“No, the doughnuts!” moaned Shade.
“What?” Only Shade would make such a bizarre remark out of nowhere.
Shade leaned forward and nodded at the passenger seat through the locked Plexiglas window separating the front and back seats. Then Winston saw it. The unmistakable pink cardboard of a Voodoo Doughnut box lay squished underneath Winston’s backpack.
“Those are the best doughnuts in the world,” said Shade. “Vanilla frosting topped with Fruit Loops. Bacon maple bar. Chocolate topped with Oreos and peanut butter…”
“I get it!” said Winston, feeling himself salivate at the menu. The legendary Portland doughnut shop was only two blocks away, but it might as well have been around the world. “Tell you what. If you can get us out of here, I’ll find a way to get us to Voo—”
He froze as the two pieces clicked into place in his mind’s eye.
Of course.
Shade glanced at him. “What?”
“I know why Mr. A picked that circular thing as the first piece to retrieve. And I know why he led us to the Shanghai Tunnels and worked on that construction crew.”
Shade waited as Winston’s mind continued to buzz. “Aaaand?” he finally asked.
“Come on. The answer is staring you in the face. Or maybe your stomach.”
Shade’s brows wrinkled in confusion. He looked down at his belly, then slowly back up to the crushed Voodoo box, then suddenly back at Winston, his features lighting up. “It’s a doughnut! That thing is an alien doughnut!”
If Winston’s hands hadn’t been trapped behind his back, he would’ve slapped his forehead.
“He hid it under Voodoo Doughnuts, laser brain!”
“Well…” Shade cocked his head and rolled his shoulders. “Obviously. But I mean, it could still be an alien doughnut. Or wait…” A sly expression came over his face. “Voodoo Doughnut — singular — wasn’t founded until the early 1990s. You said Mr. A hid the Alpha Machine pieces in the ‘70s.”
Winston rolled his eyes. “Duh — time machine! He knew where Voodoo would be someday.”
Shade grimaced. “Argh! Right. Sorry.” His eyes bulged as another thought struck him. “But how do you know it’s under Voodoo and not, like, part of a wall decoration?”
“The tunnels. And back in the basement, I saw the work crew cementing over a hole in the floor. That has to be the access point to the tunnels that still exists today. He knew what our options would be. That also might explain part of why he had to go back so far in time to hide the pieces.”
Shade appeared dubious. “Why all the sneaking? Why couldn’t we just break into Voodoo tonight and see if there’s a way into the tunnels right there? Maybe after grabbing a Portland cream or an apple fritter or a—”
“I don’t know.” Winston inhaled deeply, half-lost in concentration. “Maybe there’s no access from there. Or maybe he knew we’d get caught that way.”
“Hey, check it out.” Shade glanced about through the car windows. No one seemed to be paying them any attention. A new vehicle had just pulled up behind them. Its driver jogged to Bledsoe. Judging by the green paint splattered all over the newcomer’s head and clothes, Winston had a fair guess that this was Agent Vernon Smith.
“This is fascinating and all,” said Shade, “but I’m hungry and there are Voodoo doughnuts three feet away getting smooshed by your stupid bag.”
“Will you please stop—!”
“Reach into my belt,” interrupted Shade as he turned his back to Winston.
This was a random moment of unprecedented strangeness, even for Shade. “Excuse me?”
“My belt is made of hemp fabric. In the middle, on the inside of the fabric, you’ll find two pins woven into the belt. Pull one out.”
Winston wanted to ask what on earth his friend was talking about but figured it would be quicker to simply do as asked. He scanned the area around them to make sure no one was watching them, then turned his back to Shade and managed to slip his fingers between the belt and his jeans. At first, Winston felt nothing until something sharp pricked his fingertip.
“Ow!” Winston cried, instinctively pulling away.
“That’s it,” said Shade. “Find the pin’s head and pull it out sideways.”
Winston felt around more carefully and found the round plastic ball of the pin head, no more than a few millimeters wide.
“Why do you have pins in your belt?” asked Winston.
“For just this reason, obviously.”
Winston slid the pin out and carefully set it between Shade’s thumb and forefinger. His friend gripped it firmly between his fingertips.
“You expected to be arrested?”
Shade repositioned himself to see over his shoulder and down at where their two pairs of hands lay together against the smalls of their backs. “Not exactly. This was a line item on my #4 Security List: What to Do When on the Run During a Zombie Outbreak. You never know if someone will hold you captive for medical research. Now hold still.”
Winston fought the urge to turn and stare. “You never told me about this list.”
“I thought you’d laugh at me.”
Winston immediately saw what Shade was trying to do. These were heavy-duty, lockless zip ties. Supposedly, the only way out of them was to cut them off with huge scissors. But they still used the basic ratcheting mechanic of any other zip tie. All Shade had to do was slip the pin between the internal tab and the corrugated zip cord and…
“Now, slowly,” said Shade. “Don’t pull away from the pin. Just wiggle your wrists and loosen the ties.”
Winston did and immediately felt the pressure ease off his wrists. When he had his hands several inches apart, he slipped one hand out of the plastic noose, then the other.
“OK, I promise not to laugh,” Winston said. “This time.”
He pulled the pin out of his own bonds and copied the example on Shade’s set. A few seconds later, both boys were free. Shade, ever the pragmatic pack rat, stuffed both sets of zip ties in his pocket. The pin had apparently fallen out of sight on the floor.
They surveyed the area around them while Bledsoe and Agent Smith argued. Smith had his hands on his green-spattered hips, and Bledsoe pointed angrily at Smith’s chest. The remaining cops were preoccupied with the slowly dispersing crowd, and their backs were to the car.
“Level one, complete,” said Winston. “Got any more gadgets on you for getting us out of here? Maybe a cloak of invisibility?”
They examined the doors, which had no handles or lock releases. Steel bars covered the windows.
“Can you use Little e—” Shade started, then, thinking one step further, finished with, “Oh. Never mind.”
“I threw it to the side right when that grenade exploded,” said Winston. “Hopefully, it went behind that pile of bricks in that little gap along the long wall, but I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything until they already had me up and moving. That Duke Nukem agent will probably come out of there with it any second now.”
Winston cast about for anything they could use or do to escape. If they tried to kick out the windows, the police would be on them in a second.
“We could pretend to be having seizures,” Winston said.
“Without cuffs?”
“We could put them back on. Maybe they’d take us to the hospital.”
Shade shook his head. “And post armed guards over us. Meanwhile, you’re minus two alien artifacts.”
“We could stay here with the cuffs on loosely. Maybe it would be like taking Chewbacca into cell block nine. Maybe we could make a break for it at a better point later.”
Shade stared at him with something between accusation and disbelief at such a dumb idea.
“Well—!” Winston’s brain locked up as he was unable to pick out a single expletive from the crowd in his mouth. “I don’t know!”
Then Shade’s mouth started to curve up into a smile while his eyes grew curious and cunning. “Luke,” he said, “turn off your targeting c
omputer. Let go, Luke.”
For an instant, Winston wondered if the grenade had rattled Shade’s brain loose. “I don’t—”
“Use the Force, Luke. Without the machinery.” He nodded toward Winston’s door lock.
Winston thought he understood. It wouldn’t work. He needed Little e. Then again, if the book chute had acted like a big antenna for extending a signal, could Little e also be some kind of extender? Could Winston do it without the device?
Then he realized he could. The Stadlerator 7000 was proof. He had done it at close range with nothing but his mind.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
Trying to keep his shoulders low to preserve the illusion of being handcuffed, Winston reached up with his left hand and pressed a fingertip into the door lock’s hole, allowing his skin to barely make contact with the metal pin.
It was enough. Concentrating, Winston felt himself faintly connect with the vehicle. He didn’t feel any pressure in the back of his head, so that must be some sort of power level perception from using Little e’s extra juice. But he saw the blue schematics begin to materialize before him. The door beside him dimmed in his vision while the motor below the internal lock materialized in a faint, glowing blue outline. Two wires led away from this, back into the electrical system, which connected in turn to the engine and then into the car’s other sub-systems.
He had it. Solving the vehicle’s communications protocols was like visualizing how to solve a Rubik’s cube, but he’d already done it once before outside the library. This time, part of his mind already knew how to complete the puzzle. It was easy.
Winston sensed the energy slowly squeezing out of him. He felt hot all over as his body worked to convert stored energy into something his half-alien brain could use for this task. He swallowed with a dry throat, felt sweat beading on his forehead.
The door lock clicked open.
“Right there!” said Shade.
“Hold it,” said Winston, struggling to keep the car’s schematics and systems bright and connected in front of him. “I think I can control this one’s steering, but…we’re only going to get one shot at this.”
“Great,” said Shade. “What’s the plan? You gonna drive us out of here?”
“No. I’m going to run Bledsoe over.”
Struggling to keep his concentration, Winston couldn’t see Shade’s face, but he didn’t have to see it to know what was coming.
“No, dude, you can’t do that! Running people over with cars kills them, you know?”
“I won’t hit him that fast. And remember, he’s got QVs, too. Reinforced bones. I bet he’ll be fine.”
“You bet? What if you’re wrong?”
In a flash that set the blue electrical schematics wavering and dimming, Winston recalled his mother’s tears from yesterday and her description of how Bledsoe and Project Majestic had reduced her life to fear and seclusion.
Winston realized that he wouldn’t mind being wrong, and realizing that made him wonder again what he was becoming. Was it OK to kill someone in a moment like this, someone who wanted to turn him into a lab experiment and torture him for the rest of his life? Maybe. But was it wrong to take pleasure at the idea? And if so, what did that make Winston?
He didn’t know. Right now, he didn’t want to know.
With a sudden thump, the locks in the other three doors doors simultaneously opened.
“I’m going to hit the ignition and go,” said Winston, “and you’re going to grab our stuff the instant we stop. Got it?”
Shade nodded, wide-eyed. He exhaled, puffing out his round cheeks like it was right before the ball snap on a fourth down and goal.
Winston took a deep breath. “In three…two…”
20
Retreat Under the Street
“I called the bank manager,” said the paint-smothered Agent Smith, and Bledsoe felt a twinge of concern flit through his mind.
“Excuse me?” he asked. This junior Boy Scout’s thinking had better not be driving this direction. Bledsoe didn’t have time for delays. He needed to add the Chase boy to his prisoner collection and start asking questions. Everything else was merely annoying distraction.
Smith pursed his lips and swallowed, clearly nervous but determined to speak his mind. “I called the manager, and she was kind enough to send me some of the surveillance footage from yesterday. That kid—” He pointed to Winston’s head in the back of the cruiser. “—had been crying when he was in the vault. Did you know that?”
Bledsoe studied Smith critically, as if really noticing him for the first time. He slipped off his suit jacket and folded it neatly over his left arm. “I did. And if you had just gotten your suicide mission and picked up the nuclear materials for your dirty bomb, you’d probably be crying, too.”
“There’s only one problem with that theory,” said Smith. “According to the manager’s records, that deposit box hasn’t been accessed in years. And Winston Chase has no known connection to anything remotely related to terrorism.”
“He’s a plant!” said Bledsoe, beginning to lose patience. “Terrorists groom these people practically from the crib. They grow up here. They look like us, act like us, but in their hearts and minds they’re foreign terrorists.”
Smith gestured at the cruiser again. “These two are fourteen years old, born in 1999. I did a little searching and found that the first attempt at a dirty bomb was made by Chechen rebels in 1995. That bank started logging vault accesses by computer in 1983, and who knows how long it sat there before that — maybe even back to when it was first rented in 1976.”
Bledsoe said nothing. His body remained motionless, although the color was rising in his cheeks and his eyes flicked around to see who else might be within hearing range. No one seemed to be listening. Good. Bledsoe was willing to bet that Junior Agent hadn’t thought to tell anyone else of his findings.
“Agent Smith,” Bledsoe enunciated, “who will hopefully still be an agent by the end of this day, we are in the middle of thwarting a terrorist operation. In this war, you are either with us or against us. Exactly which side are you on?”
Before Smith could answer, the police cruiser behind Bledsoe suddenly roared to life. The engine screamed like a wild animal, then its wheels blurred as they spun, whipping up white smoke. A split second later, the car leaped into motion.
Smith’s youth worked in his favor. From his peripheral vision, Bledsoe saw the agent lunge to the side. The cruiser passed only inches from his shoe as he flew through the air.
Bledsoe was not as quick, and even before he could think to move, the cruiser’s hood rammed into his body.
***
Tires squealed, and the police cruiser rocketed forward, throwing Winston and Shade back against their seats. The jarring almost caused Winston to lose his concentration and disconnect his mind from the car’s electrical systems, but he held on, keeping the blue schematics bright before him.
Up ahead through the windshield, Bledsoe turned his head, face shifting from smug and sneering to slack and open with surprise. The car and Bledsoe were only twenty feet apart. Agent Smith must have caught the cruiser’s movement in the corner of his eye just as he was hearing the tires.
Time ground down to a crawl.
Shade’s hands smacked into the glass divider for support just as he was starting to say, “Winston, you can’t—!”
Winston adjusted the car’s trajectory, nudging it a bit to the right to make sure that it would miss the open hatch on the sidewalk.
Ten feet. Still accelerating.
Agent Smith sprang to the side, catching air, feet almost clipping the right headlight.
Bledsoe started to hunch over. One hand came up. The corner of his mouth began to peel back into a snarl, as his eyes locked onto Winston’s.
Then the police cruiser’s front bumper struck Bledsoe’s legs. His torso rocked forward and slammed into the hood. They couldn’t have been doing more than fifteen or twenty miles per ho
ur, but it didn’t take much for a four thousand-pound car to significantly damage a two hundred-pound pedestrian.
Winston put as much mental pressure as he had into jamming on the brakes. They squealed, and G forces shoved both boys into the cruiser’s dividing wall.
Bledsoe flew off the hood as quickly as he’d face-planted onto it. His suit jacket waved through the air. The gleaming ring of the time viewer jumped from Bledsoe’s arm and spun in the air like a flipped coin. Bledsoe glided, doubled over at the waist, arms raised over his head. Perhaps the hood had knocked the wind out of him or he’d been struck unconscious, but he launched from the vehicle limp as a rag doll. For that brief moment, Bledsoe was airborne, then his body slammed into the plate-glass window in front of the empty retail space. The backs of his calves caught on the windowsill as the rest of him tumbled over and out of sight. Glass shards splashed across the sidewalk. Bledsoe’s black leather shoes remained visible in the empty dark rectangle that had been a window seconds before.
In that instant, the world held its breath. Policemen on the surrounding block stared in open-mouthed shock. Several onlookers had stopped screaming and now stood with their hands over their faces. Shade was transfixed by Bledsoe’s motionless shoes, and his eyes started to fill with tears.
“Go!” cried Winston as he mentally forced the car’s electrical system to draw back the passenger door latches. He pushed his shoulder hard into the door, and it flew open. “Shade, go!”
That snapped Shade out of his stupor. In a second, he was out and reaching for the front passenger door.
The policemen seemed to come awake at the same time, and they broke into a run toward the boys. Fortunately, they were at least half a block away. Only Agent Smith was closer. The man was on his knees about fifteen feet away from the open sidewalk hatch. He already had one foot under himself.
Winston snatched the still-spinning Alpha Machine piece from the pavement as he ran. Then he was at the hatch, gazing down the wooden stairs into darkness. Winston caught a glimpse of one of Bledsoe’s shoes raising up and then dropping out of sight.
Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine Page 22