by Bryan Davis
“Yeah.” Adam shifted his weight from foot to foot. “We kind of didn’t … I mean—”
“Erase that entry,” Marilyn said, “and create a new one. We’re starting with a clean slate.”
“Old entry deleted. New record stored, complete with voiceprint.”
“Now …” Marilyn led them to a ten-foot-long wooden table abutting the wall opposite Larry. “This is our workspace for assembling Apollo.”
Carly used a pair of tweezers to lift a silicon chip about the size of a thumbnail, one of the many computer parts scattered across the table. “What exactly is Apollo?”
Marilyn picked up Apollo by one of its foot-long dowels. Except for the rectangular shape of its inner glass enclosure, Apollo, a virtual twin of its predecessor, looked more like an old-fashioned hourglass than a cross-dimensional portal device.
As she tilted it, a glass door swung open on tiny hinges, and a cat’s-eye marble rolled out onto her palm. “It’s supposed to be a portal opener. The original one created a flash of light made up of exactly the right wavelengths to create a window to another world.” She showed them the marble. “This is exactly the size and weight of something we want to transport to another realm, so we keep it in there for our tests. So far, it hasn’t worked.”
Adam’s eyes bugged out, but he stayed quiet. Obviously the talk about another realm had given him a shock.
“So,” Marilyn continued, “we want to send a gem called a rubellite. It’s needed to increase the power of Excalibur, the legendary sword. We’re hoping to get it to Billy and Walter so they can install it in the sword’s hilt.”
Carly touched one of the four dowels. “Bonnie wrote to me about this. Sometimes I wondered if her stories could possibly be true, but seeing this makes them come alive.”
“Did she include her adventures in Hades?” Marilyn asked.
“If you mean the Circles of Seven,” Carly said. “Yes, she did.”
Marilyn closed Apollo’s glass door. “Well, that’s related to what’s going on here. Hades has combined with Earth, and the appearance of strange creatures and the resurrection of dead people are the result of the merging. Billy and Walter are in another realm called Second Eden. For some reason, that place is the key for getting everything back to normal.”
Adam pointed at the floor. “So all the chaos in the world can be traced to what’s been going on in this house?” He let out a whistle. “This is getting cooler all the time.”
“Cool, yes, but dead serious, too. We’re going to help them by any means we can, and if sending the rubellite works, we’ll try to open a portal big enough to send people.”
“So what do we do?” Carly asked.
Marilyn set Apollo down. “Building this much was easy. The hard part has been getting the electronics to work. They’re housed in a cap that snaps on to Apollo’s top …”
For the next few hours, Marilyn explained the device and how her tests had failed to this point. She even replicated the failures three times to give her two new helpers hands-on experience. With her adoptive daughters, Stacey, Rebecca, and Monique, away at a church function, she had plenty of time to recount many of their adventures. Finally, after eating a late dinner, they returned to the worktable.
“So,” Marilyn said. “Any ideas? Adam? Carly?”
Adam ran his fingers through his scraggly shock of dark hair and leaned over the table. As his Castlewood Valley High School T-shirt rubbed against the edge, he peered into Apollo’s glass enclosure. “The flash wasn’t very bright, nothing like the wattage you’re supposed to be getting.”
“If that’s the case …” Carly smoothed out a schematic, a collection of printed pages taped together, and pointed at a microprocessor symbol near the bottom of one of the pages. “I think this one’s the culprit.”
“Could be.” A few inches taller than Carly, Adam looked down at her, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “Since Apollo flashed, it must’ve gotten the signal from Larry, but the flash was too weak. Something must have told the generator the wrong electromotive force.”
Carly pointed at the microprocessor symbol again. “Since that chip has the math coprocessor, and since the coding calls for higher precision, we might have a rounding problem somewhere in the calculations. Rounding might not matter sometimes, but precision is crucial in this case. If one of the earlier numbers is wrong, the error gets worse and worse with every line of math code.”
“So, the processor calculated the wattage wrong?” Marilyn asked.
“Well, voltage,” Adam said. “That drives the wattage. But, yeah.”
Carly tapped a finger on Apollo’s top. “If we can swap out that chip, we can test Adam’s theory right away.”
Crossing her arms, Marilyn gave Adam and Carly an admiring gaze. Adam had changed so much since his bullying days at Castlewood Middle School. And Carly’s computer skills had already been a godsend. “Okay!” Marilyn said. “Let’s give it a shot.”
Carly’s eyes darted from one side of the table to the other, searching across scattered chips, diodes, and resistors. “Do we have another one here?”
Marilyn looked back at Shelly. She was sitting once again at Larry’s control panel. “Do we have any more of Ashley’s zeta chips?” Marilyn asked.
“Probably.” Shelly stared at a flat monitor mounted on a wall panel as she pecked on a keyboard. “I’ll check inventory.”
“You may use verbal inquiries, Shelly. My parsing engine has fully integrated your voiceprint as well as your biography—Shelly Foley, twenty-one-year-old daughter of Carl and Catherine, sister of Walter, and one-time hostiam for—”
“Stifle it!” Shelly pointed a rigid finger at the monitor. “Just tell me if we have—”
“Any of Ashley’s zeta chips?”
Shelly rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Larry. If you already knew what we wanted, why’d you give me such a hard time?”
“To allow time for background processing. I wanted to check our usual suppliers for the raw materials. Our inventory shows zero zeta chips, but an epsilon chip would likely suffice. It is an older generation but quite functional for this application, though it lacks Ashley’s newer communications protocol.”
“Will that be a problem?” Marilyn asked.
“Only in that it will make transmissions a few milliseconds slower.”
Shelly jumped up from her seat and headed for the hallway door. “I’ll get the chip.” She stopped, twirling her shoulder-length brown hair as she looked back. “Need anything? Drinks? Cookies?”
“I don’t.” Marilyn touched Adam’s shoulder. “How about you?”
“The pizza made me thirsty. Anything non-diet.”
“Water would be great,” Carly said.
Marilyn nodded at Shelly. “Water for everyone, thank you.”
Adam picked up Apollo’s top, a black disc about the size of a hockey puck. “You think Ashley might hire someone like me? I mean, after I graduate, of course.”
“Maybe she could take on an intern before you graduate. You certainly have the skills.” Marilyn let out a silent sigh. With Adam and Carly around, they would probably eventually get Apollo working. But what would that mean? So many events had to fall into place. Who might find the rubellite once they transported it to Second Eden? How would that person know to give it to Billy? Leaving so much to faith felt like jumping into a dark pit, but what choice did she have? Somehow she had to provide a path for her men to march home … her men … Jared and Billy.
Marilyn clenched her fist. They had to come back. They just had to.
While Carly and Adam pored over the schematic, whispering to each other, Marilyn sat in the control desk chair. “Larry, I hope you don’t mind if I ask again, but—”
“I am a computer, Marilyn. I do not get weary of questions. I constantly monitor the communication ports, both conventional and cross-dimensional, especially Ashley’s tooth-transmitter protocol, and there are no messages.”
Marilyn rested her
chin in her hand. No word from Jared or Billy in a month. Were they all right? If so, what could they be doing in Second Eden that would prevent them from returning? Did they have a way to return at all?
Shelly popped back into the computer room, a small plastic bag pinched in her fingers. At the bottom of the bag lay a tiny black chip. “Found it!”
“Perfect!” Carly said, reaching for the bag.
Adam slid Apollo closer to her. “Let’s fire it up again.”
“I’ll get the water now.” Shelly hustled out of the room.
As Marilyn rose from the chair, a phone on the desk chimed. She jerked it up. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Bannister?” The voice was deep, almost like a lion’s growl, yet drowned in static.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“I am Yereq.”
She glanced at the caller ID number—Carl Foley’s cell phone. “Yes, Yereq. Is something wrong?”
Again the voice seemed weak, as if submerged in water. It broke up at times, creating gaps between words. “Mr. Foley is hurt, and I cannot … I am unable to get help. I pressed a button on this … and your name appeared …”
Marilyn swallowed and tried to keep her voice calm. “Yereq, where is Mrs. Foley?”
“She … also hurt … breathing … not talking.”
“She’s unconscious but alive?”
“Yes.”
“Listen carefully. After we’re finished, press the end button. Then push nine, then one, then one again and the send button. It’s probably green. Do you see those?”
After a few seconds, he said, “Yes. I understand.”
“Good. That’s the number for emergency calls. Tell the operator where you are and that you need an air ambulance. Do it now.” Marilyn hung up the phone and exhaled loudly, feeling a sudden loss of energy. Just staying calm for Yereq had drained her reserves.
Shelly walked back in, carrying four bottles of water. “I heard the phone.”
“It was Yereq. He says your parents are hurt.”
Shelly dropped two of the bottles. “Did he say how bad?”
Marilyn jumped up and collected the bottles. “Only that he couldn’t get help. With all the static it was hard to hear him.”
Shelly’s voice squeaked. “Can you call him back?”
Marilyn shook her head. “Yereq had a bad signal, and he’s probably trying to call nine-one-one right now, so I don’t want to confuse him with a call-waiting beep. We can hunt down the hospitals in the area and contact them.”
“I am printing out a list of hospitals within a hundred miles of that location,” Larry said. “The closest major health center is in Kalispell, Montana.”
Shelly jerked the sheet from Larry’s output bin and grabbed the phone. “I’ll start calling. Maybe someone can tell me if an ambulance was dispatched.”
While Shelly punched in the first number, Marilyn joined Adam and Carly at the table. “Will you two be able to do this by yourself?”
“Sure,” Adam replied. “It’ll be a breeze.”
“Good.” She rolled the marble into his hand. “How long do you think?”
“I have to take out a circuit board.” Holding Apollo by one of its dowels, he set the marble inside the glass enclosure. “Probably about ten minutes.”
“That might give us enough time to get news on Walter’s parents.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Marilyn walked toward Shelly as she waited with the phone against her ear, apparently on hold.
Marilyn sighed. On hold. With her husband and son off in another world, her life had been “on hold” for so long! Were they safe? Were they even alive? And what could she do once she arrived in Montana? Of course, she would have to find someone to look after Stacey, Rebecca, and Monique before she took off, but that wouldn’t be a problem. They had stayed at friends’ houses before.
She watched Adam as he feverishly worked on Apollo, Carly looking on. That strange device was their only hope for piercing the curtain of questions, and the answers couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter 3
The Vacants
Billy stopped on Mount Elijah’s steep incline and wrapped his cloak tighter around his body. The frigid wind tore through the woolen material, chilling his skin. Elam had warned him that the higher elevations were much colder than the valleys, but with the potential for battle looming, he had declined to wear more layers. A swift march up the slope would have to be enough to keep him warm.
Looking back at Walter, he raised a battle shield to block the wind and pressed a finger against his lips. “Let’s keep it down.”
Puffing white streams over his own shield, Walter joined him, whispering. “How much farther?”
Billy pointed. “You can see the top. The path will switch back twice more before we get there.”
Walter angled his head to see the pinnacle. “Is that a fire?”
“Looks like they’re trying to stay warm.” Billy reached under his cloak and withdrew Excalibur from a belt scabbard. “Get ready.”
Walter opened his cloak, revealing the hilt of a sword. “I’ve got your back.”
“But who has our front?” Billy scanned the cloudy twilight skies. From the stories Valiant told, Second Eden had never experienced such overcast conditions, but ever since Angel’s lie a month ago, rain and snow had come to the land in regular cycles. With no need for the watering mists and with the next eclipse due, would the fountains erupt and flood the Valley of Shadows as before? If so, what effect would the rising water have on Abraham’s wall of fire, the protective shield that kept Flint, Goliath, and their armies from attacking the villages?
Billy grabbed Walter’s sleeve and pulled him close. “When we get to the north face again, we’ll hold there until Pegasus rises. It looks like the sky’s clearing in that direction, so maybe we’ll see the eclipse, and we can listen for the fountains. But whether we hear them or not, when it gets totally dark, that’s when we run the rest of the way to the top and attack. Excalibur’s light should scare them half to death. And if it doesn’t, the dragons will.”
“If they show up on time.” Walter looked up at the darkening sky. “No sign of them yet.”
“Dad will wait until the last minute. No use letting themselves be seen too soon. He and Hartanna know what they’re doing.”
“Yeah, but Valiant’s description of these goons makes me wonder if your father has ever faced anything like them before. And what if they really have candlestones?”
Billy nodded. Walter was right. Valiant had called them “Vacants,” empty of soul, emotions, or capacity for pain, humanoid creatures Abraham had once mentioned as if from a fairy tale. The villagers had spoken of altered tribes, but most of them had seen only the shadow people. Now, as if resurrected from ancient history, this tribe had returned to Second Eden. Why? No one knew. But since they stalked about the woods and mountains north of Founders Village but hadn’t attacked the village itself, they seemed content to keep Abraham’s people close to home, forcing Elam, Valiant, Sir Barlow, and others to maintain as many guards as possible.
Still, they had accosted the village’s patrol, making the path to Mount Elijah dangerous, so the band of Vacants guarding the top of the volcano would have to go, and with only a narrow access trail available, it seemed best to Elam to send two warriors for a surprise attack. With Acacia now fully rested, she could try again to open the portal in the volcano’s throat, if it still existed at all. Clefspeare had tried to clear the Vacants out once before but grew weak as he approached. Could that mean these creeps had a candlestone? Who could have given it to them? And how could they know that it weakened dragons?
Pointing with Excalibur, Billy whispered, “Let’s move. Remember, we’ll stop at the next switchback. That’ll be the north face.”
Soft-stepping on the gravelly path, they eased around the mountain and out of its shadow. Pegasus came into view, barely visible over the horizon. Although partially veiled by thin clouds, it shone a swath of yellowish moonlight acro
ss an array of peaks and valleys, creating a stunning portrait of a river-fed landscape, the western side of each mountain shrouded in shadows.
As a sliver of darkness passed over the edge of the huge moon, wind pummeled their bodies and flapped their cloaks. Billy pulled up his hood and pressed his back against the mountain. The rocky wall didn’t shield him from the wind, but at least it held his cloak in place.
Walter joined him at his side and pointed toward a valley. “The fountains are supposed to be somewhere over there.”
“I see bubbles in the river,” Billy said. “I’ll bet that’s where they spring up.”
“Yep. They’re about to blow, all right.”
“Perfect. The noise should help.”
Leaning his head against the mountain, Walter looked at Billy. “You ever think back to how all this started? I mean, how we teamed up?”
Billy nodded. “When did you first know I was different?”
“When you breathed on your Pop-tart on the bus, and it toasted on the spot.”
“That soon? I didn’t know you noticed.”
“I didn’t know your breath would turn into fire, but I noticed.” Walter pulled out his sword. “And I’m glad I did. Life’s been awesome ever since.”
The shadow crossed the moon’s halfway point, further darkening their surroundings. “Are you ready for another battle?” Billy asked.
“Fire up that sword, and I’ll follow the glow.”
“Just a couple more minutes, I think.” Listening for a rush of water, Billy kept his gaze locked on the skies. Just a hint that his father lurked nearby would be a big help. These Vacants sounded as bad as the Nephilim, maybe worse. And with Excalibur acting in an unpredictable manner, who could tell how effective it would be? Still, it had always provided at least a bit of light, and the blade was as sharp as ever. If necessary, he could also use his fire breathing, but that would have to wait until they engaged the Vacants in close conflict. He didn’t want to accidently scorch Walter.
When the last slice of Pegasus drained away, Billy summoned a bare glow from Excalibur, just enough to see the path in front of him, a path wide enough for the two of them to march side by side. He stepped away from the mountain and whispered, “Ready?”