by Scott Bly
“Love comes in many forms, Charles. I would not presume to grasp them all, nor should you.” He paused, weighing how best to continue. “I truly believe that love is necessary. Since I believe it, then it is absolutely necessary … for me. I cannot feel the Hum without love. But there are those who do not believe that.”
Before Charlie could answer, the old man reached forward and touched Charlie’s eyes. Suddenly Charlie was exhausted.
“No more questions. Now is the time for rest. Then you will go back to do what you must.”
Charlie lay down on his little bed. Within minutes he was sound asleep with Callaya in his arms.
Charlie sat bolt upright. “I have to get back.”
Grandfather’s voice startled him. “You will, my boy. But I have a gift for you. The first thing the evil ones steal is hope.” Grandfather held out a dark wooden box. “Pandora’s Box,” he said, one eyebrow cocked.
Charlie knew the myth — how Pandora opened a forbidden box. To her horror, all the evils in the world rushed out. Afterward, one small thing had remained inside the box: hope.
“It’s a trap, Charles. A Hum trap. It would be nice if Pandora could put a little of the world’s evil back into the box, don’t you agree?” The box was surprisingly light. “It will feel the proper weight when it holds its intended captive.”
“Callis?”
“I wanted to stop him. If Callis is near the open box, it will capture him.”
Grandfather opened a second box. Inside was a row of small vials — family blood, kept fresh in an enchanted box. Grandfather held up a nearly empty vial — the blood of Callis. He had used it to create Pandora’s Box.
“When I first completed the box, I opened it, hoping it would draw him back. It did not work, but the box proved its power — it nearly sucked me in. Sensing the same blood in my veins, it would settle for me. It took all my strength to close it. Do not open it until you are near him! It may like you nearly as much as it likes him.”
“You didn’t make this with love in your heart, did you?”
“I made it with love for your mother and grandmother.”
Charlie carefully placed Pandora’s Box in a leather pack his grandfather had made to carry it. Then he picked up his puppy.
“Before you go … your dog … she’s very powerful. But you know that already, don’t you?”
“She’s already saved my life at least once.”
“She may yet again.” Grandfather escorted Charlie to the door. “She will make things possible that you never imagined. If she likes you, that is.” Grandfather shot Charlie a rare, wry smile.
“Are there other dogs like her?” Charlie asked.
“Not that I’ve seen. Where did you find her?”
“Foxx made her — enhanced her, I mean. And I took her away.”
“Ahhh. That explains it. She’s much better off in your care, I’m sure. He was never kind to animals. They sensed that and stayed away. But hurry, now. You must go.”
His grandfather had never been a person to hug, but today Charlie embraced him anyway, hoping it would not be the last time.
The puppy looked at the old man and barked.
Charlie patted her head. “What’s up, Callaya?”
Grandfather looked stricken.
“She doesn’t mean any harm by it,” Charlie said.
“Is that her name? Callaya?”
“It is. I made the name up. Why? Don’t you like it?”
“That was your mother’s name, when she was born….”
“And you changed it to Charla? And then named me Charles, after her?”
“We gave her a safe name the priests wouldn’t question. It was your grandmother’s idea, and it was a good one. How peculiar that you remembered. But now you and Callaya … you need to go.”
Charlie took her out into the nighttime air.
“One more thing, Charles,” Grandfather called after him. “Happy birthday.”
Charlie hadn’t even thought about that. He shot a tired smile back at the old man. “Thanks for remembering.”
As he walked down the hill toward the stream, he absently wondered if it would still be his birthday when he got to LAanges.
Two more men had been assigned to the stakeout, so Garcia and Molina ventured down to the manhole for a closer look. They saw the strange glowing water, and Molina made a crack about guarding a toilet. Garcia didn’t find it funny.
Garcia went to the roof of a parking structure for an angle. McCallum contacted street maintenance to make sure they didn’t replace the manhole cover. McCallum wanted the site untouched so the kid wouldn’t get spooked if he turned up. Molina continued with the toilet jokes until Garcia told him to shut up. “We missed the kid once. I don’t want it to happen again.”
“Come on,” Molina griped. “A glowing toilet? Weird, right?”
Garcia sent one of the rent-a-cops down another manhole, underground, to watch the glowing river from below. He was a skinny kid with red hair and freckles who insisted on being called Lazer.
* * *
“What’s your status?”
“Zero activity in the bird’s nest, sir,” Garcia replied. “Molina is on the ground, Ramirez is in the car, and Lazer is in the sewer. Sir, he’s thrown up twice already.”
“Well, stay on it. T minus eight hours. No time for screw-ups. McCallum out.” It would have been a lot nicer to handle the security detail escorting Jane Virtue from the airport to Foxx’s office. “You can’t win ’em all, Johnny boy,” he chided himself.
The tiniest sliver of light hovered above the river where the portal had been. Geneva, Charlie thought. I wish you were here.
Charlie half slid, half walked down the muddy bank. He was on his own now. There would be no one in LAanges to rescue him.
All around him, the sensation of the Hum was so strong! It washed into him in huge waves … so plentiful, so effortless. He placed Callaya between his feet. Then he made a circle with his arms and put his fingertips together.
Smasher.
A flash of light lit the darkness around him. The portal opened wide. It was time to go.
* * *
Once inside, he released Callaya and opened his eyes.
He kicked forward. Smasher. Wow.
Callaya paddled a few feet behind him. He scooped her up again. He could swear the puppy was smiling.
Now he had to find the right exit among the thousands of tiny white points.
Trust your intuition. You know. Believe.
He did.
Each kick propelled him straight as an arrow across the void until he was peering sideways through a round hole of blue sky. LAanges. This time exiting was easy.
The hard part would be getting out of the open manhole. With Pandora’s Box in the pouch on his back and Callaya tucked in the crook of his arm, Charlie wrestled his way up until he could see the edge of the street.
Screech! A car swerved past. Charlie ducked.
Garcia saw a slight movement out of the corner of his eye. Instead of watching the site, he’d been watching a gorgeous girl in a short skirt. Had he missed something? He checked the Digiscope. Nothing. A driver probably tossed something out a car window. He rolled the recording back. His radio beeped. Molina.
“Did you see those long legs? Hotty hot hotness.”
“Yeah, yeah. Knock it off. Did you notice anything at the hole a second ago? I’m checking playback now. What the —?”
There it was — a moving shadow. Garcia hit ENHANCE. That was no shadow. It was the top of a head.
* * *
Instead of risking the cars, Charlie went back down into the portal and exited into the sewer. He descended the ladder and hoped he would find a safer exit.
But a voice shouted at him from below. “Freeze!” It was a skinny, redheaded kid who looked way too young to be yelling orders. Except for one thing.
He had a gun.
“I said f-f-freeze! D-d-don’t move!” His voice was shaking. The kid
hit a button on his helmet. “Garcia! I’ve got him. He ain’t goin’ nowhere with Lazer on the scene.”
Charlie couldn’t believe he was about to get caught by a complete loser. He had escaped Foxx’s security squad. He had survived Gargan. He had traveled through time. Surely he could handle this. He gritted his teeth and aimed as he stepped off the ladder. He dropped ten feet like a bag of cement.
Lazer flinched, trying to get out of the way. His finger instinctively pulled the trigger.
Bang! The bullet bounced harmlessly off concrete.
Charlie’s feet slammed into Lazer’s raised arms. The gun rammed Lazer’s chin, and he crumpled into the muck. Charlie landed on top of him, Callaya still in his arms.
The rent-a-cop was out cold, his bloody face smashed against concrete.
Charlie stood up and vomited. Hard. He was in the sewer system. His last underground adventure had been in the storm drain system, where filthy water and garbage from the street drained into the ocean, but the sewer was the destination for all plumbing in the city — including toilets. Charlie was wading through human excrement pungent enough to make him puke again before he could even wipe his mouth.
Perfect. Just perfect.
The redhead would live, so Charlie took off. More armed guards would be there any minute.
* * *
“Lazer? Lazer?” No answer. “Come in, McGillicutty — you rent-a-cop!” Still nothing. Garcia keyed the team channel. “Ramirez, Molina! Get down there. Something happened to that imbecile. Don’t let the boy get away!”
Garcia redeployed sensor bots to the manhole to scan for signs of life belowground. McCallum wouldn’t be happy.
* * *
Garcia was right. “Do not let him get away!” McCallum roared from his office at TerraThine. Once again he was amazed at the courage of the boy, but the blunders of his team were highly embarrassing. The boy had chosen to surface again. He gave McCallum no choice.
“Molina here. Going down the manhole, sir. McGillicutty’s alive but injured.”
“Ramirez, what’s your location?”
“Underground a block away, sir! What’s the lay of the land?”
“The manhole is about five hundred yards north of a major line crossing. Do not let the kid get to that intersection!” What did the boy do to McGillicutty? Lazer was just a know-nothing rent-a-cop, but still …
* * *
Charlie was running as fast as he could in the filthy, slippery stench. How did they find him so fast?
He slipped in a slime patch. Callaya dropped into the muck. Cursing, Charlie scrambled back to his feet. He scooped up Callaya, trying not to inhale.
Less than a minute later, they came to an intersection. He had no idea which way to go. Six tunnels converged and drained to a lower level. Frantically he looked into one tunnel after another — and then he lost track of where he came from.
Panic.
Pay attention to the puppy. He gently put her down into the muck. “Which way, girl? Come on. Show me the way.”
Callaya pushed her way to the left. Sewage rose nearly to her shoulders. She slid to a stop in front of one tunnel.
She sniffed, then plowed down the tunnel, barely glancing back at him.
Charlie followed.
* * *
Spider-bots returned data as they spread across the neighborhood. So far, they’d tracked Ramirez and Molina. But they still didn’t have a lead on the kid. Ramirez was now deep down in the sewer. Garcia fed him directions.
Molina had brought up McGillicutty, who was on the way to the hospital. Now Molina was tracking on foot again. When he reached the main crossing empty-handed, Garcia told him to hold. “Wait for the bots to find the kid.”
* * *
Something felt wrong. What was it? McCallum had always trusted his instincts before, and he sensed something unusual here … something of greater significance.
He had been revolted by what Foxx was doing to Geneva. Robot or not, McCallum knew pain when he saw it. And now the boy was on the run again. Surely Foxx would torture him, too. They were children — determined children on a mission. But what was it? What did they know that made Gramercy Foxx so uneasy?
This kid was important. Foxx stressed they must capture him. McCallum worked for Foxx because Foxx was considered a great man. Serving such a distinguished man was an opportunity not to be squandered. A thousand qualified men would love to snatch McCallum’s job. But something was off.
Enough. The instincts lose today. Keep your job. Don’t overthink it.
“Sir, we’re holding for the sensor bots to give us a lead,” Garcia said. “We don’t have the manpower to chase this kid through the sewers, sir.”
“Fine. Backup is on the way with two more cases of spiders. You have tactical authority. McCallum out.” He blinked, trying to shake a growing headache. He watched the data, calculating how to capture the most elusive kid ever.
* * *
Callaya had stopped around a corner, chest-deep in filth. She wagged her tail and looked up at Charlie happily. A dead end.
If they got caught here, it was all over. The ceiling was smooth — no manhole, no ladder, no escape. Charlie listened for splashing feet. But all he heard was the gurgling of sewage.
They would have to double back.
That turned out to be easy enough; he found another manhole not far behind. But climbing up the ladder was treacherous. His sewage-covered feet kept slipping. Then there was the problem of the manhole cover. Prying it from above was one thing. From below … How did Geneva lift it the first time? Right. She was a robot.
The other exits would be the same. He had to get out.
He tucked Callaya into his shirt. Climbing was easier. He could see sunlight through the holes in the cover. A shadow passed over, eclipsing one hole at a time. It was something small.
Charlie climbed up to look through a hole. That one blacked out, too, until his eye adjusted.
A shiny silver bug stared back at him.
“Ouch!” It nearly jabbed him in the eye! He stepped down a rung as it crawled through the hole and hung there … watching him.
He froze. It was a tiny robot spider! Unbelievable!
Then another bug crawled through. He recoiled. Now another. In a few seconds, half a dozen crawled through.
Foxx had found him.
* * *
“We’ve got him, sir!” Garcia shouted. “I’m staring the kid in the face, sir — the bugs have him!” A fish-eye video of Charlie’s face filled Garcia’s screen.
“Get your men moving!” McCallum bellowed.
“Already rolling, sir.” Garcia slammed the brakes to avoid ramming a garbage truck. “I’ll be at their position in less than three minutes, sir. They are stationary and belowground.”
“Do not let him get away this time.”
Garcia would never allow it. He had two teams bearing down on a boy. They’d capture him for sure.
* * *
Charlie hated spiders. He closed his eyes to block out the swarm of bots. They were crawling on him now. Knowing they were robots offered little comfort. He was covered in sewage, lost and trapped in an underground maze, and an army of guards was on the way. How much worse could it get?
The Hum, he thought. He had tried to levitate an object this heavy once before — under his grandfather’s supervision. He’d failed. But now he had the puppy.
Believe, he told himself once again. Could he do it?
Believe, or don’t even try.
Charlie ignored the revolting spiders crawling into his shirt. He focused on raising the cover. The Hum tingled in his feet, and then he felt a strong flow in the tips of his fingers where he touched Callaya.
The Hum began to fill him up, swirling around him, invisible to the human eye. But the other eyes focused on Charlie were not human. They recorded a change in the electroweak currents, and they reported back. When the manhole cover floated away, the spider-bots set off an alarm on McCallum’s screen. They a
lso sent an alarm to the desk of Gramercy Foxx himself.
* * *
McCallum jumped when the Foxx light came on. “Yes, sir, I see it.”
“Those are my sensors,” Foxx hissed from two hundred stories above. “They report to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am seven hours away from the most important event in history. I do not have time for this. Find the boy. Bring him to me. Do not make me find him myself.”
“As you command, sir! I will find the boy. He will be stopped!”
“Good.” The intercom clicked off.
McCallum caught his breath and realized he was standing at attention. Why was his face wet? Had he been crying? He felt light-headed but clear about his orders. He leaped into action.
“Blue Bird, Blue Bird, what’s your status?”
“Blue Bird here. Landing on the roof of the parking structure now, sir. Will come across the bridge on the 25th floor. Headed for the helipad on the main building.”
“I’ll meet you there.” He grabbed his Mark V on his way through the bullpen. This kid would not get the best of him again.
* * *
Charlie shook the last spiders off, glad they didn’t bite. He and Callaya were in the alley by the hideout. When the puppy had stopped in the sewer line and wagged her tail, they had been directly under the building. Amazing.
By now the men chasing him must have pinpointed his exact location — and that meant the hideout. But he didn’t know where else to go.
Screech! In the street at the far end of the alley, a large black vehicle sped toward Charlie. A heavily armed man on foot rounded the corner at the other end.
Trapped! Charlie twisted hard for the dumbwaiter but lost his footing. He barely managed to keep from falling.
“Get him!” Garcia shouted to Molina over the truck radio. The truck jolted across the potholes between him and the boy.
Molina was halfway down the alley.
“Sir, I have the kid cornered.”
“Do not let him get away.”
Garcia slammed on the brakes. Dust erupted from the worn pavement and gravel — he’d stopped the truck much too close.
Charlie dove behind a Dumpster. He heaved the dumbwaiter door open and threw Callaya in. He tried to jump after her, but the leather pouch snagged on the door. Wild with panic, he slid out to try again.