Apolonia

by Jamie McGuire

  I struggled at first, but then he lifted me into his arms and ran full speed to the edge, leaping the incredible distance to the truck. We landed in the center and then rolled off, hitting the ground. With me still tucked in his arms, Cy pinned us under the truck and waited.

  "What are we doing?" I said through his hand.

  "Waiting for signs that we were seen."

  "Ow!" I said.

  He began to search my body with his eyes. "What is it?"

  "My elbow," I moaned, lifting up my arm. My shirt was quickly becoming a mess of dirt and blood.

  Cy uttered something that sounded like a curse as he pulled up my sleeve to get a better look. He used his fingers to feel the bone and then shook his head. "I don't think it's broken," he whispered. "Can you move it?"

  I nodded, gently extending and flexing my arm. Cy's pullover was ripped. I pulled the tear apart with my fingers to get a good look at my arm. The flesh had been scraped away, and gravel was embedded in the meaty muscle. "You were right," I said quietly. "Turns out I do have blood."

  Cy rolled his eyes and ripped the bottom part of his T-shirt, tying it around my wound. "This should do until I can clean it. Let's go."

  He took my hand, and we ran into the tall grass of the field and then across the road, back into even taller grass. I crouched down, imitating Cy. Every part of my body was freezing, except for the hand enfolded in his. He held on tight as we ran awkwardly across the muddy terrain. Once we were approximately two miles away from the warehouse, Cy finally let me stop to catch my breath.

  "I'm not sure if you knew this about me," I sputtered. "But I'm not athletic. Like...not at all."

  "Me either."

  "You're not sucking in air like I am."

  "Let's just say I'm not known for being athletic back home."

  "Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?"

  Cy looked around. "I'll try to explain everything later, but for now, we have to find Dr. Zorba, and then we have to retrieve the specimen and somehow get me to the old gas station on the south side of town by four a.m."

  "What? Why?"

  Cy made a face. "I told you. I'll explain later."

  "Dr. Z isn't home. I went there first. Soldiers were there. They didn't find him either."

  "You don't know where he went?"

  Now, it was my turn to make a face. "If I knew where he went, I wouldn't have gone to his house."

  He sighed. "Did he leave a note?"

  "I don't think he wanted the CIA to know where he was going."

  "We need to go back there. See if we can figure out where he went."

  "Why? You were stealing the rock from him anyway, right?"

  "I uploaded the final data to him and deleted it from the lab's computers before I was taken. Dr. Zorba is the only one who knows where the complete data files are stored. We have to find him, and it has to be tonight."

  Cy turned and took a step, and then he turned back around, pulling me into a tight hug. "Thank you for saving me, Rory. You don't know what you've done."

  He turned again, walking back toward town, and I followed.

  WE TREKKED THROUGH MUD AND BRUSH and jumped across ditches full to the brim with cold rainwater. My toes were almost frozen and ached with every step. Cy's pullover was warmer than my sweater, and keeping up with his pace was keeping my body temperature even. It seemed like right before I'd break a sweat, he would slow down a little bit.

  We crouched in tall grass beside the first paved road. A helicopter had been flying over the area with a spotlight since we left the warehouse, but Cy kept us just out of sight.

  "You see there?" he said, pointing. "We're going to run as fast as you can to that old garage, wait for the helicopter to pass over, and then run to the next block."

  "How do you know the helicopter will pass over that garage?"

  "Go!" Cy said, pulling me up and over the ditch, across the road, and to the garage.

  "I wish I had Silver," I said, ducking under Cy's arm and breathing hard. "Dr. Z is going to kill me for leaving it behind."

  "I don't think he's worried about that now." Cy checked his watch. After remembering it was broken, he looked away, grumbling something sounding like Arabic under his breath.

  "Was it a gift? From her?"

  "Sort of."

  "Can you just give me a straight answer?"

  Cy ducked and pulled me down with him as the helicopter flew over the garage hiding us. The blades were so loud that I didn't bother trying to talk. Once the light had touched everything in the area, the noise got farther and farther away.

  "Let's go!" Cy pulled on the coat, but I didn't budge. He turned to me, his eyebrows pulled in. "Come, Rory! We must leave!"

  "Okay, but when we get to where we're going, you're going to explain a few things. And I want straight answers. Promise me." I knew this probably wasn't the best time to be difficult, but this also wasn't the best time for him to turn me down. I wanted the truth, and I was determined to get it.

  After a second of hesitation, he nodded. "Okay, but we must go," he said, holding out his hand.

  I took it, and we bobbed and weaved in and out of shadows until we were where I'd started--Dr. Zorba's.

  A board creaked under Cy's feet, and he froze.

  "I told you, he's not here," I said, following Cy into the professor's hallway.

  "Maybe he left behind a clue of where he went. C'mon, let's get you cleaned up."

  Cy held my elbow under the faucet until he removed all the residual gravel. "First-aid kit?"

  "Try under the sink," I said, nodding.

  Cy tried under the sink and then proceeded to open every cabinet in the kitchen.

  "Found it," he said.

  Cy grabbed the clear plastic box from above the stove, and kneeled in front of me as I sat on one of Dr. Z's wooden kitchen chairs.

  Cy sprayed my wound with antiseptic, put far too many butterflies on it, and then wrapped it with gauze. "Truthfully, it needs stitches, but I don't think it's safe to take you to the hospital."

  "Agreed. Now, how are we going to find this clue you think exists?"

  "Try the easiest path first," Cy said, knocking his fist four times on the doorjamb--twice quickly, the next two slower.

  The same knock came back.

  My breath caught. Then, a trap door in the ceiling fell open, and a ladder spilled out onto the floor. Cy helped Dr. Z climb down, and I grabbed him.

  "You're okay!" I said, hugging him. From the corner of my eye, I saw Cy helping someone else from the attic. Before I even saw her face, I knew who it was and recoiled. "What is she doing here?"

  "I could ask the same of you," she said, brushing off her tight sweater.

  I frowned at Dr. Z.

  He held up his hands. "She had questions about finals. She was unfortunate enough to get mixed up in all of this."

  "So, you've been up in the attic with her this whole time?"

  "No, just when we heard someone coming. I was afraid someone was watching the house and that if she left they would grab her."

  I narrowed my eyes at Ellie. I trusted Dr. Z, but with her deep V-neck sweater revealing at least three inches of cleavage, I knew she was after more than just help with finals.

  "Stop staring at me, Rory," she snapped in her Southern drawl. "It's weird."

  "Whore," I hissed.

  "Rory!" Dr. Z said in a loud whisper.

  "It's okay." Ellie grinned. "She just wishes she had breasts."

  Her comment forced Dr. Z and Cy to glance down at the pitiful barely B cups on my chest and then at each other, both wishing they hadn't. My blood boiled, mostly because it was true.

  "Ellie, that's...quite enough," Dr. Z said, looking uncomfortable.

  "Dr. Zorba, I need the flash drive," Cy said.

  "The--"

  "Yes, with the data we've collected and your complete set of notes."

  "Cyrus, I regret that I cannot. It's the only complete file I have. It also contains my t
hesis. With Tennison snooping around, I cleared everything from my computers and--"

  "Good," Cyrus said. "That saves me a trip back to campus. What about your personal computers?"

  "They're all wiped. I didn't want my hard work getting into the wrong hands."

  "Me either. That's why I need it."

  Dr. Z stared at Cy for a long time. "I'm sorry, Cyrus. I appreciate all you've done, but--"

  "It's important, Argus," Cy said. "Please."

  Dr. Z's eyebrows pulled in, forming a deep crease between them. "Argus is my first name, and no one calls me Argus but my mother. How do you know that name?"

  I looked to Cy, wondering how he knew half of what he did. Part of me wondered what side he was on. He had helped Dr. Zorba, but then he was going to steal the specimen from him. To anyone else, Cy would seem like the enemy, but something inside of me told me he wasn't.

  "Dr. Z," I said quietly, "give it to him."

  The professor's eyes bounced back and forth between Cy and me, and then he let out a sigh in surrender. "I don't suppose you're both working for Tennison?"

  Ellie crossed her arms. "Wouldn't surprise me."

  "You know all of zero about this, Ellie, so shut the hell up," I hissed.

  "We've spent all day in this house and in that attic. I know quite a bit actually."

  Cy looked at the professor. "What have you told her?"

  "Nothing sensitive," Dr. Z said. "Almost nothing. It's been a long day. We ran out of things to talk about."

  Cy took Dr. Z's arm and led him into the professor's study. They conversed quietly, leaving Ellie and me alone to glare each other down.

  "Is that who spent the night in your room?" she asked, nodding to Cy.

  I could tell she was goading me, so I said nothing. I didn't want to give her the satisfaction.

  She laughed once. "What am I saying? He is way out of your league."

  My eyes targeted her. "At least I don't have to fuck geriatrics for grades."

  Ellie smiled, clearly amused she'd gotten under my skin. "Oh, Rory," she lilted and then circled slowly around me, "I could smile at them and get the grades. I don't have to fuck anyone. I'm just attracted to intelligence, which is why I find nothing appealing about you at all."

  Just when I was about to spit more venom at her, Cy and the professor returned.

  "I have it, Rory. I'm afraid it's time for me to go." He glanced at his broken watch. "I must be at the remaining foundation of that old gas station next to the Old River Bridge at a very specific time. If I'm not, I don't know what will happen."

  Ellie leaned down. At first, it didn't occur to me to react. Even when she pulled a small pistol from her boot and pointed it at Cy, it took me a second to register what was happening.

  Dr. Z's eyes widened. "Ellie, what on earth--"

  Ellie kept her gun on Cy. "Before you scoot along, handsome, how about you give me that flash drive?"

  Cy was disturbingly calm. "I knew Tennison had to have a contact on campus."

  Ellie laughed, and then suddenly her Southern accent disappeared. "You're a goddamn genius, aren't you? Hand it over."

  "But...you're a student." My brain couldn't wrap my head around it. I kept thinking that she must have been sleeping with this Tennison and got pulled into this somehow.

  "Rory, really. For someone who watched her mother and best friend get raped and murdered right in front of her eyes, you're so naive." My jaw clenched. She looked at Cy again. "Give me the flash drive, or I'm going to put a bullet right through your heart." She shrugged. "Or the general area of what should be your heart anyway."

  My nose wrinkled. She didn't make any sense.

  I walked up to her.

  "Rory, don't," Cy warned.

  I stood between Cy and Ellie. "Don't point that at him," I said, my voice low and full of warning.

  Ellie smiled. "You really are thick, aren't you? Get out of my way before I shoot you in your fucking face." She looked around me. "I'm going to kill your little girlfriend, Cyrus. How is that going to sit with your council?"

  "Rory, move. Ellie, just...let's all calm down. I'll give this to you if you guarantee Majestic will leave Rory alone. Forever," he said, holding out his fist.

  She chuckled. "You know I can't make that promise. There's at least one jackass in our department who can't stay away from her."

  "Benji," Cy said.

  I looked at Cy and then at Ellie. "You've wanted to believe he couldn't be trusted from day one. That doesn't make sense anyway. Benji's not even twenty, and you immediately assume that he is working for the CIA?"

  "I'm willing to believe it," Cy said.

  "Of course you are! But it's ridiculous!" I said. "Someone else is out there, watching us, and you're so set on Benji being the bad guy that you're going to overlook clues to who it really is!"

  "Aw. Are you going to cry now? Does it hurt your feelings to think that you might not be able to trust the only friend you have?"

  Dr. Z watched Cy, Ellie, and then me. "Rory..."

  "No." I shook my head. "Just think about it for a second. How many hoops does a person have to get through before being accepted into the CIA?"

  "How old is Ellie? They could be recruiting out of high school for all you know," Cy said.

  "Yes," Ellie sneered. "Because there's no way I could be older and just be posing as a college student. How did any of you make it into KIT without being able to add two and two?"

  "It's not Benji," I said. "She's full of shit for once instead of geriatrics."

  She knew Benji was my friend, and she was trying to separate us from our allies. I wasn't educated on intelligence tactics, but KIT didn't accept students on personality alone.

  "Keep talking, bitch," Ellie said, cocking her gun.

  "You might work for Majestic, but they pimped you out. You're a legit whore after all."

  "Yep, I'm going to shoot your pet in the face, Cy," Ellie said, aiming.

  I raised my hands, one on each side of my shoulder. "Make her more promises, Cy. I'm super scared right now. Really."

  "Rory, take steps back, toward me. Right. Now," Cy said again. This time, his voice was tinged with desperation.

  "Okay," I said calmly. "I'm going to take a step back now." Before Ellie could mouth off again, I reached for her gun, pulled it out of her hands, and flipped the barrel so that it was facing her. I cupped the grip of the gun in my hand, getting a feel for it. The move felt as if it all happened in slow motion, but in reality, it was about two seconds.

  "Last time I checked, they didn't teach that in self-defense class," Ellie said, clearly surprised.

  "I took an advanced class."

  It wasn't a total lie. Sydney's older brother, Sam, had picked up a lot of useful things during his time in Afghanistan. He took her death hard, and his way of forgiving himself for not teaching his baby sister how to defend herself was to teach me. This turnaround trick was the last thing he'd taught me, and other than Sam, Ellie was the first person to see me use it.

  I was just relieved it worked. I hadn't practiced it in over a year.

  I held the pistol in front of me, aiming straight for her forehead.

  "Rory, don't!" Cy said.

  Ellie took that momentary distraction to bolt, pushing through Dr. Z's screen door. I followed her, but she had already disappeared into the darkness.

  "I am so confused," Dr. Zorba said, wiping the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand.

  "Can I have the flash drive now?" Cy asked.

  I turned to him. "I thought you said you had it?"

  "I had to provoke her. Something wasn't right."

  I smiled. "Congratulations, Cy. You just told your first lie."

  He opened his hand, revealing a screw. "I said I had it. I didn't say what it was. Still not a lie."

  "Close enough."

  "The truth," Dr. Z said, exhaustion in his voice. "If you tell me the truth, I'll give you the flash drive. I just need to know."

  Cy looked a
t me and then to Dr. Zorba. "We haven't much time. They know we're here. They'll come for us." He glanced at me. "All of us."

  "Then give me the short version," Dr. Z said simply.

  Cy thought about this for a moment and then nodded. "Okay. You might want to sit down, Professor."

  DR. Z SAT NEXT TO ME on his green crushed-velvet couch. It had seen better days, I was sure. I was also sure he'd found it at a garage sale like the rest of the furniture in his home.

  Dr. Z was a humble man even though he'd won a Fields Medal, the Hubbard Medal, and the international Balzan Prize. He was the most respected man in his field, even before his tenure. He expected to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry one day for his thirty years of research on the calcium-sensitive proteins within cells and their biochemical language. But for a little over a year, he'd been obsessed with newly discovered, unusually regular radio signals coming from an unknown object in Galaxy M82. His oldest and most trusted friend, Lucius Brahmberger, a renowned astrophysicist, had discovered the signal, and together, they had begun investigating the anomaly and Erich von Daniken's paleocontact hypothesis.

  Seven months after Brahmberger had first heard the radio signals, he'd disappeared. Dr. Z had remained committed to continuing their research, believing that doing so would lead him to his friend. He had been given a tip from a secret government contact about a meteorite landing in Cape Hallett, an Antarctic Specially Protected Area. Knowing this, Dr. Z had packed his bags and left immediately. When he'd come back, he was more consumed by his work than ever. He had been tracking this particular meteorite since not long after Dr. Brahmberger's disappearance, and Dr. Z was convinced that because of its trajectory, radioactive dating, and reflectance spectra, the rock's origin was the same as the signal's.

  He lectured to his classes, giving no one any reason to ask questions. Every other moment of the day, Dr. Z was in his lab, studying his specimen and gathering data. He told me about the rock right away, but no one else--as far as I knew. He was convinced that if he learned enough about the rock, somehow that knowledge would lead him to his friend.

  Waiting for Cy to offer some epiphany that Dr. Z had been waiting fifteen months for, Dr. Z was wringing his hands and shifting on the couch cushion. I'd never seen him so apprehensive. Even back when he realized that Majestic was after his rock, he had a confident, mischievous look in his eyes, as if he were accepting the challenge. Nothing seemed to intimidate Dr. Z. He knew then that he was truly onto something, and now that he knew the answer was just a few moments away, he was a wreck, waiting anxiously for Cy to tell him what it was.