by Jerry Hart
With all his strength, Owen turned his head and, with his returning vision, saw Michael pick up the orb and do the same things he’d seen himself doing: First, he circled the top of the orb, then traced his finger down the middle until he got to the base, where he drew three circles.
Immediately the orb lit up from within, and the air around Michael became electric. A rumbling was emitting from the orb, and it was getting louder.
“Hold it higher!” Jason snapped, putting two small black earplugs in his ears as he wrapped his arms around his brother to get as close as possible. There were steady blue lights blinking from the plugs, and Owen assumed they were specifically made to protect Jason from the orb.
Michael held the orb over his head. It looked to Owen as if he were having trouble with it; it was shaking wildly in his grip. Waves were pulsing out of it now, heading in all directions.
Whatever this orb was built for, whatever Jason and Michael wanted to accomplish … it was happening now.
* * *
Chris had seen enough—now was the time to act. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Buster. He had to blow them away; he didn’t like what that strange orb was doing. He knew it was wrong.
Owen was still too close to them, though.
Owen…
He was looking straight at Chris. Chris stared back. There was something in Owen’s eyes. The orb was pulsing loudly, too loud for Chris to hear anything around him. It looked as if Owen wanted to speak, but it would have been impossible to hear him.
So Owen nodded.
What did that mean? Chris asked himself. Owen simply nodded. Then it came to him. Owen was telling him to blow them up. Right now.
Chris nodded back. Now was the time. But he had another idea. He reached into his pocket again. Suddenly a loud bang that sounded like a thunderclap came from the orb, and the pulse grew in intensity, spreading in all directions. Glass shattered from the nearest buildings, as well as all the glass from the parked cars around them. Car alarms were going off, barely audible due to the pulse.
“Now!” Chris thought he heard. He turned back to Owen and saw him screaming at him.
Now was definitely the time. Michael and his brother stood close together, directly under the orb, as if trying to stay in a protective circle. Chris pressed down on the activation button of the Rejecter bomb and threw it at them.
The explosion was worse than he imagined it would be. The ground shook, and the explosion itself almost seemed frozen in time; all sound ceased to exist, as if someone had flipped a switch to turn it off. Everything lit up brilliantly.
The next moment, time caught up with itself. A powerful force sucked everything inward, toward the orb. Chris grabbed onto the closest car, but it too was being dragged. Then, an explosive force blew everything away. The entire parking garage wobbled and cracked. It felt like it was about to collapse completely.
Chris had to get Owen out of there. He ran toward him, trying to stay away from Michael and the orb. He didn’t even bother looking at them. He reached Owen, pulling him to his feet. That’s when the ground below them gave way. Chris yanked Owen back as the ground collapsed, taking Michael, Jason and the orb with it.
But the crack in the ground spread, and then more ground began to collapse. Cars fell through the expanding hole. Before Chris could even think, Owen lifted him off the ground.
The entire garage, all six levels of it, was collapsing. Owen ran away from the ever-expanding hole, carrying Chris in his arms.
“I can run, you know!” Chris screamed.
“No time,” said Owen.
The ground disappeared below Owen’s feet. He leapt onto the nearest car, and then the next one after that, as the cars vanished. He continued to leap from car to car, staying off the ground as best he could. The sound of the collapsing structure was overbearing to Chris. How were they going to get out of this? It was only a matter of time before they ran out of space, before the entire building was gone.
Owen jumped onto a car that had already begun to fall. Utter fear grasped Chris as the two of them fell, but Owen didn’t give up. He jumped to the next car that had started falling above them. And then he jumped to the next one after that. They were going to run out of cars before too long.
And that they did. Owen stayed on the last car he’d jumped to, pinning Chris against the roof so he wouldn’t fall away. The car spun and the roof faced down, toward the ground. Owen gripped both sides of the roof and pulled one side with all his strength. The car tilted until the roof faced upward again. Chris took this moment to look around—the entire parking garage was collapsing.
All because of one tiny Rejecter.
Chris and Owen looked down as they fell into the void.
CHAPTER 21
The dust hadn’t settled yet when Owen opened his eyes. He was on the hood of a car—the last one he’d jumped on—with his back against the windshield. Chris was next to him, unconscious. Other cars were littered around, some almost completely crushed by rubble. Something was digging into Owen’s back, but before he could look to see what it was, a low rustle of gravel alerted him to something moving in his direction. He held his breath as the figure drew closer. Owen could see the silhouette of a man pushing through the dust.
“If only you knew who you really are,” said the figure, “you would not have stopped us.”
“I know who I am,” said Owen.
The figure stepped into a patch of light coming from the moon far above, and Owen saw it was Jason, blood covering his face and clothes.
“Do you really?” asked Jason.
“I made that orb. I knew it the moment I saw it. It’s mine to do with as I want.”
He noticed a body lying a few feet behind Jason. He assumed it was Michael.
“You’re wrong about that, my friend. It’s ours,” spat Jason, “and the decision is not yours, as much as you’d like to believe that. The decision will never be just yours. Never forget that, brother. I hope you’re ready to die for this world.”
Sirens wailed in the background. Jason became fully aware of them and tensed on the spot. He started backing away, never taking his eyes off of Owen. In the blink of an eye, Jason and Michael disappeared. The dust that had surrounded them puffed inward, as if filling the void the brothers left behind. Owen wasn’t sure what he had just seen, but he also didn’t care.
He looked over to Chris, who was still passed out. Only then did he remember the pain in his back. He reached to feel for what was behind him and his fingers touched upon a hard, round object.
“It can’t be,” he said.
He grabbed the object and brought it to the front so he could get a good look at it. Sure enough, it was the dreaded orb that had caused all the chaos.
The orb he knew, in some unexplainable way, belonged to him.
And now it was back in his possession.
Owen pulled Chris off of the car and carried him away from the collapsed garage. Cops surrounded their condo down the street, and some were headed to the parking garage now. Owen knew police had to have discovered Daniel’s body by now and it wasn’t safe to go home. He couldn’t think of any other place to go right now.
And just then, he remembered Mr. Elfman was out of town. The old man wouldn’t mind if the boys crashed at his place without his knowledge. At this point, at least, Owen didn’t care if Mr. Elfman would mind.
* * *
“What do we do now?” Owen asked Chris as they settled into Mr. Elfman’s condo. Chris held the orb, studying it. Neither one of them knew what it had done after it had been activated, but they had stopped it before it could do any real damage, and that was something.
“I think we should just chuck it into Trident River and be done with it,” Chris said, handing it back to Owen.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, what if someone else finds it?”
“Then let’s destroy it.”
Owen pondered this. “How?”
“Beat it with a sle
dgehammer. I don’t know.”
“What about Nikki?” Owen asked. “She told us to bring it to her.”
“Why should we?” Chris asked. “We stopped what those guys were doing, and you said Michael was dead, right?”
“He looked dead,” Owen amended. “Daniel and Alyssa were killed because of this thing,” he added. “I want to know why.”
Chris had just woken up from his unconscious state and found himself in the old man’s place. Owen had filled him in about what had happened after they’d fallen to the street, and how Jason and Michael extracted the knowledge of how to activate the orb from Owen’s mind. Police were swarming their own condo down the hall, so they couldn’t return there. Chris rubbed his temples; his head was ready to split wide open, and he doubted it was because of the concussion he’d suffered at the garage.
“But how did you know how to activate it?” he asked Owen for the third time.
“I told you, I don’t know. I kept having those dreams about this thing, like I was the one building it. That’s why I think we should take it to Nikki. Maybe she can tell us.”
“So you think you built it?”
“I don’t see how or why. I think I know everything about it, but, at the same time, I know nothing about it. Michael knew, too. He knew what it does, but not how to turn it on. I knew how, but not what it does. It’s like pieces…”
Chris looked up at him when he suddenly stopped talking. “What is it?”
“Pieces of a puzzle,” Owen finished. “That’s what Michael said he and I were. Two pieces of a puzzle. And when we were together, we completed that puzzle.”
Chris said nothing. He only stared at the orb—the puzzle. After a moment, he got up and went to the bedroom.
“Let me just lie down for a second,” he said to Owen over his shoulder. “I just need to lie down. Then we can go.”
* * *
Chris wanted nothing more than to sleep. His head throbbed and his body felt stiff. He felt he deserved to rest. The orb was now in his and Owen’s possession, Michael and Jason had fled, defeated, and the world was safe.
So why did Chris not feel at ease? Even as he lay in the bed, he felt he should be up. A sudden fear washed over him. He felt himself slowly fading away. He sat up from Mr. Elfman’s bed, his heart racing.
He was still infected by Eric. He had forgotten.
Until now, nothing had come of that; he never felt the urge to feed on human blood; he didn’t develop super-human strength. But now he felt something odd. He suddenly felt if he fell asleep, he would wake up changed. Not in a coma, like Stephanie, but completely changed.
He walked over to a desk and sat, staring at Mr. Elfman’s computer monitor. He slapped himself hard. I can’t fall asleep. He had no idea where this realization came from, but he felt it to be true.
He was starting to panic now. He looked around the room for something to distract him. His thoughts dwelled on the bed, and how Mr. Elfman was out of town and, according to Daniel that day D had snuck into this apartment, wouldn’t be back for another week.
With that, Chris figured he could catch a quick nap before things got busy.
No, he thought, I can’t go to sleep.
The feeling he wouldn’t be the same if he slept filled him with an overwhelming fear. He thought of going for a jog, but he was much too tired for that.
He closed his fists. His fingers crackled—he felt so stiff. His mind felt empty, too. He was feeling even sleepier because of it. He gazed longingly at the bed; it looked so inviting.
He spun in his chair to stare back at the monitor. The dark screen seemed to hypnotize him. The desire to sleep was growing.
* * *
When Owen entered the bedroom, he saw Chris resting his head on the keyboard. He understood why Chris would be exhausted after what they’d just experienced, but he knew they couldn’t stay here. The police were investigating the explosions that had plagued the building. Owen had been watching the news the whole time to see if they’d reported on any of the things that had happened in the last few hours. Nothing yet, so far.
And the police were no doubt curious about the weapons cache and the dead body of Daniel Hudson. Owen Walters and Chris Weaver would most definitely be questioned about all of that.
Owen called to Chris, who woke instantly. Owen was startled by his blank expression; his eyes were empty.
“You all right?” Owen asked.
Chris didn’t respond. He didn’t even move. It was like he was frozen. He continued to stare at Owen, which sent a chill up his spine.
Suddenly, something started dripping out of Chris’s eyes and down his face. It looked like he was crying, but the tears weren’t clear; they were dark and sappy-looking.
“Oh, my god,” Owen said after examining it closely.
Something definitely wasn’t right. He ran to the bathroom to get a towel, but when he returned, Chris was gone. Owen looked around the room. He searched the living room and kitchen, the other bedrooms and bathrooms. The condo was almost as big as theirs, though Mr. Elfman lived alone. Chris was nowhere to be found. Owen ran past the TV where he heard a news report (the reporter sounded excited about something), but he did not stop.
His heart raced. It wasn’t like Chris to just get up and leave like that. Owen walked to an open window (the one they’d crawled through to avoid the cops at the entrance) and looked down, preparing for the worst. He was happy to not see Chris’s body splattered on the street below.
He looked up at the sun, which was slowly rising; something wasn’t right about it. Instead of feeling heat radiating from it, he felt cold. Maybe there was something in the air. He went back to the living room and grabbed the orb from behind the couch. Had Michael and Jason succeeded in their plan, after all?
The orb felt warm and greasy in his hands once again. He felt nothing good could ever come from it. He had succeeded in obtaining it from Michael and Jason, and Michael was pretty much out of commission, but he couldn’t shake the feeling this wasn’t over.
Owen saw D standing in a corner (the robot had been waiting in this condo instead of their own), low blue lights barely visible in the sun-drenched room. In all the excitement, Owen hadn’t noticed the front door open. He ran over to it, but before he could poke his head out to survey the hall, a cop ran by. Owen jumped behind the door, and then slowly closed it. Chris must have gone out that way.
Owen looked back to D. There was no way he was going to leave it—him—there all alone, but he couldn’t very well take him looking the way he did—looking very much like a robot.
* * *
A few minutes later, Owen and D casually made their way out of the condo. D had on a long brown trench coat and a fedora. He was walking with his head down. Owen wouldn’t have been at all surprised if someone found them suspicious-looking.
No one had stopped them so far, so they kept walking until they got to the garage, to Owen’s car. D got into the passenger’s seat as Owen tossed the orb in the back.
“Ready to hit the road, Daniel?” Owen asked.
The robot looked at him but said nothing, which was pretty much what Owen had been expecting. And then Owen caught what he had just said. He’d referred to D as Daniel. He sat there for a moment, contemplating that.
D did stand for Daniel, he told himself, remembering how the boy genius had decided to name his creation.
Owen started the car and drove out of the lot, making sure not to speed; there were cops all over the place. “Keep your head down,” he told D.
The robot did as it was told. Owen turned right on Calhoun. As he did so, he looked to where the parking garage had collapsed. There were people crowded all around it, and it appeared some police officers were fighting them back. Owen turned right on the next street, intending to circle back to the collapsed building. He had a crazy thought and wanted to check to make sure.
As he approached Calhoun and 4th, he saw the crowd of people better. Most of them looked pale and weird, much th
e way Chris had appeared to Owen moments ago. Four police officers kept pushing them back, but the people were insistent upon approaching the site.
That’s when Owen thought he saw who he was looking for: Someone who looked a lot like Chris was among the crowd. Before Owen could get a better look, a cop noticed him and approached his car.
“Sir, you’re going to have to move along,” the officer said.
Owen nodded and drove off, fearful of the officer noticing his robot companion. He got onto the freeway, trying to remember the way to his destination, but his thoughts suddenly dwelled on Chris again. Where was he? Owen kept asking himself.
As he drove down the freeway, he kept glancing back at the orb. There was someone who might be able to tell him what it truly was, someone with strawberry-blond hair, who could tell you anything you wanted to know, as long as you were completely honest with her. And Owen intended to be as honest as he possibly could this time.
He turned on the radio and settled in for his trip to Baker, to see Nikki. As he drove, he thought of all the things he would ask her.
CHAPTER 22
Daniel still didn’t know where he was, though he did know he was no longer alive. He was in an eerie, silent world of gold and black that shimmered all around him. The strange energy actually formed shapes, however, and he couldn’t help but feel he was in some bizarre landscape, like a canyon.
There were hills and pillars, but no wind or sand or grass. The ground was firm, and every time he took a step, there was some ripple effect just under his feet. When he looked up, he saw a large golden sun that radiated no heat whatsoever.
“Where am I?” he asked himself.
He stood in place and looked around to get his bearings. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in this place, but he felt like he wasn’t alone. In fact, he kept seeing shadowy forms in the corner of his eye. Whenever he actually looked straight at them, however, they vanished.
“Hello?” he called out loud. His voice seemed to fall flat on the glimmering landscape, though. He waited for a moment. Nothing.