I Am Phantom Read Online Free PDF Page B

papers layered the
floor. Posters of equations and famous scientists hung on the back walls.
    Cody
looked up from working on something when we walked in. “Drake, my man! Welcome
to our humble laboratory. Don’t mind the mess.”
    Matt
didn’t say anything, but immediately put down his backpack and started working
on the telescope thing.
    “He
seems to like this place,” I said.
    Cody
shrugged. “I’ve noticed he zones out when he works on something. Zones out more
than normal, I mean. I swore I was having a conversation with him last night in
our room. Turns out he was talking to himself.”
    “And
if I adjust this…” Matt turned something on the telescope and it began to hum.
Cody hurried over.
    “What’d
you do? I ran full diagnostics on the front brace coupling. Scans showed up
fine.”
    “Circuits
for the rear molecular stabilizers were shot. I noticed it last night.”
    “And
you didn’t leave a note?”
    “No.
Stop talking and hand me—I’ll get it.” He reached over and grabbed a
wrench off the table.
    “It
looks cool,” I said.
    Matt
paused in his work, then reemerged from under the telescope thing, his face
scrunched in confusion.
    “Are
you being sarcastic?”
    “What?
No, I’m being honest. It looks cool.”
    Matt
continued staring at me like if he did long enough I would say I was lying.
Then he returned to tinkering with it. “Thanks,” he muttered, so quietly I
almost missed it.
    “But…I
didn’t know telescopes had rear pulse stabilizers,” I said. Cody shot me a
guilty look, like a dog that had been caught doing something bad.
    “Try
to keep this under wraps, but it’s not a telescope.”
    “I
figured that. What is it?”
    “Technically
it’s a—”
    At
that moment the sliding door, well, slid open, and the same girl who had
stopped us in front of the Lab during our tour came in. Now that she was closer
I saw she was a couple years older than us. She still wore a strict lab coat
and a clipboard dangled from one hand. The calming scent of pumpkin wafted in
when she walked over and looked at me over her floral print glasses.
    “Hello.
And you are?”
    “Drake,”
Cody said, rushing to my side. “His name is Drake, Melanie. Drake, you’ve kind
of met Melanie, our floor supervisor, and Melanie, this is Drake,
our…scientist.”
    Melanie
rolled her eyes. “Does he have permission to be up here?”
    “He
does,” Cody said.
“I don’t,” I said.
    Melanie
opened the sliding door and motioned towards the hallway. “I admire your honesty
but as acting floor supervisor I’m going to have to ask you to leav—”
    “Come
on, Melanie!” Cody said, giving me a playful punch. “This is Drake Sinclair.”
      Melanie didn’t move.
“He’s from Bhutan,” Cody added.
    One
of her eyebrows perked. “You’re a foreign exchange student?”
    “Very
foreign,” Cody agreed, flashing a huge grin. “And he won’t touch anything while
he’s here.”
    “No
promises,” I said.
    “Not
helping, Drake buddy,” Cody said out of the corner of his mouth, his smile
never wavering. Melanie looked torn between throwing me out and giving in.
Finally, she dropped her arm and the door shut.
    “Don’t
make me regret this,” she said. “Dr. Carlyle, the director of this program,
sometimes comes up here, so watch yourself. If you’re caught by anybody other
than me then I can get in a lot of trouble.”
    I
recalled the man with the face squashed like a bulldog’s who had greeted us
during the tour. I would definitely try to stay out of his way.
    “I
appreciate it,” I said. “You’re here to make sure nobody does anything too
crazy?”
    Melanie
adjusted her glasses and nodded. “Yeah. Since the people in the Lab are allowed
to work on pretty much whatever they want then there’s got to be somebody to
monitor.”
    Cody
handed Matt a tool he was floundering for. “Every student has the entire year
to work on a project and have something to show for it,” he said.
    “So
what