashed windows.

  He saw nothing but empty seats.

  The plane seemed deserted.

  Relieved but wanting to be certain, Jarli circled around to the emergency exit and poked his head in. The plane had room for about a dozen people, but no one was there. Not even the pilot. The cockpit door hung open, revealing shattered controls and an empty seat.

  Everyone must have bailed midflight. But why?

  Whumpf. Flames raced across a puddle of jet fuel behind him. Jarli jumped away from the intense heat.

  If anyone was in the house, he didn’t have long to find them. He’d seen how fast a fire like this could spread.

  Covering his face with one arm, Jarli stumbled into the wrecked building. Only one wall still stood. The rest looked like ruins from ancient Rome. Chunks of the ceiling were all over the floor. Someone could be underneath the debris. Unconscious, maybe.

  Jarli’s eyes stung. The puddles of burning fuel were spreading. Behind him, near the remains of the front wall, smashed wooden beams were catching fire. Having barely escaped from a burning warehouse a few months ago, Jarli knew he was running out of time to leave. Soon his lungs would fill with deadly smoke.

  But what if someone was still alive in here?

  “Hello?” he bellowed and immediately started coughing. There was no response.

  Jarli clambered over some rubble, searching for survivors. He lifted a few chunks of brickwork—looking for an arm, a foot, anything. The hot bricks stung his hands. There was nothing underneath them except broken glass.

  He passed a smashed TV, then a crumpled fridge. There was a blackened plastic box nearby that might have been a data projector.

  Jarli looked back. His heart clenched as he saw that the fire was already climbing the walls. Smoke hid the ceiling, growing thicker every second. Jarli quickened his pace, wading through cutlery and smashed plates. The gas stove was a twisted wreck, lying on its side. This must have been the kitchen.

  The back wall of the house was missing, pushed out by the plane. He could see the backyard through the haze. The innards of the house had been scattered across the grass. A queen-size mattress was impaled on the back fence. A chest of drawers floated in the swimming pool—

  Wait. Back up. Gas stove.

  This house was connected to the gas main. When the flames reached it, the main could explode. Jarli was standing on a time bomb.

  The backyard pool was still full of water. It might protect him, but he couldn’t just jump in—he had to warn Bess about the gas. He turned and ran back the way he’d come. The fumes from the burning jet fuel still scorched his throat. The smoke surrounded him. He was dizzy and could barely see. The only light came from the flames, blazing all over the shattered beams.

  Jarli tripped over a TV and hit the ground. Broken glass stung his palms. He’d already gone past the TV… hadn’t he? Was he stumbling around in circles? Which way was the front of the house?

  Jarli got to his feet and staggered through the smoke in what he hoped was the right direction. The heat stung his eyes, so he closed them. A few steps later, he bumped into a wall.

  Only one internal wall had been left standing. At least now he knew where in the house he was. He felt his way across the bricks, eyes stinging.

  Then he tripped again and fell.

  He hit the floor shoulder first. He tried to get up, but it was hard to figure out which way up was. As he crawled along the hot wood, his arms kept collapsing under him. His muscles felt frail. He couldn’t see or breathe. The sound of the roaring flames started to fade. The heat, the light, the smell—everything was slipping out of reach.

  “Help me!” A whisper was all he could manage.
/>
  Darkness crawled in from the edges of his vision.

  False Identity

  Strong hands lifted Jarli into the air.

  He was at a Paint Rocket concert, crowd-surfing through the noisy darkness. Except he’d never been to a concert. Bands never came to Kelton.

  Soon the smoke cleared, or maybe his eyes were just working better. Something huge and yellow filled his vision. When he shifted his head, he realized it was a coat. He could see rivers of grit and ash in the creases of the plastic. He was being carried over the shoulder of a firefighter.

  Jarli’s ears had recovered just enough for him to hear shouting. Other firefighters were yelling commands at one another. Bess was calling out his name.

  It all came back to him. The plane crash. The burning house.

  The stove.

  “Gas,” Jarli mumbled. “Explosion.” No one seemed to hear him. The words didn’t come out properly. His lips felt stiff, like clay.

  When they were a safe distance from the burning plane, the firefighter set Jarli down on the curb and knelt in front of him. The air seemed impossibly cold. Jarli’s teeth were chattering.

  “Is anybody else in the house?” the firefighter asked. His gray eyes matched his bristly mustache. His skin was wrinkly except for spots where old burns had made it smooth. His name was stitched onto his uniform—KING.

  “Couldn’t find anyone,” Jarli rasped. “But—”

  “No one was in there with you?”

  Bess limped over on her crutches. “He wasn’t in the house when the plane hit,” she told the firefighter. “He ran in to look for survivors. He’s like that.”

  Jarli couldn’t tell if she was complimenting him or calling him an idiot. Maybe both. He coughed up a glob of black, shiny spit onto the road. “Gas stove,” he gasped. “In the house.”

  The firefighter was looking at someone over Bess’s shoulder. “Hey!” he yelled. “Stay back! Get that kid back!”

  Jarli looked. A few meters away, a teenage boy was sprinting toward the burning ruins of the house. He’d dropped his shopping bags, spilling apples and milk onto the road. His face was as white as the plane had been before the fire charred it.

  “Mum!” he screamed. “Dad!”

  Jarli felt sick. Were the boy’s parents in the burning ruins of the house? Had Jarli missed them somehow?

  One of the other firefighters grabbed the teenager before he could get too close to the fire. “You can’t go in there,” she yelled. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Jarli’s eyes were full of soot, sweat, and tears. He blinked, clearing his vision. Now he recognized the woman—her name was Fiona. She worked at the post office with Mum. Jarli hadn’t known she was a volunteer firefighter.

  He recognized the boy, too. It was Doug Hennessey.

  Jarli didn’t like Doug. He was a quiet, angry kid who had moved to Kelton last year and spent most of his time in class glaring at people. After Jarli’s lie detector app, Truth, had gone viral, Doug had cornered Jarli and threatened him.

  That didn’t mean Jarli was happy to see Doug’s home destroyed, though.

  “Mum!” Doug wailed again.

  “We’ve searched the house,” Fiona said. “There was no one inside.”

  “Are you sure?” Doug asked. It was strange for Jarli to see someone as scary as Doug look so frightened and desperate.

  “We’re sure. What’s your name?”

  Doug just stared at the burning plane and the shattered house.

  “Tell me your name,” Fiona said. “I’ll track down your parents and make sure they’re okay.”

  “Doug Hennessey,” Doug said finally.

  Jarli’s phone beeped in his pocket. Lie.

  Jarli’s jaw dropped. His homemade Truth app could detect lies with 99.2 percent accuracy—using word choice, tone of voice, and (sometimes) facial expressions. Releasing the app had made Jarli very unpopular among dishonest people, which had turned out to be just about everyone.

  Doug had been especially angry. And now Jarli realized why—Doug Hennessey wasn’t even his real name.

  If Doug wasn’t Doug, who was he?

  “Jarli,” Bess was saying. “Are you listening?” She and King, the firefighter with the moustache, were staring at him.

  Jarli snapped out of it. There was no time to wonder about Doug. “We have to get out of here,” he told them. “There’s a gas stove in the house.”

  Bess’s eyes widened. “Like, flammable gas? Kaboom gas?”

  King held up his gloved hands. “It’s okay,” he said. “We turned off the gas connection to the house. There’s not—”

  Boom!

  Blast Radius

  The plane turned into a fireball. The rest of Doug’s house disintegrated as a shock wave rippled across the street, cracking windows and knocking the leaves off trees. The air hit Jarli like a fist, and he fell onto his back. If he hadn’t already been sitting down, the impact could have killed him.

  He found himself staring at the tower of smoke against the blue sky, too dizzy to stand up.

  “Bess?” he called. “Bess!”

  No reply. He could hardly hear anything over the pounding of his heart.

  Jarli rolled onto his side. King was lying facedown on the road nearby, not moving.

  He said the gas had been shut off, Jarli thought. His mind was whirling. An empty plane, a false name, an impossible explosion—none of this is right.

  “Bess?” Jarli shouted again.

  Her voice floated from somewhere nearby. “I’m okay. Are you?”

  Jarli sat up. Bess was on the ground, not far away. It looked like her backpack had broken her fall.

  A flood of relief swept through Jarli. Bess had been his best friend since they were toddlers. Losing her was unthinkable.

  “I’m fine.” He reached over and grabbed the big firefighter’s shoulder. “Hey, Mr. King. Can you hear me?”

  The firefighter stirred, hands fumbling around on the asphalt. His helmet must have protected his head.

  “What happened?” he groaned.

  “The house exploded.” Right after you told us it wouldn’t, Jarli thought.

  Burning debris rained down on the other houses in the street. Firefighters blasted them and the surrounding trees with huge hoses. Steam filled the air.

  Fiona ran over and knelt next to King. “Wesley,” she said. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” King shook his head, clearing it.

  An ambulance screeched to a halt up the other end of the street. Two paramedics leaped out and ran toward Bess.

  Jarli suddenly realized he couldn’t see Doug anymore. He twisted around one way and then the other. Doug was gone.

  A woman and a man approached Jarli. The woman had a chipped tooth and dark eyes. The man was tall, with white-blond hair, saggy cheeks, and a scar on the back of his hand. They both wore normal clothes, so it took Jarli a minute to recognize them: Constable Irena Blanco and Constable Daniel Frink.

  “Jarli Durras,” Blanco said, scratching one eyebrow. “Trouble seems to follow you around, doesn’t it?”

  Jarli felt his face get hot. “This isn’t my fault.”

  “We know.” Frink crouched down next to him. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” Jarli wondered why the officers weren’t in uniform. Had they been called in on their day off? The only car nearby was an unmarked sedan farther up the street.

  “You saw the plane crash,” Blanco said. It wasn’t a question. “Then you went into the house. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Just a minute,” called one of the paramedics, who ran over to Jarli while his partner was examining Bess. “I need to get a look at him first.”

  The two cops stood back while the paramedic shone a flashlight in Jarli’s eyes. He didn’t wait for permission. “How do you feel, Jarli?”

  “Fine.”

  “Can you turn your head this way for me?”

  Jarli did. “How do you know my name?”


  “We met last year. You were in a car crash. My name’s Tyson. Now, this way, please.”

  Jarli turned his head the other way. “You have a good memory.”

  “It was memorable.” Tyson turned to the police. “His spine and brain are fine. You can take him now.”

  “Where are you taking him?” Bess asked.

  “Jarli didn’t hear the response because he’d just realized something strange. Blanco and Frink had seen him run into the house. They had been here before the plane crashed.”

  Why?

  * * *

  “What did Doug Hennessey say when he arrived at the crash site?” Frink asked.

  Jarli frowned. “Why?”

  “Just answer the question,” Blanco said.

  Jarli shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly what he said.”

  They were in an interview room at Kelton Police Department—a small concrete building opposite the town hall, which Jarli had completely ignored until the first time he got dragged in there. The smells of burned coffee and mold lingered in the air. Jarli’s chair was about as comfortable as a milk crate. A camera stood in the corner, red light blinking.

  Jarli had called his mum on the way here. She’d told him Dad would be there pronto. Her voice had been calm, but Jarli could sense the anxiety behind her words. He got the feeling she would never let him leave the house again. Mum already didn’t trust him to stay out of trouble. Even though it wasn’t his fault, the plane crash wouldn’t have helped.

  “You don’t remember what he said,” Blanco repeated, staring at her phone. “You know, your trust rating isn’t great. Seventy-one percent.”

  Jarli sighed. The police were using a rip-off of his lie-detector app called Truth Premium. It cost $0.99 and had some additional, annoying features. It used a voice-print database to identify the person talking, and then adjusted their “trust rating” as it listened. Jarli knew people who spent hours saying true things to their phones in an effort to pump up their average score.

  “Let’s say we believe you,” Blanco said. “Was there anyone else around who might have talked to Doug?”