Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine

by Bodhi St John

  Winston was almost relieved to see that the man wasn’t dead. He hadn’t wanted to kill him, although he wondered if that might have been best.

  Shade had both backpacks, one in each hand, and it was only because Winston knew the intricate language of his friend’s many frowns that he understood how much it pained Shade to leave that box of Voodoo doughnuts on the passenger seat. Fortunately, he let it go. They didn’t have a second to spare.

  Winston closed one of the two hatch flaps as he descended the stairway. It was much heavier than he’d expected, and it fell shut beside him with a loud clang.

  “Grab the other one!” Winston yelled at Shade as he approached, then dropped down two more steps to get out of the way.

  Shade slid to a stop by the hatch and reached for the remaining flap just as Agent Smith stood and launched into motion.

  Shade had the flap up and swinging. A keyring hung from its lock, jangling against the steel panel. Winston hopped down several more stairs and Shade followed him, pulling the hatch door along behind. Two more steps, three. The hatch banged shut with a deafening clang that filled the narrow stairwell.

  Something that sounded like a large sandbag thudded into the panels just above Shade. Winston guessed it was the curly-haired agent.

  “Did you lock it?” called Winston in the absolute darkness even as their ears still rang.

  Above him, Shade hollered back, “You didn’t say anything about a lock!”

  “What?!” cried Winston. “The keys were in the—”

  “Do you want me to grab them?”

  “I—”

  Before Winston could decide what he wanted, something clicked above them, followed immediately by a snapping sound and the jangling of keys.

  “The second boy broke off the key!” Agent Smith said above them. “Is there another way to get this panel open?”

  He broke it off, thought Winston. On purpose. Why would he do that?

  Many footsteps approached. Winston heard scrabbling at the steel hatch, then cursing.

  “Does anyone have a crowbar?” someone yelled.

  “What about that guy they hit?”

  Winston could see a faint yellow light from the cellar’s one bulb coming from beyond the narrow hallway that led to the stairs. He jogged back into the large chamber and scanned the floor for Little e. Even with his abnormally good eyesight, Winston couldn’t find it. Shade cast about frantically, but fared no better. They searched all around the area where Winston had fallen, near the brick pile, in the shadowy corners, under the wooden chairs used in the tourist lectures.

  “It can’t just vanish,” said Shade. “Can it?”

  Then Winston remembered that he had tried to throw the device into that exposed side room just before the grenade explosion. He was turning around to explore in that direction when a low voice growled, “Looking for this?”

  The overly muscled FBI agent who had pursued him with such determination yesterday morning appeared around the edge of the ragged brick wall opening. He had Little e in one hand, and he stared fixedly at Winston, small eyes black and gleaming like a snake’s.

  “What’s wrong?” the man rumbled. “Nowhere to run? Should we see if you’re as strong as you are fast?”

  Winston swallowed hard. He knew he wasn’t.

  21

  Agent Altercation

  Bledsoe felt the world tilt as hands helped prop him into a sitting position. He opened his eyes and tried to make sense of everything as uniformed officers crouched around him. Glass shards sparkled on a rough green carpet. One finger-length shard jutted excruciatingly from his right calf. Blood trickled from the wound down his leg and into a small pool on the floor.

  Then he remembered. The police cruiser.

  “Get me up!” he bellowed as he pulled the glass from his leg and tossed it aside.

  “Sir,” said one officer who tried to help. “You’ve been in an accident. I think you should—”

  “Gah!” Bledsoe pushed him away and got stiffly to his feet, not caring about the pricks of glass as they bit into his palms. He knew that the bleeding would be over in a minute or two and the pain in half that. His legs ached fiercely, as if someone had bludgeoned him repeatedly with a lead pipe.

  “Sir,” said another. “You’re…glowing blue.”

  Of course he was. That little brat had run him over with a car, and it would probably take hours for his skin to go back to its normal color. Even in the depths of his rage, though, Bledsoe felt a wave of admiration for the kid. His father never would have had the nerve for such a stunt. Maybe the apple fell a little farther from the tree than he’d suspected.

  “The radiation,” he grunted. “The terrorists exposed me with their weapon. Better keep your distance.”

  In unison, the officers stood and backed away.

  Beyond the shattered window, Bledsoe found that the cruiser blocked his view of the sidewalk hatch. Agent Smith’s curly red and now half-green hair bobbed along beyond the car, and he appeared to be directing two officers. One of them rocked the end of a crowbar back and forth.

  The crowd of pedestrians at each end of the block continued to swell. The grip that Bledsoe felt he’d had on this situation five minutes ago was now slipping away.

  He still had one ace in the hole, though.

  Bledsoe settled his earpiece back into his ear canal and hit the Send button on his wrist transmitter.

  “Lynch,” he barked into the strap. “Tell me you’ve got that kid.”

  A second later, Bledsoe heard a crackle in his ear followed by a low, clearly self-satisfied voice.

  “Yes, boss. I’ve got him.”

  ***

  Winston could barely breathe. He was terrible about confrontation to begin with, and being trapped in this dim, dusty cellar — part of a place reputed for its shanghaiing of innocent men, drug dealings, and all-around bad stuff that led to death — only deepened his terror of Agent Lynch. The gigantic, snarling FBI agent had the front of Winston’s shirt in his fist, practically lifting him off the cement floor. And that was with his left arm.

  Lynch had his head cocked, and it was quiet enough down here that Winston could hear the tiny buzz of a voice in the agent’s earpiece.

  “Yes, boss. I’ve got him,” said Lynch into the band on his right wrist.

  As Lynch spoke into the device, the man held Little e only inches in front of Winston’s eyes, nearly too close to focus on. But he could see that Lynch’s meaty fingers were locked around two of the rods, and Winston gave himself approximately a 0 percent chance of being able to wrestle the device away from the agent.

  “Yes,” added Lynch to some question he heard. “Yes, sir. His friend is down here, too, probably hiding in the shadows by the stairway, waiting to—”

  From those shadows, Shade let forth a mighty war cry. It would have sounded mightier if his voice had finished changing. As it was, the guttural howl warbled and cracked twice, veering sharply into a girlish falsetto, back into his normal register, and back again.

  Lynch had plenty of warning and simply shifted one foot to improve his balance. Shade put his head down and charged, just as he had done with Brian Steinhoff in the gym. Shade rushed in on Lynch’s left, going for the mother of all quarterback sacks. Lynch didn’t even bother to lower his arms. He only turned slightly to face the charge.

  Shade put his shoulder right into the man’s solar plexus, between his ribs and his belly button. It was a perfect hit that should have at least knocked the wind out of the agent and sent him reeling.

  Instead, Shade ran head-first into a building. In slow motion, it might have resembled one of those crash test dummy videos in which the car accordions into a thick wall, with glass exploding everywhere as the hood buckles in half and the dummy finds itself suddenly plastered around the steering column like the bread of a wiener wrap.

  Shade collapsed before the man with an audible “uuughh!” His arms flopped briefly around Lynch’s midsection, then tumbled away with
the rest of his body. His butt hit the cement, and he fell onto his side. He blinked vacantly, unable to think or understand how he’d suddenly run into a tree.

  Lynch laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound or even mean. It was what Winston imagined Zeus would have sounded like in those ancient stories by Homer, beholding all the little humans as if they were ants. Winston could see it in the upward tilt of the man’s eyebrows and the curl at one corner of his mouth. Puny mortals, that face said. You are no match for my gym membership.

  With that, Winston’s fear-locked brain suddenly sprang free.

  He could feel the magnetic pull of Little e’s crossbar, as if he only had to let the thing guide his hand into place. There was no clumsiness, none of his usual finger fumbling or slow second tries. In one moment, his right hand was dangling stiff and still at his side, frozen in fear, and in the next it was plunged inside of the device’s bottom ring. His fingers seized around the bar, and Winston felt that bulging tension return to the back of his head.

  As Lynch’s gaze flicked back from Shade to Little e, the rods were already starting to waver and spark.

  “Puny god,” said Winston.

  Lynch started to let go, but it was too late. The device instantly reacted to Winston’s touch and will. Three of the rods gripped onto Lynch’s suit sleeve. As the weather was still warm, it was a thin fabric and easy enough for the energy to penetrate.

  Winston hoped that the huge man would reflexively open his hand and release him, but no such luck. Lynch’s body went completely rigid, spasming as the shock poured through him. Winston felt his T-shirt fabric start to tear as Lynch’s grip rattled his torso. The agent stood there, jaws clenched, teeth bared, eyes bulging. Blood began to trickle from the corner of his mouth, and Winston guessed he might have bitten down on his tongue, just like Brian Steinhoff.

  Winston had shocked himself enough times accidentally at his lab bench over the years to know that this had to be agonizing for the agent. He didn’t mind that at all. The power meter buried in his mind told him that he had more energy in reserve. Winston could squeeze harder and hurt the man more, maybe even kill him.

  But he didn’t.

  Winston relaxed his grip on Little e, and the rods fell still in their original, gracefully tapered positions. Lynch’s body went completely slack. His eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped to the ground, releasing both Little e and Winston’s shirt. Winston got his balance back awkwardly, almost tripping over Shade’s legs.

  Propped up on one elbow, Shade kept trying to blink the stars out of his eyes, but he was also clearly aware of what Winston had just done.

  Winston reached out with his left hand and helped Shade to his feet.

  “Dude, that was a great tackle!” said Winston encouragingly.

  Shade gawked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Did you see the same guy I did? I bounced off him like he’s frickin’ Superman!”

  “Well,” said Winston. “Fortunately, the man of steel conducts energy well. I’m sure you softened him up for me.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Shade rolled his head around on his neck, massaging his left shoulder. “Soft like butter.”

  Winston caught a whiff of something burning and discovered that Lynch’s earpiece and wrist strap were sending up slow tendrils of smoke.

  Loud banging on the steel panels above them filled the cellar.

  “Lynch!” cried a faraway voice that could only belong to Bledsoe. “Lynch, report!”

  “And on that note…” said Winston. He reached down for the Alpha Machine time viewer, which he had dropped when Lynch seized him. Winston straightened and pulled Shade along behind him toward the gap in the long brick wall.

  More pounding, dull and booming like a gigantic bass drum.

  “Chase!” hollered Bledsoe.

  “Stand here,” said Winston, pointing to a spot next to the cellar’s long wall near the jagged opening but protected from the space on its other side. Shade did as he was told.

  Winston stood next to the crumbling brick divider, peeked around the wall, and aimed at a spot on the cement floor about fifteen feet away, secluded deep in the shadows.

  “What are you pointing at?” asked Shade. “There’s nothing back there.”

  “Remember how Melissa showed us that picture of the drainage tunnels under the main tunnels?” Winston asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And remember how Mr. A was shown in that picture managing that construction crew all those years ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s how I knew to look for this.”

  Winston took one last glance, remembering the spot he’d seen the workmen focused on in the past. In hardly more than a blink, the tips sparked brightly. Blue arcs entwined in a frenzy at the end of Winston’s arm. He mentally pushed as hard as he could, visualizing some sort of laser cannon blasting into the floor. If an Area X lab monkey could do this on accident in 1948, he should be able to do it on purpose now.

  Little e understood and obeyed. The tiny lightning arcs blossomed into a soccer ball-sized explosion that launched from the device across the little chamber and into the floor where Winston aimed.

  The concrete erupted in a spray of dust and fragments that filled the narrow space. Winston felt a few pieces bite into his exposed hand and forearm like pinpricks, but there was nothing he could do about it. After a few seconds, Winston set Little e to glowing. In its blue light, he saw that for all of the noise and exploding material, he’d only made a dent in the concrete. It resembled something a little kid might have scooped out of beach sand.

  “Get another bar!” yelled Bledsoe. “Can’t you hear? They’re trying to escape!”

  There was no time for subtlety or precision. Winston took a deep breath, aimed again, ducked his head behind the brick wall, and started launching energy blasts at the floor as quickly as he could muster them.

  Three, four… His head throbbed with intense pain, and he finally understood what his mom must mean when she described having a migraine. It felt like acid was burning a thousand paths along the inside of his skull. But he kept firing.

  Five…six.

  The pressure switch at the back of his head suddenly flipped off. He was empty. Why hadn’t he thought to have another energy marble in hand?

  He needed a moment, anyway. Winston leaned against the brick wall, breathing more heavily than if he’d just finished the mile-and-a-half. Both of his ears rang. Sweat dripped down his back and temples. His head felt like it was about to explode, just like that concrete, and part of him wished it would. Slowly, haltingly, his fingers fumbled with his backpack zipper, shoved the time viewer between his spare jeans and jacket, and sought the leather pouch containing the blue marbles.

  Shade said something, but the pain worked like a thick screen between Winston and everything around him. Making it worse, the air hung thick with a white fog of cement dust that set both of them coughing. In Winston’s mouth, it tasted vaguely of chalk and bitter rock.

  “Winston, are you OK?”

  Shade gripped Winston’s shoulders and stared into Winston’s face, then they both broke into more coughing fits.

  Winston managed to nod. Together, they crept around the edge of the broken brick wall, feeling bits of concrete debris crunch under their shoes.

  “Can you see anything?” Shade asked as he grabbed Winston’s arm and made them both stop.

  The feeble light from the main room barely penetrated into the smaller space, and the dust cloud about the boys obscured much of whatever was left. Winston’s first impulse was to use Little e for illumination, but it was out of power, and his fingers still hadn’t found that leather pouch.

  “Flashlight,” he choked.

  Shade unzipped one of the side pockets on Winton’s pack. He found the flashlight within and clicked its power button. Dazzling bluish white burst from Shade’s hand and cast a narrow spotlight through the debris haze.

  Through the ebbing pain in his head, Winston was suddenly
glad for Shade’s caution. Pointing the beam at the floor ahead of them, not more than five feet away, Shade revealed a ragged hole waiting in the middle of the floor. Three divots flanked the gap where Winston’s shots had gone wide. Yet he’d landed enough blasts where they needed to go. The floor here couldn’t have been more than five inches thick, applied more for cosmetic cover than real support. Winston would need to leave his pack off in order to wriggle through the hole, but he and Shade would just fit. He fetched the flashlight from Shade’s pack and clicked it on.

  Metal rungs bolted to a side wall formed a ladder down into the dark drainage tunnel below.

  Seemingly far away, a rhythmic, metallic banging resumed. They likely only had a few seconds until the agents were through.

  “A tunnel,” said Shade with breathy drama, “to doughnuts.”

  Winston sat carefully at the hole’s edge and let his feet dangle as he reached for the first rung.

  “It better be,” he said, “or else we’re totally hosed.”

  22

  Drop Into Darkness

  The rungs were spaced a foot apart, and Winston counted ten of them before his foot splashed into water. The next step found him standing on a firm floor with black, bone-chilling water swirling around his calves. That wasn’t good, he knew. Wet jeans and sweats didn’t offer much insulation. If they got soaked and chilled down here and couldn't find an exit in a couple of hours, hypothermia could set in, which would be really ironic — dying of hypothermia in the middle of an 80-degree Indian summer day.

  Shade splashed down next to him, and both slowly waved their flashlights about to take in their surroundings. The tunnel was maybe five feet wide with curved walls of brick. The ceiling was low — even Shade had to duck slightly — and every surface glistened with dark slime. Winston wasn’t sure if it was chemical or some organic growth, and he didn’t really want to know. It oozed everywhere, including over the occasional pipes that would cut through one side of the tunnel near its top and then exit the other side. Even with their flashlights, Winston could see nothing but impenetrable blackness stretching off in either direction.