The Search for Artemis (The Chronicles of Landon Wicker)

by Griffith, P. D.

  He wasn’t sure how, but he was able to wrap his arms around her torso before she had a chance to step aside or telekinetically freeze him in midair. In another second, they had collided with the wall. The impact jarred Landon, but his body worked through muscle memory, using what he had learned from combat training. Before he knew it, he had pinned Artemis to the ground, holding her wrists to the floor and straddling her midsection.

  Once the initial excitement of the attack had subsided, he looked down at her, but he could never have expected what he saw. Her collar had fallen, making her face visible, and looking up at Landon, with her grey, stormy eyes was the face of Celia Jackson.

  “Wha—” Landon exclaimed in shock as his body rolled off her, and he pushed himself away in a state of sheer panic and surprise. “Celia? How? It can’t be!”

  Before he knew it, Celia had risen from the floor and forced Landon against the lab table, the edge of its surface digging into his back as she held him down by the arms. Landon frantically tried to break free and get away from her.

  “Landon!” she said forcefully. “Landon!”

  The second shout was strong enough to break through Landon’s erratic state. He kept his face turned away, but his eyes turned and looked at her. Alarm still read all over his face. He squirmed one final time in a last-ditch effort to break free from her grip. He needed to get away.

  “Landon.” Her voice was panicked and jittery as it resonated through his mind. She was speaking to him telepathically to ensure she had his complete attention. “You cannot tell them who I am.”

  Getting nowhere in his efforts to escape, Landon relaxed slightly and looked back at Celia with caution. He didn’t say anything or even attempt to give a gesture of understanding; he just continued to stare at her.

  “I’ll explain everything back at the Gymnasium,” she continued. “You’ve trusted me to keep your secrets, now I’m trusting you to keep mine. Not everything is as you imagine it to be.”

  “How can I trust anything you say?” Landon’s voice was strong, but Celia could hear the panic in it.

  “Because you have to,” she answered sternly. “Yes, I am Artemis. I know you’ve been looking for me. Landon, I promise I’ll tell you everything later, but now is not the time.”

  The sound of the office chair sliding across the tile floor stole Landon and Celia’s attention. Cortland was regaining consciousness and fighting to get up.

  Celia’s voice re-entered Landon’s mind. “Trust me, Landon. Trust me. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Landon gave Celia an almost imperceptible nod of assurance. He didn’t know what else to do. He was so confused. How could Celia be Artemis? It just didn’t make sense. She had tried to kill him earlier, but wasn’t she his friend? He knew he wasn’t ready to be an active operative in the Pantheon; he couldn’t handle the pressure of all this stuff. It was too much. He had learned hours earlier that Artemis was the enemy of the Pantheon; he should have been able to give her up to the Gymnasium without remorse, but in the back of his mind, he knew he needed to give her a chance to explain.

  Celia released Landon’s arms and slowly stepped backward. She kept her eyes fixed on Landon, who had pushed himself up while continuing to stare at her. As she continued to walk back, one step after the other, she projected her voice into his head one last time.

  “I’ll tell you everything in the morning. Now, grab what you came for and get out of here.”

  After she spoke, Celia shut her eyes and took a final step back, but rather than colliding with the wall, she sank into it and disappeared, passing through it like a ghost.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BACK TO BASE

  Landon stood there with his jaw agape and his eyes fixed on the spot where Celia once stood. It was now just a white wall. Where had she gone? How could Celia walk through walls? Did he really just see that? Or was everything he had just experienced some strange trick of his imagination, some chemical imbalance in his brain confirming that he couldn’t withstand the pressures of the Pantheon?

  Rubbing his head, Cortland rose to his feet and looked around at the disheveled lab, confused. Landon’s body was pressed against the table running down the middle of the room. His hands clasping the edge of the black surface, and he was panting heavily. All the color had drained from his face, and he looked to be on the verge of passing out.

  “Apollo, what happened?” Continuing to stare at the blank wall, Landon didn’t respond. Cortland repeated a bit louder, “Apollo, what happened?”

  Landon turned to his teammate and answered convincingly, “I don’t know.” It was the honest truth. His thoughts were moving in so many directions he didn’t know what was going on. “Are you okay? We need to get out of here,” Landon added emphatically. He didn’t even care if they’d obtained all the info on Project Herakles; he just needed to get out of there.

  “I think I’m all right,” he replied. Cortland turned around and looked at the computer monitor. “And it looks like the last of the files are being deleted as we speak. Do you have everything else?”

  “Yeah,” Landon answered as he went over and grabbed the file folder and the three vials off the table. Landon slid the test tubes into a pocket on the upper arm of his tactical uniform. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Cortland was the first to the door. He opened it and peeked his head out to make sure the coast was clear. After giving him the go-ahead, Landon followed him out of the lab.

  Once in the hallway, Landon looked over at the spot where Artemis’ unconscious body was lying before they’d entered the lab. She was now nowhere to be found, and the hallway looked pristine, showing no sign of anything that had transpired on the forty-seventh floor. Landon was nervous of what Cortland thought when he saw Artemis was missing. Be cool, Landon told himself. Act natural.

  They moved swiftly but cautiously back toward the inner balcony, around the circle, and into a separate hall, only stopping once they reached the west elevators. The entire time Landon could still hear gunfire echoing up the inner shaft of the building from below, but the sound of each shot was far less frequent than before. The trademark chime of the elevator sounded, signaling its arrival. The doors parted. Landon sighed with relief when he saw it was empty. Cortland and Landon hurried inside.

  “Sorry, man. I can’t handle going down the way we came up.” Cortland pressed the button for the lobby, and the doors closed.

  The elevator hummed as Landon and Cortland silently watched the numbers count down to the bottom floor. Then when the display read “1,” the same high-pitched chime rang through the elevator, and the doors slowly parted opened.

  The overpowering stench of vanilla from the Morphium-12 serum slammed into Landon’s face, forcing his head back as if he had been punched. The Pantheon had congregated in the inner circle of the lobby near the desk.

  “Did you get what we came for?” Dr. Brighton asked after telekinetically pushing what seemed to be the last of the security agents into a marble wall, knocking him unconscious.

  “Objective complete,” Cortland answered, and Landon held up the file folder as a visual confirmation.

  “Then it’s high time we got out of here.” Dr. Brighton turned and started moving toward the glass doors they had entered through. “Ares and Pollux, grab Castor. We’re leaving!”

  Landon moved as fast as he could toward the exit, but it was difficult since the floor was covered with the bodies of an ungodly number of security agents. What once was a smooth white marble floor was now a lumpy mass of black blobs. The bodies were so closely packed that it was impossible to discern where one person ended and another begin. How could they have defeated them all?

  Stepping over bodies and navigating the few open spaces of floor, Landon soon made it to the doorway and watched as Parker and Dr. Brighton made their way toward him. Br
ock and Jeremiah hoisted Joshua Crane off the ground and carried him, each putting one of Joshua’s arms over their shoulder to hold him up. Even from where he was standing, Landon could see the metallic dart sticking out of Joshua’s neck.

  Once they had all regrouped at the exit, the team moved as quickly as possible out of the compound and into the woods. Although the entire security force of Metis Labs laid unconscious inside, the team stuck to their training and moved through the shadows.

  They found Peregrine just outside the gates, easily visible at the tree line with her platinum blonde hair shining in the moonlight.

  “What happened in there?” she asked, her head darting from one person to the other as she searched for a response.

  “Not now,” Dr. Brighton said with authority as he walked straight past Peregrine. “Right now we need to get back to the Alpha Chariot.”

  Walking deeper and deeper into the woods, Dr. Brighton never stopped moving and expected the team to follow. The return trip to the Alpha Chariot was much slower than the initial run. For some reason, the two miles from the gate to the clearing was riddled with many more obstacles, from denser woods to steeper changes in elevation, and having to lug Joshua along didn’t help. Throughout the journey, the team took turns carrying him in order to keep the fastest pace possible. Landon was skipped over, being told that the protection of the file was his sole responsibility.

  It took them just under an hour before they made it to the clearing. The Alpha Chariot looking just as they had left it. Dr. Brighton lowered the hatch and the team quickly rushed on board. Cortland and Parker set Joshua into his chair as delicately as possible and engaged his in-flight harness. His head lay awkwardly to the side as he sat in his drug-induced slumber.

  Before long, everyone was fastened into their seats and Dr. Brighton was piloting the Alpha Chariot back to the Gymnasium. On the way back, Cortland told Peregrine all he knew of what happened inside. He spoke of their flight up the center of the tower, of breaking into the lab, and of their encounter with Artemis. When Cortland spoke of the latter, Landon remained silent and turned away, trying to pass as a humble hero, when in reality he was hoping to move past the subject.

  Once Cortland was done, Jeremiah turned around in his seat and from two rows up, regaled the team with his version of what happened while Cortland and Landon were on the forty-seventh floor. Landon didn’t pay him much attention. He was too distracted by what he had learned. He just didn’t know what he was going to do about the Celia/Artemis situation. He played through the sequence of events over and over again in his head as he looked down at the blue folder of information on Project Herakles. Why was she doing it? he thought. How had he not seen it before? She was obviously working undercover, so why had she risked being found out to stop them? Was there something more about Project Herakles they weren’t telling him?

  “ . . . and then I picked up this other guy and threw him into the pool!” Jeremiah explained with exuberance.

  “Do not boast too much Pollux. We were lucky tonight,” Dr. Brighton interjected from the front of the aircraft. “It’s a wonder we managed to escape, let alone succeed at our mission. Something went terribly wrong this evening. They knew we were coming. So be grateful . . . nothing more, nothing less.”

  Dejected, Jeremiah dropped his head and turned back in his chair. The rest of the team followed suit and sunk down in their chairs, silently awaiting their final descent into the Olympic Tower.

  Landon continued to stare down at the folder, his finger running over the embossed image of the owl holding the branch. What could be so important she’d risk everything? Unable to withstand his curiosity any longer, Landon turned the folder around on his lap and pulled back the cover. The page was covered in illegible handwriting, obviously the work of a scientist, where poor penmanship is a requirement of the profession. The next-to-nonexistent lighting of the Alpha Chariot didn’t help in deciphering the text, but through some of the lines and familiar symbols, Landon understood that it contained the workings of some complex formulas amidst a hodgepodge of notes jotted in the margins and every available bit of space. He stared at it intently, squinting to read it, but he couldn’t make out a single word.

  Continuing his search, he lifted the page up from the stack so he could peek at the next. It was covered in more illegible text. He pulled that page off the stack and then the next and the next. None of it seemed to make any sense. It was infuriating. He wanted an answer, but he was too unlearned to understand the science laid out across the numerous pages; however, after pulling off another sheet, Landon saw a page much different than the others. It was on a different paper, college-ruled and crinkled as if water had spilled on it then dried.

  It can’t be, he thought as his eyes widened.

  “Landon, what are you doing?” From her seat next to him, Peregrine’s voice startled Landon.

  He hurriedly shut the folder and sat straight up in his chair. A strange sense of numbness flashed through his body, and he felt his ears get red as blood rushed to them. It was that feeling one gets when they’ve been discovered doing something they know is wrong, like being caught in a lie.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to be looking at that.” She leaned over in her chair as far as she could and whispered it to Landon.

  “I know,” he replied soft enough so only she could hear. “I couldn’t help myself, you know?” Landon leaned over toward Peregrine and added in a remorseful tone, “Don’t tell anyone, okay? I don’t want to get in trouble on my first mission.”

  Peregrine nodded in understanding. “So—” she sounded mischievous and overtaken by her own curiosity “—did you find out what was in the test tubes?” She motioned her head toward Landon’s pocket.

  Landon pulled the three samples he’d found in the lab out of the pocket on his shoulder and held them loosely in his hand. As he stared down at them and slid his thumb down the edge of one of the labels, he replied, “No. I’m not even sure we needed two of them.”

  “Oh,” Peregrine replied. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out back at the base. Good idea though. We wouldn’t want to leave anything behind.” Without another word, she turned forward and returned to her own thoughts.

  Landon looked back at the vials resting in his open palm. As he stared at them, he couldn’t get past the fact that the first one he found looked so much like blood. Shaking his head in hopes of shifting his thoughts, Landon put the vials back into the pocket on his shoulder and stared out the window. What a first mission, he thought as he watched the mountains and trees sweep by below.

  Soon they were landing inside the Stable of the Olympic Tower—returned from their mission. Exhaustion was recognizable on the faces of everyone as they disengaged their harnesses and alighted the Alpha Chariot. A pair of Gymnasium personnel came on board and carried the still unconscious body of Joshua off the tilt-rotor and headed straight for the medical wing.

  While he stood there waiting for the men to carry Joshua past, Landon saw Cortland hand a small black object over to Dr. Brighton near the front of the aircraft. It must have been the computer files he had copied from Metis Labs, so once standing on the hangar floor, Landon stepped over to Dr. Brighton and gave him the file folder and the three vials he had been holding on to, assuming it was the standard procedure.

  “Sir,” he said apprehensively as Dr. Brighton took them, “do you know what Project Herakles is, really? I mean, what was so important about this that we had to risk our lives for it?” Landon felt insubordinate for merely asking. He knew the information was “Top Secret” but he didn’t understand why they hadn’t given them more information on what they were getting into before the mission.

  “Ah, Landon, ‘Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die.’” Dr. Brighton had adopted his usual philosophical demeanor as he replied. Landon looked at him with an unsatisfied expressio
n. “Unfortunately, Apollo, I do not,” Dr. Brighton said, reverting to a more straightforward approach. “Our mission was to acquire the documents. What they’re about is the concern of greater people.”

  “It’s just that—” Landon stopping himself to rework his thought. “It’s just that we could’ve died today. Castor’s got a tranquilizer dart in his neck and you guys had to take on an army for God’s sake, but for what?” Landon threw his arms outward in exasperation. His voice went higher and more emphatic as he spoke. “I mean, really, for what? One little file on some project we aren’t allowed to know about. It just doesn’t make sense. I know it’s our job, but they should tell us more—let us know what we’re getting into. Give us something to know we’re fighting on the right side.”

  The words escaped Landon’s mouth before he could stop them. In a moment of panic, he nervously licked his lips and took a labored gulp. He turned away, hoping to escape, and watched the rest of his team as they moved toward the lift. Before darting away, he took one last look at Dr. Brighton to see his reaction.

  He face showed no sign of shock, disappointment or any extreme expression for that matter. He merely looked at his student and said normally, “Apollo, hang back with me for a minute, okay?”

  Even though staying back to talk to Dr. Brighton was now the farthest thing from what he wanted to do, Landon nodded in affirmation. A moment later, he heard the lift as it began to descend into the depths of the Olympic Tower.

  “Landon,” Dr. Brighton began the minute the top of the others’ heads disappeared from view, “I need to apologize to you.”