by Darrell Pitt
Chapter Twelve
My blood runs cold at the news.
Ravana.
The memories of my time in the room come flooding back. For a few hours I have driven him from my mind. Now that I think about it, I wonder how I could have so successfully avoided thinking about him. It must be my mind shielding me from the pain of the experience. The truth of it is that I will never forget that monster. He will be a part of me for as long as I live.
“How can you know this?” Brodie asks.
Dan shakes his head. “I have no idea. The feeling comes and goes. One second I’m here and then I’m in their heads. Ravana is applying that…probe to their hands. It’s a girl and a guy.”
The probe. The thought of it makes me want to throw up.
Still, we need to help them. If we can.
“Do you know where they’re being kept?” Brodie asks.
Dan focuses for a minute. He looks out across the city. “I’m not sure. I get a feeling the building is over in that direction.” He points to the east. “I think we need to go that way.”
Fortunately we’ve got a car. It’s a late model convertible. Again, thanks to Dan, we were able to purchase one for an apple and a copy of the daily paper. Mind you, I think the man thought he was collecting about twenty thousand in cold, hard cash, but he seemed happy with the deal anyway.
Brodie and I are in the front seat. I drive while Dan focuses on trying to find the building. It’s like driving around with a human metal detector. We spend half an hour with Dan saying things like, ‘it’s getting warmer’ and ‘no, now we’re moving away’. At the end of it I think all we’ve done is driven around in circles and used up half a tank of gas.
Finally I pull over.
“I think you need to focus,” I tell Dan.
“I’m trying.”
Brodie makes a suggestion. “What if you were to move out of the minds of the kids in the building? Can you do that?”
Dan considers this. “I can try.”
“Maybe you can latch onto someone else’s mind,” Brodie says. “Someone who’s leaving the building.”
Dan takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and focuses. For a few minutes he says nothing. I glance out the window and notice people walking past the vehicle. One glances in. Obviously this must look a little weird; two people staring at a guy with his eyes shut. After a while Dan clears his throat.
“I’m with someone in the elevator. It’s a guy. He doesn’t know Ravana or his organization. He just works somewhere in the building. The elevator is coming to a halt. It’s at ground level. He’s getting out. Leaving the building. I can look back. I can see…”
Dan’s eyes open wide. “I can see it. I can see the building. It’s…”
The moment seems to last forever.
Then he tells us the address of a building on East Seventy-First Street.
Brodie shakes her head in amazement. “You’re incredible.”
Dan wipes sweat from his brow. “I know.”
“Modest too,” I lean over the seat and hit Dan on the shoulder.
I start the car and angle it into the traffic. It doesn’t take long for us to arrive at the address. It’s a tall, modern looking office block surrounded by similar buildings. It’s hard to believe there are two kids being tortured in such a location.
The thought turns my stomach.
We climb out of the car. For the first time, I’m feeling kind of nervous. I feel like I’m the spare wheel in this organization. It looks like Brodie can single-handedly fight an army to a standstill. Dan can move objects with the power of his mind and get into people’s heads. I can –
Well, I know how to drive. Maybe I can be like Alfred the butler in the Batman comics and drive the others places and make cocoa at appropriate times.
We stop in front of the building.
“I know this is probably too much to expect,” I say, turning to Dan. “But any idea which floor Ravana is on?”
Dan shakes his head. “No. We might just have to wing it from here.”
We enter the main lobby. Adjacent to the elevators is a chart of the building occupants. There are a lot of them. We spend the next few minutes perusing the list. Finally we turn to each other in frustration.
“Nothing stands out,” Brodie shakes her head. “Why can’t bad guys identify themselves as such?”
“You mean, like Evil Inc?” Dan asks.
“Yeah,” I say, staring at the list. “Or Bad For U?”
At that moment a guy enters the lobby and passes us without a glance. He disappears into an elevator. Dan has been watching him from the corner of his eye. He leans close to us as the elevator departs.
“I picked up something from him,” Dan says.
“The flu?” I ask.
“I couldn’t get a clear picture, but it was a negative vibe.”
We wander over to the elevator and watch the changing display. The elevator stops at the twenty-fifth floor. The directory lists them as Stanley Imports. I glance at the others.
“What do you think?”
Brodie shrugs. “We’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s do it.”
It seems strange standing patiently in the ascending elevator. I don’t know about the others, but my throat has gone dry. My heart is beating like crazy. I look at Brodie and a sweat has broken out on her brow. Only Dan seems completely confident.
It’s because he’s younger than us, I think.
A chill runs down my spine. How old is Dan? Maybe fifteen. Brodie and I aren’t much older. We’re a bunch of teenagers about to launch an attack on Ravana and his cronies and we don’t have a plan.
The idea makes me dizzy. We haven’t prepared for this. We’re marching blindly into this place with no clue as to what we’re about to do when we reach the floor or where to go when we get there. It’s absolutely insane. I open my mouth to speak, but as I do the elevator draws to a halt.
The doors slide open.
I think we’re walking into Hell.