by S. S. Segran
“We’re not making this up, I swear,” Jag said.
Tony thumped Jag’s back reassuringly. “No, no, I believe you. Just . . . wow. Now I know why I thought you guys looked familiar when we first met. You were in some media reports.” After a brief period of silence, he said, “So . . . how do you think I can be of help?”
“The Elders told us that, when we returned to our lives, we would not be alone,” Aari answered. “There would be people here who would help us.” He felt nervous as the moment of truth hung over their heads like an axe on a fraying rope. “They said that they’d placed special people around the world and . . . and we wondered if . . . you were one of them?”
The five’s hopes sank the instant they saw that Aari’s words had left Tony completely nonplussed. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Doing all they could to hide their disappointment, the friends looked away. “It’s alright,” Jag said through a tight smile.
Tony seemed distraught, as though he felt that he hadn’t lived up to the five’s expectations. “I wish I knew what you meant, but—”
“It’s alright, Tony,” Jag repeated.
There was another pause in the conversation. The group looked on as two dragon boats practice-raced; the craft carried ten rowers on each side who were energetically working their paddles.
Tony shifted uncomfortably, then asked, “What’ll you do now?”
Aari and the others didn’t take their eyes off the dragon boats. “I guess we’re just gonna continue our trip,” Jag responded. “We checked out of our hotel a day early. All our stuff’s already in the car.”
“Where to next, then?”
“We’re driving down to San Diego in a bit.”
Mariah stretched out her feet. “I can’t wait to check out the zoo and Sea World.”
“And the USS Midway,” added Aari and Kody in unison.
“Sounds like you’ll be having a blast,” Tony said. “I’m just sorry I’m not who you thought I was.”
“Don’t worry about it. If anything, we should be apologizing. We called you away from your girlfriend and had you drive out all the way from Morro Bay.”
Tony gave Jag a friendly smack on the back. “I like being with you guys! Trust me, there really was no harm done here. I learned a lot about the five of you. It was enlightening. But there was something you said, right when I joined you guys—about a prophecy?”
Aari and the others froze; they thought they’d managed to wriggle out of that question at the beginning. Thankfully, Jag recovered quickly. “It was an inside joke,” he said dismissively.
Aari couldn’t tell if Tony bought into that, but he sure hoped he did.
Tony looked at his watch. “Mind if I catch lunch with you guys before we part ways?”
The teenagers' faces lit up. “Of course not!” Tegan exclaimed. The group pulled their feet back from the edge of the wharf and helped each other up. Together, the six of them made their way to a fish and chips place not far down the pier.
From behind the windows of a crowded restaurant, a man watched the group walk past. He inspected them with a careful eye as the five chatted animatedly with a light-haired man. When they turned out of his sight, he leaned back and rubbed his short beard, then glanced down at a black bag that lay by his feet. He picked it up. Unzipping it, he reached in and cautiously removed a pouch. When he was sure no one was looking his way, he opened the pouch and pulled out a glass container that was filled nearly to the top with a glowing liquid. It was exactly like the one that he’d tossed into the teenagers’ Jeep a few days before.
He stared at it for a while, debating with himself, until finally reaching a decision. Pressing his lips together, he glared and placed the container back into its pouch. He would wait and see if he needed to use the device again.
14
The friends arrived at San Diego smack in the middle of rush-hour. They’d been happily following their GPS to their hotel along the freeway but were stunned to see the lines of cars ahead of them as they neared the city. They sat with the air conditioning on full blast, not aware how hot it was outside their vehicle. They’d tried to pass the five-hour drive from Santa Barbara with some games, but after playing scavenger hunt on an app and a run of thumb wrestling they’d gotten bored and couldn’t wait to get out of the traffic. They hadn’t spoken for a while now, each retreating into their own personal space.
Jag rested his chin on the steering wheel and glanced at Aari, who was fiddling with his phone as he rode shotgun. His black sling bag sat across his knees. Every time Jag would make an attempt to engage him in a conversation, he only received distracted, one-word responses.
Letting out a sigh, Jag leaned back and tried to stretch the kinks out of his legs as best he could. He knew that the silence that had converged upon the friends was largely due to Tony not being a Sentry. They’d had such high hopes for him. That wasn’t the only thing that was unsettling the group, though—all five of them were at a loss. They’d wanted someone to tell them why their memories and powers were just returning and what they were supposed to do.
We need guidance, Jag thought sullenly, but with no one around them providing direction, the friends were nothing more than wandering teenagers who harbored abilities for reasons they weren’t sure of. What do we do now?
He sighed loudly and looked up at the rearview mirror. He saw Kody reading a brochure with such intensity that he didn’t notice Tegan balancing an empty plastic bottle on his head.
“What are you looking at, Kode-man?” Jag asked.
“I’m trying to find a good restaurant around here,” Kody answered. “By the time we get out of traffic it’ll be dinner time.”
Mariah snorted. “You and food . . . ”
“We have a beautiful relationship. If food wore a white dress, I’d marry it in a heartbeat. I’d put a ring on it.”
Tegan threw her head back, laughing. “It’s scary that I don’t doubt that.”
The traffic moved in starts and stops. Jag grumbled as he scratched his temple. “When we get to the hotel, take twenty minutes to freshen up. We’ll meet in the lobby and head out for dinner.”
“Yes, Sir,” Tegan barked, looking dead serious.
Jag smirked, glad that the group was perking up. “Ha-ha, Ms. Funnypants.”
“Hey, hasn’t that van been following us since that gas station several miles ago?” Mariah asked suddenly.
Jag frowned and checked his mirrors. “What van?”
“That black one a few cars behind us, in the other lane.”
He found it a second later. “I don’t think so. There’s a ton of vehicles going the same way. I think you might be carrying over your suspicious feelings from Vegas.”
Mariah huffed but didn’t say anything more.
Aari yawned and put his phone down. “This traffic is ridiculous. Hope it’s not this busy when we visit the Midway museum tomorrow.” A smile worked across his lips. “I can’t wait to see that ship. We’re actually going to be on an aircraft carrier that saw action during the Vietnam War and Desert Storm.”
“That’s all good, Aari, but I just found a Malaysian restaurant,” Kody said, looking up from his pamphlet, “and I can’t wait to get my satay fix.”
Aari gasped in mock astonishment. “Food trumps an aircraft carrier?”
“Only until my hunger’s gone,” Kody promised.
“Mmhm . . . ” Aari reached out to turn on the radio. He shuffled through a few channels before landing on a talk show that caught the five’s attention.
“ . . . But does this mean we’ll see rising gas prices soon as well?” a gravelly-voiced man asked. “I mean, that’s how it tends to work, right? I don’t want to be driving to the studio one afternoon and get a heart attack ’cause gas shot up to ten bucks a gallon!”
“I dunno,” joined another voice, a woman this time. “I think the main worry right now is food. The prices of bread and other grain products
in some places have nearly doubled in the past two weeks alone. Had to do a double take at the baked goods section while doing groceries yesterday.”
“Just a matter of time before we’re going to have to pay more for red meat too, then,” the man moaned.
“Give up on meat!” the woman said. “Being vegan is a much healthier lifestyle.”
“Hey, if I want to eat meat, I’ll eat meat. Besides, I heard that even San Joaquin Valley’s been hit hard. Hundreds of acres of fruits and vegetables, gone. And—hold on.”
There were a few moments of silence followed by the sound of shuffling papers on the radio as the five waited intently.
When the male radio host spoke into the mic again, he sounded grave. “We’ve just received some news and it ain’t good. Looks like whatever’s hitting our crops at home has spread to other parts of the world. Scattered reports are beginning to trickle in from farmers in Asia and Europe claiming substantial loss of crops.”
“That’s not something we want to hear . . . I hope someone gets to the bottom of this real soon,” the woman muttered, “because if it doesn’t stop, things are gonna go south faster than you can say ‘What on God’s green Earth . . . !’”
The hosts soon moved on to other local happenings. Aari turned down the volume. “That’s not good,” he said darkly.
“This crop disease or whatever it is that’s going around, has anything like this happened before?” Mariah asked.
“Well, yeah, but I don’t think it has ever spread this wide or, for that matter, this quickly.”
The traffic began to ease up at last. Jag stepped on the gas, relieved to be moving. They drove through the city, taking in the sights that zoomed by. It wasn’t long until they found their hotel and checked in. While Jag went to park the car in the basement, the others carried their bags to their rooms.
Once they’d freshened up, the five regrouped in the lobby and made their way back to the car. They piled in, Aari beside Jag once again and Kody in between the girls in the back. “I guess we’re going to that restaurant you found, huh?” Jag asked as he passed Kody the GPS to key in the restaurant’s address.
“No question,” Kody said.
As Jag put the car in reverse to back out of the parking slot, the sound of tires screeching filled the underground parking. Alarmed, the five turned to look through the rear window. A black cargo van was stopped right behind them, blocking their exit.
Jag heard Mariah breathe in sharply. “Oh my God, it’s the same van I—” Her sentence ended in a scream when her door was thrown open and a figure clad all in black yanked her roughly out of the car. She struggled violently against her assailant but a rag was quickly pressed to her mouth and nose and she passed out almost instantly.
At the same time, Tegan’s door was flung open, as was Aari’s. They were both pulled out of the vehicle by two more figures in dark clothes. Their cries for help were muffled by rags held up to their faces; they barely had any time to fight back. Jag watched in terror as they lost consciousness as well.
“Jag, what—no!” Kody yelped as he in turn was pulled from the car.
Jag moved to get out of the Jeep but stopped short when he saw an attacker headed to his side of the car. At first he thought of locking the door, but another idea came to mind. He braced himself, waiting until the assailant was close enough. From the build of the body, he could tell that the attacker was a beefed up man.
Jag hesitated, now unsure of himself and his plan. As the man reached for the door handle, the only thought Jag had was: Here goes nothing. Come on, you jerk.
He lifted his feet and the moment his door was wrenched open and struck out at full force, catching the aggressor square on the stomach and throwing him back a good ten feet. Jag was out of the vehicle in an instant. He saw his friends’ limp forms being tossed through the rear door of the van like rag dolls. The girls were the last to be dumped in.
With a roar of outrage, he leapt toward the van. Before he could get close enough, he heard what sounded like the muted report of a gun and felt something hit his back. He lurched forward with his arms outstretched to break his fall but found that he was weakening rapidly. He fell onto the concrete floor as his vision began to blur. His muscles wouldn’t respond to his will and he found himself a helpless, limp mass on the ground.
A dark shape stepped in front of him. Heavy, rough hands grabbed him by the arms and dragged him up. Jag tried to do all he could to fight, but the most he managed was a weak twitch of his fingers.
He was shoved unceremoniously into the large vehicle, on top of his friends. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the back doors being slammed shut, blocking out any light from the outside.
15
Wake up, Jag.
You must wake up.
JAG!
Jag groaned quietly as his eyes opened. He saw nothing but darkness. For a moment, he thought that he’d somehow lost his eyesight until his senses slowly started to function again. He could feel something wrapped around his head, covering his eyes. His arms were behind him and his wrists wrapped in some kind of binding.
Suddenly, whatever he was laying on rattled, bouncing him, and he let out another quiet complaint before realizing that he was swaying ever so slightly, as one would in a moving vehicle. Two male voices speaking softly to his right reached his ears. Jag could hardly make out what they were saying, but judged that the voices were coming from the driver and his passenger.
Slowly, he began to recall the final moments before he’d lost consciousness. Oh, brilliant, he thought bitterly. Kidnapped.
He should have been scared, and rightly so, but he was irate, mainly at himself. Why had he dismissed Mariah’s concern when she pointed out the van earlier? Why hadn’t he reacted quicker to save the others from their attackers?
As his head cleared, he managed to catch part of the conversation between the men. “ . . . besides, you know how our client is. Once they’ve got what they wanted from these kids, they’ll be discarded quickly.”
“That’s not our problem,” rasped a deeper voice. “We get paid for delivery.”
Jag’s lethargy vanished at once. He tried to move his legs but could barely even lift his feet. While his mind was nearly able to function at its full capacity, his physical self was still trying to catch up. He could feel something to his right; presumably a body. He hoped it was one of the others.
A voice near him made him jump. “Hey, we got a wriggler here. What dosage did we use on them?”
One of the men whom Jag had heard earlier spoke up. “Enough to knock ’em out for a few hours. Even if they wake up, their hands are tied and they can’t see a thing. They’re a buncha kids, they’ll be too terrified to try anything.”
Wrong, Jag wanted to hiss, but instead told himself to calm down and think. He was sure now that there were two men at the front of the vehicle, with another somewhere in the back, closer to Jag. The van made a sharp turn and then straightened out onto a rough road, rattling the passengers and making a rumble in the cabin.
The three men got caught up in a conversation about a cohort who’d disappeared with money he’d borrowed from them. Over the noise inside the cabin they argued loudly on how to track him down and what they would do when they found him.
Seizing his chance, Jag whispered hopefully to the body on his right. “Tegan? Mariah?”
No sound.
“Kody?”
Still nothing.
“Aari?”
A groggy voice whispered back, “Jag?”
Relief flooded him. “Aari. You okay?”
He could hear his friend’s voice in the din. “Maybe. Feeling weak.”
“I know.”
“Shoot—we were nabbed.”
“Yeah. Need to figure out how to get out of here.”
“Are we . . . are we in the van?”
“Yeah.”
Jag strained to hear Aari murmur. “There’s something against my back. It hurts.”
&
nbsp; “Your hands. They’re tied back.”
“No, no . . . something hard. Feels like metal. It’s rattling under me.”
The wheels in Jag’s head slowly began to turn as his body started to respond. He had a suspicion that if the two men at the wheel were to his right that would mean that the back of the van was, hopefully, to his other side. He stretched his left leg little by little until he felt his shoe hit something flat and solid.
Doors. He grinned to himself as a plan took shape in his mind. If they could force the abductors to stop the van, it just might give them a chance to rescue the others. “Try grabbing that metal thing under you,” he breathed to Aari.
“Why?”
Very quietly, Jag laid out his idea. In response, Aari told Jag that he was out of his mind but he would go along with it anyway.
Jag felt Aari’s shoulder butting into his as the other boy tried to grasp the object beneath him. “Got it.”
“Wait for my word.”
The vehicle stopped rattling as it made a turn onto a smoother road and accelerated, indicating that they were on a stretch of highway. Several minutes later, Jag felt the van slow down again. His weight shifted to one side and he realized they were turning onto an exit ramp. Here we go, he thought, preparing himself, then shouted, “Now!”
He quickly twisted around to position his feet toward the back doors. As he curled his legs toward his chest, he heard shouts as Aari lurched forward to stand up.
Jag uncoiled his legs and smashed the doors open. The sound of cars on the road and horns blaring filled the van. More shouts ensued, followed by a heavy clanking as Aari swung around and launched his prize—a wrench—toward the front of the vehicle. At least, Jag hoped it was the front of the vehicle. His answer came soon enough when he heard the windshield smash and felt the van swerve sharply as the driver wrestled for control.
“Damn!” someone bellowed. Horrified yells rang out before the vehicle leaned far over and crashed onto its side.