by Sechin Tower
I nodded the lie again.
“Okay, then, I’ll get you into the database. But I need something from you in return,” she folded her arms and leaned back on the tall heels of her lavender pumps.
“What?” I said. “Anything.”
“I need you to drop out of the Institute. After this, you get gone and you don’t come back. You hand in your key and you don’t get another one—ever. You hear?”
I felt like my ribcage was closing in on my lungs and I had to struggle for breath. Sure, President Hart had withdrawn me from my classes at Langdon University, but as long as my cousin was the Dean of Students at the Institute there was always a chance I could get into Topsy, where I could learn all kinds of things even if I wasn’t officially enrolled. Now, though, Nikki wanted to rip that gift away from me. And if I didn’t do it, I would lose my father, the only family I really had outside a mother who left when I was a child and a cousin I hardly knew.
I just stared back at her. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t make any sound come out.
“Think about it,” she said. “I think you’ll see it’s for your own good. If you agree, meet me at Topsy in a half hour.”
She turned her back on me and disappeared into the house while my mind struggled to put together the pieces.
“Wait!” I called after her, but it was too late for her to hear me. “Wait, Nikki, I already know my answer—”
I dashed through the door into the kitchen, but instead of finding Nikki I collided with a big, muscular guy. Of course, I bounced off him like a ping-pong ball bouncing off a side of beef, but the collision was still enough to knock his cup of beer into his chest and spill it all over his shirt.
“Oh my God,” I said, my hands covering my mouth because I didn’t know what else to do with them. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”
“Soap?” he said to me.
I looked up from the wide, wet stain on his shirt to see his face. It was Brett Jensen.
Chapter 27 ~ Dean
“We’re going to do what?” Dean tried to pull away from Angela, but she just clamped her arm down on his and kept him walking towards the Museum exit.
“A heist,” she said with a voice that mimicked prohibition-era mobsters. “We’re gonna rob this joint, see? You know, knock it over. Clip the goods. Pull a fast one. Capiche?”
“Are you crazy?” Dean said loudly. He checked himself and then spoke more quietly. “I don’t want to rob this place. It’s a museum, for crying out loud.”
She stopped in between a collection of stuffed devil rays arranged artfully along one wall and a replica of a deep-ocean habitat on the opposite wall.
“If we don’t take the egg,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “What do you think the Professor will do when he discovers that what he wants is right here, protected by a thin pane of glass? I guarantee we won’t get caught and no one will get hurt. If you’re willing to bet that the Professor would be so considerate, just walk out the door. Go on—you don’t need to be involved in this.”
Dean stood for a moment. “Who are you?” he asked.
Although he meant it as a rhetorical question, she turned to him with flashing eyes.
“I’m your guardian angel, sweetie,” she said, patting him on the cheek. “Now, let’s get down to work. Ever seen one of these?”
Without removing her backpack from her shoulders, Angela twisted her arm behind her to pull out a short piece of metal from a side pouch. She opened it like a telescoping antenna until it was two feet long. At first, Dean thought it was a collapsing baton for self defense, but it was far too thin. She flicked a switch in the pommel and the thing started to buzz like a bee.
“What is that?” Dean asked.
“It’s an EMP generator,” she said. “I call it my harp, because it makes such heavenly music that electronic equipment stops working to listen to the song.”
Angela strode back the way they had come, towards the main entrance that connected the oceanic evolutionary exhibit to the mineralogical wing. As she went, the lights overhead flickered rapidly, as though they were short circuiting. The museum’s patrons murmured with concern and a security guard by the entrance reached for his walkie-talkie only to be greeted by an earful of static.
“Whoa, hold up,” Dean said, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. “I don’t like this. There’s a bike gang that knocks over banks using a thing like this.”
“You mean the Blitzkriegers? Yeah, I’ve heard of them,” Angela waved her hand dismissively. “What they use is more like a sledge-hammer that smashes all the electronics within a city block. My harp is more subtle. It just causes things to go on the fritz for a little while but doesn’t actually damage anything. It might burn out your cell phone if you stand too close for too long, but that’s about it.”
As she said it, Dean realized there was a warm sensation in his pocket that was rapidly growing uncomfortably hot. He pulled out his phone and it burned his fingers. The screen was a riot of colors as the pigments squirmed and swirled in the electromagnetic field.
“Sorry,” she said, stifling her laughter. “I probably should have warned you. You’ll have to buy a new one later. The important thing is that the cameras can’t record us right now.”
She held her “harp” on the inside of her arm to make it less conspicuous and led Dean by the hand to the room with the egg.
“Would you reach into my pocket?” she said, turning her back towards him. “The pocket on the backpack, I mean—sorry to disappoint. There’s a little steel rod I need in there.”
Dean unzipped the pocket and found what looked like a sawed-off piston housed in a thick pipe. It weighed about five pounds and had an LCD screen that showed a flat red line against a green graph. The display looked like a heart monitor that was currently reading a flatline.
“What’s this?” Dean asked, handing it to her.
“Earthquake grenade,” she said nonchalantly as she stuck the device to the center of the display window.
“Huh-uh, no way,” Dean said. “You’re not going to start blowing things up.”
“No explosions today, cowboy,” she said. “It’s a vibrational oscillator. It emits the perfect harmonic frequency to shatter whatever it’s attached to. In other words, it will rattle anything to pieces.”
“I’m going to take your word that whatever you just said means it won’t explode. Will it work, though? This glass looks pretty thick. There are diamonds in that display, after all.”
“Nikola Tesla once almost leveled an entire building with a device like this,” she said. “Of course, I improved the design by adding a circuit that finds and maintains the best possible harmonic frequency.”
“Where do you get this stuff?”
“I already told you,” she said. “I’m an Institute grad; I invented half these toys.”
She flicked the switch and stepped back as the line on the earthquake grenade’s screen jumped to life. It coiled erratically for a second until it settled into a steady wave, which then sped up, faster and faster, until it blurred into a haze. As it did, the steel rod vibrated like a paint shaker until the entire window shook in tune with it. In less than three seconds, the glass shattered. It happened so quickly that Dean didn’t see any cracks: it was as though the whole thing had suddenly turned into powder and cascaded to the floor. The bomb fell with a heavy thump at their feet.
“See?” Angela said, picking the earthquake bomb up and handing it to Dean. “It’s reusable, which is good for the environment. Now, which rock do we want?”
A crash emanated from the neighboring room. The guards, evidently disoriented by the flickering lights, were nevertheless sweeping the exhibits to usher patrons outside. Dean handed the earthquake grenade to Angela and leaned over the precious crystals in the display to snatch the wrinkly black rock at the back. It was oddly cool to the touch, and it now seemed to glow in a way it hadn’t before. Even after he closed his hand around it, there was an aura of red
, blue, and yellow streaks that projected past his fingers. Weirdly, these colors flashed in time with the lights overhead.
Angela didn’t seem to notice the swirling colors, and Dean wasn’t about to take time to point them out at the moment. The two of them jogged out of the room and through the emergency exit before the guards entered the area.
They emerged into a narrow alley, alone but near enough to the museum’s main entrance to see and hear the crowd of evacuated patrons accumulating outside. Museum employees were attempting to keep everyone calm, and a teacher was counting her elementary students to make sure all of them were safe. A police car arrived and two officers began pushing their way through the crowd towards the door, instructing everyone to disperse.
“Give me the egg,” Angela said.
“Why?” Dean moved to put it into his jacket pocket.
“I should take it because we both still need to get out of here and you’re more likely to be caught than I am.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because you didn’t bring a jet pack,” she said. With that, she snatched the egg out of his hand, turned, and ripped the outer covering off her backpack. Underneath was a contoured device consisting of two chrome cylinders with a rounded engine in the center. In a flash, she had blasted up to the third-story fire escape of the next building over. By the time the silver cloth that had formed the outer layer of her backpack fluttered down by Dean’s feet, she had jumped into the air again and disappeared over a nearby roof.
Chapter 28 ~ Soap
It turned out Brett wasn’t actually mad at me. He said he was worried about me when I didn’t show up, and then got more worried after I told him about my Dad being in jail. Now he wanted to help—and that was the problem. Somehow he got it into his head that I was going to get myself into trouble, and when I told him I needed to go back to the lab, he insisted on going with me. There didn’t seem to be any way to get rid of him, so I let him drive me there.
“I knew it,” he said as I held out the key to open Topsy’s front door. “This place—the people—they’re wrong, Soap. You need to quit while you can.”
“And how do you know that?”
He followed me inside and we walked past the statue of Tesla. “I grew up in this town. People talk. The professors who teach here have a tendency to end up dying in strange ways. The students, too. This place is bad news.”
I nodded because I honestly couldn’t disagree. He was like the big brother I never had, trying to protect me from the world. Trying to protect me from myself. I wanted to trust him with what I planned to do, but how could I explain that I intended to track down a gang of armed robbers and blow up their motorcycles out of revenge? Somehow, I needed to convince him to go home, because he would never let me finish what I set out to do.
“Thank you for worrying about me,” I said. “I really mean it: thank you. But you can go ahead and take off now; I’ll be okay here.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
He stopped in the doorway, eyes darting around the big, empty, ground floor lab as though we were entering a den of grizzly bears.
“Go,” I said.
“Never.”
“Okay, look, I just need to get something and I’ll be right back.”
“But—”
“Just wait here. Please. We’ll talk more in a minute.”
I was up the stairs before he could say anything else. I really wanted someone to pull me out of the black pit that had swallowed my life. But even Brett, the big-shot college football star, wasn’t strong enough to do that for me. So I wiped the tears out of my eyes, climbed into the shower, and opened the hidden elevator panel. The stall descended into the floor, down towards the underground lab.
Nikki was waiting for me when the elevator door opened.
“Have you made up your mind?” she demanded. She was wearing her pink lab coat again. Somehow it gave her an air of authority.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll drop out of the Institute. Just like you want.” There was no going back with her: she and I wouldn’t be able to co-exist in the Institute after this anyway.
Her stance relaxed, but she was still frowning. “I hope you understand,” she said. “I want you out for your own protection. Maybe you can come back when things are safer.”
I nodded, but I knew perfectly well that things were never going to be safe, at least not unless someone took care of the Professor and his Blitzkrieger stooges. If he hadn’t threatened my Dad and cost me everything that was good in my life, then I could have just gone back to the old version of me. But the Professor had left me no choice. All I could do now was nod and keep my secret plan to myself.
Following Nikki through prototype storage, I passed Choop, whose red eyes followed me with curiosity. Then we went by Victor, who was working in the glass sterilization room. He was wearing full surgical gear with cap, mask, and a white apron. He looked up at me as we went, and he watched me with those ice-blue eyes that seemed somehow more sad than usual.
“Is he working on his secret research?” I asked.
“It’s none of your concern anymore,” Nikki answered.
I let her drag me away, but her words stung my heart. I had hardly had a chance to get to know this place, but I already felt like I belonged here more than anywhere else in the world. That included my apartment back home. And I would have to give it all up when I came back… if I came back. I could feel the tears in my eyes again, but I dug down deep, until I could touch the steady, steel-hard rage at my core. I had a job to do.
Nikki was already scrolling through data in the computer pavilion. Without looking away from her screen, she pointed at another screen which was evenly divided into four grainy photos of motorcycle license plates.
“Most of our cameras are relatively low-rez,” Nikki said. “But the parking-lot cameras are HD for just these occasions. We got the whole lot of their license numbers. I’m running them through the local DMV and FBI databases right now.”
“You can do that?”
“Funny thing,” Nikki said, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “The sheriff’s servers are housed in city hall. A few years ago, city hall had its network installed by a student from—guess where?—the Mechanical Science Institute. Luckily, the mayor—bless his heart—hasn’t upgraded since then, which means we have ourselves a back door into all the government databases you could want. That means: bingo! Here’s your printout.”
Nikki snatched a piece of paper out of the high-speed printer and shoved it into my hands. The names of the registered owners of the four bikes were on it, along with their photos, home addresses and occupations, and criminal arrest records for three of the four. I didn’t see the shirtless guy in there, but the other photos still looked familiar after their raid on Topsy two nights before. One driver’s license picture stood out because his weight was reported at 404 pounds. His name was listed as Cecil Stellenlieter.
“Cecil?” I read out loud as I looked from the printed name to the picture of the bald-headed giant and back. “What kind of biker-mamma names her oversized son ‘Cecil?’”
“It’s got to be a fake identity,” Nikki said. “Notice he’s the only one without a criminal record, but the other three all served time for a bank job they did together ten years ago. I’d bet dollars to donuts that the big guy was in on it, too, but he used a different name. If not that, then they must have met in prison. Don’t these guys know Facebook is free? You don’t have to go to the slammer just to do your social networking.”
I knew she was attempting a joke, but I wasn’t in a laughing mood.
“There’s another reason why our friend Cecil would be using a fake identity,” Nikki went on. “He’s on the run from the law. Coincidentally, the cops have been looking all over the country for a group of bikers who rob banks by frying their electrical systems with EMPs. You can take that to the cops and maybe they’ll forget about your Dad.”
“But there’s no wa
y these guys could have come up with an EMP-bomb to rob those banks,” I said. “Not on their own, anyway. Not to mention that they had a chupacabra trained to steal reactor cores. It’s pretty obvious that the Professor has been the one behind all this, but why would he want to team up with a bunch of criminals?”
“Seems clear enough to me,” she laced her fingers behind her head and leaned back in her chair. “You’re the Professor, an evil genius who wants a bunch of money, but you don’t want to get your own hands dirty. So what do you do? You hire a gang of thugs by givin’ ‘em some special toys to help their robberies. Then you sit back and let them do the heavy lifting.”
It made a lot of sense as far as it went, but I still wanted to know who the Professor was and what he really wanted. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to try to break into Topsy, which made me think he was after something more than just bank loot.
“Hmmm…” I said, studying the printout, “All of them have the same employer. It says they all work at Happy Fun Land. Isn’t that the amusement park just outside of town?”
Nikki’s smile stopped immediately. “I’m sure it’s nothing. That place is closed down. It’s probably just a cover-up for their parole officers. Just ignore that part.”
I looked closely at her and saw that her right eye twitched for just a second. I read on a website that people usually make that kind of expression when they’re nervous about something, but I couldn’t think of what would make Nikki nervous just then. However, I did think it made sense for a biker gang with a mutant lizard for a pet to hide out in an abandoned fun park. They would have plenty of room to run around and no one would see them. Plus, free skee ball. At least now I knew where to look.
“Hey, remember,” Nikki put her hand on the print-out as if she might take it away. “This is just to get your Dad out of jail. You promised not to go do anything stupid, right?”
For me, promising not to do something stupid would be like promising not to breathe, but I lied again and said I wouldn’t go anywhere near the bikers or the Happy Fun Land. Then I walked out of the computer pavilion.