Crystal Force

by Joe Ducie

Drake awoke to find himself in bed with Irene.

  He took a second to process that, found the circumstances to his liking, and offered her a weary wink. ‘Hello, Miss Finlay,’ he said. ‘How long was I out?’

  ‘Not even ten minutes,’ she replied. ‘I healed you as best I could, Will.’

  ‘I feel great,’ Drake lied. He felt like roadkill. ‘A few aches and pains, but nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t fix.’

  Drake knew that Irene knew that he hadn’t slept more than an hour in the last week. And when he had, his dreams had been of nightmarish crystal landscapes. He took a deep breath and it didn’t hurt. His ribs were mended. Irene was a wonder – and the sooner he got her to London, the sooner she could heal his mother.

  And then they could get fish and chips.

  The last two years of prisons and escapes may actually pay off.

  ‘We don’t have a lot of time left, if Whitmore is to be believed,’ Irene said. ‘Only half an hour before the creature, whatever it is, attacks New York.’

  Drake leant up and caught her lips. He kissed her deeply, cupping her cheek with his real hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said after the kiss and took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of her hair – like strawberries and rainfall.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, with a pleased smile.

  Irene kissed him again and Drake moved his hand to her shoulder, and then down along the curve of her side. He rested his palm on her hip and remembered that he was almost shirtless, and what shirt he did have on was stained bloody and black.

  He sighed and sat up on the bed. Irene shifted next to him, shuffling her legs under her and resting her hands in her lap. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  He grinned. ‘You mean besides the fact that Brand is still out there and we’ve got only half an hour before Whitmore said New York is going to be attacked by the crystal beneath the Rig?’

  ‘Yeah, besides that.’

  Drake laughed. ‘Well besides that, I’d really like to have an hour together, just you and me – maybe some pizza from Lombardi’s – without being interrupted by the Alliance, or Haven, or crystal doom and gloom. I kind of want to ask you out for fish and chips, Irene Finlay.’

  ‘Please stop being so cavalier. What are we going to do, Will?’

  Irene was afraid. She was strong, but she was afraid. He went to hug her with both arms, thought better of wrapping his crystal monstrosity around her, and stroked her shoulder with his real hand instead.

  ‘Amy Whitmore is in the living room,’ she said.

  ‘She … huh, what?’

  ‘She was alone at the museum and I just kind of … brought her with me. I didn’t know what else to do. The man watching her was killed. I was worried there’d be more dinosaurs or Brand would find us or something.’

  Drake considered and then nodded. ‘So, kidnapping. May as well add it to the ever-growing list of crimes we’ve committed.’

  ‘I didn’t kidnap her!’

  ‘Does her father know?’

  ‘She wants to call him.’

  Drake nodded and pulled his battered phone out of his pocket. The screen had cracked and water beads bubbled under the glass. The device was dead. ‘Do you have your phone?’

  ‘On the kitchen bench.’

  Drake swung his legs off the bed and took a second before standing up. The room didn’t spin but his legs felt a little like brittle twigs. ‘Let’s go and make a call then.’

  He stepped out into the hallway and Irene followed at his side. Ready to catch me if I fall. That was a nice thought. He found her phone on the marble island bench in the middle of the kitchen and accessed the contacts.

  ‘Who are you calling, William Drake?’ Noemi asked, stepping over from the living area to join him in the kitchen.

  She was dressed all in black, her katana hanging loose in its sheath at her waist and her dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. He glanced past her and saw Takeo on the couch playing with Amy Whitmore. He held a small patchwork doll by the arms and was making it dance in the air. Irene squeezed his arm and walked over to the couch.

  ‘Michael Tristan,’ Drake said. ‘I’m calling Tristan, because I just can’t quit him. He’s working with Whitmore, somewhere, feeding him all my secrets. We need to let President Lucien know his daughter is safe.’

  Noemi quirked an eyebrow. ‘Safe? Around you?’

  ‘Heh. Oh, fair point. But if it were my family or whatever, I’d want to know. Especially after that trick Brand pulled with the dinosaurs.’

  ‘You are assuming Lucien Whitmore has any emotional connection to this child.’

  Drake shrugged. ‘She wants us to call him. Little girl frightened and lost in a big city after running from evil dinosaurs and she wants her dad – what would you do?’

  ‘Whitmore may use this as an opportunity to seize you.’

  ‘That he may, but I am not so easily seized.’ Drake thought about the three times he’d been captured in the past two years after escaping Alliance prisons across the face of the world. ‘Well, not so easily any more. Also, he told me we’re in trouble.’

  Noemi tensed. ‘What manner of trouble?’

  ‘The crystal under the Rig? It’s been growing since I escaped. And it’s coming here. I think whatever is living in it – the creature or alien or whatever – is coming for us. We went and woke it up. Whitmore said the crystal would reach New York tonight.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘He had some pretty convincing charts and maps and stuff, yeah. I’m easily swayed by pie charts.’

  Noemi hesitated and then sighed. ‘We must leave the city. But if the population here is exposed to so much Yūgen …’

  ‘Kind of thinking the same thing. This could get really nasty. Give me five minutes and I’ll show you a pie chart supporting my position.’

  ‘Haven is safe,’ Noemi said. ‘Whatever darkness has grown under the ocean cannot touch the grounds of Haven. Our borders are protected. If we can make it to Japan, then you can rest.’

  Drake clenched his crystal fist and exhaled slowly. ‘We have to make it out of New York first,’ he said. ‘And then hop, skip, and jump across a continent or two. What’s the plan?’

  ‘It was going to be a ship,’ Noemi said. ‘A vessel in the harbour that will take us out to sea. Once we’re far enough away, several hundred miles, a long-range helicopter will collect us and fly us over to Europe.’ She bit her lip. ‘Looks like we are taking the long way round after all, but if it’s true the creature under the Rig is approaching, the ocean may prove treacherous.’

  ‘Plane to London, then?’ Drake asked.

  ‘We have come this far, so why not?’ Noemi hesitated. ‘It is your mother, isn’t it? Your reason for journeying home.’

  Drake nodded.

  ‘Takeo has done his research on you. We had to leave Haven in such a rush, after I sensed you. We knew nothing more than that you were half a world away. And then reports of the terrorist William Drake started to surface, of the chaos on the Rig, and I knew you were the one I had been sent to find.’

  ‘Are you glad you did?’

  Noemi tilted her head and grinned. ‘Oh yes. From now on I go where you go, Drake.’

  ‘Call me Will – all my friends do.’ He pressed his thumb to the name Michael Tristan in the phone’s contacts and held the device to his ear.

  Whitmore answered on the first ring. ‘Hello, Mr. Drake.’

  ‘Tristan is with you, then?’ Good.

  ‘Indeed. I apologise for the unpleasantness at the museum. Have you reconsidered my offer?’

  ‘Is Brand still breathing?’

  ‘Mr. Brand will be reprimanded for his actions.’

  Drake scowled. ‘You keep saying that. I’m not buying it.’

  ‘If not to accept my offer, then what do you want?’

  ‘I’ve got Amy here,’ Drake said.

  ‘Yes, of that I am aware. She left the museum with Miss Finlay. My people tell me you’re bac
k in that apartment on Park Avenue.’ Whitmore paused. ‘Are you threatening me with my daughter’s life, Mr. Drake? I warn you now, that is a line you can only cross once.’

  ‘No, no threats. Who the hell do you think I am?’

  Whitmore sighed down the line. ‘Do you even know yourself any more?’

  That made Drake frown. ‘I’m asking if you want to come and pick her up. Or we’ll drop her off somewhere. We’re leaving town.’

  ‘You cannot run from the fight.’

  ‘I’ve been running for two years. Why stop now?’

  Whitmore chuckled. ‘Very well. Safe passage from the city in exchange for my daughter? Agreed. Times Square. Ten minutes.’ He disconnected the call.

  Drake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He slipped Irene’s phone into his pocket and thought through the rough sketch of a plan he’d been making up as he went along these past few days. This is my chance. Follow the web.

  ‘What are we to do, Will?’ Noemi asked.

  Drake blinked and looked up. ‘Hmm? Oh. Times Square. We’ll drop Amy off there and, with any luck, the Alliance will let us leave town.’ After I take care of one little thing, most likely, if I’ve read you right at all, Whitmore.

  ‘I would not trust Lucien Whitmore to keep his word,’ Noemi said.

  Drake tapped his crystal fingers against the marble bench top, producing a dull chime, and nodded slowly. Neither would I. ‘Deal’s a deal, right? You know he’s got colourful eyes. The President of the Alliance was at Haven, once upon a time, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, yes he was.’

  ‘You should have told me that before. What can he do with the power?’

  Noemi bristled. ‘I have told you, that question is impolite at best, offensive at worst.’

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’

  Noemi shook her head. ‘Lucien Whitmore left Haven when I was only a child of four. He … made enemies before he left, and assumed control of Alliance Systems not long after his father’s death.’

  ‘Some of the oldest and wealthiest families in the world, that’s what you said.’ Drake chuckled. ‘And then his family went and discovered another source of Yūgen, beneath the deep blue, icy arctic sea, and what he must have thought about that …’

  ‘The Yūgen beneath the Rig does not act entirely like the gemstones grown in Haven. We believe this is why he was experimenting on the inmates.’

  ‘It also went boom when exposed to the air.’

  ‘Yes, that is interesting.’

  ‘And there’s something living in it. Something … mean. Something that Whitmore wants to fight.’

  Noemi shivered and gripped the hilt of her sword. ‘That terrifies me. The creature beneath the sea.’

  ‘Bluebird, they’re calling it. What is it, do you think? Honestly.’

  She looked at his forehead, her lips a thin, pale line as she examined his kiss-shaped scar. ‘Nothing kind.’

  Drake nodded and clapped his hands together – gently. ‘Best we be somewhere else very soon, then. If Whitmore’s right, it could be following me, which means if I leave it may spare the city. Either way, the Alliance have enough resources. We’re not needed here. We can get out while they’re distracted. And if not … well, I can’t just leave the city to its fate.’ He walked over to the couch, to Takeo and Irene. ‘Hey, Amy. We’re going to take you to see your dad now. I just need to change out of these stinky clothes.’

  ‘Your hat is funny!’ Amy said and giggled.

  ‘Maybe a little bit, yeah,’ he said. ‘We’re getting out of here, you two, so pack a bag. Leaving in two minutes.’

  ‘Are you in charge now?’ Takeo asked.

  Drake winked. ‘Was I ever not? No, we’re a team, mate. Team Drake.’ He glanced at Noemi. ‘We drop Amy off and her father will let us leave the city. We need to hurry. Two minutes and we’re out the door.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Times Square

  Irene’s healing had taken the edge off Drake’s bone-numbing fatigue. He felt charged, alive – ready to kick ass, take names, drink milkshakes, and get the hell out of town. A pervasive heat had settled in his chest, around his heart and near the thin claws of skeletal crystal growing in sharp lines from his shoulder. His forehead pounded, thrummed, on the edge of a migraine. He wasn’t sure if it was the madness from the Crystal-X or just how much he was falling for Irene Finlay.

  Love and madness are the same thing, he thought, feeling wise beyond his years for a brief second before snorting a rough chuckle. I don’t know what the hell I’m feeling … I can’t, with all this Crystal-X inside me.

  He and Irene walked to Times Square, holding Amy Whitmore’s hands, along 59th Street next to the park. She skipped between them, happy and laughing, as only the very young can be. Noemi and Takeo kept a clear path ahead. A cadre of Alliance soldiers, goons in fine suits, had met them out front of the apartment, and under their ‘guard’, the NYPD officers around Central Park didn’t waylay them. Walking would be quicker than trying to steer the car through the traffic and police checkpoints that had sprung up after the museum incident.

  Drake had changed into a clean pair of navy jeans and a black short-sleeved shirt. His crystal limb was on full display and he found that didn’t bother him so much. Perhaps his lack of worry should have worried him, how quickly he was becoming used to the obsidian change. The marble of light in his wrist, the guardian eagle, shone softly. He had no idea how to summon the ethereal creature. What remained of his tassel hat kept his head warm – so far the wool had mostly escaped the blue flames, gunfire, helicopter crashes, and reanimated dinosaurs. Irene had also changed out of her party dress, into jeans and a tank top. She wore a light jacket against the frosty bite in the night air. New York was cold. Takeo and Noemi had dressed for a fight. Dark clothes, solid boots, and while Noemi carried her curved sword in its sheath at her waist, Takeo had a pistol holstered under each arm. But what can he do with Yūgen, I wonder?

  ‘Do you think Michael will be there?’ Irene asked, as they took a left down onto 7th Avenue.

  Drake stared down the avenue at the lights of Times Square – something he had never seen before in person, but in a hundred films and TV shows. The throngs of people walking the streets worried him. So far all his encounters with the Alliance had ended in crystal fire. They were about ten minutes away, at a steady clip. Drake met her eyes. ‘I’m counting on it.’

  ‘My daddy has an ice cream store near here,’ Amy said. ‘Do you want ice cream, Irene?’

  Irene smiled. ‘Not right now. What’s your favourite flavour?’

  Amy shrugged. ‘Maybe the pink one. Or the one with cookie bits. Do you want ice cream, Will?’

  ‘I really, really, really … really, really, really super do,’ Drake said. ‘Maybe later, though. Must be past your bedtime by now!’

  Amy huffed. ‘I’m allowed to stay up and watch Teddy’s Adventures!’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Drake smiled wryly. ‘What time’s that on?’

  ‘After Arthur the Antelope.’

  ‘Ah, of course. It’s way past my bedtime.’ Drake shuffled around a food cart full of hotdogs and pretzels. His stomach grumbled, he was famished from the amount of power he had used, but he resisted the temptation. A delay could cost him at this point in the game. The webbed path in his mind trembled. So much was on the line, and he was dragging all of his friends into this – hopefully last – confrontation with the Alliance.

  I should have told them to run. It’s me they want. Irene shouldn’t be here, and neither should Noemi and Takeo. Still got a hidden ace to play, though.

  Too late to back out. The half a dozen soldiers shadowing them, the half a dozen he could see, would put up a fight.

  And little Amy didn’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire.

  Times Square punched Drake in the face with a thousand bright lights, screens full of corporate advertisements, and dozens of clubs, pubs and department stores. He contemplated raiding the M&M World
store for much-needed supplies, but as with the pretzel vendor he decided against what his stomach was telling him. Food would come later, if Lucien Whitmore did what Drake thought he would.

  As soon as they entered the heart of Times Square, the shadowy figures in suits dispersed and at least two dozen SUVs with blazing lights and sirens converged from all the available side streets. Alliance guards, soldiers and NYPD officers, all heavily armed, emerged from the vehicles and began to evacuate Times Square between 46th and 47th Streets. Drake watched – he marvelled – keeping hold of Amy Whitmore’s hand as the entire space emptied out. Irene shuffled in closer and Noemi and Takeo kept a hand near their weapons.

  New Yorkers, tourists, performers, ticket hawkers and food vendors were shuffled out of the area. In the space of less than five minutes, Drake stood with only his handful of allies, and Whitmore’s daughter, in the bustling, hustling heart of Manhattan Island. The guards and police had set up a perimeter stretching two blocks, with the public on the other side, and barricaded people in the hotels and restaurants.

  Empty of all save a few people, Drake thought Times Square looked bigger, cavernous – where wide streets met and branched away.

  Only once the space was clear did a sleek limousine pull into Times Square, driving off the street and onto the pedestrian walkway between 7th Avenue and the skyscrapers. Drake and his group had a set of red and white steps rising at their backs, forming the roof of the TKTS Times Square building. Broadway sales had come to a sudden stop, given the situation. The limousine parked in front of Drake, trapping his group between the car and the stairs and, as Drake felt a rush that he might just pull this off, Lucien Whitmore and Michael Tristan emerged from the luxurious vehicle.

  So everybody is here except Brand. Where’s he hiding? A shiver ran down Drake’s spine. Something was about to happen …

  The stolen Alliance drone hovered behind Tristan, and he shouldered the backpack Brand had swiped during Irene’s abduction from the apartment.

  ‘Daddy!’ Amy Whitmore cried and dashed forward. She stumbled and Whitmore caught her under her arms, sweeping her into a quick hug. After a moment, he put her in the limousine and shut the door.