by Lubar, David
Martin reached into my open wound. As I turned my eyes away, I felt a pain that made the rest of it seem like a gentle kiss.
“Got it,” he said.
“Crush it.” I slumped against the wall as my legs gave out on me, then slid to the floor.
“No. We need it.”
Martin dashed through the open cell door and ran toward the steps. I had no idea what he was doing.
The guy pushed Torchie away, spun around, and aimed the gun at Martin. Between them, Cheater started to get back on his feet. Praying that Martin had moved far enough away, I reached out with my mind and twisted the gun in the guy’s hand, turning it back toward him. It would serve him right to take one of those darts in the gut.
He must have held on to the trigger as the gun twisted. The shot was loud. Too loud to be a dart. He grunted like he’d been kicked hard in the stomach, doubled over, then crumpled. The gun slipped from his fingers as he hit the floor.
I studied the open gash in my arm. It didn’t seem real. I felt I was watching someone else’s blood spill from my veins.
“Torchie,” Cheater said, “cauterize the wound.”
“What?” Torchie asked.
“Heat it. Seal off the blood vessels, fust be careful—you don’t want to cook his arm.”
Torchie turned toward me. His face grew even paler than Martin’s. But he swallowed hard, and I felt a warmth in my arm. The bleeding stopped. I pointed at the guy on the floor, who seemed dazed enough that he wouldn’t be a problem any time soon. “Him, too.”
“Him you can fry,” Flinch said. “He’s one of the bad guys.”
“Nobody’s totally bad,” Martin said. “Help him, Torchie.”
While Torchie stopped the guy’s bleeding, I unlocked Thurston’s door. I felt like I’d just played about seventeen straight games of tackle football with people twice my size. As soon as he got out of his cell, Thurston picked up the gun that the guy had dropped and put it in his pocket.
“Hey, can we turn this thing off?” Martin called from down the hall.
“Pull the battery,” Cheater said.
“I don’t see one,” Martin said.
“There won’t be a regular battery,” Thurston said. “It’s probably bio-thermal—powered by body heat. Check upstairs for a remote switch. Look for a small transmitter. Something with one button and an antenna.”
Flinch ran upstairs and came back a moment later with a device the size of a pen. He pushed the button, then told Martin, “Okay, let’s check it out.”
Martin brought the disrupter over to me. I swung the cell door back and forth with my mind. “It’s off,” I said. “What the heck were you doing?”
“Saving a friend,” he said.
“But you could have just stomped on it,” I said.
He shook his head slowly, then smiled. “You aren’t the only one of us in trouble.”
I realized what he was thinking. “That’s perfect.”
He nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
“Is everyone okay?” I asked as Martin wrapped the bandage back around my arm.
Cheater nodded. Torchie got up from the floor and gave his accordion a squeeze. It made a sound like a newborn kitten. “I think it’s broken.”
“I kind of like it that way,” Flinch said.
“It’s definitely an improvement,” Martin said.
“What do we do about him?” I asked, pointing to the guy who’d gotten shot. “Should we call an ambulance?”
Thurston knelt down, rolled him over, and examined the wound. “Bullet went clear through. He’s okay, short term. Just in shock right now. He’ll need medical care eventually. Or we can leave him here to die.”
“No we can’t.” I knew what sort of stain that would put on our souls.
Flinch shrugged. “After what those people did to you, it seems fair.”
“We still can’t,” I said. “But I don’t want them chasing after me. Or chasing any of you, for that matter.”
“He’s no problem,” Thurston said. “He just works for the highest bidder. Bowdler hasn’t told him anything more than he needs to know.”
“So who knows?” I asked. That was the crucial question. If too many people knew about me, there was nothing I could do but run, or accept that my talent doomed me to a future doing things I didn’t even want to think about. If it was just a couple people who knew, there was hope.
“Bowdler and I are the only ones who’ve seen you in action,” Thurston said. “The lab workers were never allowed to observe anything. But Bowdler made a video the last time he applied for funding.”
My heart sunk at the thought that there was proof of my secret. “What’s on it?”
“Just enough to show that telekinesis might exist,” Thurston said. “A couple marbles rolling.”
Move the marble a half inch, Eddie. Just a nudge. Stop! That’s far enough. Wait. Now, very slowly, move it back. I remembered a video camera on a tripod.
“The Russians had lots of that,” Cheater said. “I saw it in a documentary. There were all these grainy black-and-white films. Some guy would be staring at a piece of paper and it would flutter. It always looked sort of fake—like he was breathing on it, or there were hidden wires.”
“Maybe they’ll think the video with Trash is fake,” Martin said. “Most people don’t believe in psi.”
The thought of fake videos and grainy images jammed together in my mind. I remembered that day at the bank, when I’d taken the money from the vault, and I saw a way out.
“I have an idea,” I said.
upon reflection,
a solution appears
“YOU’D MAKE A good agent,” Thurston said after I’d explained what I had in mind. “We can do that. Everything we need is at the lab. We just have to put our friend on ice for a while.”
He grabbed the guy under the arms and dragged him to a cell. “Let’s see what we have here.” He went through the guy’s pockets, pulling out a phone, keys, and a wicked-looking folding knife. He backed out of the cell, then picked up the bloody key and locked the door. “He’ll keep for a while. You did a good job with the bleeding.”
After we followed Thurston upstairs and onto the street, I dropped back and joined Martin. “Sorry I didn’t trust you earlier.”
“No problem. I usually don’t trust me, either.” He pointed ahead and whispered, “You trust him?”
“Yeah. Not that we have to.” I tapped Cheater on the shoulder. He moved next to Thurston and said, “You wouldn’t hurt us, would you?”
“Of course not.”
Cheater put his hand behind his back and flashed us an “OK” sign. I guess he hadn’t found anything dangerous in Thurston’s mind.
“You want to check him out, too?” I asked Martin.
“No thanks. I’d rather not learn his deepest secrets. That other guy already spooked me enough. Getting close to Bowdler wasn’t a lot of fun, either. He thinks he’s the smartest guy on the planet.”
When we reached the lab, Thurston pulled a key from his pocket and opened the door. Cheater and Torchie went to scrounge up the parts we needed. The rest of us headed downstairs.
Thurston waited by the door of the room where I’d been kept. I thought I could walk right back in. But I froze for a moment at the doorway, as if I’d hit a force field.
“Take your time,” he said.
My hands hurt. I realized I was clenching my fists. I uncurled my fingers, then stepped into the room and stared for a moment at the plain, white walls. Thurston set up the table. The sight of the steel marble made my stomach flutter. I went to the bathroom and washed the blood from my arm.
Martin joined me. “The bad part’s over,” he said as he scrubbed his hands. “No more blood.”
Cheater set the camera on a tripod. Then he and Flinch made sure the angle was just right.
I looked around for Torchie, but he’d wandered off. Martin and Flinch moved aside so they wouldn’t be in the shot, and Cheater crawled under the ta
ble.
“Ready?” Thurston asked.
I nodded.
He started the camera, then stepped back. I stared down at the marble and put my hands to my temples like I was deep in thought. The steel marble rolled in a figure eight across the surface of the table. I glanced up at Thurston, who mouthed the word, “Again.”
We did it a couple more times. Then Thurston stopped the recording. We took the camera upstairs and played the video through a monitor. It looked like I was moving a marble on a table with the power of my mind. But the open door of the bathroom was also in the frame, along with the mirror above the sink. You could see something in the mirror. At a glance, it seemed innocent enough.
“Zoom in on it,” I said.
Close up, in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, you could see Cheater’s arm under the table, moving a magnet that pulled the steel marble. I thought about the reflection in the bank drive-through window that got me into all of this trouble. Now, a reflection would get me out of trouble.
“Perfect,” Thurston said. He pulled the memory card from the camera and put it in his shirt pocket. “I’ll see this gets into the right hands. After that, there’s no way Bowdler will ever be able to convince anyone that you have powers.”
“Will that be enough to make him leave me alone?”
“I intend to be fairly persuasive when we meet, and show him the error of his ways. Bowdler isn’t stupid. Besides, he’s been sneaking around for months, setting something up. I suspect he has other projects that will bring in more money than he can spend, even if he is trying to buy every overpriced piece of war memorabilia he can find.”
“What about the rest of it?” I said. “I’m supposed to be dead.”
Thurston smiled. “When you dedicate your career to spreading lies, you also learn how to spread the truth. I can get your resurrection started on Monday. By next Friday, nobody will remember that you were ever dead.”
I couldn’t believe the nightmare was over. But there was another nightmare I was eager to end. “I need to take the disrupter where it will do some good.”
“Give me one more moment.” Thurston went to the room with the electronics equipment and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. It looked like the one he’d found on the guy at the funeral home. He took apart the phone, removed one of the chips, replaced it with another that he got from a drawer in the workbench, then said, “Here, hang onto this. We need to stay in touch until I get everything straightened out. It’s not traceable through the GPS system, so it’s safe to leave it on. The charge should last long enough. Who’s good with numbers?”
“I am,” Cheater said.
“Memorize this one.” He recited a string of digits, then had Cheater say it back. “You can always reach me at that number—day or night. Don’t write it down.” He handed Cheater the phone.
“What about the guy you locked up?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of him as soon as I get my car,” Thurston said.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he meant by take care of him.
Thurston put away the tools, then glanced at the box that held the prototypes. “I hadn’t seen this.” He picked up the note, then started to sift through the devices. “Maybe there’s something useful here.”
“Come on.” Torchie pointed toward the door. “We’d better get going.”
“Relax,” I said. “We’re going in a minute.”
“I’ll meet you outside.” He picked up his damaged accordion and dashed ahead.
I left the lab with the rest of the guys. As we headed down the street, I asked Torchie, “What was that all about?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on. I know you. What’s going on?”
He pulled something from his pocket. “Look what I found. I figured it was okay to take it since it belonged to the bad guy. I was afraid the other guy would want it back.” He held up a small gadget that looked like a fancy TV remote control. I figured he’d gotten it from the lab.
“Wow,” Martin said. “A box.”
“It makes a cool sound,” Torchie said. “There was a label on it saying it’s an FME device, whatever that is.”
“Probably frequency modulation,” Cheater said. “Maybe something to jam a radio transmission.”
Torchie pressed one of the buttons, and a whirring hum filled the air. “That one says CHARGE.” He pointed the control at Flinch and pushed the other button. “That one says DISCHARGE.” There was electronic chirp. But Flinch had already jumped out of the way.
“Watch out,” he said.
“It doesn’t do anything,” Torchie said.
“FM is just a type of radio signal,” Cheater said. “It can’t hurt you.”
“Some of the stuff I’ve heard on FM hurts a whole lot.” Flinch held his hand out. “Let me see.”
Torchie handed it to him. “Promise you won’t shoot me?”
“I promise I won’t not shoot you.” Flinch pressed the CHARGE button, then pointed the device at Torchie and pressed DISCHARGE.
“Hey!” Torchie said as the gadget let out another chirp.
“Will you guys quit playing around,” I said. “Put that away. It’s just a piece of junk.”
Torchie grabbed the thing from Flinch and shoved it in his pocket. “I found it and I’m keeping it.”
“Whatever.” I headed toward the hospital with the guys.
major glitches
“MAYBE YOU SHOULD sneak back into your room,” I told Cheater when we reached the hospital.
“I will. But I want to be there when you give the disrupter to Lucky.”
“Sure. I wouldn’t want any of us to miss that.” I felt so good about this. Of all of us, Lucky was the one who had the hardest time coping. Finally, thanks to the disrupter, he’d have a shot at a normal life.
We walked up to the desk outside the psyche unit. “We’re friends of Dominic Calabrizi,” Martin said. “We came to visit him.”
“He’s not here,” the nurse said. This was a different woman from before.
“He went home?” Martin asked.
She nodded. “You just missed him. His father came for him about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Thanks.” We turned to walk off. This would delay things. But even if I couldn’t give Lucky the disrupter right away, I was glad he was heading home. Maybe he was getting better. Halfway to the elevator, I stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Martin asked.
“Something doesn’t feel right.” I went back to the desk. “Excuse me,” I said to the woman.
She looked up. I realized there was no way she would answer the question I was about to ask. At least not if I asked it straight out. What did the man look like? I’d have to find a way to trick the information out of her. “Was it Dominic’s father or his stepfather?” I asked.
“I hardly see what the difference is,” the woman said.
“Well, I want to know where I should go to see him. Was he about this tall …” I held my hand about six inches above my head. “With really short hair and a dark blue jacket.”
She nodded automatically. It had been an accurate description—not of any imaginary stepfather, but of our far-too-real enemy. “Thanks.”
I spun and dashed for the elevator.
“Bowdler?” Flinch asked.
“Has to be.”
“Oh no,” Martin said as we got into the elevator. “Bowdler has Lucky.”
“It looks like it,” I said.
“How?” Martin asked.
“It wouldn’t be hard. He had my name and Cheater’s name. Maybe he ran them through a computer and Edgeview popped up.”
“It would be easy from there,” Cheater said. “He wouldn’t have any trouble finding out where Lucky was.”
“So what do we do?” Flinch asked.
“Thurston should still be at the funeral home,” I said. “He can help.”
As soon as we left the hospital, Cheater pulled out the cell phone and punched in the number Thurs
ton had given him. He listened for a minute. “No answer.”
“Are you sure you called the right number?”
“Of course.” Cheater repeated the number.
It sounded familiar to me. I looked at Flinch. He nodded. “That’s the one.”
“Try again.”
Cheater dialed, held the phone to his ear, then said, “Nope. No answer.”
You can always reach me at that number—day or night.
“I don’t like this.” I flagged down a cab. The driver wasn’t thrilled at the idea of five kids and a giant accordion in his cab, but a twenty-dollar bill erased his concerns. We crammed in and rode back to the funeral home.
“Do you think Bowdler brought Lucky here?” Martin asked.
I looked at the opening where the door had been. “I can’t tell. We’re just going to have to go in and find out.”
When I went through the doorway, the hairs on the back of my neck rose up.
“Something’s wrong here,” Martin said.
“Yeah.” I walked to the stairs at the end of the hallway. Halfway down, I froze. “Oh God …”
“What?” Flinch pushed by me, then lurched to a halt. I saw his whole body shudder. He spun around, staggered past me, then bent over and threw up.
I choked down my own nausea and forced myself to move a step closer. I didn’t want to. The chill on the back of my neck grew colder as the odor of spilled blood flooded my nostrils.
“They’re both dead,” I said.
There’d been a fight. That much, I could tell for sure. I guess the guy put up a struggle when Thurston went to take him out of the cell. I heard a thump behind me. Torchie had dropped to a seat on the steps. His head went limp. As he started to tip over, Cheater steadied him.
“Let’s get out of here,” Flinch said.
I shook my head. “I have to see … Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe Torchie can stop the bleeding. Thurston is really tough. I broke all his ribs and he lived.”
Martin grabbed my shoulder. “He’s gone.”
A knife handle stuck out of Thurston’s chest. His eyes were wide open and staring. The other guy, outside the door of the cell, was sprawled face down in a pool of blood that was still slowly spreading. I think he’d been shot in the throat. The guy must have pulled a knife and stabbed Thurston. It looked different than the knife Thurston had taken from him earlier. I guess he’d had it hidden. And I guess Thurston managed to get off a shot before he died.