No Refuge

by Richard Bard

“Came to find me, I guess.”

  “Came to save you, I’d say,” Deondre said. “I don’t care if he is a terrorist. He saved my life.”

  I pounded my fist on the desk. “My dad’s not a terrorist! He saved the world, for God’s sake. It’s all a big mistake.” I tried to calm myself. I knew they had questions. So did I, plenty of them. But now was not the time.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jazz said. “We have to find him, too. Because finding him means finding my sister.”

  Everyone quieted. The auction timer was down to forty-four minutes. Strawberry voiced what I knew the rest of us were thinking. “But without Alex’s headset there’s no way on Earth we can find them in time.”

  In that moment it no longer mattered that I had a disease that was going to kill me before the year was out. Because I felt like a stupid little kid. I was ashamed, and overwhelmed by the wish I’d simply stayed with my family. That I’d—

  Wait.

  What had Strawberry said? There was no way on Earth we could find them in time?

  A shiver ran up my neck. Maybe not, I thought, as I glanced down at my backpack.

  But the mini’s not from Earth.

  Chapter 27

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN we can’t find her in time?” Jazz cried out, her eyes frantic. “We have to find her. Don’t you understand? The things they’ll do to her!” She lunged and yanked the broken Spider from my grip, shaking it at my face so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. “You’ve got to fix this. Make it work. You’ve got to—”

  “Hold on, please,” I said, my palms raised defensively. I tried to calm her with my mind but I couldn’t break through.

  Strawberry tried to place an arm around her, but Jazz pushed it aside. “What have you done?” Jazz glared at each of us. “All of you?” Her hands shook. “It’s your fault Ellie’s there! Don’t you see what you’ve done? It was supposed to be me. Not Ellie. I’m the strong one, not her. Not my sis—”

  “Stop,” I shouted, using the same voice I’d learned to use when my brother Ahmed got lost in a rant. I may have been the smallest in the room, and maybe that’s why it worked. She froze.

  “There may be another way,” I said.

  She frowned, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, as if her mind was trying to catch up to what I’d said.

  I didn’t want to make promises I wasn’t sure I could keep, so I added, “There’s a chance, at least.”

  Hope flashed across Jazz’s face. When Strawberry placed an arm around her, she didn’t push it away this time.

  “A chance is all we need,” Deondre said.

  “Let’s get started,” Simon added.

  Strawberry nodded. “Whatever it is, we’re with you.”

  I marveled at how quickly they’d jumped aboard, these friends who hadn’t even known me two days ago, willing to follow the lead of an eight-year-old kid. My eyes lingered on the tablet’s live feed of my father. I imagined how he must have experienced the same wonder, and gratitude, for all those who’d clung to his side in the face of seemingly insurmountable dangers.

  Jazz must have sensed their resolve as well, because she straightened her back, wiped her tears, and said, “What’s the plan?”

  The plan was simple but I couldn’t just blurt it out. I needed to give them some background first so they wouldn’t freak out. “Okay, but remember to keep your minds open.”

  Jazz and Strawberry plopped on the edge of the bed. Deondre and Simon remained standing. I kept my explanation short and to the point, but that included telling them a few essential things only a few people on the planet knew about. As I spoke, their faces displayed both wonder and worry. No one interrupted me, though, and when I finished three minutes later, they looked like they’d just climbed off a death-defying roller coaster.

  Deondre shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

  “Savage,” Simon said.

  “That’s why your head was glowing,” Jazz said. “In the shed. When you scared away the big guy?”

  “I guess. My head’s never glowed before.” I reconsidered. “At least not that I know of.”

  Strawberry stood up and glanced at the tablet. “The auction ends in forty minutes. Let’s do it already.”

  I reached into my pack and grabbed the mini. I hesitated to pull it out when I heard several intakes of breath. They had all edged closer. “Umm, like I said, I’ve never tried this before. Anything could happen.”

  Jazz’s brow pinched in concern, but the members of The Card Club didn’t seem to care. They were looking death in the face anyway, and seeing the power of the miniature pyramid that had been at the center of nearly ending the world was not something they were going to pass up. Jazz didn’t know they were ill and couldn’t grasp the source of their courage, but it emboldened her as well. She puffed her cheeks and stood her ground with the rest of them.

  I pulled out the mini, and its energy made my skin tingle.

  “That’s it?” Simon asked.

  The others leaned in. “It’s not very big,” Jazz said.

  “Good things come in small packages,” Strawberry said.

  Deondre patted me on the head. “Yeah, like Alex.”

  I laid my arms on the desk, clasping the black pyramid. Its smooth surfaces felt cool, but the flow of its energy stoked a fire in my belly. Jazz said my head had glowed when I tapped into a trickle of its energy from twenty feet away. What would happen when I focused on it as it lay in my hand?

  I turned to the others. “Please, step back. This could be—no, not could be—this is dangerous. I’m not sure what I’m doing, and if any of you are hurt…”

  “He’s right,” Deondre said, backing away. “Give him some space.”

  “Should we go into the adjoining room?” Jazz asked.

  “Nooo!” all three of the others said at the same time.

  “We’re with you, Alex,” Strawberry said, taking Jazz’s hand and backing up against the wall.

  “Nuttin’ to lose,” Simon said as he pulled up beside them.

  Plenty to lose, I thought, preparing myself. Ellie’s and my dad’s lives hung in the balance, and what if the so-called glow was a precursor to something horrible, something that would kill us? My dad had almost died tapping into the power of the mini when he first found it, and I knew from my own connection with the grid that it held energy beyond mankind’s comprehension. It wasn’t like I could do a Google or Wikipedia search to get answers about the artifact in front of me.

  No, I had to rely on one thing—faith. A belief spawned from that first connection a year and a half ago between me, my father, and the grid, when I’d been granted a glimpse into the mindset of the alien race that had visited Earth twenty-five thousand years ago, and who’d created the grid of pyramids as a fail-safe device to ensure that man’s violent nature never posed a threat beyond our world. The pyramids they’d left behind had been programmed with an intelligence that had allowed us to reason with them, so the beings behind it must have known compassion or none of us would be alive today. I had to rely on the belief that the mini responded to my dad’s touch and mine and no one else’s—because of that original connection—and that it had remained bonded with the two of us for a specific purpose. I didn’t know what that purpose was, but in my gut I knew it had something to do with the presence in Brazil that pulled at me.

  I was scared but I had no choice. The mini was my last hope. I looked at the feed. My dad’s hands were tied to the chair, but his expression was defiant. I drew strength from that. I fueled that strength with anger as the viewer count continued to accelerate and the bids for my dad’s life mounted.

  I opened myself to the mini, willing its energy into me. My head snapped back, and the world went black around me. I felt weightless, drifting in a boundless void, no up, no down, nothing. Then my breath seized as a kaleidoscope of images and scenes bombarded me from all directions. It was like witnessing a timeline of humankind’s violent history at hyperspeed. Man’s animal insti
ncts at their worst—war, genocide, depravity, atrocities, slavery, and so much more. White, Black, Asian, or native, no race was immune, no continent untouched. Where humans lived, violence thrived. Even since the dire warnings issued to the planet by the grid. I absorbed it all, in a fraction of a moment. I started falling into a well of despair that I feared I’d never return from.

  Suddenly the stream of horrors vanished, replaced by the foggy image of the underground cavern in Brazil, and an urgent voice.

  “Hurry.”

  I focused on the voice as if it were a lifeline, and pushed through the fog to see the figure behind it. But it disappeared, and I was transported into my dad’s head, staring out at the woman, Lieutenant Garcia, and Sergeant Sánchez. They were standing behind the tripod and camera that was recording my dad. The woman’s face was bruised and battered. Sánchez had bandages taped along half his and his arm in a sling. I was surprised I didn’t feel guilty about it in the least. They were in a modern-looking office, with new furniture and shiny marble floors. Behind them were a large desk and a floor-to-ceiling window covered by vertical blinds. In the distance I heard music and cheers.

  I felt my dad’s shock and fear for my safety when he realized I’d used the mini to reach out to him.

  “Nooo!” he shouted. He instantly read my intentions and shut me out, and just like that the connection was broken.

  “No!” I cried out in return. I stared at the tablet, where my dad was looking straight at the camera. He shook his head at me.

  “Forget that!” I said. The sharp edges of the pyramid dug into my palms as I tried to squeeze the vision back to reality. But there was nothing.

  Strawberry reached me first. “Are you okay?” She touched my arm, and a spark danced between us. “Yikes!” she said, jumping back.

  She was surprised but not hurt. Even so, I stuffed the mini in the pack. Simon and Deondre crowded closer while Jazz kept her distance. All the color had drained from her face.

  I steadied myself, for her sake as well as my own. “Did I glow?” I asked her.

  She shook her head in short little jerks.

  “Well, that’s good, right? I’m okay, really.”

  She sucked in her lower lip, unconvinced.

  “Did it work?” Deondre asked.

  “Not like I hoped.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked.

  I pushed back a swarm of emotions as my thoughts went back to the horrible images and the urgent voice from the cavern. I couldn’t ignore its pull for much longer, but I couldn’t face it without my dad.

  “I saw my dad,” I said hesitantly.

  Jazz hurried over. “You did? And my sister?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “But that’s okay,” Strawberry said. “Because they’re in the same place.”

  Jazz licked her lips.

  Simon asked, “Where is he?”

  “That’s the problem. I’m not sure.”

  Strawberry spun my chair so I was facing away from the desk. She took Jazz’s hand and pulled her new friend alongside her onto the edge of the bed. She stared at me. “You’ve heard the expression that two heads are better than one? Well, there are five of us here.”

  “That’s right,” Simon said, sitting down next to them.

  Deondre pulled up the only other chair in the room. “So spill it. And don’t leave anything out.” There was an eagerness about him, and it occurred to me how different he was from when I first saw him bullying kids on the bus. He had a spark that hadn’t been there before, a sense of purpose that was about others instead of himself.

  I closed my eyes and told them everything I’d seen from inside my dad’s head.

  I faced four confused faces when I finished.

  “That could be anywhere,” Deondre said.

  “I know.”

  Strawberry wasn’t deterred. “You said the furniture was modern and that it seemed new. What about the office itself. Also new?”

  The floors had been super shiny. There was nothing personal on the desk, no computer, no printer on the credenza, nothing hanging on the walls. “It felt like no one had completely moved in there yet.” I pulled up the scene again in my mind, reached out with my senses and reheard the sounds, inhaled the smells. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what the scent was, but it seemed the opposite of lived-in, with a chemical taint to it. Trust your gut. “It’s not necessarily brand new. But it’s a newer building, or one that’s been recently remodeled.”

  Jazz said, “Plus, you said it had a large window. So we’re looking for a relatively new or remodeled office building with large windows.”

  “Come on,” Deondre said. “There’s got to be thousands of those in this city.”

  Simon’s tongue licked the corner of his lips. His eyes narrowed. “You heard music. What kind?”

  “It was loud.” I didn’t listen to music much, unlike my sister, who would’ve known exactly what type it was. It wasn’t like the popular music she listened to, and it also wasn’t classic rock and roll like Dad enjoyed. It was more like something Ahmed was into. “It was rock and roll-ish. Kind of angry sounding.”

  “Punk rock, maybe?” Jazz asked.

  I shrugged.

  Simon’s eyes lit up. “The Parque Simon Bolivar rock festival! The one my artist buds told me about. That’s why you heard cheering.”

  “You’re right,” Jazz said, leaning in. “We heard the guards talking about it. It lasts three days. In the park.”

  “What park?” Deondre asked.

  “Duh,” Simon said. He jumped up, grabbed the tablet, tapped a few entries, and held it up so we could see the screen. “The Simon Bolivar park. And it’s only four miles away.” He pulled out the tablet kickstand and set it back on the desk in front of the wireless keyboard. Everyone but me was on their feet by now. Deondre and Strawberry crowded next to Simon to get a better look while I switched to Google Earth and zoomed in. The park was huge—a couple of hundred acres with a half-moon lake surrounded by tree-studded trails and lawn areas.

  Simon pointed to an open area labeled Plazoleta de Eventos. “That’s got to be where the concert is.”

  As if on cue, a chorus of raucous music sounded behind us. We turned to see Jazz had switched on the TV to a channel broadcasting the event. The area was packed with bouncing fans. “It’s a live broadcast. The guards had it on in the room next to ours.”

  “That’s massive,” Simon said.

  “The largest annual concert of its kind in South America,” Jazz said.

  “So we know that Alex’s dad and Ellie are being held within earshot of the concert,” Deondre said. “But that could be anywhere within a couple miles.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But the music was pretty loud even though the windows were closed. So I think they were pretty close to it.”

  Simon pointed at the screen. “Only two sides of the park are surrounded by structures. Zoom in, Alex.”

  I zoomed in on the first neighborhood. Even from the overhead view, we could tell this was an older residential area. The target building wasn’t in there.

  “Check out the other side,” Deondre said.

  This was a newer area full of three- and four-story commercial buildings.

  Jazz joined us around the screen, leaning so close I could hear the quickness of her breaths. “That’s still a big area,” she said. It was five square blocks with at least a hundred structures.

  “How the hell are we going to narrow it down?” Deondre asked.

  Simon said, “We’re going to have to do a grid search.”

  Strawberry checked her watch. “We can’t possibly find them in time. The auction is going to be over in half an hour.”

  My mind was ten steps ahead of them. “I know what to do.” I scooped the tablet off the desk and jumped to my feet. “Get your stuff. We’ve gotta go!”

  Chapter 28

  EIGHT MINUTES to find a needle in a haystack.

  Car horns blared as
Deondre steered the Vespa through another red light, swerving to avoid cross traffic.

  “Slow down!” Strawberry shouted. She sat behind Deondre on the bike. “If we crash—”

  “Go faster,” I said. Like before, I sat between Deondre’s legs in the front, my pack swiveled around in front of me, one hand on the handlebar and the other clinging to the tablet. I’d linked the device to my smartphone so I could continue to monitor the streaming feed from the auction site. My dad’s face stared back at me on the screen. “Faster!” I repeated.

  Deondre gunned the engine, Strawberry squeaked, and Jazz and Simon pulled up alongside on their motorcycle. Jazz was eyes forward, all focus and intensity. Simon had a death grip around her waist.

  Two blocks later we turned into the back end of the neighborhood near the park. There were commercial buildings on both sides of the street, and a few high-end villas. Most of the offices were closed at this hour, so traffic was light and there were only a few pedestrians.

  Deondre slowed the bike. “Which way?”

  I glanced at my dad on the screen but he wasn’t any help. At least not yet.

  I looked around. The road we were on bisected the neighborhood, ending five or six blocks ahead at a T-intersection that fronted the park. The outdoor concert lighting shone brightly above the distant tree line and I could hear the music.

  “Straight ahead,” I said, keeping an eye on the tablet.

  Deondre and Jazz both slowed at the first intersection, looking left and right, checking for signs of the van or the cop’s car, or anything else suspicious. “Keep going,” I said.

  Jazz gave me a curious glance, but then scooted ahead. She braked hard at the third intersection. We pulled up beside her, and she pointed to the third building down on the right. “That one looks pretty new.”

  It also had large windows.

  “Okay, I’ll check it out,” Deondre said, turning the bike before I could stop him. “But just us,” he said to Jazz. “Your bike is too loud.” She nodded and pulled to the side of the road.

  Deondre drove a little ways. “Go back. That’s not it,” I said, my focus on the screen.