Initiates (The Book of Adam 3)

by Scott Gelowitz

  “What is this place?” asked Adam as they walked inside.

  “This was the original Mechanical lab. Back in the forties they began to experiment with radioactive materials here. They had an accident and it became contaminated so they shut it down and pretty much sealed it shut.”

  “But aren’t we going to get cancer?” asked Adam.

  “The radiation level isn’t high enough that a few minutes exposure walking through would hurt you, but if you were here for an hour or two, that wouldn’t be good,” said Val. “It’s been closed off for a long time and we like to keep it that way.”

  “Is that why the Lumiens aren’t working in here?”

  “They are living creatures and they don’t do very well with radiation either,” said Val. “Interestingly enough, the Teneo don’t do well in radiation themselves, although they do much better than us.”

  Adam felt queasy at the thought of the radiation exposure, so even though he was exhausted, he started walking quicker after hearing the news.

  “Yeah, I don’t mind getting out of here fast either,” said Val.

  A couple of minutes later they reached a familiar corrugated steel door. Val slid it down into the floor and they stepped through before he pulled it up behind them. It was the door at the end of the hallway where they always went when they wanted to talk privately, and the door was at least twelve inches thick.

  “I can’t wait to tell the guys what’s in there,” said Adam. “But we couldn’t figure out how they open it.”

  “It’s controlled at the main office. They have to unlock it from there or you can’t get in. From what I understand, there has to be three senior members at three stations unlocking it at the same time or it won’t open. There’s supposed to be an emergency way to get it open from the inside, but I don’t ever want to be locked in there to figure it out. That door and the emergency door have solid lead cores and weigh a lot.”

  Adam stripped off his winter jacket, hat and gloves, and started walking back toward the Arrival chamber.

  As soon as he turned the corner, he saw that Gurpreet was sitting in a chair at the end of the hallway waiting for them to return. The second he saw them, he hopped up and jogged in their direction.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked.

  Adam shook his head. “Nothing but a big waterfall.”

  Gurpreet nodded. “Yes, we know about that. That is one mile away. Do you still think the Heartstone out there?”

  “I don’t know. I was sure that I would see something that would give me a clue at least,” said Adam, disheartened.

  “Don’t feel bad,” said Gurpreet. “You only fail if you don’t try. We tried. Now we move on and decide what to do next. Maybe we just need to wait for spring and something will show up when the snow melts.”

  Adam forced a grin and nodded.

  “Come, let’s get you some food,” said Val, and they walked together toward the cafeteria.

  It was mid-afternoon when they finished eating, so Adam went back to the Mechanical Lab to give them all the news.

  Jimmy had perfected his large 3-d printed dice, Kevin was working on a more complex wooden box, and Mark was trying to perfect a slingshot he had made, launching steel ball bearings around the lab.

  After giving them all the bad news, Horton was more supportive than Adam thought he would be, considering how much he opposed the whole idea from the beginning.

  “Well, it’s like this. Have you ever heard of WD-1? Or WD-5? No? How about WD-40?”

  Adam nodded his head. Almost anyone with any type of mechanical background knew of the all purpose lubricant called WD-40.

  “See. It took them 40 tries to get it right. And that’s not a lot of tries compared to a lot of people attempting things. Don’t get discouraged with a little failure. Sometimes genius is born from failure.” He paused. “Why don’t you guys take the rest of the day off. Besides, Mark is going to lose an eye when one of those ball bearings rebounds in his face.” Horton laughed.

  They thanked Horton and headed back toward the dorms.

  “I’m going to be so sore in the morning,” said Adam.

  “Suck it up Sunshine,” said Kevin in his best imitation of Ben Casey.

  It was good enough that all four of them burst into a few minutes of uncontrollable laughter.

  After Adam had changed, they sat around in the common area and played another round of the Game of Life. Once again, Adam came in last with the least amount of money.

  “It’s like the game knows who I am,” said Adam with a laugh.

  Like usual, the others were uncomfortable with Adam’s joke, but this time Kevin called him on it.

  “You like making us feel uncomfortable, don’t you?” he accused.

  Adam grinned. “Sorry. It just comes out sometimes.”

  Kevin smiled and shook his head.

  “I almost forgot,” said Adam, and he told them about the room behind the corrugated steel door.

  “No way! I just thought they were taking x-rays in there or something,” said Mark.

  “Why don’t you go in there for a while? Maybe you’ll become a super hero?” asked Kevin.

  Mark rolled his eyes. “Yeah, super dead guy.”

  “Well, you’re already super lazy guy and super annoying guy. It’ll just fill out your super resume’,” said Jimmy making them all laugh. Even Mark laughed along. Then he made a cranking motion beside his fist and raised his middle finger at Jimmy, which made them laugh even more.

  Derek walked into the room in the middle of the laughter.

  “I miss all the fun,” he complained.

  “We’re just mocking Mark,” said Jimmy. “It happens all the time so you’re not missing anything special.”

  “How did it go today?” Derek asked Adam as he sat down in an empty chair.

  “Terrible. Didn’t find anything. I think we’ll wait and try again once the snow melts.” Adam had had enough time to think about it and his belief that something was down there had returned. Now he felt that once the snow melted he would find some clue.

  “That’s too bad, but what do you do?” asked Derek. “Just keep trying. I wish I could help you. Actually, we all wish we could help you – even Mark, but it’s up to you.”

  “Was that your very first Mark insult?” asked Jimmy.

  Derek blushed a little.

  Kevin held out his hand to shake Derek’s. “I knew you had it in you all along,” he said.

  “Great. Another smart…,” said Mark, but he was cut off by a noisy group of boys entering into the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Time flew by again, and soon spring was approaching. Each of the boys had finished their regular classes with high enough grades to pass and had moved on to choose one major subject area and two minor areas that they would be interested in learning.

  Just like everyone expected, Adam was spending most of his time in the Mechanical lab and his major was physical mechanics, but his minor areas were electrical systems and chemistry. Kevin was no surprise either, since his major was plant science followed by animal science and organic chemistry. Jimmy and Mark both majored in strategy, with Jimmy taking political strategy and Mark taking military strategy, probably as a result of all the first-person shooter games he played. Jimmy’s minor areas were surprisingly astronomy and food service. Mark would often tease Jimmy that when Mark became the Prime Minister of Canada, he would hire Jimmy as the chef to prepare food for his dog.

  Mark had two unusual minor areas as well. The first one was mathematics, and the second one was maintenance, so Jimmy would tease Mark that he would have be able calculate how little work he would have to do in order to not get fired from his maintenance job, because maintenance was real work.

  Ages no longer mattered in any of the areas. Derek was finally able to have a class with other boys instead of his all girl class, which he was happy and sad about at the same time. He and Jimmy were in the same Political Science class, but that
was only a minor subject for Derek. Derek’s major was in food services, which was almost as surprising as the fact that it wasn’t Mark’s major area.

  Stealth and self defense became daytime classes instead of evening, and once a week everyone would have to sit through a history of the League course as well. They were glad it was their only evening class because it was just as boring as the one they had taken in Grayson.

  And during the entire time, Adam sat and waited for the next trip down the mountain. He had become convinced again that once the snow melted there would be something down there that he would recognize to give him a clue. He kept going over the first walk in his mind, wondering if they should have done something different.

  Kassie spent more time hanging around with them as a result of Trevor’s departure, and most of the time she was her normal happy self. Once in a while she would slip off into a daydream, though, and get teary eyed.

  Interviews were conducted every few weeks, and Horton still insisted one other friend of Adam’s might follow Trevor.

  The work in Horton’s lab was the most fun Adam had ever had. Horton would pick a new tool or technique to teach them every day and then let them loose to do whatever they wanted so long as it had to do with building something. Adam couldn’t decide on any big project he wanted to attempt, so he wandered around and made smaller test projects with each piece of equipment so he could find the limits of what each was capable of producing. While he wandered, he made mental notes of all of the equipment that happened to be in the lab, thinking all the time what his dad could have used to get back up the mountain. He had some ideas, but kept them to himself for the time being.

  Chemistry was completely different, though. The instructor Allan had strict guidelines and procedures for each experiment, and each experiment was carefully constructed to teach them something specific.

  “This is an exact science,” he said in his meek voice on the first day. “A little change in temperature, volume, pressure or any number of things can throw your results off easily. In construction they say ‘measure twice – cut once’. Here it’s ‘measure twice – stir once.” He chuckled at his own joke that no one really thought was funny.

  Adam enjoyed the class and the challenge of doing things with precision, but didn’t like the restrictions and rules too much. It was still better than a full mathematics course, although there was quite enough of that in the field of chemistry.

  After class one day, Allan called Adam over.

  “I understand you know Elianora,” he said in a mousey voice that Adam barely heard over the sound of the others leaving.

  Adam nodded.

  Allan smiled. “Her and I go way back,” he said. “I met her soon after I completed my training here. I had gone to work for one of the labs run by the League and she came to see me about my work. We have a lot of similar interests, especially when it comes to Chemistry. She’s beyond brilliant.”

  Adam thought of the few things she had shown him before.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, half-heartedly.

  “You know she came up with the solution to create the caves under your town and all the other towns?”

  “The solution?” asked Adam.

  “It’s a dissolving solution,” replied Allan, but he saw the confusion on Adam’s face. “Not a solution as in the answer to a problem, but a solution in chemistry terms – a liquid.”

  “Oh,” Adam said as he caught on. “She dissolved those tunnels? Did someone go behind her with cement to create the walls?”

  Allan shook his head. “That’s the genius of it. She was able to spray the solution onto just about any type of material and it would open up a hole while depositing the excess material around the circumference, creating a water-tight and strong structure.”

  “We wondered how that was done the first time we saw those walls,” said Adam.

  “Like I said, she’s brilliant. I just wanted to you to tell her hello from me the next time you see her,” said Allan.

  Adam nodded. “For sure.”

  Adam waved a polite goodbye and headed for the dorms to meet up with his friends again, and once more he was left wondering about all of the unique things the Teneo had invented. So far in their special training, none of that information had been shared and he was beginning to wonder if any of it would.

  As Adam walked toward the dorms down the long hallway to the gymnasium, he saw someone walking in his direction. It looked like a lady from far off, and as she got closer Adam realized that it was Tilda.

  “Just the person I’m looking for,” she said as she came close enough to recognize him.

  “We’ve been talking and we think the time is right for you to go check the river again,” she said.

  The news startled and excited Adam.

  “I thought we needed to wait for the snow to melt?” he replied.

  “You must be busy lately,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed how much the snow has melted over the last few days? It’s been unseasonably warm outside.”

  Adam actually hadn’t noticed. In his bedroom he had stacked books and things in front of his window high enough that he didn’t see the ground but still got some natural light in the room, and the rest of the time he took routes to and from his classrooms where there were no windows, so he rarely saw outside.

  Adam shook his head. “I’m willing to try again. First, I’d like to talk to Horton about an idea for getting back up the mountain.”

  “Sure,” said Tilda. She glanced at her watch. “He’s probably in his office right now,” she said.

  They were near the classrooms, so Tilda escorted Adam to see Horton.

  When they knocked on the door, Horton beckoned them to come in.

  “Sit,” he said, and motioned to the chairs by his desk.

  The interview chair was missing again, Adam noticed.

  “The Senior members would like Adam to investigate the riverbank again tomorrow,” said Tilda. “I just got the orders. The conditions should be close to the same as it was the year Edward was here last.”

  Adam was impressed. They must have investigated how much snow was around the year that Ed had died.

  Horton shrugged. “OK then,” he replied but said nothing more.

  After a moment of silence, Adam spoke.

  “I had an idea for getting back up the side of the mountain again,” he said.

  “What’s that?” asked Horton.

  “The big winch at the front of the lab. What if we ran a cable all the way out and used it to lower us down and bring us back up again? It should be plenty strong enough.”

  Horton considered that for a moment. “Besides the fact that you’ll need to use every inch of cable I have, that might just work.”

  Adam was excited that Horton agreed with his idea. “Should we go get it ready?” he asked.

  “Sure, why not,” replied Horton. “Then the only difference in condition is that you’ll be going in full daylight.”

  Realization dawned on Adam.

  “Dad came here in the evening,” he stated.

  “Yep,” replied Horton.

  “Can we go down there tonight? Just after dark?” asked Adam.

  “Why?” asked Horton.

  “I want the conditions to be exactly the same,” said Adam.

  Horton looked at Tilda.

  “It’s up to you,” she said.

  “What the hell, who needs sleep anyway? At my age I pee more than I sleep at night,” said Horton with a chuckle.

  “I’ll leave the rest in your capable hands,” said Tilda, and she led them out of the classroom.

  An hour later Adam returned to the dorms, excited to tell his friends what was going to happen that night. He needed to be back at the Mechanical lab at 10 pm to try again, and the others complained that they wouldn’t be allowed to tag along.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When the time came, Adam was surprised to see both Horton and Linus sitting in the lab sipping coffee already.
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br />   “Good evening,” said Linus, and Adam answered in kind. Horton nodded as he sipped his coffee.

  “Ready to try again?” Linus asked.

  “As ready as I can be,” said Adam.

  “As soon as I finish my coffee we’ll go,” said Horton. “Did you want to get the cable ready while you wait?”

  Adam jumped at the opportunity. Fifteen minutes later they were all standing at the edge of the cliff, shining lights down into the darkness. Horton had the hard-wired control box for the winch in his hand.

  “This is as far as it’ll reach,” he said.

  “Couldn’t you just add in some more wire to make it longer?” asked Adam.

  Horton shook his head. “Any longer than this and you’ll have too much voltage drop so it won’t work. They make them nearly as long as they can be to still work.”

  That information sat heavy in Adam’s brain because he had been thinking that this was the method his Dad used to get back up the mountain again. Ed could have spliced in enough extra wire to run the control box all the way down the side of the mountain in Adam’s scenario, but now that Horton shot down his theory, Adam was disappointed.

  Linus was lit up like a Christmas tree, with flashlights and safety lights everywhere. He hooked his harness up to the end of the winch cable and also held the black cord they had used to rappel down the mountain as extra safety. Horton lowered him down slowly, and Linus yelled ‘OK’ when he reached the bottom. It echoed loud in the quiet darkness.

  After retracting the cable it was Adam’s turn. It was a slower method of descending than rappelling had been, but it would definitely be much faster if it worked to pull them back uphill.

  Adam unhooked the cable once he had reached the bottom and nodded at Linus.

  “After you,” said Linus, waving his handheld flashlight in the direction of the river.

  Most of the snow had melted, and the river was flowing quickly to take the excess water away. Adam hoped that the higher water level wouldn’t hide anything as they searched, but he walked at the edge of the water anyway.