Blue Moon

by James Ponti

  “Great,” he said as he moved back toward the desk. “Just come on over, and I’ll sign you in.”

  We all breathed a sigh of relief. This might be easy after all.

  “I just need to know who the appointment’s with,” he continued.

  And then again, it might not. We stood quietly for a moment until Natalie stammered a very unconvincing, “You mean who on the thirteenth floor?”

  But out of nowhere Alex stepped forward and answered, “Palindrome Games.”

  The guard handed us the sign-in sheet. “I should have guessed. Are you the game testers?”

  Without missing a beat, Alex nodded and said, “Yes. Yes, we are. We’re the game testers.”

  We signed in and walked straight onto the elevator. Sure enough, it had a button for the thirteenth floor.

  “Ready to press your luck?” Natalie said as she pushed the gold button.

  The moment the doors closed, I slugged Grayson in the arm. “Thanks a lot, Mr. United States Postal Service.”

  “I said I was sorry,” he protested. “I can’t help myself. When I know the right answer, I have to say it.”

  “Speaking of right answers,” Natalie said, turning to Alex. “How’d you come up with Palindrome Games?”

  “It was on the directory.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “But so were about fifty other companies.”

  “True,” Alex said. “But none with ‘Omega’ hidden in the middle of their names.”

  Sure enough, the last three letters of “Palindrome” and the first two of “Games” spell “Omega.”

  “Nice,” Grayson said as he gave Alex a fist bump.

  I knew that a palindrome is a word like “racecar” or a phrase like “Madam, I’m Adam” that’s spelled the same backward or forward. But I had never heard of Palindrome Games. It turns out it’s a software company that designs word games that can be played on social media.

  When we walked into their office, I thought Grayson was going to faint. It was total compu-geek heaven. There were electronic gadgets everywhere and a handful of programmers working on computers with giant monitors. As far as offices go, it was supercasual. One wall was filled with the latest video game consoles, and there was a massive cappuccino maker in the corner that made the room smell like a coffee shop.

  One of the workers wore a vintage concert tee, another had on a Yankees jersey, and a couple sported Hawaiian shirts. All of them looked like they’d been putting the cappuccino maker to good use and had gone at least twenty-four hours without any sleep.

  “I’m home,” Grayson said as he soaked it all in. “This is where I belong.”

  The man in the Yankees jersey got up and walked over to us. “You must be the game testers,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Adam.”

  “Just like the palindrome,” I answered. “Madam, I’m Adam.”

  He smiled as he shook my hand. “Just like the palindrome.”

  After some quick introductions, he led us into an office filled with even more high-tech stuff.

  “We’re not really game testers,” Natalie admitted after he’d shut the door.

  “I know that,” he answered. “But there’s no reason for the guys in the other room to know it. Let’s just keep that between us Omegas.”

  “You were an Omega?” I asked.

  “Still am,” he corrected me. “Omega today, Omega forever. I graduated from MIST nine years ago and started this company when I was a senior at Stanford.”

  “Impressive,” Grayson said, looking around at it all.

  “Not as impressive as you four figuring out the riddle in less than three hours,” he said. “This morning I got word from the Prime-O that you might be coming soon. But we thought it would take at least a couple days for you to make it here.”

  We each stood up a little straighter and tried to hide how pleased we were with ourselves, but I think our big goofy smiles kind of gave us away.

  “Are you going to tell us what the Baker’s Dozen is?” Natalie asked.

  “I’m going to do better than that,” he said with a sly smile. “I’m going to show you. But first we need to take care of security and I need to scan your handprints.”

  He plugged a scanner the size of a textbook into his computer and had each one of us press our right palm against it. Then he used the palm prints to create security access for us.

  “Okay,” he said once he was done. “Let’s check out the attic.”

  “What’s the attic?” asked Natalie.

  “The attic is what you’re looking for,” he said somewhat cryptically.

  He led us back into the hallway and onto the elevator. Then he pushed the button marked 20.

  “Originally, this building was twenty stories high,” he explained. “But a year after it was completed, they mysteriously decided to add an additional floor. Everyone calls it the attic.”

  The elevator door opened, and we stepped out onto the twentieth floor. The entire floor was a little strange. First of all, the layout of the offices was odd. Adam said this was due to the shape of a building. “Without nice square walls, it’s hard to make nice square offices,” he said. Even stranger are the windows. They’re high on the wall so that their bottoms only reach down to your shoulders. If you want to get a good look outside, you have to stand on your tiptoes.

  “Funky, isn’t it,” he said. “It gets weirder. Because the attic was added later, the main elevators don’t go high enough. The only way to get there is by taking a separate elevator that just connects the twentieth and twenty-first floors.”

  We stepped into the other elevator, and the button panel had a scanner like the one in Adam’s office.

  “Try it out,” he said to me.

  I pushed the button for twenty-one, and nothing happened. But when I pressed my palm against the glass, the elevator instantly came to life and started carrying us to the attic.

  “Cool,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?” Adam agreed. “Believe it or not, it gets cooler.”

  When we reached the twenty-first floor, we stepped out into a tiny hallway.

  “Welcome to the attic,” Adam said. “It’s all Omega.”

  We traded looks.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Well, on paper, it all belongs to Palindrome Games,” he explained. “This is where we keep our computer servers. But they also function as the electronic hub for the Omegas. For example, every message to or from the Prime-O comes through here. And each door requires a palm scan.”

  He led us through a series of rooms filled with computer servers.

  “Because the building’s a triangle, the rooms have an unusual alignment,” he explained as we went through them. “As a result, there is one room that virtually nobody knows about. It isn’t even in the blueprints, and it can’t be detected from outside.”

  We reached a door that had another palm scanner. Instead of an office number on the nameplate there was simply the symbol “Ω”—Omega.

  “Your palm prints will open this door for exactly three hundred and sixty-five days,” he said. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

  We all traded looks, and then Natalie pressed her hand against the glass. A bright green light traced its outline, and moments later, we heard the door unlock. She reached for the knob, but before she opened the door, she paused and took a deep breath.

  “You know that feeling you get on Christmas morning, right before you unwrap your first present?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She flashed a smile and said, “This is way better than that.”

  She opened the door, and I think each one of us was surprised. So far, everything that we’d seen in the attic was high-tech and ultramodern. The endless rows of servers looked like something out of a science-fiction movie. But this room was strictly old-school. There was a manual typewriter sitting on the end of an oak table and four wooden file cabinets next to a rolltop desk. Knickknacks sat on dusty bookshelves next to outdate
d encyclopedias and travel guides.

  “Apparently, the room’s not just a secret from other people,” Alex said as we began to poke around. “It’s also a secret from the twenty-first century.”

  Grayson took in a deep breath and added, “It even smells old.”

  Despite this, there was something undeniably appealing about it. I imagine it’s the same vibe you’d get in the office of a brilliant but somewhat offbeat college professor.

  “Welcome to the Baker’s Dozen,” Adam said, addressing us. “For the next year, you’re responsible for monitoring the Unlucky 13. These cabinets are filled with more than a hundred years of observations and information about the original thirteen zombies. You must determine their current identities, which are ever changing, and keep close track of their actions to see if there are any changes to the structure or balance of power of Dead City.”

  “We’re not the only team, though, right?” Natalie asked. “They said something about two others.”

  “That’s right,” Adam said with a nod. “There’s a team of past Omegas who are responsible for support. I’m part of that team, and among other things, we make sure that the room is secure.”

  Grayson tapped a key on the manual typewriter and asked, “Who makes sure that we have modern office equipment?”

  Adam laughed. “Yeah, you’re just going to have to get used to that. Think of this room like it’s a research library. Nothing can be taken out. If you generate new reports, they are to be typed on the manual typewriter and not on a computer where they could be hacked.”

  Natalie gave me a sideways look. “What have you gotten us into, Molly?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” she replied.

  “Yeah,” added Alex. “This is awesome.”

  “Agreed,” said Grayson.

  “You said there was another current team?” I asked Adam.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But to be honest, they’ve been a disappointment. This assignment is not easy. They’ve struggled to identify the Unlucky 13’s current identities, and I haven’t seen them in months. That’s why we needed to add another team.”

  “So I guess that means it’s up to us,” Natalie said.

  “You guys solved the riddle in three hours,” he reminded us. “I think you’ll be up to the challenge. I’ve got to get back to work. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

  We said our good-byes, and Adam left us in the room to explore.

  We started looking into the different file cabinets. Each one of us took a different one and called out whenever we found something that seemed particularly interesting.

  Grayson found an envelope that had photos of eight of the thirteen. They were mostly the same pictures I’d found in the Book of Secrets, but this was the first time the others had seen them. He spread them out on the table.

  “You were right,” Natalie said, pointing at one of them. “That is the guy who died on the subway, Jacob Ellis.”

  The boys looked and nodded their agreement.

  “Check it out,” exclaimed Alex a few minutes later. “You know how Adam said this floor was mysteriously added one year after the building was completed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It gets even more mysterious than that.”

  He carefully laid a piece of yellowed paper on the desk.

  “This is on White House stationery,” he announced quickly, getting our undivided attention. “It instructs the builder to add one floor to the top of the Flatiron with enhanced security for the sole exclusive use of the United States Secret Service. It’s signed by President Theodore Roosevelt.”

  “That’s strange,” I said.

  “I think if we look around here some more,” Natalie said, “we’ll find all kinds of strange and unusual things.”

  “Like this,” Grayson said, holding up an aged ledger. “This has a section for each of the thirteen. And in that section, it lists sightings, locations, known addresses, and so on.”

  He flipped through the pages, which were filled with handwritten notations and dates going back to the early 1900s.

  “Now, look at this section,” he said.

  He turned it to the final tab. The name on the top of the page was Milton Blackwell. Everything beneath it was blank.

  “How are we supposed to find a guy who nobody’s seen for over a hundred years?”

  The Three Wise Men

  Blackwells are strong. Blackwells survive. Blackwells are strong. Blackwells survive.”

  The phrase kept repeating in my brain until it was drowned out by a steady throbbing in my ears that distorted all sound. I could tell someone was talking to me, but I couldn’t understand the words. Then, after a few moments, I was able to make out a voice calling my name.

  “Milton, can you hear me? Milton, are you alive?”

  Time seemed to bend as my mind raced back and tried to piece together what had just happened. In one flash of memory, I could see the fuse burning its way toward the explosives. In another, I caught a glimpse of the blast in slow motion, a million tiny pieces of rock heading right toward us. That’s when I realized that I was still in the subway tunnel. I bolted upright and cried out, “Oh no! What have I done?”

  And so it happened that the last words I said while I was alive were also the first ones I said once I became undead. The mind is a funny thing, and in trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, it had replayed the last moments before the explosion, trying to undo my mistake.

  “You’re alive,” said the voice. “Thank goodness you’re alive!”

  I looked over and realized that the voice belonged to my brother Marek, who had also survived.

  Or so I thought. So we all thought.

  One by one, as my brothers and cousins regained consciousness, they all arrived at the same conclusion. They had cheated death. Each one was sure that he’d been spared by some miraculous twist of fate. But unlike them, I had done the computations and understood the magnitude of the blast. I was certain that fate alone could not explain it.

  “That’s impossible,” I said as I pulled myself up from the rock and debris. “The explosion was too strong. Every law of science dictates that we should be dead.”

  Marek laughed. “That’s the problem with your books and equations, brother. You believe them more than you believe your own eyes. Look around. We’re all alive. And not only that, but do you see what your explosion did to that black devil?”

  I turned toward the rock face and could not believe my eyes. The massive bedrock that we had battled for weeks was gone. The impenetrable wall of Manhattan schist had been reduced to a pile of crushed rubble that sparkled with flecks of orange and green.

  A momentary wave of relief washed over me.

  “I did it?” I asked in stunned amazement. “My explosives broke through the rock?”

  “Yes,” he said gleefully. “You brought the devil to his knees!”

  I turned to embrace Marek and celebrate, but that’s when I noticed that something was wrong. His left arm was bent completely behind his back and twisted in an odd corkscrew. It seemed humanly impossible.

  “Your arm,” I gasped.

  I expected him to scream in agony when he realized what had happened. But he didn’t seem pained at all. He just looked at it curiously and simply untwisted his arm and snapped it back into its proper place.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  He thought about it for a perplexed moment and answered, “I have no idea.”

  The tunnel was dark, but what little light there was reflected in glimmers of orange and green along his cheeks. I saw the same phenomenon on my hands, and when I looked closer, I realized that the light was reflecting off of tiny crystal shards of the schist that had imbedded into my skin.

  As the thirteen of us congregated and surveyed one another, we quickly discovered other injuries that defied explanation. The jaw of my brother Elias had detached and dangled from the bottom of his face. Stil
l, he was able to pop it back so that it worked perfectly. Several cousins had fractured bones that had broken through the skin yet somehow caused no pain. And my brother Bartlett was able to walk among us despite the fact that a pickax was buried deep into the middle of his chest. In addition to these injuries, all of us were covered with the glistening shards of rock.

  Marek asked me if I knew any scientific explanation for what we were experiencing.

  I shook my head and said, “No.”

  I thought back to when I was a child and had been trampled by the horse. Somehow, Marek had instinctively known what to do that day. So I looked to him again. We all did. He was our leader.

  “What should we do?” I asked him. “Where do we go?”

  Marek had always trusted family above all else. That’s how he selected where to carry me when I was near death as a child, and that’s what drove his thinking now. He decided that we would go to our grandfather, Augustus Blackwell.

  Before we exited the tunnel, we did our best to mend the most obvious injuries so that we wouldn’t attract attention. Then, under cover of night, we traveled to what is now known as Roosevelt Island but which at the time still bore our name.

  In 1896, Blackwell’s Island was no longer farmland belonging to the family, but our grandfather still owned a large portion of it, and he lived in the same two-story house as his father and grandfather had lived in before him.

  That night, of course, we had no idea that our continued survival was directly related to our proximity to Manhattan schist. It was simply our good fortune that Blackwell’s Island was formed on the same bedrock. Had our grandfather lived in Brooklyn or Queens, we would have all died the moment we crossed the East River.

  As it was, one of us was almost killed anyway.

  It was a cold, moonless night, and by the time we reached the house, it was nearly three in the morning. Our grandfather was awakened by the alarming sound of thirteen dazed and confused men walking along the old dirt path in the woods behind his home.

  Considering Blackwell’s Island was also home to a large prison with frequent escape attempts, it is understandable that he was concerned for his safety. He came out onto his back porch, carrying a lantern and a shotgun. When we emerged from the woods, he was startled by our appearance and aimed the gun at the one leading the way, Marek.