“I’m not doing that either.”
“Explain how taking this will help,” Brendan said.
Nurse Dreyfus nodded. “Some Earths are parallel to one another and are close enough to be connected. They are either downstream or upstream. We all consider our own Earth as normal. The headmaster’s home is upstream. When he comes here, or when anyone from his world sets foot here, they bring with them part of their own world that puts them at an advantage. This fades with time as your world aligns them and normalizes them. What I’m offering is a taste of something upstream from his own world that will grant you a benefit to aid you. It’s only temporary.”
Both Vlad and Tina launched into questions about where the nurse procured this mysterious liquid and what it actually was.
Brendan gave the vial back to the nurse. “Set me up.”
As the nurse filled the oral syringe with an ounce of the medicine, Tina said, “Brendan, don’t take that.”
Charlotte was watching Brendan carefully, a look of determination on her face. Brendan took the syringe from the nurse and considered it.
“It will pass through your system in a few hours,” Nurse Dreyfus said. “If you’re going tonight, take it now.”
“Bottoms up.” He squeezed the liquid onto his tongue, expecting anything from a burning sensation to some sort of awful flavor, but all he detected was a hint of a metal taste that reminded him of the tap water back home. Maybe that’s all it was, part of some mind game Charlotte was playing, a ruse to bolster his confidence in his upcoming suicide mission.
Vlad and Tina looked worried.
“I’m fine. So, what’s next?” he asked.
“I could try again to talk you out of this, but I don’t want to waste your time. I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, but once you’re across you will be alone…except for whoever goes with you.”
Brendan looked over at the A.V. Club. “The ask keeps getting bigger.”
Tina held her hand out to the nurse. The nurse filled another syringe, and Tina swallowed it. When she looked at Vlad, he shook his head.
“In case it’s poison, one of us should stay off of it,” Vlad said.
“Smart,” Brendan said.
Nurse Dreyfus looked at them all. She gave a second vial of liquid to Charlotte, then kissed her forehead. “Find me in my office if you decide not to go. All of you.” And then she left.
They stood there for a moment. Charlotte was staring at the theater door as it auto-closed ever so slowly. Brendan watched it too, knowing that as the seconds ticked by, his opportunity of taking an alternate course was fading quickly.
“You’re not buying all this, are you?” Vlad asked.
“Bought it and swallowed it,” Brendan said.
Tina flexed an arm. “When do the superpowers kick in?”
22. The Break-In, Take Three
“I’m on the roof,” Soren texted. “Coast clear.” “Office dark.” “OMG. Heat signature is back!”
“He says we’re clear,” Brendan told the others. “Which could mean the headmaster is inside his special doorway or has left it on. We just need to wait for Lucille.”
She still wasn’t there. Brendan sent her a text.
“Meet you there,” she replied finally.
“Is she coming?” Tina asked.
“She said she was. She didn’t say anything else.”
“Well, I hope she’s not getting cold feet. She still has the card key.”
“This is her exercising her control over the situation,” Vlad said.
When they all looked at him, he shrugged. “Parents are both psychotherapists.”
“If you’re ready, we should go,” Charlotte said.
Brendan had his own sweatshirt with a hood and he pulled it on. The night outside the performing arts building was too warm to be bundled up, but Brendan remembered how cold the headmaster’s office was. He also didn’t want to be recognized by any security officers. He nudged Vlad as they walked. “You don’t mind keeping watch again?”
“Mixed feelings. I want to see what you’re going to see. But this is crazy. I’m rethinking going to the cops. We have enough. We get the headmaster’s phone and show them the video he showed you. If he doesn’t know they’re coming, they might take it from him before he can delete anything. We take the cops to his office. The headmaster can’t hide everything, and the cops can’t ignore us completely.”
“You’d be surprised. The video could already be erased. And security is pretty chummy with the cops. But the fewer of us inside the admin building, the less chance of all of us getting busted.”
“If you say so. Tell that to Lucille.”
Lucille waited for them at a pair of benches. The location was well situated, in clear sight of the front of the admin building while being only partially illuminated by the lighting along one of the walkways. Henry wasn’t with her. She flaunted her security card.
“Where’s Henry?” Tina asked.
“Gave him the night off,” Lucille said. “Or I sent him up to the boys’ dorm roof to keep Soren company. You pick. So are we going to this Not-Earth or what?” She offered the card to Tina, but snatched it back when Tina reached for it. She beckoned them on as she walked towards the admin building.
Brendan wondered if she had been drinking again. “Lucille, wait,” he said, but she kept walking.
Vlad caught up to her, but she just motioned him forward with a sweeping wave.
“She’s still heading for the door,” Tina said. “I’ll grab her.”
Charlotte stopped her. Pointed. A security guard was approaching Lucille and Vlad.
“Vlad,” Brendan hissed, but he didn’t hear him. Charlotte pulled Brendan and Tina down behind the bench. They had enough shadows to be completely hidden.
Officer Glenn lumbered up towards Lucille. She offered him a friendly wave, the key card still in her hand. He suddenly grabbed her and pulled her close, twisting her arm around behind her. She screamed. Vlad advanced on the officer.
“Vlad!” Brendan called.
“Stay quiet!” Charlotte hissed.
“Let her go,” Vlad shouted.
Brendan gripped the bench and watched as Officer Glenn pulled a plastic restraint from his belt and secured Lucille’s hands behind her back, ignoring Vlad as the large boy tugged at the officer’s arm. The key card went tumbling to the ground. Vlad kept tugging, but once Lucille’s hands were tied Officer Glenn turned in an instant and took him by the throat.
Brendan started to stand, but Charlotte pulled him back down. “It’s too late.” He tried to pull away from her but now Tina was also holding him back.
Impossibly, Officer Glenn held the large boy up in the air for a moment before setting him down. Vlad slapped at the arm that gripped him. A second security officer came running forward, and he wrangled Vlad down to the ground with ease. Vlad was shouting. A string of curses and threats poured out of Lucille’s mouth. Officer Glenn leaned in close and said something to her, and she was immediately quiet. He picked the key card up from the ground and put it in a pocket.
“Oh my god,” Tina whispered. “What do we do? Did you see that? How was that even possible?”
A few other passing students stopped to watch, but Officer Glenn barked at them to return to their dorms. They did as they were told, even though one had pulled his phone out to record the incident. Officer Glenn spoke into his radio and paused to listen to the response. Lucille tried jerking away from him a few times, but he had no problem keeping her still. Vlad appeared dazed, and the other security guard was now pulling him up to his feet. Officer Glenn marched Lucille away towards the security office. She never once looked in Brendan’s direction.
The second guard followed Officer Glenn, with Vlad firm in his grip.
“Whatever threat or mojo Lucille had over the guard is gone,” Tina said.
“He’s been switched,” Brendan said. “He just...picked Vlad up. We’re screwed.” It was all too much to process. B
rendan tried to catch his breath. The threat to them was more real than ever, and now they had no way into the admin building. More security would be coming. He looked at Charlotte. The girl was intent on the departing guards. All he had to do was deliver her up, send a message to the headmaster, and his problems might all be gone. Tina placed a hand on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down.
“We need to get the police,” Tina said.
“Go on if you think it’s best,” Charlotte said. “But I’m going in.” She waited for Brendan’s decision. He gave a nod.
The three headed for the front of the admin building.
***
Charlotte tried the doors, but they were locked. “Let’s check the sides.”
Brendan shook his head. “There’s no time. They’re onto us. And I’m in trouble anyway.” He removed the metal lid from a nearby concrete recycle bin, ran to the glass pane between the doors—the largest target he could see—and slammed the edge of the lid into the glass. The glass spidered but held. He hit it again. And again. The loud crashes were startling, but the time for stealth was over. When it began to fall away, he pushed it in, and it flexed like a giant blanket. Bits of glassy pebbles fell away, but it largely held together as it fell into the front lobby.
“That wasn’t quiet,” Tina said as they stepped through. Charlotte pointed to the door to the stairway.
“The elevator will be faster,” Brendan said. A student appeared at the broken window and took a picture before moving along. This is why my dad wears a mask.
They all piled in the elevator. Brendan’s hand trembled as he hit the button for the top floor.
“This is crazy,” Tina said softly.
Charlotte nodded. “My father’s a brilliant man,” she said, her voice calm, as if they were all between classes on their lunch break with an hour to kill. “Science and inventing things used to be just side projects when he was teaching. But it became an obsession. He never rested, never had time for my mom and me. When my mom started openly talking with other men on the phone, it was her way of accepting the status quo. I don’t think he noticed. Soon enough she was out most evenings, leaving me to fill my own time. Often, instead of doing stuff with friends, I would sneak into his office or go over to his lab and read his notes.”
“What did you find?” Brendan asked.
“That I needed to learn more to understand what he was trying to do.”
The elevator arrived on the top floor. No one waited for them. But then Brendan realized he could be bringing Charlotte straight to him. Brendan stopped her before she could step out of the elevator. His foot pressed against the door so it wouldn’t close.
“He wants you here in the open where he can find you,” Brendan said, a crushing wave of guilt twisting his stomach. “This is what he asked me to do. This is us giving him what he wants.”
“I knew that before you told me the first time. He was trying to draw me out before we met. But I don’t think he’s here. You’d eventually find out if you ever tried to follow him that he’s always at work and almost never leaves campus, even at night. And he was in his office all afternoon. That means he spent as much time as he could here in your world today and then went back to his. He’s having his security people look for us and maybe even the police. Lucille and Vlad bought us some time. Maybe they told security a story that got them heading in a completely different direction. But my father is through the door and in my old world. I know it. And the last thing he’ll expect is for you and me to go to him.”
They got out of the elevator. An alarm started ringing downstairs.
“Two-minute delay,” Tina said. “They’ll know we’re here no matter what Lucille and Vlad tell them.”
The key to the office was still hidden by the bell, and Brendan took it down. Tina considered the phone on the secretary’s desk. “We could call security and tell them it’s a false alarm.”
“Would you fall for that?” Brendan asked. He unlocked the office, and the cold air attacked his face even before he stepped inside. “Is your world this cold?”
“No. It’s just the machine on this side of the door.”
Tina inhaled sharply when she stepped inside. “Yikes. So what do we need to do?”
Charlotte handed the bracelet to Brendan.
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“Because I’m going to stand guard on this end for a little while.” She produced a second metal glove and put it on her left hand. “I’ll do what I can to keep anyone coming in behind you.”
“I thought you were going. Why are you telling us this now?”
“Because now that security is coming, they’ll be on our heels. Some of them are from the other side of the door. They know how it opens and won’t be afraid to go through if they know someone used it that wasn’t supposed to. I might be able to stop or delay them while you find your father.”
Brendan pointed to her glove. “And what’s that supposed to do?”
“I haven’t fully tested it yet,” Charlotte said. “But hopefully, it will knock out any security from my world back home.”
“So you have tested it some. You’re able to use it on yourself, aren’t you? It’s how you vanish.”
Charlotte didn’t answer.
“You’re not telling us enough,” Tina said. “You didn’t take the drug the nurse gave us, either.”
“I have a vial if I need it. But my world won’t affect me the same way. I’ve given Brendan the key to all of this. If it works he can open the door as he pleases from this side. Once across, you should be able to open and close the door with a primary switch on the machine. Be careful. The machine can be broken, but then you’ll be stuck.”
“Is there any way we can talk to you once we’re across?” Brendan asked.
“No. It’s just not possible. But as long as the machine on the other side is working, you can come back. Save your father. Bring him back as soon as you can. I’ll try to follow if I feel it’s safe here.”
There were too many what-ifs for Brendan to feel any confidence. Was this how one of the supers felt the first time they stepped off a balcony to field test a glider or hover pack? He had no idea if Charlotte’s device would open any kind of door. His father could be anywhere. And with the alarm, the headmaster and campus security had to know where they were. The police would be involved soon if they weren’t already.
“I’m right behind you,” Tina said.
He nodded and walked up to the bookcase. He held up his glove as if saluting someone from far away. All he felt was air. He swiped at the air, once, twice, as if trying to catch smoke.
“It’s not working,” he said and stepped towards the window. But when he turned to look at Tina and Charlotte, they weren’t there.
23. Not-Earth
The room wasn’t cold. At first he thought everything was the same. But some objects on the bookcase were gone, with different items now in their place. He saw a bronze statue of a horse bucking a cowboy who clung tenaciously to its back. A decorative boomerang rested on a stand. He would have noticed that before, wouldn’t he? The giant desk was still there. But on closer inspection, the top wasn’t made of wood. It was gray. He touched it. The material was some sort of polished concrete.
The desk had a banker’s light with a green glass hood. Again, something different. The light was on.
He paused to listen. The room was silent. The familiar nervousness raced through him, his heart beating hard, his mouth dry. He began to reach up for the invisible spot in the air where the bracelet had opened the door but stopped himself. He was here for a reason. Charlotte had said he could open the door with a switch on the machine.
He took a few steps forward, expecting the floor to feel different somehow, or his feet to sink into some unreal nightmare ooze. But the floor was a floor and the rug was as ugly as the one in his world. As his eyes adjusted to the lamplight he saw some green LEDs by the window. The tiny lights were attached to a tall wh
ite box that reminded him of a portable air conditioner, like what his mother would use to shave a few degrees off their stifling apartment in the summertime. There was a reason he had gone outside so often. But this wasn’t an air conditioner. It was some sort of control unit with a touch screen and several toggles. It had a hard-wired conduit connected to it that ran to a floor-mounted junction box.
Was the gateway between worlds powered by a mere 220 volts?
The unit had a glass aperture that looked like it could be a camera, and it was pointed right at the bookcase. Perhaps this was the signal pickup for the ring to move its wearer through the doorway. He guessed the largest toggle was power. The other two didn’t have labels. He tapped at the touch screen, but it brought up a numbered lock. Perhaps it could all be preprogrammed. The second toggle was already in the up position. The third was not.
“Here goes.”
He put his finger on the third switch and clicked it up.
The air shimmered in front of the bookcase, and he felt the slightest change in air pressure. He stepped closer. It was as if a weak fan was now blowing towards the distortion.
“Tina?” he said.
He didn’t want to step back through or spoil any chance he had of success. If Tina didn’t come his way, he would go on without her. He picked up the boomerang, considered it, and lobbed it towards the distortion. It vanished. A moment later, Tina appeared.
“Whoa. It worked!” She tapped on the floor with her foot as if to confirm it was solid. Then she rubbed her arms. “It’s not cold here.” She looked around the office.
“You made it,” Brendan said with relief.
“This is Not-Earth?”
“Huh?”
“That’s what Lucille called it. We need to call it something.” She spotted the machine and went to examine it. “That’s it?” She sounded disappointed.
Brendan turned the door off. “This way he might not know we’re here. Let’s go.”
The Supervillain High Boxed Set: Books One - Three of the Supervillain High Series Page 19