by James Ponti
I looked up at him and suddenly felt panicked.
“Does that mean you invited Natalie? Here?”
Mom gave me a confused look. “Of course we did. We invited your whole team so we can give you all your new assignment.”
This was bad news. If I was right and Natalie was a Level 2, then her learning the location of Mom and Milton’s hideout would be a disaster.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Why not?” asked Mom.
Before I could explain, the door opened and Natalie entered with Liberty, who had been her guide like Dr. Stimola was mine. They, of course, had no idea I was just questioning her invitation, so they were all friendly smiles when they came through the door.
“Okay,” Natalie said, marveling at the lab. “This may be the coolest place on earth.”
“Thank you,” said Milton. “I’m pretty fond of it myself.”
All of my worlds were colliding, and I was desperately trying to keep calm about it. Somehow I had to tell Mom about my suspicions. She’d know what to do. I turned to talk to her, but Liberty intercepted me and gave me a big hug.
“Hey, Molly, happy belated birthday.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Thirteen, right?” he said.
“Let’s just hope it’s not unlucky thirteen.”
I tried to break free from the little conversation, but before I could, Natalie had come over to my mother.
“Where are we exactly?” she asked her. “I tried to keep track of where Liberty was leading me, but I got it all turned around in my head.”
Natalie didn’t know our exact location and that was good. I didn’t give Mom a chance to tell her. Instead, I interrupted and changed the subject.
“What was your clue?” I asked Natalie. “I’m supposedly at a lecture on the birds of Central Park at CCNY.”
The sudden change of subject caught her off guard, but one of the advantages of being socially awkward (which I am times a thousand) is that people are used to odd transitions. Rather than wait for an answer to her question, she answered mine.
“I’m at a lecture too,” she replied. “It’s at the Museum of Natural History, where I’m listening to excruciatingly in-depth analysis of STS-135, the final mission of the space shuttle.”
I gave her a confused look. “That was a clue?”
“Since it was the shuttle’s last flight, the mission logo was an Omega symbol,” she explained.
“And you knew that?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Like I said, my worlds were colliding. Here she was, my best friend, a total genius, and I was trying to figure out whether or not she was the enemy.
“So why are we here?” Natalie asked with anticipation. “Are we getting a new assignment?”
“Yes,” my mom said. “We want you to—”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting again. “We should wait for Grayson and Alex to get here before we talk about anything. That way we’ll make sure we all have the same information and there won’t be any confusion. And while we’re waiting, Mom, I thought you and I might talk for a second . . . alone.”
As I moved toward Mom, Natalie looked over at the collection of test tubes and beakers where Milton and my mother had been working.
“What kind of experiments are you working on?” she asked him.
I started to interrupt again, but I didn’t really have anything to say. Natalie was frustrated. She started to ask, “Is there a reason you don’t want me to . . .” and then she stopped midsentence as she figured it out. The whole room got quiet, and she looked me right in the eyes.
“You know, don’t you?” she asked.
“Know what?” I said, trying to play dumb.
“You know exactly what I mean,” she said.
I nodded. “Yes,” I said softly, “I know.”
“When did you figure it out?”
“The day after my birthday, when I came to visit you,” I said.
“But you didn’t ask me about it.”
I shrugged. “I tried to, but I couldn’t do it. I kept hoping you would tell me.”
She was quiet for a moment, thinking back to that day.
“I almost did,” she said. “But I was worried about how you’d take it. I don’t mean you specifically, but the three of you. I was especially worried about Alex.”
I hate to say it, but I was worried about Alex too. More than any of us, he’s distrustful of the undead. It took him way longer to warm up to Liberty than it did the rest of us, and I wasn’t sure how he’d respond to finding out about Natalie.
“I would have kept your secret,” I said. “In fact, I did keep it. I haven’t told anyone. Not even Mom.”
“It wasn’t a secret to her.”
I looked over at my mother.
“The three of us have known since New Year’s,” she said, nodding toward Milton and Liberty. “We’ve been working with her and trying to help her adjust to her new life. It’s hard, but she’s been doing great. I’m really proud of her.”
I had only seen my mother once since New Year’s and Natalie had seen her multiple times. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt my feelings. I understand that Natalie was in an incredibly difficult situation and needed help, but I needed help too. I wanted her to be proud of me, too.
“We thought she should be the one to decide when it was the right time to tell you guys,” said Liberty. “I know first hand how difficult that can be.”
“That makes sense,” I said.
“But I don’t understand why you don’t want them to tell me where we are or what they’re working on, just because I’m undead,” she said. “Everyone in this room is, except for you. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept quiet and looked right at her.
“Unless you think I’m a Level 2.”
I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no either. I just kept looking at her and watched her face fill with sadness.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked. “You think I’m an L2.”
All eyes were on me, but too much was at stake to do anything but tell the truth.
“Yes, I do.”
RUNY
It was terrible. I had just completely devastated my best friend, and I did it right in front of the people who mattered the most to us both. I’d accused her of being a Level 2 zombie. Which is another way of saying I’d accused her of being the enemy. She didn’t respond. She just looked like she was about to cry.
“Why would you think that?” asked Mom.
First I hadn’t liked the fact that Mom and Natalie had been working together. Now I didn’t like that it seemed like she was taking Natalie’s side.
“Somebody told Marek about our secret code,” I said pointedly. “Somebody told him that we left messages for each other on the Delacorte Clock. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t you. Natalie was the only other person who knew.”
“You think I told Marek?” Natalie asked, even more shocked than before. “You do realize he’s the reason I’m in the condition I’m in? And that I’ve spent the last three years fighting him?”
“I’m confused,” said Milton. “What’s this about a code and a clock?”
“The clock by the Central Park Zoo,” I told him. “It’s where Mom and I agreed to leave messages for each other. Last Christmas Eve, I left one telling her to come to the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center. Natalie discovered it and surprised us there. That’s when she first found out that Mom was undead.”
I turned back to Natalie.
“And that’s the only time we ever used the clock,” I said. “The next time, it was actually Marek using it to lure us. You remember, he did it the same day you told me you were certain that Mom would leave me a message sometime soon. The day you told me to go check it.”
“So now you think I’m helping him set a trap for you?” she asked. “After all that we’ve been thr
ough. Don’t you remember that I’m the one who asked you to join Omega in the first place? That I’m the one who oversaw your training?”
“I remember all of it, including the part where you said that I should always be careful and assume that anyone who’s undead is a Level 2 until they prove otherwise. That it’s better to hurt the feelings of a zombie than it is to endanger the lives of your team.”
“I would think you’d make an exception for your best friend. After all, I’m not just a zombie. I’m also part of that team you’re protecting.”
I didn’t know how to reply, so things were quiet for a moment. It sounds weird, but the thing that caught my attention was that she considered herself my best friend. Hearing that out loud made my feel even worse about it all.
“By the way, I wasn’t the only one who showed up at the skating rink that night,” she said. “There was also the zombie who attacked you on the ice. The one who your mother and I had to get rid of. The one who I killed to protect you.”
It had never occurred to me that the zombie had seen the message too. I had assumed she just saw me there at the rink and attacked. But it made total sense that she might have uncovered the code just like Natalie had. My mind was racing in reverse.
“Ahh, now you remember,” she said, reading my reaction. “She must have passed the word along to Marek, because I certainly didn’t.”
It was like a punch to gut. I was suddenly short of breath as I thought through her explanation.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I forgot all about her.”
Natalie went to say something, but my mother interrupted.
“Grayson and Alex are about to get here,” she said, pointing at a pair of security monitors that showed them both approaching the lab. “Is this a discussion you want to continue in front of them?”
Natalie looked at me for a moment, then shook her head. “No. It’s not.”
“Okay,” she said. “Molly, knowing what you know now, do you have anything you want to say to Natalie?”
“I really am sorry,” I told Natalie. “I was just trying to be careful, and I ended up being stupid.”
She seemed unsatisfied with my apology, but with the boys almost to the door she didn’t have many options.
“Fine,” she said curtly. “Forget about it.”
“Good,” said my mother. “Because we’ve got a lot of information to go over.”
Moments later Grayson and Alex arrived, and I tried to act like things were normal between us all. Mom and Milton showed us around the lab, and as they did I noticed Natalie kept her distance from me. Every now and then I caught her glaring my way. I couldn’t blame her. I just hoped that the excitement of a new assignment would help distract her from it and make her focus on the work we had to do.
My mother gathered us all around a large wooden table in the corner of the lab and laid out a map of Manhattan.
“Let’s talk about RUNY, that’s R-U-N-Y,” she said. “It stands for Reinventing Underground New York, and it’s Marek’s big idea. Through his connections with the mayor’s office he has taken control of five abandoned subway stations.”
She marked them on the map. Three were near each other in Lower Manhattan, another was in Midtown, and the last was on the Upper West Side.
“He is converting them into public areas with restaurants and stores and turning them into underground parks,” she continued. “This one even has a playground.”
She showed us an architect’s rendering of one of the projects. It reminded me of the High Line, which is in the Lower West Side and is about a mile long. Once, it was an abandoned elevated train track, but now it’s a public park thirty feet above the ground. Marek was using the same concept, except he was building below the street instead of above.
“It’s like he’s taking everything about a flatline party and making it permanent,” said Alex.
“That’s exactly what it is,” she replied.
The undead have to go underground for about an hour a day in order to recharge their energy from the Manhattan schist. They often do this at flatline parties, which are held in abandoned sewers and tunnels.
Grayson looked at the drawing and then at all of us. “I know it’s Marek and he’s evil and all, but this actually sounds like something good. The flatline parties can be scary and dangerous, and this will be much better for everyone. Right?”
“Yes,” said Milton. “It’s pure genius. He’s taking abandoned property that no one else wants and turning it into something useful. And, if all he’s doing is making them safe places for the undead, then we’re not going to get in his way. But knowing Marek we have to consider that it may be part of something bigger and more sinister. And if that’s the case, we have to be prepared to react.”
“So what’s our assignment?” asked Natalie.
“You’re going to find out if RUNY is what he says it is, or if it is what we worry it might be,” said Mom.
“Actually,” I said, “someone sent me an anonymous letter about this very thing.”
Everyone looked at me.
“Who?” asked Grayson.
I gave him a look. “I have no idea. That’s why I said it was anonymous.”
“And you kept this a secret?” Natalie asked. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you trust us?”
“We weren’t supposed to do anything Omega related, so I just kept the letters in my dresser drawer.”
“Letters?” she replied. “I thought you said there was an anonymous letter. As in one. Now there are letters, plural.”
Despite her accusatory tone, I tried to keep my emotions balanced.
“I received two letters,” I said. “But only one was about RUNY.”
“What did it say?” asked my mother, cutting off our little back and forth drama.
“There was a newspaper clipping about Marek and the ghost stations,” I replied. “And a single question written on a piece of paper. ‘How is he paying for this?’ ”
Mom and Milton looked at each other and nodded. “I don’t know who sent it,” said Mom, “but that’s the two-hundred-million-dollar question, because we know he’s spent at least that much money so far.”
We were all stunned by this number.
“Two hundred million dollars,” I said, shaking my head. “Where could he possibly get that much money?”
“That’s the key to everything,” said Milton. “If we can figure out how he’s coming up with the money, then we’ll have a better understanding of what he’s up to.”
“In addition to converting the ghost stations, he’s also been doing some other unusual things that appear to be completely random and unrelated,” said Mom. “But with Marek, nothing is really ever random. It just looks that way until later on when you see the big picture.”
“What types of things?” asked Natalie.
“Out of the blue he donated a lot of money to support the research of one of my colleagues at CCNY,” said Professor Stimola. “She’s a historian who specializes in the American Revolution.”
I instantly thought of the man who attacked my mother and me. I turned to Mom and said, “The guy in the boathouse. He was reading a book about the Revolutionary War.”
“It gets better,” she replied as she picked up the book off of a nearby table and handed it to me. “This is the book he was carrying.”
“Defending Manhattan: New York City During the Revolutionary War, by Denise Hendricks,” I said, reading from the cover.
“Denise Hendricks is the professor who Marek is suddenly funding,” said the professor.
“That does seem like a big coincidence,” said Grayson.
“Does she have any particular expertise about George Washington?” I asked.
The professor nodded. “She does. In fact she’s writing a biography of him right now. Why do you ask?”
“That was the second anonymous letter,” I explained. “It had a map of Manhattan locations that related to Washington, and a note that told me to ‘Reser
ve a place in history.’ ”
“Any other letters or secrets we should know about?” asked Natalie.
I shook my head. “No. That’s it.”
I couldn’t tell if Grayson and Alex noticed the tension between Natalie and me, but they were probably too excited about the new mission to pay any attention to it.
“What else has been going on with Marek?” asked Grayson.
“There’s a company we want to find out about,” said Milton. “The Empire State Tungsten Company.”
“Back to the man in the boathouse,” I said to Mom. “According to his business card he was their vice president.”
“That’s right,” she said. “The company has come up a few more times in relation to Marek and the Unlucky 13. For example, they just sponsored a fundraiser for the NYPD’s brand-new Departmental Emergency Action Deployment Squadron.”
“The Dead Squad,” said Alex.
“Another amazing coincidence,” she replied. “We think these things are all related. We just haven’t been able to figure out how, and recent developments have made it almost impossible for us to go above ground to look for answers.”
I was trying to figure out what “recent developments” meant when Milton explained.
“She’s referring to my brother’s current medical state,” he said.
We all exchanged confused looks.
“How do you mean?” asked Alex.
“Marek’s doctors were able to rebuild him using body parts from my cousins and from my brother Cornelius,” he said. “It’s quite remarkable, actually. But apparently his body is beginning to reject those parts that came from cousins, while those that came from Cornelius are working perfectly. It seems as though he needs a closer genetic match to make the repairs permanent.”
Grayson was the first one of us to really understand what he was implying.
“Do you mean he wants your body parts?” he asked.
“That is exactly what I mean,” replied Milton.
“As a result, Milton has to keep an extra-low profile,” Mom added. “The Dead Squad is looking everywhere for him. They’re also on the lookout for me, because they think I’m the way to reach him. That’s why we need your help. You can cover more ground than us. You can solve this.”