by Gary Urey
“Are you okay?” a male voice asked from the darkness.
Daisha’s first instinct was to run, but the fight with the Pursuer had sapped all of her energy. All she could do was kneel in the dirt, massage her aching neck, and wait for what was going to happen next.
“Who are you?” she whimpered. “What do you want?”
The person who had clubbed the Pursuer stepped out of the shadows. He was holding a bloody tree branch the size of a baseball bat.
“Axel,” Daisha whispered through shredded vocal chords, and then she collapsed unconscious into the dirt.
Chapter Twenty-Six
AXEL
Axel didn’t recognize the girl in the darkness, nor did he hear his name escape from her lips right before she passed out. He only saw that she was young and dark-skinned, with short hair and wearing pink sweatpants.
“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling next her. The steady rising and falling of her chest indicated that she was alive. He gently patted her cheek. There was no response. Movement from the black-and-white dog caught his attention. The animal trotted sheepishly over to the man who had attacked the girl, gave his bleeding skull a sniff, and then urinated all over his face.
A chortle escaped from Axel’s lips, but he quickly suppressed the laughter, knowing the seriousness of the situation. Seeing that the dog was no longer dangerous, Axel walked over to the man he had just bashed into the dirt and felt the side of his neck. There was a light pulse.
“Thank goodness I didn’t kill the guy,” Axel said under his breath. He then took a good look at the man’s bloody and dog pee–soaked face. There, etched on the man’s neck, was a familiar-looking charging-bull tattoo.
“It’s that filthy pig, Loosha!” he hollered, and instantly his memory flashed back to the young Pursuer wresting him into the Coney Island sand, duct-taping his mouth and eyes, and then locking him inside a dirty bathroom.
An urge to unzip his fly and take his own pee on the man’s face briefly crossed Axel’s mind. He thought better of it and turned his attention to the girl. What should he do with her? Perhaps find a pay phone and call 911 so they’d send cops and an ambulance. He noticed a few items scattered on the ground. One was a small handgun that the Pursuer must have dropped when Axel clubbed him over the head. Then he noticed something small, black, and round lying in the dirt. When he scooped it off the ground and realized what it was, he nearly passed out right along with the girl.
“This has to be Daisha’s GeoPort!” he screamed.
Uhhh…” A groan escaped from the girl’s lips as she stirred.
Axel quickly ran to her. He plopped down beside her and cupped her face in his hands. The dreadlocks were gone, but the shape of her lips and cheekbones were as familiar to him as his own reflection.
“Daisha!” he cried. “It’s me, Axel!”
Her eyes blinked a few times and then opened completely. A weak smile stretched across her face. “I found you,” she said softly.
Axel pulled her to a sitting position and wrapped his arms around her. “I missed you so much. What happened to your hair?”
“A long story,” Daisha said, hugging him back.
Just as Axel was about to kiss her, a large, dirty fist swung out of the darkness and clocked him square in the face. Axel fell away from Daisha, pain searing through his jaw. Still dazed from her battle, Daisha struggled to her feet. Loosha stared menacingly at her, his angry face streaked with sweat, blood, and dog pee.
“I’m going to kill you!” he growled.
Daisha tried to run, but her legs were too weak to move. Loosha jumped at her. Just as he was about to grab her, the black-and-white dog leaped out of the darkness. Loosha cried out as the dog drove its sharp fangs into his forearm. Axel struggled to his feet and saw the same tree limb he had used before. He quickly swiped it off the ground, swung with all his might, and bludgeoned the man into submission once again.
Axel crumpled to his knees, his chest heaving and his jaw throbbing.
“Is your mouth okay?” Daisha asked.
“I can talk so it’s not broken,” Axel said, rubbing his face. “I’m sure it’ll just be sore for a while.”
A set of high beams shining in the distance caught their attention. They watched as a tan Hummer with tinted windows slowly cruised down Cowper Street toward the park.
“We have to get out of here,” Axel said. “But where can we go?”
“Let’s go to my old house. It’s empty right now. That’s where I’ve been hiding out.”
“Perfect. The Doctor’s men will be swarming all over this park any moment.”
They hustled ten yards to the dog run exit, and then Axel abruptly stopped in his tracks. He turned and looked at the dog, who was again cowering next to the chain-link fence, whimpering.
“Come on boy, girl, or whatever gender you are,” he called out. “If it wasn’t for you and those sharp canines, who knows what would have happened to us.”
“I overheard the guy calling the dog Boris,” Daisha said.
“Boris, come,” Axel ordered, and then added a quick whistle. The dog perked up his ears and trotted over, and all three of them disappeared into the dark city streets.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
DOCTOR STAIN
The Doctor flung back his head and howled with laughter.
“Excuse me, sir,” Pinchole said. “But what’s so funny?”
“Your facial expression,” the Doctor said, wiping away a tear. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“The boy just escaped from his room. I think we all should be a little concerned. How could he have possibly gotten out?”
“The security camera should give you a clue.”
“Our guy on the other end of the camera said there was a malfunction. When he went to the room to investigate, the boy was gone.”
“Idiot! You probably forgot to lock the door.”
Pinchole pointed to his skull. “I have OCD. I absolutely locked that door and checked it four times. I’m heading to the basement to look for myself.”
“Hold on a moment,” the Doctor ordered. “We’re not finished talking.”
A deep sigh escaped from Pinchole’s lips. He ran a hand through his thinning hair and sat down on the chair. The Doctor poured himself a drink and then fired up a Gurkha Black Dragon, the most expensive cigar in the world.
“Our men are on high alert so the boy won’t go far,” the Doctor said, exhaling a puff of thick smoke. “We have his GeoPort. The thing is locked up safe and secure, right?”
“Absolutely,” Pinchole answered, fanning the air in front of his face. “It’s locked up in a cabinet inside the Monitoring Room with a twenty-four-hour security detail. It would take the Army Special Forces to pry it away.”
The Doctor picked up the San Jose Mercury News and scanned the police blotter again. “‘Suspicious African American female snips off dreadlocks in bathroom and then flees Palo Alto Main Library,’” he read aloud. “Without a doubt the ‘Suspicious African American female’ is Daisha.”
“I’d say that is a ninety-nine percent certainty,” Pinchole said. “We’ll get a good image of her without hair and circulate it to the men. I recently hired a girl named Stiv who’s freakishly adept at the art of hacking. In fact, she’s so good the guys in the lab nicknamed her Stiv the Hacker.”
“Also, see if Daisha was using the Internet. I want to know her search history.”
Pinchole nodded, dialed his cell phone, and told the woman on the other end of the line what to do. “She’ll have everything we need shortly,” he said, hanging up the phone. “Now, please, can we head to the basement and figure out how that boy escaped from his room?”
The Doctor popped two more prescription pain pills and washed them down with his drink, and then he and Pinchole hurried down the hall to the elevators. When the doors opened on the basement floor, two guards holding assault rifles and one highly trained, female Belgian Malinois dog were standing inside the ro
om.
“The little rodent broke the camera,” the Doctor said, looking at the smashed surveillance equipment lying on the floor.
“The door was still locked from the outside,” one of the guards said, holding up a key.
“I knew I didn’t forget to lock the door!” Pinchole exclaimed.
The Doctor stepped over the broken camera equipment and looked around the room. “Unless that boy has the power to pass through solid objects like some comic book superhero, he found a way to escape from inside this room.”
The guard held the couch cushion that Axel had been sitting on to the dog’s nose. After deeply sniffing the fabric, the dog explored the space, tail wagging and muzzle to the floor. When the dog got to a spot in the far corner of the room, she barked and began jumping high in the air.
“What’s wrong with that mutt?” the Doctor asked.
“She found the boy,” the guard answered. “He must be hiding in the ceiling tiles.”
Pinchole smiled. “I knew the kid couldn’t have gotten very far.” He stepped under the ceiling tile and shouted, “Axel! We found you! Come on down before we sic this dog on you!”
There was no response.
“Get him down from there,” the Doctor barked impatiently. “I’m tired of these games.”
The guard dragged over a chair, used it as a step stool, and punched out the tile with his nightstick. He poked his head through the space. “Nobody’s up here,” he said, his voice muffled. “It’s just a ventilation shaft that leads into the…Wait…I think I found something.”
“What is it?” Pinchole asked.
“Looks like it’s nothing,” the guard answered, sliding back out of the ceiling. “It’s just a piece of green fabric or something.”
Pinchole grabbed the fabric from the guard and examined it closely. “This is from Axel,” he said. “It’s the color of the green shirt he was wearing. That little worm is wiggling his way to freedom through the ventilation shaft.”
“Get in there after him!” the Doctor ordered.
The guard attempted to climb farther into the shaft but only got as far as his shoulders. “It’s way too small,” he said, climbing back out.
“The shaft must lead to the outside,” Pinchole said. “Get a ring of men to surround the building. Now!”
The two guards and the dog hurried out of the room and sprinted down the hallway. The Doctor stepped cautiously onto the chair, mindful of his broken wrist, and poked his head into the ventilation shaft. He flicked on a small penlight and peered inside. Cobwebs and dust filled the space. He wondered why anyone—even a desperate, terrified boy—would try to escape through a tight, constricted, claustrophobic corridor like this one. The irony of the situation did not escape him. Axel had eluded him for half a year by slipping into a phantasmagorical passageway, and now he was escaping again through another dark tunnel.
Pinchole’s phone rang. His ringtone was the theme song to the old 1960s Batman television show. For some reason, the Doctor found the song incredibly annoying. He lowered himself out of the shaft, brushing the dust and debris from his expensive suit jacket.
“That was fast, Stiv,” Pinchole said into the phone. “Great. I want you to make fifty eight-by-ten posters of her without hair, and I’ll pass them out to our security team. Yes, of course I want to know what she was googling during her time in the library. Magnet of the…huh? Konanavlah Temple…what?”
“What are you mumbling about?” the Doctor asked.
“Whoa…Stop right there!” Pinchole gasped. “Stiv, I want you to repeat what you just said very slowly. She searched for the words electron…diffusion…region…” Pinchole lowered the phone from his ear and looked at the Doctor, a stunned expression on his face. “Sir, we need to see Stiv ASAP. It seems Daisha was googling some very unusual search terms. All of which should be well beyond her realm of knowledge.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
DAISHA
Daisha and Axel hurried through the dimly lit streets with Boris trotting right along with them. Daisha’s house was normally only a fifteen-minute hike from the park, but this trip took twice as long because they had to constantly dive for cover whenever a car whizzed down the street. While they walked, Axel told Daisha all about his capture and subsequent escape from the Doctor’s headquarters.
“Now they’re looking for both of us again,” Daisha said.
“Except this time I don’t have a GeoPort,” Axel remarked.
“Are you telling me the Doctor has your GeoPort?”
Axel nodded. “We don’t have to worry until they figure out that only my DNA will make the thing function properly. Which is bound to happen sooner than later.”
A jolt shot up Daisha’s spine when Axel unexpectedly reached out and held her hand. Their fingers intertwined, and her initial surprise quickly turned into something warm and comforting. Only two days had passed since their separation in Vietnam, but to Daisha it felt like a year. She didn’t let go of Axel’s hand until they had reached her house.
They slipped into the yard through a side gate. A rustling sound near the back of the yard made Boris bark an alarm.
“Shush!” Axel ordered, and they stepped into the house through the unlocked kitchen slider.
The house was pitch-black. Daisha fumbled through a drawer next to the dishwasher and pulled out a candle and lighter. With a flick of her thumb, she touched the flame to the wick until the empty dining room glowed with a dancing orange light. Boris investigated the place with his nose and then plopped down on the hardwood floor. Daisha and Axel sat cross-legged next to the candle, gazing into each other’s eyes.
“You look really funny without your dreads,” Axel said.
“Better watch it, big guy,” Daisha retorted, punching him playfully in the arm. “Or I just might snip off those flowing curly locks while you’re asleep.”
“That might not be such a bad idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Doctor and Pinchole know me with long hair. If I chop off my hair like you, they may not recognize me on the street.”
“Who’s Pinchole?”
Axel ran a hand through his hair, trying to imagine life without it. “He’s the Doctor’s main geek. His ringtone is the theme song to the old Adam West–era Batman TV show.”
Daisha laughed. “The guy must not be that bad.”
“Pinchole’s bad, all right. He’s obsessed with our parents’ work and the Warp. He’d probably sacrifice his own grandmother to get my GeoPort to work for him.”
A blast of wind rattled the windowpanes. Boris’s ears perked up. He let out a bark followed by a low growl. Daisha stood up and looked out the window. After seeing nothing, she walked over to the sink and filled a paper cup from a stack left by the real estate agent. Boris lapped up its contents in a few quick slurps.
“He was thirsty,” Axel remarked.
“Do you want something to drink?” Daisha asked.
Axel shook his head. “They fed and watered me well while in captivity.”
Daisha’s stomach grumbled. The last thing she had eaten was from a sample cheese plate while wandering around Whole Foods the day before. A stack of papers sitting on the kitchen counter caught her attention. They were listing sheets and a notice of an open house for this coming Sunday.
“The Realtor must have been in the house earlier this evening,” Daisha said. “If they sell this place, we need to go somewhere else.”
“Where will we go?” Axel asked.
“India.”
“Do you mean the country or the Amber Elephant Restaurant on West El Camino Real?”
A big smile stretched across Daisha’s face. “The country.”
“You have a good time sightseeing. I can’t go. Remember, I don’t have my GeoPort anymore. We each need our own to go anywhere.”
Daisha grabbed one of the Realtor’s listing sheets and a pen. She sat close to the candlelight and wrote 23.1483° N, 79.9015° E.
Do th
ese coordinates look familiar to you?” she asked.
“Not really,” Axel replied.
“They are the latitude and longitude coordinates of the Konanavlah Sun Temple in Madhya Pradesh, India.”
“Is that place supposed to mean something to me?”
A lump formed in Daisha’s throat, a dam of tears ready to burst from her eyes. “Right before they killed my mother, she managed to say a partial coordinate—Latitude 23.1483…”
“You’re right! It’s where we can supposedly find this mysterious Magnes Solace person to destroy the GeoPorts!”
“Only Magnes Solace is a place, not a person. And it’s not Solace. It’s solis as in s-o-l-i-s. Solis is Latin for sun. Magnes is Latin for magnet.”
Axel sat up and paced around the kitchen. “That day my dad told us to ‘take them to Magnes Solace.’ I just assumed Magnes Solace was a person.”
“I thought the same thing. Then I remembered all the Latin my mother taught me.”
For the next ten minutes, Daisha explained her findings. How electron diffusion regions—or X-Points—were unstable hidden portals that connected Earth’s magnetic field to the sun’s magnetic field. Their parents had discovered a predictable X-Point, and that precise location was the Konanavlah Sun Temple. The Sun Temple, also known as the Magnet of the Sun, was supposedly one of the most magnetic places in the world.
“Don’t you get it?” Daisha said. “The first half of the Sun Temple’s coordinates is 23.1483°. Konanavlah Sun Temple…Magnet of the Sun. Our parents would have explained the same thing if only they had lived another five minutes.”
“Everything you said makes perfect sense,” Axel said, astonished with what Daisha had just laid out for him. “The Sun Temple is where we can destroy the GeoPorts. But how can we do it?”
“I guess we’ll have to figure that out when we get there.”
“You mean, when you get there. I’m staying put right here in Palo Alto until I can get back my GeoPort from the Doctor.”