She had to do something. She couldn’t let Christopher die for her. He might be nearly impossible to kill, but that wasn’t the same as immortal. She tried to bubble the cat, but she just couldn’t focus. Although she’d been working towards controlling multiple bubbles at once, it sapped her strength badly, and she struggled to hold two at once. Either she would have to wait until the first one dissolved on its own, or she had to pop it. But fear gripped her with such force that she had trouble concentrating, and her mental hold slipped off no matter how hard she tried. With every second that passed, the cat stalked closer and closer.
“You leave her alone,” Christopher said, like he was scolding a household pet.
The cat tensed, gathering all of its considerable strength. It leaped onto Christopher’s chest, its claws piercing his flesh. He cried out, falling to the ground, putting his hands on either side of the creature’s massive head. The tiger yowled and thrashed, but still Christopher held on. Their eyes were locked in some invisible struggle. Eva wanted to help, but she didn’t know what to do. Sabretooth could offer no assistance; he still fought the other saber-toothed cat on the opposite side of the clearing. So she stood there, frozen with indecision. Her body broke out into a cold sweat, and she bit the inside of her cheek, urging herself to move. Do something. But if she did the wrong thing, it could mean their deaths.
Christopher retched, his body convulsing, but still he held on. Was he trying to heal the tiger? That didn’t make any sense to Eva, but it looked like the same reaction he’d had when he tried to heal Graydon.
With a mighty roar, Sabretooth lifted the other saber-toothed cat up over his head and slammed it down over a park bench, breaking its back. The mighty mutant bled from what looked like a thousand scratches, and his chest heaved as he panted for breath, but he had triumphed once again. He threw back his head and bellowed in victory as the body at his feet disintegrated, leaving nothing but a pile of dry bones, empty fur, and dust.
“Sabretooth, help!” Eva cried.
His head whipped around, and it only took moments for him to assess the situation. He grabbed a rock off the ground and flung it at the cat with impeccable aim. It pinged off the animal’s shoulder, drawing its attention away from Christopher.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” said Sabretooth.
He beckoned to the cat, eager to fight once again. A gleeful light played in his eyes as he licked blood from his lips. The tiger approached him, but instead of the graceful, slinking approach that it had made toward Eva, it now staggered on unsteady paws. Its fur appeared patchy now too, and as she watched, bits of it fell out in uneven clumps to be carried off by the wind. Sabretooth’s tense eagerness relaxed as he watched the cat, and he seemed almost disappointed at losing the opportunity to do battle with it.
Halfway across the clearing, the sabre-toothed tiger shuddered, fell on its side, and went still. After a moment, it dissolved just as its companion had, leaving only bones and fur behind. Sabretooth tilted his head, studying the pile for a moment, then nudged it with the toe of his boot.
“Well would you look at that,” he said, wonder in his voice. “Did you do that, kid?”
“The other one fell apart too,” said Eva, pointing toward the pile.
“Huh. Never seen that before.”
Eva hadn’t either, but she was more concerned with Christopher right now. He had raised himself up to sit while she’d been distracted, which would have been a relief if he hadn’t been clutching his stomach in obvious pain. Blood trickled from punctures in his suit. She went to her knees beside him but didn’t know what to do.
“You OK?” she said. “Are you gonna be sick?”
He shook his head. “I think I got it, but I need a minute.”
As Christopher caught his breath, Sabretooth pulled Eva aside.
“He OK?” he asked.
“He says he is, but I’m not sure.”
“What’s your gut say? You know him better than I do.”
She considered this. “He’s obviously hurting, but at this point, he’s determined to go on. If it was really bad, I think he’d bow out and tell us to go on without him.”
Sabretooth nodded. “That’s good enough for me. I’ll get him up then.”
He walked over to where Christopher was still slumped on the sidewalk. He leaned down and held out a hand, being careful with his claws.
“Let me give you a hand,” he said.
Christopher considered the offer for a moment. It seemed to take some effort for him to gather the energy to take the offered help, but he did it. Sabretooth hauled him to his feet and stood there a moment, offering a little extra support and stability. Then, he stepped closer. Eva couldn’t help it. She listened in.
Sabretooth said, “I saw what you did there, kid. That was brave of you. Good work.”
Then he clapped Christopher on the shoulder, nearly knocking him back off his feet. Christopher smiled tremulously. Eva couldn’t tell if it was out of weakness or emotion, and she didn’t feel like it was her place to ask. Instead, she cleared her throat and rubbed at her own watery eyes.
“So can we get that Box thing and get out of here already? I am so over this day,” she declared in a shaky voice. “It sucks.”
“You can say that again, missy,” said Sabretooth.
Eva opened her mouth to say it again, and Sabretooth bared his teeth at her.
Chapter 16
The fight with the saber-toothed tigers had made a lot of noise, and it was only a matter of time before the cop that had escaped managed to convince his fellow officers that he wasn’t completely nuts. He’d return with backup. Even if the other cops didn’t exactly believe his story about giant prehistoric tigers dropping from the sky, they were already on high alert. They’d come to check it out, and Christopher thought it would be better if the mutants had gotten far away by then.
“We should go,” he said, swallowing hard.
His stomach had settled into a slow roll, like the last day of the flu when you thought you might stomach some saltines or ginger ale but you definitely weren’t ready for a full-on spaghetti dinner yet. Thin tendrils of that same tainted life force that filled Graydon seemed to permeate the air here. He could feel them on his skin, a creepy crawly feeling that he disliked intensely. If this was how Sabretooth felt with his enhanced senses, Christopher didn’t know how he handled it. It would drive him mad.
Perhaps that explained a few things about Sabretooth’s behavior, come to think of it.
Eva nodded. “You feeling up to this?”
“I’ll manage.”
She followed Sabretooth toward the front entrance once again, but Christopher stopped short. He looked along the featureless side of the brick building. Bushes and ivy lined the sidewalk in what looked like an unbroken line all the way to the corner, but there had to be a door down there somewhere.
“Wait a second,” he said. “When we were talking to Candy, she mentioned that her sister went out through one of the emergency exits. If we waltz up to the main entrance, we’re going to have to walk through a bunch of cops. I’ll bet you Graydon didn’t do that. He knows they’re not going to open the doors for anybody, so there’s got to be another way in. Remind me why we’re not going around the back again?”
Sabretooth paused further up the sidewalk, shrugging. “I figured it would be more fun this way.”
“More fun?” Eva demanded. “You’re kidding me.”
“Hey, I get bored. Everyone’s got to have hobbies.”
Eva gave Christopher a long-suffering look, and he smothered a grin. Sabretooth had to be joking. Although he didn’t look like it. The more Christopher thought about it, the less certain he was…
It didn’t matter.
“If we find an emergency exit, you can break down the door, right?” he asked Sabretooth.
Sabretooth scoffed. C
learly, he wouldn’t even dignify this question with an answer.
“It’ll get us to that Box quicker. That’s good, right?” said Christopher.
“And Graydon too,” Eva added brightly. “We’ll find him, and we’ll finally get out of here.”
Sabretooth nodded. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I’ll have some fun some other time, I guess. I did get to fight a real saber-toothed tiger after all. How ironic is that? I should have gotten a picture.”
“Very ironic,” said Eva, deadpan.
Christopher led them down the path as they chatted. He wanted to get this over with, just so his stomach would settle. He didn’t care how upset Cyclops would be; he intended to stop somewhere on the way back. He would buy a real meal that didn’t come between two pieces of bread, and he would eat the entire thing. Somehow, he had the strange sensation of being starving and not wanting to eat ever again, both at the same time. It didn’t fall at the top of his list of his favorite experiences. Not even close.
The Grace Museum was bigger than he remembered. They walked for a long time around the curving length of the building without seeing a single door, and Christopher began to wonder if maybe he’d made a mistake. Maybe all of the emergency exits sat on the other side of the building for some unknown reason having to do with building codes. Just as he gathered up the courage to tell the others to give up and turn around, he saw the outline of a russet-colored door set into the wall ahead.
He jumped up and down, pointing in excitement.
“Look! Look!” he exclaimed.
“It’s a door,” said Eva, looking at him askance.
Sabretooth patted him on the shoulder. “He doesn’t get out much, does he?”
Christopher thought about clutching at his stomach again and making them feel guilty about teasing him when he’d repeatedly sacrificed his welfare for their safety. It wouldn’t be much of an act, after all. But he blushed instead.
“I just want to get home before I puke again, guys,” he said. “At this rate, I’ll hork up my spleen before this is all over.”
His earnestness seemed to work better than the stomach-clutching would have. Even Sabretooth had the grace to look sheepish.
“You feeling OK?” he asked.
“Not great,” Christopher admitted, “But I’m holding on. The faster we move, the better.”
“Can you feel Graydon yet?” asked Eva.
Christopher shook his head. “Not with all this interference. I should be able to tell when we get closer to the Grace, though.”
“Let’s get you in there, then,” said Sabretooth.
He squared his shoulders and charged at the door, ramming it with all his might. The reinforced metal flew off the hinges with a squeal of protest. The security system let out a fading electronic whoop, and Christopher tensed, expecting the full lights and siren treatment, but it fell completely silent instead. He peered around Sabretooth’s bulk, trying to figure out what had happened. The interior of the museum was a vast black chasm, with only the dim red glow of the security lights in the distance offering any illumination whatsoever.
“The lights are out,” said Christopher.
“Good job stating the obvious, kid,” replied Sabretooth. “That might have something to do with the giant robots with the lasers that were here earlier. They probably took out the power.”
“That’s good for us. No alarm,” said Eva. “So, where’s this Box of yours?”
Sabretooth stepped into the Museum and looked around. They stood in one of the natural history wings, in a room full of fossils in glass cases. Under different circumstances, Christopher would have loved to read every single placard, but he didn’t have the time. He ran his fingers over a trilobite fossil and marveled at it. He was touching something millions of years old. How amazing was that?
As Christopher examined the exhibits, Sabretooth looked at the signage.
“The Box is in the Evolution of Mutants exhibit. This way,” Sabretooth said, gesturing for them to follow.
As they wove their way through rooms full of fossils, Christopher fell into a broody silence. Something had been nagging at him, and the trilobite brought it to the forefront. The saber-toothed cats had been extinct for thousands of years, and they’d crumbled into bone, almost as if they’d never been alive in the first place. It led him logically to places he wasn’t sure he wanted to go, but he had no choice.
The soft sound of crying interrupted this disturbing chain of thought, pulling him out of his reverie. He had fallen behind Eva and Sabretooth, who had hurried ahead to consult the map at the next intersection and seemed to be arguing over it. He ducked around the corner, gesturing wildly for silence and finally catching Eva’s attention. He held his finger to his lips, and she clamped her hand over Sabretooth’s mouth mid-rant. From the looks of things, he nearly bit her hand off before he realized what she was doing. Then the two of them slinked back to join Christopher.
“What is it?” whispered Eva.
They wouldn’t believe him if he told them, so he just pointed. He could barely believe it himself, and he’d seen it with his own eyes. A pair of what looked like honest-to-goodness Neanderthals with loincloths wrapped around their waists carried a long stick on their shoulders. Tied to the stick and ready for roasting was a museum security guard. He was old and frail, with deep lines on his liver-spotted face.
Christopher had heard him whimpering around the cloth tied over his mouth.
Eva’s eyes filled with tears, and she took an involuntary step forward as if eager to help him right now. Christopher had to grab her arm and hold her back, shaking his head.
“What?” she asked.
“Not a good idea,” he responded, pointing.
The slumped bodies of a few other prehistoric men and women littered the carpet nearby, testament to a quick and brutal battle. Christopher had only caught the end of it, but he’d been impressed.
“There are a few more of them hiding in the displays,” he whispered. “They throw spears. They ambushed the other prehistoric people and took the guy.”
“Bad luck for him,” said Sabretooth. “We need to get going.”
The two students stared at him like he’d suddenly grown horns.
“You can’t be serious, mate,” said Eva.
“We don’t have the time to waste on this,” Sabretooth argued. “You heard him. They have an ambush set up. One of us takes a spear to the throat, and then Chris here has to heal us. He’s been puking left and right as it is. It’s not worth the risk. But if you want, you can go out to the doors and fetch the cops. Chris and I will go on and get the Box.”
“It’s Christopher. Not Chris, remember?” Christopher said.
Sabretooth sighed. “Whatever.”
“Splitting up is a bad idea,” Eva argued. “If we do that, we have to find each other again. That takes time, and we’ve wasted a ton already. Can’t we free the guy without fighting them?”
“You could bubble them,” suggested Christopher. “Buy some time. Call the cops and let them handle it.”
“Then the cops know there’s someone else here. I don’t want to advertise our presence,” said Sabretooth. “Right now, it’s nice and quiet in here, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Christopher nodded thoughtfully, looking around the room. An idea had begun to form in the depths of his mind. It just might work…
“So I bubble them?” asked Eva. “I just can’t sit back while they eat some poor old guy. I mean, we’ve got to have standards.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I wouldn’t have let them cannibalize the guy. Not really,” Sabretooth replied, although Christopher wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.
“Wait.” Christopher held up a finger. “I might have it.”
Eva perked up, listening eagerly as he explained his plan in simple terms. They didn’t have
much time. The Neanderthals moved with swift efficiency to prepare a bonfire using sticks from one of the exhibits. They would be finished in minutes.
Sabretooth stood guard as the two students snuck down toward the Neanderthals and their intended lunch. Christopher knew he didn’t approve of yet another delay in their schedule, but Eva was right. They had to have standards. He just couldn’t abandon somebody to such a horrible fate. If that meant he puked his guts out again, so be it. Sabretooth had put his foot down on the topic of the Box; he and Eva had put their foot down on the subject of the guard. Now they were even.
The guard continued to squirm against his bonds as the prehistoric hunters built the fire, communicating in grunts and gestures. A pair of them stood guard, spears at the ready. Eva moved like a shadow, darting from display to display in quick, furtive movements. Christopher did his best, but he’d never been the fastest. His overcoat kept brushing up against the displays, making the slightest of noises. At some point, one of the Neanderthals would hear him. He stopped his approach, hoping that he would be close enough.
He crouched down and mashed the buttons on the display. If the power had been up, a recording about the use of tools by the Australopithecus, likely read by a narrator in a bland monotone, would have played over the speakers. With the power down, all that came out when he pushed the button was a single garbled syllable at high volume. It startled the Neanderthals; they grabbed their spears and grunted aggressively as they searched for the source of the noise, but Christopher was already on the move. He moved to another display and pushed another button, producing another earsplitting syllable. They nearly jumped out of their skins.
He would have felt guilty about using technology to frighten a bunch of prehistoric people except for the part where they were going to eat a frail old man for lunch. A little fear wouldn’t hurt them, and it was a lot better than letting Sabretooth knock their heads together. He continued on, pushing buttons on various displays, drawing them further and further away from the man on the spit so that Eva could free him. Then he pushed a button that emitted a clap of thunder. Perhaps the Neanderthals worshipped some lightning deity, or maybe they’d just had too many bad experiences standing on top of hills during thunderstorms, but they panicked. En masse, they ran from the room, hooting and clutching their spears.
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