Pursued

by Gary Urey

  The door was windowless, so Daisha couldn’t see what was waiting on the other side. She pressed her ear against the door, listening for any sounds. Her palms were sweaty, her heart ricocheting. She knew all too well that just because she couldn’t hear anybody on the other side of the door didn’t mean no one was there waiting for her.

  “Okay,” Daisha said, trying to pump herself up. “If I didn’t hear anything, then I guess it’s safe.” She took a deep breath, grabbed the handle, and peeked through the doorway. What was waiting for her on the other side caused her insides to swell with relief.

  A short, skinny janitor in a baseball cap and a long-sleeved work shirt a size too big had stopped pushing a bucket and mop to stare at her. The janitor looked just as surprised as she was.

  “Axel!” Daisha shouted.

  “Hush up,” Axel said, pressing a finger to his lips. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be waiting for me in India.”

  “I was about to go, but I couldn’t leave without you.”

  “How’d you sneak in here? I had to crawl through a ventilation shaft.”

  Daisha held up her GeoPort. “One time when I was bored in Vietnam, I googled the coordinates for the Doctor’s headquarters. The latitude and longitude numbers stuck…”

  The sound of an elevator opening and two loud voices talking cut her off in mid-sentence. “It’s the Doctor!” Daisha exclaimed.

  “The other guy is Pinchole, the head science geek. I’d recognize his wimpy voice anywhere.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I bet they’re headed to the Monitoring Room. Quick, let’s go back where you came from and figure out our next move.”

  Daisha and Axel hustled into the stairwell, the door slamming shut just as the Doctor, Pinchole, and four armed security guards rounded the corner.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  DOCTOR STAIN

  “Ouch!” the Doctor hollered as his foot collided with a big yellow bucket. “What’s this thing doing in the middle of the hallway?”

  Pinchole shrugged. “Don’t know. One of the custodians must have left it.”

  “Remind me to tell Kari to fire these people and hire a new janitorial service.”

  One of the guards moved the bucket against the wall and joined the others stopped in front of the Monitoring Room. The room’s security was state of the art. First, Pinchole punched a series of numbers on a pad on the wall. He then pressed his thumb against another pad for fingerprint recognition. Finally, he looked directly into a small camera lens embedded into the wall. Only when the system recognized his iris did the door pop open and allowed them to enter.

  A dozen scientists, both male and female, scurried around the Monitoring Room. They operated dozens of laptop computers, antenna systems, communications modulators, signal conversion systems, subcarrier synthesizers, and a dozen other pieces of high-tech equipment. The two giant high-resolution monitors that once tracked Axel and Daisha via sophisticated reconnaissance satellites were now black.

  “Unfortunately, we can’t transport any of the Satellite Warp equipment to India,” Pinchole explained. “I’ve handpicked these twelve individuals to man the ship while we’re on location.”

  “Show me the GeoPort,” the Doctor demanded.

  Pinchole pulled a key from his pocket and walked over to a closet safe marked Authorized Personnel Only. He was just about to unlock the door when a young woman with blue hair, piercings, and colorful tattoos looked up from a laptop screen.

  “What are you doing here?” Pinchole snarled.

  “Working,” Stiv said.

  “The Doctor told you to go home and pack, not to come back to the Monitoring Room.”

  “I needed to get some things together so I could be of better assistance in India.”

  “Well, I don’t think…”

  “Stop it right there,” the Doctor ordered. “The girl is part of my team. She doesn’t need the third degree from you. Now, get me the GeoPort.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pinchole sighed and unlocked the safe. He stepped inside and emerged a moment later with the prize.

  “The thing looks like a cheap cell phone,” the Doctor said, taking the GeoPort from Pinchole.

  “It’s far from cheap. That little unit you’re holding is worth more than all the proverbial tea in China.”

  The Doctor laughed. “Try worth more than all the bars of gold in Fort Knox and then some. I want you to fill me in on how this unit and a very expensive expedition to India are going to get the Doctor Lennon Hatch Geographical Transportation Company a New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol.”

  Stiv stood up from her desk. “May I see the GeoPort?”

  “Of course, young lady,” the Doctor said, handing her the unit.

  “This isn’t show-and-tell!” Pinchole whined. “I’m not comfortable passing around the world’s greatest technological achievement like a toy truck.”

  “Quiet, you,” the Doctor said sharply. “Once again, I want you to fill me in on what we hope to accomplish in India. Layman’s terms, please.”

  Still obviously miffed at Stiv’s presence, Pinchole clarified the entire operation as simply as possible. He explained that the realization that Magnes Solis was a place instead of a person was the key to unlocking the mystery. Further investigation into the Konanavlah Sun Temple’s hyperactive magnetic properties had convinced him that the location was in fact a permanent electron diffusion region, or X-Point.

  “I know all of that,” the Doctor grumbled. “But how are you going to use that information to make our own GeoPort? From what you’ve told me, the two GeoPorts in existence won’t work unless they are in very close proximity to each other.”

  “We already know that geographical transportation works using large space magnets to capture electrons found in the solar wind,” Pinchole continued. “Then we transfer the electrons to Earth with lasers. This is enough power to dematerialize the human body. However, to make an actual working GeoPort, we needed to find a permanent, uninterrupted X-Point that connects the magnetic fields of the sun and Earth. The Konanavlah Sun Temple is that place. The GeoPort needs the power of a continuous portal to operate. Before now, we only knew how to follow the GeoPort’s trail with limited success. Understand?”

  “I understand perfectly,” Stiv said, her eyes wide with wonder. “It’s the same barrage of supercharged electrical particles that brighten the aurora borealis and ignite geomagnetic storms.”

  “Exactly. Thanks to Professors Jack and Tandala, we now know how to harness this incredible power. The world will never be the same again.”

  The Doctor smirked. “That is the understatement of the twenty-first century. You still haven’t told me how you are going to corral this energy from the other side of the world.”

  Pinchole smiled. “Very carefully.”

  “Oh crap!” A voice rang out.

  They looked up and saw that one of the Satellite Warp technicians had spilled a large bottle of fizzy, super-gulp cola all over the desk and floor.

  “Get that mess cleaned up right away,” Pinchole ordered. “Sugar water and electronic equipment don’t mix.”

  The SWT grabbed a handful of napkins to sop up the spillage.

  “There’s a mop and bucket with a wringer outside in the hallway,” the Doctor told one of his security guards. “Go out and get it.”

  The Doctor’s cell phone rang. “Doctor Lennon Hatch,” he said. “Whoa…slow down, Kari. What is the matter? Why are you crying?”

  Pinchole, taking advantage of the Doctor’s diverted attention, snatched the GeoPort out of Stiv’s hand. “This will remain under lock and key from now on, and no one touches it but me,” he growled.

  “Are you absolutely one-hundred-percent sure?” the Doctor asked, still talking into the phone. “I don’t know whether to jump for joy or scream bloody murder. Alert security right away, please.”

  “What’s going on?” Pinchole asked.

  The Doctor hung up the cal
l and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “That was Kari. A few moments ago, a young black girl with short hair attacked her in my office.”

  “What does this mean?” Stiv wondered.

  “It means that Daisha Tandala has somehow sneaked into the building,” the Doctor said, adjusting his arm sling. “She’s here right now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  AXEL

  Axel had just stepped into the hallway again when a Pursuer confronted him.

  “Are you the janitor?” the guard asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Axel muttered, pulling his hat farther over his eyes and deepening his voice to sound older.

  “Grab that mop and bucket. There’s a mess in here to clean up.”

  Three more burly Pursuers burst out of the Monitoring Room and rushed down the hallway. Axel prayed they wouldn’t head into the fire escape where Daisha was hiding. Much to his relief, they flew past the exit door and jumped into the elevator. The Pursuer who had ordered him to clean up joined them. The elevator doors closed and they were gone.

  The argument Axel had had with Daisha just moments before replayed in his mind. He felt bad for scolding her, but using her GeoPort to Warp to the Doctor’s headquarters instead of India was probably the stupidest thing in the world. Twenty-four hours had to pass before her GeoPort could work again. He hoped that she had taken his advice and was now crawling through the same ductwork he had used for escape. That way she could hide out for a day until the Warp was ready to go.

  Regardless, he had to get his GeoPort back. The mop, bucket, and janitor disguise were his ticket into the Monitoring Room.

  With a thumping heart and sweaty palms, he cautiously entered the room, leaving the door slightly ajar in case there was some kind of security lockdown mechanism. A young bearded man wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a fried egg and the words This is your brain on HTML pointed toward a large puddle of spilled soda. Axel kept his head down as he walked past the Doctor and Pinchole. He quickly took out the mop and began swabbing away. He listened intently to the heated conversation between the Doctor, Pinchole, and a girl with spiky blue hair and a gold hoop protruding from her bottom lip.

  “If they’re still in the building, the men will catch them,” he heard Pinchole say.

  “But why in the world would they come back?” the Doctor asked.

  “That thing,” Stiv said, snatching a small device from Pinchole’s hands.

  Axel’s thoughts screamed silently inside his head—My GeoPort!

  Pinchole grabbed the GeoPort back. “We still don’t know how to replicate this precious device, and we need it. When we get to India, we’ll start manipulating the Sun Temple’s permanent X-Point. My team will advance the discoveries made by Professors Jack and Tandala by light-years.”

  “How exactly will you manipulate the X-Point?” Stiv asked.

  “The same way you get to Carnegie Hall,” Pinchole answered. “Practice, practice, practice!”

  Stiv cocked her head and smirked. “Come on. Seriously.”

  “I am serious. Practice makes perfect, and I’ve been practicing with the Warp for over a year by sending men chasing down this little nugget.” He held up the GeoPort and pretended to give it a kiss. “Since we have only one, it’s impossible to use it like the kids did because of its security features. But all that changed when the girl steered us toward the discovery of a permanent X-Point and its unfathomable power. And when I applied the simplicity of Faraday’s Law to what we already knew, the whole shebang made perfect sense.”

  “Faraday what?” the Doctor asked.

  “Faraday was a nineteenth-century English physicist who discovered that when a magnetic field changes, you create an electric current,” Stiv offered. “It’s eighth-grade science.”

  “Exactly,” Pinchole interjected. “Faraday discovered that the bigger the changes in the magnetic field, the greater the amounts of voltage. A permanent X-Point is the Big Bang of earthly magnetic fields. If that field shifted or suddenly became demagnetized somehow, geographical transportation could not exist, unless we could find another X-Point.”

  As Axel eavesdropped, the realization hit him like a wet mop right in the face. His father and Daisha’s mother didn’t mean for them to destroy the GeoPorts; they meant for them to demagnetize the X-Point!

  “I’m going to put this GeoPort back under lock and key until we’re ready to jet to India,” Pinchole said and made a step toward the closet safe.

  The Monitoring Room door flew open. Daisha burst into the room, her eyes wild with adrenaline.

  “Axel, get the GeoPort!” she screamed.

  The Doctor gasped. “It’s Daisha! And that janitor is Axel! Stop them!”

  Axel took advantage of the diversion and leaped into action. He swung his mop handle like a baseball bat, clipping Pinchole in the ribs. The man grunted in pain as the GeoPort flew from his hands and skittered across the floor. Axel shoved one of the Satellite Warp techs aside and scooped up the GeoPort. He then tore out of the Monitoring Room with Daisha by his side. He didn’t get ten yards before a Pursuer rounded a corner. The man clubbed him in the back of the head and grabbed him by the throat. Axel’s eyes bugged out, his windpipe crushing under the Pursuer’s viselike grip. He gasped for breath, clawing at the hand around his throat.

  The Pursuer pulled out a gun and held it to Axel’s temple.

  “You better not move a muscle!” the Pursuer screamed, his spittle flying everywhere.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Axel saw Daisha lunge at the Pursuer. She grabbed the arm attached to the hand around Axel’s neck and bit hard into his flesh. The Pursuer cried out, aimed the gun at her, and fired. The blast was deafening. Axel’s ears rang. When the smoke cleared, Axel saw a large bullet hole in the wall. The shot had completely missed Daisha.

  “Do not damage that GeoPort!” he heard Pinchole cry from down the hall.

  Daisha kicked the Pursuer hard in the groin. The gun fell from his hand, and he crumpled to the floor.

  The Doctor, Pinchole, and the girl with blue hair were closing in on them fast. Axel climbed to his feet, and he and Daisha took off down the hall. The elevator door opened, and the four burly Pursuers he had seen earlier sprinted in his direction with guns drawn.

  “Hurry!” Daisha cried. “Type in the Sun Temple coordinates!”

  Quickly Axel typed 23.1483° N, 79.9015° E, his fingers shaking.

  “What about you?” Axel asked, out of breath.

  As the Doctor, Pinchole, and the four Pursuers were about to pounce, Daisha pressed her thumb on the GeoPort’s DNA sensor. Axel positioned his thumb next to hers and pushed the button.

  Milliseconds later, both of them detonated into the invisible void.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  DAISHA

  Daisha landed hard on a blistering hot, dusty dirt road. Her stomach heaved and her head throbbed from the blast through the Warp. After the cobwebs cleared, she looked for Axel. He was a few feet from her, on his hands and knees, vomiting.

  “Sorry,” he choked. “It’s been a couple months since I’ve blown chunks after going through the Warp.”

  “Trust me,” Daisha said. “If I had any food in my stomach, I’d be tossing cookies right beside you.”

  Axel wiped his mouth and sat back on his haunches. “I guess our parents didn’t live long enough to fill us in on that little detail,” he said.

  “What detail?”

  “When we pressed our thumbs together on the button, it must have recognized both of our DNA, allowing us to soar through the Warp with a single GeoPort.”

  “Maybe it was another safety feature our parents programmed into the unit,” she said. “They made them both operable with either of our DNA. You know, in case we lost one or something.”

  Three women wearing beautiful saris and carrying large woven baskets filled with food shuffled past them. The mouthwatering smell of the exotic spices made Daisha’s stomach grumble with hunger. Right behind the women came a l
ong line of Japanese tourists. Expensive-looking cameras dangled around their necks, and all of them wore the same bright-yellow baseball caps. Daisha sat up and turned her head in the direction everyone was walking. There, bathed in golden rays of morning sunshine, stood the monument she and Axel had been running toward for six months without even knowing it.

  The Konanavlah Sun Temple.

  The ruins of the majestic structure stood before her like seven prancing horses pulling a giant chariot. Daisha knew from her Internet search that the shrine was supposed to represent that. She remembered that the temple was from the tenth century and that some ancient king had built it to honor the Hindu Sun God, Surya.

  “Wow,” Axel said with wonderment. “That thing is just freaking wow. Look at those intricately carved walls and pillars. Whoever built this baby was an artistic genius.”

  “See those three huge, entwined elephant tusks?” Daisha pointed out. “I read that the ancient architects always used that symbol as their trademark.”

  “They must have really liked fighting elephants too, because the imagery is everywhere.”

  The amazement of gazing at the Sun Temple up close and personal quickly gave way to paranoia. A bead of anxious sweat rolled down Daisha’s temple as her eyes darted back and forth, looking for the Doctor’s men.

  “I don’t see any Pursuers,” she said. “At least I don’t see them yet.”

  “What should we do now?” Axel asked.

  Daisha let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, Manny. You can start by ditching the janitor’s uniform, unless you want to do free advertising for Los Altos Janitorial Services.”

  Axel stuck his tongue out at her. “My other shirt has a big rip in it. I’m fine with this one.”

  Daisha pointed to a blue handkerchief lying in the dirt. “Is that yours?” she asked.

  “Yes. I found it in the chest pocket of the work shirt. It must’ve fallen out when I landed.”