“Yes, she does.” I tucked my head behind his back. The wind from the increasing speed of the motorcycle due to the perfectly paved road was becoming more brutal to my poor eyes that had seemed to run out of tears.
“Good, then we’re going to have to act fast. Once we get inside, we need to upload every piece of information on this disk to the Network. Once it’s out there, everyone will have access to it. There will be no hiding Oceania. There will be nothing Mayor Aldridge or anyone else can do. The damage will have been done. They won’t be able to do anything to us then.”
“All right.” The bike reached maximum speed and I grasped onto Dylan’s waist even tighter to ensure I wouldn’t be flung off.
By the time we reached Gran’s house, the helicopters were a little ways behind us. When Dylan stopped the bike in the driveway, we let it fall to the ground as we sprinted up onto the porch and into the house.
“What in the world is going on?” cried Gran at our sudden burst into her house.
“Hi, Gran,” I greeted, quickly brushing past her on our way toward the den.
“What?” Gran grabbed my arm. “Alexandria, what is going on? Where have you been? Everyone is looking for you!”
“Yes, I know, Gran, but I don’t have time.” As gently as possible, I wrenched my arm out of Gran’s grasp and followed Dylan into the den.
He was already working on uploading the information.
“Allie, I need your passcode to get onto the Network.” Dylan’s fingers hovered over the virtual keyboard, ready to type it in.
“5126403,” I responded quickly.
Dylan typed it in perfectly the first time. “All right, I’m in. All we need to do now is upload everything.”
Sharp banging on our front door rattled the whole house.
“Open up. There are wanted trespassers in your home!” yelled a voice I was sure belonged to the man who had posed as a phony private investigator.
“Gran, don’t answer that door!” I called out, although I knew she wouldn’t listen.
Dylan glanced at the time left on the upload. “We aren’t going to make it in time. We need to go. Is there a way to sync this with your communicator?”
“Yeah, you just touch it to the computer. It will transfer the screen and all of its contents to the omniphone and we’ll be mobile.”
“Great.” Dylan took my omniphone and placed it against the back of the computer screen. Both flashed green to indicate the connection had been made and Dylan double-checked the screen on my omniphone. “All right, let’s go.”
I heard the door open and Gran greet the man at the door.
Dylan and I slipped out of the den and into the laundry room at the back. The single window easily lifted up. Dylan went out first and then helped me out. Once we were both outside, we started running into the field behind the house.
Before we’d gotten very far, we were noticed. Suddenly, we were surrounded. Men in hover cars and the two helicopters enclosed us on all sides.
Dylan gazed down at my omniphone in his hands. I looked at it, too. The loading went from ninety-nine percent to one hundred percent.
“It’s up!” shouted Dylan, his entire face shining.
“Yeah!” I screamed as Dylan and I gave each other enthusiastic high-fives.
We did it. Now the whole world would know about Oceania. It wouldn’t be a secret anymore—billions of people would have knowledge about the underwater city. Mayor Aldridge had no power now. She could do nothing to us without angering nations across the globe. The Oceania Project to save humanity—to save only the brilliance of humanity—was out and the world governments would have to answer to its citizens.
The man in the helicopter shouted down, “Be prepared to be apprehended.”
Dylan opened his arms wide and yelled up to him. “It’s over! There’s nothing you can do about it. It is done. The world knows!”
The man in the helicopter paused, while the people around us looked at one another.
Dylan and I merely shared an equally happy grin of accomplishment. We had done it together and now it was all over.
Epilogue
A year passed and my life completely changed. For one thing, Sunnyville became a livelier place to the chagrin of most of the elderly residents there. Due to the town being the terrestrial gateway to Oceania, it became an international tourist hotspot. I still had to spend my summers with Gran, but now they promised fun and excitement.
However, the biggest change of all came from the experiences and insight of my first summer in Oceania. Gran had been right. My father’s death had affected me more than I wished to admit to anyone. My escapades under the sea had awakened a love for nature and sense of adventure that made me feel closer to my dad. It had also made me aware of my passion for doing what was right in the face of adversity. Oddly enough, it had begun to help me fix my tattered relationship with my mother. Finally, I understood her passion for her business—no matter how boring it was to me, and her compulsive need to constantly be focused on it. We’d started talking about my dad and I think that helped ease both of our pain at his loss.
As for the world finding out about Oceania…well, there were mixed reactions. Initially, there was an outcry from people around the world when they found out the origins of The Oceania Project. Almost everyone screamed that it was an injustice to keep Oceania a secret from the common people. They also felt wronged that the ones chosen
