by Carter Roy
Izzy growled something, and Dawkins snapped, “I apologized already. Now, which of you has the keys to that motor home out there?” Her eyes flicked to Henry, and Dawkins said, “Old Man Winter, eh?” He patted Henry’s pockets and found the keys, then said, “Okay, kids, I think we should take this reunion on the road.”
“What about Sammy?” Greta said.
“Who?” Dawkins said.
“This kid who was traveling with these two,” I explained, glancing around. There was another door out of the lobby, one I hadn’t noticed when we’d first arrived. “He saved us when we were in the motor home.”
“If he saved you,” Dawkins asked, “what are you doing here?”
“Okay, he tried to save us, but we got caught, anyway,” Greta said. “Maybe he’s locked up here, too. We’ve got to help him.”
Dawkins rolled his shoulders until something popped, then stood up straighter. “What’s one more kid? I swear, I’ve become a glorified babysitter. Let’s go find this Sammy character.”
Dawkins opened the door off the lobby, and we followed him into a small room with a wall of gray metal lockers and two wooden benches. Facing us was a gun rack loaded with rifles—ordinary ones without the Tesla modifications. Next to the rifles was a fat duffel bag.
“We’d best find something with which to defend ourselves,” Dawkins said. He opened the duffel and peered inside. “These will do.” He took out two sheathed swords that curved slightly at the tips, then drew them from their scabbards. “Briquet sabers, Napoleonic era. A bit unwieldy, and fancier than I generally go for, but we don’t really have a choice.”
“Why don’t we just use the guns?” I asked.
Dawkins crossed and uncrossed the sabers a few times, and a whisper of metal filled the room. “Guns are dishonorable.”
“Hard to be honorable when the other guy brings a gun to a knife fight,” Greta said.
“Not when the person wielding the knife is one of the Blood Guard. We can—well, slow down time itself. A Guard’s reactions are fast enough to mark a bullet’s trajectory and deflect it. So guns are, for the most part, ineffective against us.” In my mind’s eye I saw my mom charging the fake cops in Stanhope, knocking aside their bullets with her cutlass. And I remembered the paddle I’d used on the river. But that wasn’t the same thing, was it?
A sword in each fist, Dawkins sidled up to a swinging door on the opposite wall of the locker room. “Now let’s see what’s on the other side of this.”
“What about us?” Greta said. “Shouldn’t we have something to defend ourselves?”
“You mean a weapon?” he said, his voice dripping disbelief. “You two are practically children; you could get hurt.” He tipped his chin at me. “Besides, Ronan has his chair. If we run into any trouble, he can sit on our foes.”
“Can we just find Sammy and get out of here?” I asked. “That locked door isn’t going to hold Ms. Hand much longer.”
“Right, then,” Dawkins said. He backed into the door, turning as he did. We followed.
Beyond was another hall like the one we’d come from—a similar row of cell doors, the same fluorescent lights, the same tan tiles on the floor. But coming around the corner at the far end were the two men who’d brought Greta to Ms. Hand—Mr. Two and Mr. Five. They skidded to a stop as the door swished back and forth behind us with a soft fwap–fwap-fwap.
“Hello, there!” Dawkins called, walking down the hall to meet them.
Mr. Two and Mr. Five both held Tesla rifles. Clearly the ones we’d disposed of weren’t the only Tesla weapons these people had.
“I really wouldn’t shoot those newfangled gadgets in here, if I were you. Who knows what’s in these pipes overhead?” Dawkins gestured with one of his sabers. “Could be extraordinarily messy.”
They leveled the rifles.
“Duck!” Dawkins shouted as they opened fire.
He took three enormous leaping strides, then dropped to his knees and slid. As he did, he spun the swords in swift, short arcs, catching the violet Tesla bolts with the flats of his blades. The beams ricocheted off the swords into the walls and ceiling, shattering the lights and the bulb housings and showering glass and metal down on everything.
And then the bolts seemed to fuse, and I realized that Dawkins wasn’t just blocking the beams. He was aiming them, reflecting them away from himself and back at the two men.
Startled, Mr. Two and Mr. Five released the triggers.
Dawkins rolled a neat somersault and planted his feet on the ground, then exploded into the air, sailing high, right between the two men.
Mr. Two dodged out of reach, but Mr. Five wasn’t as fast, and Dawkins swung the hilt of one sword hard against the man’s temple. Mr. Five crumpled to the floor.
Dawkins bounced off the far wall to the ground.
It took him only a moment to get back on his feet, but that was long enough for Mr. Two to take aim at Greta and fire off a shot from his Tesla rifle.
Greta was as good as dead. Except…
Nothing is as fast as the speed of light, but somehow that split second lasted a short eternity. There was Mr. Two, grimacing as he squeezed the trigger. Behind him, Dawkins was already springing into the air again, bringing up his swords. Greta, one hand on the wall of the corridor, was slowly—way too slowly—dropping to the floor, trying to get out of the way.
And somehow, interrupting it all, my stupid metal chair.
When had I thrown it? I don’t know.
It looked almost weightless, tumbling gently end over end, spinning up right in front of Greta before the Tesla bolt struck her.
The chair didn’t explode—not quite—but the discharge from the Tesla gun caught it full-on, and it burst into bright light. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see the outline in the dark, as though its shape had been traced by laser beams.
A smoldering shower of steel pattered to the floor around us. A few bits landed in Greta’s hair but I swatted them out. A thin electrical stink filled the air.
From down the hall someone grunted, “Unh!” and then the searing light from the Tesla gun was gone and Dawkins was standing over the two unconscious Bend Sinister agents.
“Wow,” Greta gasped.
“What did I just do?” I whispered.
“Saved my life,” she said. I reached out a hand and pulled her up, and then she hugged me, hard enough that I wheezed. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I knew that chair would come in handy!” Dawkins hollered from the other end of the hall. “I’ll make a Blood Guard of you yet, Ronan Truelove.”
The big room around the corner was the mirror image of the one where Ms. Hand had interviewed me—scarred wooden tables, the same cold concrete floor, even the same passcode to open the door. But there was no sign of Sammy. “That’s a relief,” Greta said, rubbing her wrist. “I was afraid we might find him—or his hand—on one of those tables.”
Instead, there was a map and a blueprint, the kind architects use. Dawkins scanned both, said, “Don’t mind if I do,” then folded them up. I remembered that I had his notebook and wordlessly handed it to him. He nodded and tucked everything into his jacket.
Next, we checked each of the cells in the long corridor. Midway down, we found Sammy.
He was stretched out on a cot, focused on his GameZMaster IV. He flinched a little when the door opened, then relaxed when he saw it was us. “I thought you guys might be someone else,” he said, his eyes searching the hall behind us. “Izzy told me the head guy was going to punish me for helping you, but I told her she had it wrong. You figured out what was going on with them all by yourself, right? Maybe if you told her, she’d believe you.”
“You don’t have to worry about them,” Greta said.
“We’re busting you out,” I said. “Taking you to safety.”
“That’s good,” Sammy said, but he still looked anxious. He pointed at Dawkins. “Who’s he?”
“A friend,” Greta said. “His name is Jack Da
wkins.”
“You’re sure he’s not one of them?” Sammy’s grin twitched, and I realized just how terrified he was.
“No way,” I assured him. “Dawkins is on our side.”
Sammy shoved his GameZMaster IV under one arm and stretched out his right hand. “In that case,” he said, dead serious, “I am very happy to meet you.”
CHAPTER 17:
THE SOUL OF THE MATTER
In the parking lot, Dawkins neatly stabbed each of the tires of the two red SUVs. The air filled with a loud hissing. “That should slow them down a bit,” he said.
Then he came around the motor home and saw the hole Greta had carved into the back. Some of the wiring near the upper right-hand corner was still spitting out an occasional spark. “What happened here?”
“Greta was trying to get the trailer free, but we couldn’t get the hitch loose, and Izzy was chopping at us with a sword, and so Greta had to use a Tesla gun to cut off—”
“Never mind,” Dawkins said. “I just wish one of you had mentioned that the RV lacked a proper back end before I ruined the other means of transport here.” We all looked at the SUVs, now resting on their flattened tires. He sighed and waved us aboard. “I only hope there’s something to eat in here.”
He stowed the swords in the motor home’s closet, then slid behind the wheel and cranked the ignition. As he wrestled the vehicle down the road, Dawkins tapped the bank of small screens set in the dashboard. “Sammy, I assume one of these is a GPS mapping thingamajig?”
“That one,” Sammy said. “You type in the address, and it shows which way to go. The other three are for the rearview cameras.” Sammy pushed a switch and the screens glowed.
“Will those people be able to track us?” Greta asked.
“Doubtless,” Dawkins said. “But my hope is that we can outrun them and get to DC before they wise up to our escape.”
“We’re going to DC now?” I asked. “Not Roanoke?”
“Our plans have changed again, Ronan,” he said, shivering so hard his hands shook on the wheel. “There are events underway that we need to stop. Even if doing so means exposing some of the Blood Guard and risking retaliation.”
“DC sounds good to me,” Greta said. “I really need to see my dad.”
Dawkins cast a sidelong glance at her. “Right,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”
“And we can meet up with my mom,” I said and told them what Ms. Hand had revealed.
Suddenly, looming up ahead of us in the headlights, were the locked chain-link gates, with Greta’s motorbike still parked in front of them.
“I can go and move the—” I started to say.
“Do you jest?” Dawkins said, stomping on the accelerator. “We are not stopping again until we reach DC.”
He swerved the motor home around the bike and straight through the gates. They burst open, the chain snapping like it wasn’t even there.
“That. Was. Awesome,” Sammy declared, whistling.
“That’s nothing,” Dawkins said, typing an address into the GPS unit. “If you really want to see awesome, make me a sandwich.”
“There was some bread and stuff back there,” I said, walking to the kitchenette. “I’ll see what I can find.”
The cupboards were filled with a random assortment of groceries—two cans of soup, a bag of coffee, a package of straws. “Straight off the showroom floor,” I remembered. Above the sink I found a jar of peanut butter and the loaf of bread. I picked a butter knife up off the floor and washed it in the sink.
“Sammy, tell me how you came to be mixed up with these people,” Dawkins said, cracking the driver’s side window an inch. A cool breeze blew down the length of the motor home and out the giant hole in the back.
I looked down the road behind us, fearing I’d see headlights—Ms. Hand and her glassy-eyed, numbered flunkies, but there was nothing. I sighed with relief and got to work making a sandwich.
“My foster parents,” Sammy said. “They’re scientists. And they belong to this big association of other scientists who are all working on a super-important project.” He got quiet. “My mom died a couple years ago, and I didn’t have anyone else. I’ve been in, like, four foster homes. This one seemed okay at first.”
“Ms. Hand talked about a scientific society,” I said. “She said they were doing ‘a great undertaking.’”
“We need a lot less talking and a lot more sandwich making, Ronan,” Dawkins called back. “That whole coming-back-from-an-early-grave bit? That spot of rescuing I did back there? Those heroic deeds require a lot of energy, and energy requires fuel.” When no one responded, he added, “And by fuel, I mean food.”
The dirt lane ended at a stretch of asphalt: a two-lane highway, the dashed yellow lines luminous in the glow of the headlights. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see something so ordinary. Without a word, Dawkins turned left and took us up to the speed limit.
I set the sandwich on a paper plate and started back to the front. But before I’d taken two steps, Dawkins said, “Not so fast. You’ve seen me eat. Turn that entire loaf into sandwiches, if you please.”
Greta found another knife and said, “I’ll help.”
“They seemed okay at first?” Dawkins asked Sammy.
“I’m not the first foster kid who lived with the Warners. The girl before me ran away. That’s what they told me, but I think something else happened. I found her diary behind the dresser. What kid runs away and doesn’t take her diary with her?”
“Just because she left her diary doesn’t mean they did something to her,” Greta said.
“I know that! But the stuff she wrote about was…” Sammy looked down at his hands, and I remembered that he was only eleven. “They were doing experiments, and the head guy would put on this freaky three-eyed mask to examine her. She wrote that the mask was alive. It moves.”
“Creepy!” Greta said, pausing with a wad of peanut butter balanced on her knife.
“The mask is some kind of creature?” I asked.
“Only when it’s on his face, I guess. After she described that, the diary just ends,” Sammy said. “Something bad happened to her, I bet, and it’s because of the head guy in the mask.”
“Did you catch this head guy’s name?” Dawkins asked. “That would help.”
“I think I heard it once, but…that was before I’d found the diary. I wasn’t really paying attention.” Sammy sighed and sank into the seat. “Mostly they just call him the Head. He’s this middle-aged guy in a business suit who looks normal and pretends to be nice, but you can tell he’s just sizing you up. He is cold, cold, cold.”
Dawkins drove silently for a moment. “Tell me, Sammy, what exactly do your foster parents do?”
“They’re particle physicists. Dr. Warner—that’s my foster dad—publishes articles with weird titles like ‘The SubAtomic Smoke Trail of the Soul.’ My foster mom works as a scientist, too.” He swiveled his chair and stared into the dark outside the window. “I don’t really see them all that much, to be honest. They’re always in the lab.”
“My dad is the same way,” I said. “Some weekends I forget he’s even part of the family.” These past few years, Dad was always working, always traveling, and I couldn’t even tell you what he wore on any given day, because most days I didn’t see him at all. I swore to myself that was going to change after today. Once my mom and I rescued him, we’d be a family again.
“My parents aren’t like that,” Greta said. “I see my mom all the time. My dad, too.”
“Ronan, Greta, seriously—I am in dire need of sustenance.” Dawkins’ eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror. They were dark ringed and exhausted looking. He’d been run over by a semi, I reminded myself. “Where’s the chow?”
Greta stacked the plate high with sandwiches and came forward. “Right here.”
“Just drop those in my lap. I can take care of the rest.” Dawkins scooped up a sandwich, wadded it up with his right hand, and began stuffing it
into his face. “Your foster parents?” he asked, his mouth full. “Those were the two oldsters we left tied up in the lobby of that building?”
“No, no—that’s Izzy and Henry. They’re what my foster mom calls acolytes. They do odd jobs at the lab and just hang around. When the alarm came in about you guys, they volunteered. Dr. Warner called me and told me I had a role to play. He figured Greta and Ronan might not trust two strange old people, but that kids would trust a kid.”
“It’s true,” I said. “Izzy and Henry did seem a lot less obviously weird because you were there.”
“Still weird,” Greta agreed, “just not as obviously weird.”
“Oh, they’re the weirdest.” Sammy nodded.
“What I don’t understand is why they want you so bad, Ronan,” Greta asked.
“Ms. Hand told me she wanted to use me against my mom,” I said, “but that wasn’t all.”
Dawkins folded a sandwich into his mouth. “What else?”
“She asked me about the Eye of the Needle,” I said.
“Matthew 19:24,” Dawkins explained. “That’s the whole ‘easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ business.”
“Mrs. Warner said the same thing,” Sammy said, “when I asked her about what it meant. She’d written it across the top of a diagram that I found on the kitchen table.”
“And she probably wasn’t checking to see that you’ve done your Sunday-school reading.” Dawkins nibbled at a sandwich instead of swallowing it whole. “I don’t like how this is all fitting together.”
“How is it fitting together?” Greta asked.
“What was that diagram of?” Dawkins asked Sammy, ignoring Greta’s question.
“I’m not sure. It looked like a big basketball hoop.” Sammy made a circle in the air with his hands. “It even had a net and stuff.”