by Lubar, David
“Hi, guys.” He looked over at me. “Man I’m glad you’re not dead. How come they said you were?”
“Long story.” I gave him the basic details. When I was done, I asked, “What about you? How are you doing?”
“Real good.” He put the accordion down on the bed, then said, “Wow. You’ve got sheets and a blanket.”
“And television,” Martin said. He tossed the TV schedule from the newspaper to Torchie. “There’s some great stuff on tonight.”
“You’re controlling your power?” I asked.
“Totally. I’ve hardly burned up anything all summer, except for a tiny part of one cornfield. And our mailbox. But just twice. Oh, and a billboard. I’m real good, unless I get excited.”
That’s when I noticed the smoke curling up from the newspaper. Flinch, of course, was way ahead of me. He smacked the paper out of Torchie’s hand and stomped on it. At the same time, Torchie leaped up, screamed, “Yeooowwwcch,” and blew on his fingers.
“Guess I was excited to see you,” he said.
“Here, put some ice on it.” Martin looked in the bucket. “Shoot. We’re out.”
“I’ll get it!” Torchie shouted. “I love ice machines. They have one where I’m staying, but it doesn’t work. And it sort of smells.” He grabbed the ice bucket and headed for the door, then turned back. “You guys aren’t gonna ditch me, are you?”
“What?” I asked.
“You know. Slip out while I’m away.”
“Drat! You figured out our secret plan,” Martin said. “I was going to steal your accordion, go back to your motel, and impersonate you. I’ve been plotting this my whole life. The hardest part was learning to sweat on demand.”
Torchie grinned at Martin. “I forgot what a kidder you are.”
“Here. Take this.” I handed him the key card. Torchie put it in his pocket and walked out.
A half minute later, there was a knock on the door. “That was fast,” Martin said. “I guess he had trouble with the lock.” He turned the knob and opened the door.
Maybe if it had been Flinch who’d gone to the door, we would have had a chance. But Flinch was busy channel-surfing and Martin never saw it coming. As soon as the door opened, someone tossed a small cylinder through the opening. Before I could react, the cylinder exploded in a cloud of gas.
I tried to open the window, but everything went gray. I could feel myself falling toward the floor. I seemed to be falling forever.
while trash learns that
life is a gas, torchie
gets some ice …
“THIS IS AWESOME.” Torchie couldn’t believe he was together with his friends again. Sure, they had some problems. People were trying to kidnap Trash. Lucky and Cheater were in the hospital. But there was a bright side to everything. Trash had escaped. Cheater was healing. And Lucky was in a place where he could get help. That was a Grieg family motto: It could be worse. Of course, that came true a lot, too. Things got worse. But even then, the motto applied.
Torchie followed the signs, turned several corners, and finally found the ice machine at the far end of a hall. It took him a while to figure out how it worked, but he managed to fill the bucket. And this machine didn’t smell. The hotel seemed a lot nicer than the one where he was staying. There weren’t any holes in the carpet, and you could see through the windows. He held a piece of ice against his finger for a minute, until it stopped hurting, then headed back.
As he turned the final corner, he looked down the hall and saw a couple guys coming out of Trash’s room. Torchie got lost all the time, especially in buildings he’d never been to before. But when Flinch had brought him to the room, he’d noticed the number on the door. It was 427—which was easy to remember because that was exactly what his Uncle Duley weighed last year after Thanksgiving dinner. So the room was right. But something was wrong. The men coming out were pushing a laundry cart. They didn’t look like maids.
Pretending he was going to another room, Torchie walked right past 427. He waited until the two men had gone into the elevator, then he went back and unlocked the door. There was nobody there.
“Oh boy,” he muttered. “This is not good.”
cell mates
WHATEVER THEY USED to knock us out, I came awake faster than before. No gorillas. No singing crumbs or smiling shoes. But I had a killer headache, and my eyes didn’t want to focus. My left arm ached, too. I lifted my sleeve and saw I had a bandage wrapped around my arm, just above my elbow. I guess I’d gotten hurt when they’d captured us. I didn’t remember putting up a fight.
I was on a concrete floor. This wasn’t the lab house. It looked like a large basement—except part of the space, maybe ten or twelve feet long, had been walled off with iron bars, forming a cell in one corner. There were no windows in the walls. Even without the bars, it would have been a dark, depressing place.
“My head hurts,” Martin said.
I looked over to where he was sprawled. “Sorry. This is my fault. I got you into it.” I couldn’t believe I was a captive again, so soon after escaping.
Flinch was slumped in the corner. His eyes were closed, his mouth hung open, but he was breathing.
“We’ll be okay,” Martin said.
“And you know that with your psychic powers, Martin?” I shouted.
“Hey, chill out,” he said.
“Sorry. It’s not you. I’m just angry at everything right now. You have no idea how bad this is about to get.”
I clamped my mouth shut as my eyes focused and I realized there was another cell in the corner opposite ours. Someone was sleeping on a cot. An adult. His back was turned to us. There’s an old saying Cheater had taught me: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I was still too dizzy to stand. I crawled to the door of my cell and shouted at the guy, “Hey! Wake up!” He didn’t move. I tried a couple more times, then gave up and went back to the corner.
A moment later, Bowdler came down a flight of steps to the right of the cells. He didn’t have anything in his hand. Maybe he thought I was still too dizzy to be a threat. I waited until he unlocked the door and stepped in. Then I lashed out with my power. I wanted to crack his skull against the bars.
Nothing happened. No satisfying smack of bone against metal. No flying bits of brain.
I scanned the room, looking for the disrupter. Bowdler gave me a thin smile. “Oh, we’re not lugging around clunky prototypes anymore. You’d be surprised how small a device we can make. But I’m not here to discuss technology.” He glanced toward Martin. “I have the feeling you also have psychic powers.”
I remembered the sarcastic words I’d shouted a moment ago. And you know that with your psychic powers, Martin? Bowdler had probably heard me all the way upstairs. “That was a joke,” I told him.
“I think not. I think it was the truth. The name ‘Martin’ does seem to ring a bell. You cried it out the day you escaped.” Bowdler crossed the cell and put his foot on top of Martin’s hand where it rested on the floor. “The truth?”
Martin shrugged. “You heard him. It was a joke.”
Bowdler rocked forward slightly, putting more weight on Martin’s fingers. “I don’t like playing ‘truth or dare.’ I much prefer ‘truth or pain.’ Pain builds character. Something that your generation sorely lacks.”
Martin hated bullies. I expected him to spit out an insult or to grit his teeth and refuse to make a sound. I never expected him to talk.
“If I tell you what I know, will you leave the fourth kid alone?” he asked.
Bowdler slid his foot off Martin’s fingers, then leaned over and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “What fourth kid?”
“Nothing,” Martin said. “There’s no other kid.”
“There’s nobody else,” I said. What was Martin thinking? If Bowdler got his hands on Torchie, it would be like tossing a puppy to a python. I wanted to jump on Bowdler’s back and pound him, but I wasn’t even sure I could stand up without help.
Bowdler ignored me and pu
lled Martin closer to him. “Do you know how easily I can make you talk? Do you know how quickly I can have you crying like a baby, just begging me to let you tell everything? Do you have any idea how much of the human body can be sliced off or peeled away without killing someone?”
“You can’t…” Martin said. “We’re just kids.”
“Can’t what? Look around? Do you see anyone who can stop me? Your little friend, that telekinetic freak of nature, has been tamed. You don’t have any way to hurt me, or you would have tried by now. I’m getting bored. So talk.”
Don’t do it, I thought. You can’t mention Torchie.
“His name’s Dennis Woo,” Martin said. “He’s in Philly, at the hospital.”
“No!” I leaped to my feet, then fell back to my knees as a wave of dizziness washed over me. How could Martin betray Cheater?
“What’s his power?” Bowdler asked. “Is he a telekinetic, too?”
Martin shook his head and whispered something to Bowdler. It was too faint for me to hear. Bowdler let go of Martin and strode toward the cell door.
Martin grabbed the bars on the side of the cage and pulled himself to his feet. Grunting with the effort, he dove at Bowdler. Bowdler glanced over his shoulder, then threw back a kick that caught Martin in the gut and dropped him to the ground.
“Looks like I can see the future, too,” Bowdler said.
See the future? I had no idea why he mentioned that. Precognition wasn’t Cheater’s talent.
It didn’t matter. Even if he’d mentioned the wrong talent, Martin had broken our vow. Bowdler went out and locked the cell door behind him.
Martin was curled up, but I didn’t feel any sympathy for him. “Why’d you do that?”
After all we’d been through, I couldn’t believe he’d rat out Cheater that quickly. I know I’d have kept my mouth shut, no matter what sort of things Bowdler threatened to do to me. No matter how many fingers he crushed. I held my hand up, with my palm facing him. “Doesn’t this mean anything to you?”
Martin glanced toward the stairs, then whispered two words. “Trust me.”
“What’s going on?” Flinch asked. He sat up and rubbed his face, then looked around. “Where are we?”
“In deep trouble,” I said.
while trash begins to lose
hope, cheater meets a
misinformed man …
“HELLO, DENNIS.” The man pulled the curtain around the bed and sat in the chair. “Your friend Martin tells me you can see the future.”
“No, I can read minds.” That’s what Cheater would have blurted out if he hadn’t been trying to avoid moving his jaw so much. As he bit back the words, his brain went from high gear to overdrive.
Obviously, Martin had spilled their secret. But he’d spilled the wrong information. Why? Because Martin must have wanted to bring the two of them together. But why would Martin mention psychic powers? He would never reveal their secret. Which meant it wasn’t a secret. So the man knew something. But not the right thing. And he definitely didn’t know anything about mind-reading.
Cheater felt like he was holding a weak hand in a game he had to win. He couldn’t fold. He had to play it out. Barely moving his lips, he whispered, “I can only see blurry stuff.”
“What?” the man asked.
Cheater whispered again, even more quietly, making sure he slurred his words.
The man leaned over so his ear was directly above Cheater’s mouth. Cheater opened his mind to the man’s thoughts.
This time, it was even harder to keep from blurting anything out. The man had taken Martin, Flinch, and Trash to a building somewhere and locked them up. He was on a mission to find anyone with useful psi talents.
“Where’s Martin?” Cheater asked.
“Just tell me about your power,” the man said. But the address ran through his mind.
“Sometimes, I can see how TV shows will end,” Cheater said.
“What?”
“TV shows. I know what’s going to happen before it happens. Five minutes before the ending, it will just come to me in a flash. Even sooner if it’s a rerun.”
The man straightened up. “That’s it?”
“Yeah—that’s my special talent. It’s spooky. I just know what the future will bring. I guess I’m psychic.” Cheater’s face was killing him, but he knew he needed to keep talking until the man lost interest in him. “Yup, TV is pretty awesome when you think about everything that’s involved. You know, a guy named Philo Farnsworth got the original idea. It came to him when he looked at a cornfield. Amazing, huh? He stares at rows of corn and changes our lives forever.”
“Anything else?” the man asked. “Can you see things in the real world?”
“Nope. Just TV shows. But my friends think I’m a genius when we watch mysteries. I’ve got a TV. Wanna watch something with me? That way, you can see me in action. It’ll be fun.”
The man shook his head and left the room.
“Bluffed you,” Cheater said after the footsteps had faded down the hall. He felt like he’d just won a huge pot with a busted flush. Now all he had to do was figure out how to rescue his friends.
what’s gotten into you?
I’D MOVED AWAY from Martin to the other side of the cell. But Flinch stayed with him. Martin groaned and rubbed his stomach.
“What happened to you?” Flinch asked.
“I got kicked.”
“I’d have seen it coming.”
“Then maybe you can try to jump him next time while I take a nap.” Martin flicked a jab at Flinch’s face.
Flinch blinked, but didn’t make any move to block the punch. “Do that again.”
Martin threw another jab.
“I didn’t see it coming,” Flinch said.
“Of course not,” I said. “There’s a disrupter hidden in here somewhere.”
“Maybe the field doesn’t cover the whole area.” Flinch got up and walked to the far corner of the cell, diagonally opposite from where I sat.
Martin got up and joined him. “Yeah, let’s check it out.”
“Slap me,” Flinch said.
Martin took a shot at him, but Flinch blocked it easily enough. “I definitely saw that coming.”
Flinch took a tiny step toward me, then nodded at Martin, who tried to slap him again. They repeated the process a couple times, until they were several feet from where they’d started. Then, the slap landed.
“Ow!” Flinch said.
“Sorry. You didn’t see it coming?” Martin asked.
“Obviously not,” Flinch said, rubbing his cheek.
“So the disrupter is on my side of the cell,” I said. “If you can get out of the field, I can, too. It looks like Bowdler isn’t as smart as he thought.”
I stood up and joined them in the corner. Since I hated to miss out on all the fun, I took a swing at Flinch, and smacked him in the cheek.
I was too surprised to say anything. Flinch always sees it coming. My hand never should have landed.
“Oh man, this is bad,” Martin said. He looked over at Flinch.
“Yeah,” Flinch said. “Really bad.”
“What?” I asked.
They both looked at me like they’d just found out I had cancer. An instant later, my body shuddered as I realized what their expressions meant.
“The disrupter is moving with me.”
It was on me. Or … in me? I lifted my sleeve and stared at the bandage on my arm.
“That truly stinks,” Martin said. “I’m gonna stomp that guy, first chance I get. Starting with his fingers, and ending with his head.”
I unwound the bandage. There was a gash on my arm sewed together with crude surgical stitches. Beneath the stitches, my skin bulged as if something had been forced under it. I grabbed my arm to rip open the wound and pull out the disrupter. But just touching the flesh sent such a jolt of pain through me that I let out a scream.
“You guys have to do it,” I said.
Flinch shook his
head. “No way. You could bleed to death.”
“We have to get rid of it.” I felt my pockets. All I had was my MP3 player and my wallet. Nothing sharp enough to cut the stitches.
“It won’t be easy,” someone said. “But you have to try to get it out. Or Bowdler will own you forever.”
The voice came from across the hall. I looked toward the other cell, and saw a face I saw every time I closed my eyes. It was a face that lived in my nightmares. “Oh my god …” It couldn’t be.
while trash is gasping,
bowdler is digging …
BOWDLER WENT FROM the hospital to his apartment. He’d have preferred to use the computer at the lab, but the lab had been compromised. Its location could have been revealed by Eddie during the time he was loose. Unlikely, but Bowdler hadn’t survived so long by taking chances. That was rule number one: always have a backup. A backup plan, a backup weapon, a backup location. Fortunately, he’d had the foresight to establish several other locations, including the one where the captives were currently being held. Bowdler couldn’t help smiling when he thought about the former—and perhaps future—use of the building.
His apartment was outside the city. Nobody knew its location. It took time to get there. But there was no rush. The captives weren’t going anywhere. Before he got to work, he took a moment to admire his newest purchase—a hat that had belonged to General Patton. The bidding had been fierce, but he’d won. There was no way he would have allowed such a prize to fall into the hands of some undisciplined hobbyist who had no idea what it meant to be a general.
Nobody beats me. With great care, he put on the hat. Then he sat at his computer and logged into a program that wasn’t supposed to exist.
He entered two names: Edward Thalmayer and Dennis Woo.
Three minutes later, the information he wanted scrolled onto the screen: