by James Ponti
“Really,” he said. “But let me tell them. I’ll make sure you get the credit for the discovery, but I’d like to be the one to own up to my identity.”
“It’s a deal.”
When I reached the door, I realized he could be pulling a fast one on me. I turned back to him and waved an accusing finger. “You will be here, right? You promise you won’t try to get away?”
“You can trust me,” he promised. “I’ll be here.”
The Unwanted
He wasn’t there.
I was standing outside Kappa Cottage, cupping my hands over my eyes so that I could look through the window by the door, and there was no sign of anyone—living or undead—inside. Every light was off. Every door was locked. Dr. Gootman had lied to me. I’d uncovered his true identity, and he’d made a run for it.
“I do not believe it,” I said, furiously rattling the doorknob to no avail. “I do not believe he isn’t here.”
“Wow,” Alex joked at my expense. “This really is the biggest surprise of the year. Dr. Gootman’s door . . . has a lock.”
“I never knew that!” Grayson added with mock amazement. “Do you think it’s a dead bolt?”
Okay, not only had Dr. Gootman lied to me, but he was making me look stupid in front of my friends. I had texted them to meet me after school at the cottage for an “earth-shattering” surprise. This was supposed to be my moment.
“You don’t understand,” I said, my frustration level rising. “You just . . . don’t . . . understand.” I looked back through the window and tried the doorknob again.
“Sure, I understand,” Alex said, needling me some more. “You’re a little jealous because I found out all the information about M42 and Track 61, and Grayson figured out that Liberty installed the hand scanner, so you wanted to . . .”
“Dr. Gootman is Milton Blackwell.”
I couldn’t stop myself. I just blurted it out. Actually, I blurted it so fast it was probably more like “Dr.Gootman-isMiltonBlackwell.” But you get the point. And, yes, I remember I had promised to let him tell them, but he’d promised not to run away so I figured that deal was off.
“What?” Natalie said in total disbelief, trying to compute it all in her head. “Dr. Gootman?”
Grayson and Alex exchanged stunned looks and then turned back to me. It was around this time that I realized a school courtyard filled with students was probably not the best place to announce that the principal was living under a false identity. But the genie was already out of the bottle, and I could tell by their expressions that the others wanted to make sure they’d heard me right.
“Dr. Gootman is Milton Blackwell,” I said again, but this time slowly and in a whisper only loud enough for the three of them to hear.
“Well, so much for letting me tell them,” a perturbed voice responded.
I looked up and quickly had to amend two of my assumptions. First of all, my whisper was apparently loud enough for at least four people to hear. And since the fourth was Dr. Gootman, my runaway pronouncement may have been a bit premature.
“I’m so sorry,” I said lamely. “But the door was locked, and I figured that meant you’d . . . you know . . . become a fugitive.”
“Really? Fugitive was the most likely explanation?” he asked as he nodded down to the large volcano model that filled his arms. “Not that I’d locked up because I’d gone to Beta to do the volcano demonstration for the sixth graders?”
“Well, now that you say it,” I responded, “that’s also a logical explanation.”
I was completely frustrated with myself, and not just because I’d been so impatient. It was mostly because I knew that it probably did have something to do with me being jealous of the boys and wanting to one-up them as quickly as I could.
“Is it true, Dr. Gootman?” Natalie asked him softly. “You’re Milton Blackwell?”
He forced a smile and nodded. “Yes. It’s true.”
We helped him carry the volcano experiment into the cottage, and despite his initial frustration, he didn’t seem too mad at me for telling the others. First, we sat around his conference table and he had me show the others my yearbook evidence. Humbled by my earlier mistakes, I toned down my self-congratulatory tone and kept it pretty straightforward. When I was done, Dr. Gootman took over.
“It really is impressive,” he said. “Molly is only the third person to ever figure this out.”
Okay, I’ll be honest. I had assumed I was the first. Humility lesson number two. But it did make me wonder something. “Was one of the others . . . ?”
“Yes,” he said before I could finish. “One of the others was your mother. Apparently, Sherlock Holmesian skills of deduction are just as genetic as heterochromatic eyes.”
“If two others figured it out, then how come there’s no mention of it in the Baker’s Dozen files?” asked Natalie.
“Because those teams did what I am going to ask you to do,” he said. “They kept it a secret. They didn’t leave any evidence anywhere. Not even with a manual typewriter at the top of the Flatiron Building.”
“Why do you need it to be a secret?” Grayson asked. “Because it puts you in danger?”
“No, if it was just me, it wouldn’t be such a big deal,” he explained. “But the simple truth is that to many of the citizens of Dead City, I am to blame for their condition because I built the explosive that started it all. If word ever got out that I was here, a never-ending stream of Level 2s and 3s would come to MIST looking for revenge. And that would endanger all my students, which is something I cannot let happen. I understand if you feel you can’t keep this secret. I do, however, ask that if you’re going to share it, you first give me a few days to make arrangements so that I can disappear properly.”
“Wait a second,” Alex said. “You can’t disappear. You run the school. You make everything possible.”
“That’s kind of you to say, but hardly true,” he replied. “Just as Newton’s First Law of Motion says of momentum, this school will continue to move in a straight line unless compelled to change that state. There were gaps of five to ten years before the arrivals of Mr. Pax, Mr. Speranza, and Mr. Wissenschaft. The school continued to prosper in my absence in those periods, and it will do so when Dr. Gootman suddenly retires, whether that’s in two days or two years.”
“But where would you go?” I wondered.
“I’m afraid that is something I cannot share.”
“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “Your secret’s safe with us.”
“Really?” he said, only half joking. “ ’Cause you didn’t do such a good job keeping it earlier.”
I was so embarrassed with myself.
“Really,” I said. “That was a one-time-only malfunction.”
He looked around the table at the others. “You all feel the same?”
The others nodded and smiled.
“We won’t write or mention a thing,” Grayson promised.
“Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll make some popcorn. This could take a while.”
First, he showed us some clips from some videotapes he was making that chronicled the entire history of the Blackwells and what happened before and after the subway tunnel explosion. Then he suggested we go for a walk around the island that had been his home for more than a century.
A pathway wraps around Roosevelt Island like a ribbon, and together the five of us walked along it as Dr. Gootman told us about the Unlucky 13. We discussed the explosion in the subway tunnel and the three wise men who had banished them to the dungeon at the Asylum. He also answered some of our nagging questions.
“Why do some people become undead when they die while others do not?” I asked.
“I only know of two ways to become undead,” he answered. “It happens if you die a sudden death surrounded by Manhattan schist, which is what happened to the thirteen of us in the tunnel. And it happens if you get infected by exposure to the undead, which is what happened to your friend Liberty.”
; We stopped walking for a moment when we reached the Blackwell House. It was now a museum, but back in 1896, it still belonged to his family. This was where he had his final confrontation with his brother Marek.
“I had to make a choice,” he explained. “I could have gone along with Marek and let him kill our grandfather, or I could have defied him and in the process cut myself off from my brothers and cousins.”
“Do you think it was the right choice?” asked Alex.
“I know it was,” he said with certainty. Then he looked at the house for a moment and added, “Although it was a very lonely choice, and there are moments of weakness when I wonder how things would have turned out if I’d chosen otherwise.”
“And you stayed on the island after that?” Natalie asked.
“I thought I would be safe here. I knew that Marek would never want to come back to this place he liked to call a ‘godforsaken island.’ In 1896, this was home to the Asylum, the prison, and a smallpox hospital. There were a few scattered homes like my grandfather’s, but mostly this was where New York sent its unwanteds. Among those were the children in the smallpox hospital. No teachers would risk going in there for fear that they would catch the disease and die.”
Grayson turned to him and smiled. “But you couldn’t die.”
“That’s right,” he said. “So I began to teach at the hospital. And I was happy. I thought that it was my calling to help those sick children. But then I started to hear stories about monsters in Manhattan. People with unexplained powers who lived underground and could withstand bullets. Some people claimed they were werewolves or vampires. But I knew it was Marek and the others. And since I couldn’t stop them by myself, I decided to train others who could.”
Natalie stopped walking and turned to him. “The Omegas? You started the Omegas?”
“Well, first I had to start MIST,” he said. “But, yes, I started the Omegas to fix the problems I had created.”
Our walk had brought us back to the campus. Knowing what I now knew made it look a little different.
“But how did you just start a school?” Alex asked, motioning to the campus full of buildings.
“Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one with a guilty conscience. My grandfather owned much of the property on the island. He also owned a construction company. He made much of this possible. And then there was one of the three wise men.”
I turned to him. “Theodore Roosevelt?!”
Dr. Gootman laughed. “Quite the interesting fellow.”
I got goose bumps when I thought about the idea of Dr. Gootman actually knowing Teddy Roosevelt.
“He helped you?” asked Grayson.
“Very much,” he said. “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you have help from the president of the United States.”
We were now at the door to the cottage.
“I have one last question,” I said. “Actually, I have hundreds of questions, but one last one I want to ask you now.”
“What is it?”
“Why did Jacob come to warn you? What had changed things?”
He thought about it for a moment and looked out over the campus to the East River.
“You did, Molly.”
“Me? How did I change things?”
“You beat Marek. And when he fell from the top of the George Washington Bridge, everything changed. Ever since our escape back in 1896, Marek has told the others what to do. With him out of the picture, they will all try to take control of Dead City.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be,” he replied. “Marek came looking for you because he knew you were strong enough to beat him. He thought he could get to you while you were young. But you were already too strong. And so was your team.”
He looked at the four of us and shook his head with wonder.
“You four are amazing,” he said, giving us quite the morale boost. “Don’t ever be sorry for that. You’re the reason I created the Omegas. I hoped that one day it would produce people like you. Because, believe me, we’re going to need them.”
Blue Moon
Amazing or not, we were running out of time and needed help. There was less than a month until Marek’s Verify on New Year’s Eve, and all we knew for sure was that once the crystal ball dropped to signal a new year, someone was going to take control of Dead City. Beyond that we had no idea what was going to happen.
We thought there might be some answers hidden deep below Grand Central Terminal in M42, so we went looking for Liberty. He’d installed the security system, and we hoped he could help us get inside.
Since we’d had a few too many close calls crashing flatline parties, we decided to try a different method of contacting him this time. We went to the farmer’s market in Union Square, where he told us he met his mother every Saturday. Unlike the flatline parties, there was less danger and more snacks. Yum.
“I’m going to go on the record and say that kettle corn is the greatest invention of all time,” I proclaimed as I stuffed a fistful of it into my mouth and crunched.
“Even more than, say . . . the computer . . . or the Internet?” offered Grayson.
“Both great inventions,” I mumbled as I tried to talk and chew at the same time. “But kettle corn is sweet and salty. It’s easy to carry, and unlike computers and the Internet . . . it’s delicious.”
“She makes a compelling argument,” Alex added as he reached into my bag and stole a handful for himself.
It was a cool December morning, and we were walking around eating snacks because Alex insisted we watch Liberty from a distance and approach him after his mother left.
“He only has family one morning a week,” Alex explained. “Let’s not take that from him.”
(You see, deep down Alex has a huge heart.)
Liberty’s mom left around noon, and we caught up with him in front of a booth where a man was selling homemade pretzels.
“I saw you the second you arrived,” Liberty said, shaking his head. “I hope you guys do a better job hiding when you’re following the bad guys.”
“We weren’t trying to hide from you,” Natalie said, “just your mom.”
He considered this for a moment and smiled. “Thanks for that. I appreciate it.”
When we told him about M42, he wasn’t impressed.
“That’s why you came looking for me?” he asked. “Because you found a secret room from World War II?”
“Well, we were hoping you’d tell us what’s inside it now,” Natalie said.
Liberty seemed totally confused. “How would I know that?”
“Didn’t you install the biometric hand scanner that controls the door?” Alex said.
“No . . . although, now that you mention it, I do remember setting one up for Winston. But I don’t know where he installed it. I gave it to him in his office.”
I knew from our research into the Unlucky 13 that Winston Blackwell was in charge of the portion of Dead City directly beneath us. His home station was Union Square, and he was Liberty’s stationmaster.
7. Winston Blackwell: Deceased
Occupation: Businessman
Aliases: Winston Grant, Winston McClellan, Winston Burnside
Most Recent Home: Union Square
Role within the 13: Organization and Logistics
Last Sighting: Greenwich Village
“If you didn’t know anything about it,” Alex said, somewhat suspicious, “why did he ask you to set it up for him?”
“Like I told you guys before. Every now and then I do some computer work for them, and in exchange, I get to give my little speeches and move around Dead City without getting hassled too much,” he answered. “It was just one of those times. There was nothing special about it. Winston told me that he was going to take care of the installation. He just needed me to buy a new scanner and fix it.”
“If it was new,” I wondered aloud, “why did it need to be fixed?”
“Palm scanners measure all the different aspects o
f your hand and turn them into a geometric equation,” he explained. “They’re great for security . . . unless you’re undead.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Body heat,” Grayson said, figuring out the problem. “They’re triggered by body heat.”
“That’s exactly right. I had to reprogram the scanner so that it would recognize hands like mine,” he said, wiggling his fingers for emphasis. “Winston also had me create security profiles for the whole group.”
“What group?” asked Natalie.
“The Unlucky 13,” he said. “They get pretty secretive about who’s doing what with whom. So Winston had me build a separate profile for each one of them. That way, I wouldn’t know who it was really for. All he had to do was bring it to the ones he wanted and scan their palms into the profiles I’d built.”
We mulled this over for a moment.
“So the only way to open the door to M42 is to have one of the Unlucky 13 with you,” Natalie said. “That should be . . . impossible.”
She looked defeated, but Grayson smiled as he had a brainstorm. “Wait a second,” he said excitedly. “You don’t technically need one of them. You only need one of their hands.”
“Okay, ewwww,” said Natalie. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but let me stress, ewwww.”
“Jacob Blackwell was one of the Unlucky 13 before he was killed on the subway,” he pointed out. “Can’t we dig him up and get his hand?”
Natalie shook her head. “You’re kind of freaking me out, Grayson. I don’t expect stuff like this from you—Alex maybe, but not you.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Alex protested.
“You know what it means,” Natalie said. “It means . . .”
Before this could escalate into an argument, Liberty jumped back into the conversation. “You know, there is an easier way that doesn’t require any grave robbing or dismemberment.”
Suddenly, everybody stopped talking, and all eyes turned to him.
“You remember the part where I said I programmed it to recognize hands like mine?” He held his hand up and wiggled his fingers again. “I did that by actually programming it to recognize my hand.”