The Prince's Trap

by Griffith, P. D.

  As Landon slid the folder back into the locker and shut the door, he said softly to himself, “This place isn’t like a library; . . . it is a library.” He stepped back and looked down the long aisle. “And I’m in the wrong section.”

  Abandoning the row, Landon rushed over to the other side and opened a random locker midway down. Inside was just a heavy stack of thick folders. Landon pulled the first file folder off the top. “PS,” Landon said aloud as he read the tab. “Project Sparta.” While he returned the file and shut the locker, he said, “I’m in the PSs.”

  “PMM . . . Project Minute Men,” Landon said with a bit of excitement. He’d gone an entire row closer to Celia and felt invigorated as he realized the gap to Project Herakles was narrowing. Landon went to a new row. He could hear Celia slamming lockers shut on the other side.

  Selecting another at random, Landon pulled out the case files. “PHT . . . Project High Tower.” He’d found the right section. “Celia, come over here!” he yelled to her while he continued to stare at the text with gratification. A second later she peered around the end of the row.

  Landon held up the folder for Project High Tower so Celia could see it. “These are the PHs!” he explained with manic excitement. Celia rushed over to him, and he continued, “This is Project High Tower . . . PHT . . . so Project Herakles should be somewhere in this direction.” Landon motioned to the right of him. “So I’ll keep going that way, and you start at the end and work towards me.”

  Celia nodded and went to the head of the aisle.

  “And you don’t have to check every one!” Landon called down to her. “Just check randomly ‘til you find the PHs, and if you get anywhere past PHA, backtrack.”

  Celia nodded again in affirmation and then turned to a locker. Landon did the same. There was no direct order to which hold he chose to open, he just worked methodically down the row toward Celia until they merged onto Project Herakles.

  “I got it!” Celia yelled to Landon as she stared down at the top page of a folder.

  Landon quickly tossed the folder in his hand back into its locker and slammed it closed before rushing over to join Celia. She never even acknowledged him; she was busy flipping through pages and rummaging through the hefty stack of folders inside the locker.

  While she did that, Landon turned to see what else was inside the box. He pulled out the first object he saw. It was spherical and about the size of a baseball. When he examined it closer, he gasped slightly. The atomizer from Nitranos Industries, completely reconstructed, rested in his palm. A sense of anxiety crashed over him. What would they need this for?

  He grabbed a rack of test tubes with his other hand and set the atomizer on the edge of the cabinet. One by one, Landon lifted the test tubes out of the rack just enough to read their labels. It contained five vials—he instantly recognized a few of them from Metis Labs. The first was rusty-colored with the label “PH-LW-BS001,” and the second vial was filled with a translucent, bright blue substance, “PH-LW-Isolate.” The third one looked very similar to the yellowish-white stuff he’d recovered, which was labeled “PH-BioEnh #014”; however, this one was milky but more green than yellow, and the label said, “PH-BioEnh #36.” The next vial contained a clear liquid that looked like water, but as it moved in the tube, it seemed thick. The label read, “PH-Primer.” Landon slid the vial back down into the rack and pulled up the final tube. In it, a fluorescent purple liquid washed about, and the label read “PH-Stabilizer.”

  Landon nearly dropped the rack. Stabilizer! He stared at it wide-eyed at the possibility of this material being the physical manifestation of the chemical formula he’d received from Susano-o Industries.

  Landon thrust the rack of test tubes back into the locker. The glass clinked against the sides of the rack as he slammed the tray down on the metal. “What is all this about?” he asked vehemently, turning to Celia who still studied the files. Her feverish pursuit of information had pulled her to the floor. Files were splayed open and stacks of folders had been divvied up into small piles around her.

  Celia stopped reading and looked at him. “You,” she said matter-of-factly with her arms spread to represent the collection surrounding her. “It’s all about you?”

  Landon’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared back at her, speechless.

  Celia thumbed through the pages of the folder in her lap as she continued to work through what she’d discovered. “I mean, it’s all here,” she continued. “There are pictures of you, notes on your performance, photos from the apartment after your apocratusis, and detailed accounts of your training. . . . There’s even a whole file just on your childhood.”

  “Why?” The edge of Landon’s lip curled upward as he shook his head perplexed.

  “Well, in this one,”—Celia pulled out a file wedged in the middle of the stack beside her knee and opened it—“there are all these notes. Here Dr. Dodgson wrote, ‘LW exhibits telekinetic strength in excess of the thirty-five times body weight maximum previously recorded without any adverse physical effects. Further observation needed to gauge full capacity.’ And this one from Dr. Longfellow: ‘Emotional trauma presumably hindering full extent of LW’s strength. Individualized training recommended.’”

  Celia began to flip through the folders again, looking for more pertinent information. Landon, however, had a year’s worth of memories running through his mind. Things he cherished, like his private sessions with Dr. Brighton and joining the Pantheon, were not genuine; they were just tactics to get closer to Landon and better understand him. Was everything a lie? Landon asked himself, thinking of his friendships and bonds with his teammates on the Pantheon. To how many was I just another mission?

  “Okay.” Celia’s voice shocked Landon out of his reverie. He gave her his full attention. On her lap rested a sizeable folder with what looked like a ream of paper inside. “This contains the entire log of the experiments they were conducting,” she said as she scanned the pages. Landon waited for her to continue, but she had fallen silent. She suddenly turned from the page and looked up at him, a disconcerted expression on her face. “Landon,” she finally managed, “they’re trying to replicate your abilities.”

  “But how?” The words blurted from his mouth without any thought.

  “Something they’re calling ‘immersive gene therapy.’ They’ve managed to isolate something from your genetic code and believe that if it’s integrated into the genetic structure of a normal psychokinetic, it will amplify their abilities to your level.” Landon glanced over to the rack of test tubes. “Their first tests were before I stole the samples last year. Judging by the scribbles here, it looks like they went horribly wrong, but when you recovered this stuff from Metis Labs, they got right back to work and have been working to perfect the process ever since. I guess they determined that the stuff needed to be inhaled—”

  “The atomizer,” Landon interrupted as the pieces began to fit together in his mind.

  “Yes, but it looks like that’s not enough. Apparently, it’s a process. There’s a primer that frees up the receptors in the cells and prepares the person for the new genetic material . . . then they get the Landon juice . . . then some stabilizer that seals in the genetic information and finalizes the process of gaining your power. If this is right, without the final step, the enhanced cells explode!” Celia’s lips curled up in disgust to reveal her teeth as she visualized the violent end before she returned to perusing the wealth of documents associated with Project Herakles.

  “Landon!” Celia drew out his name, her voice raised in shock. “There’s some—”

  High-pitched alarms suddenly sounded. In conjunction, the lights in the floor began to strobe. Landon covered his ears in a futile attempt to dampen the debilitating volume of the sirens.

  “We lingered too long,” he mouthed as panic slowly grew within him. We should have gotten out of here when we f
ound the folders.

  “What did you do?” Celia asked him, attempting to be heard over the alarms.

  “Nothing!” he screamed back. “It’s Dr. Brighton! I told you this was a trap!”

  Celia frantically stacked the folders in her arms, then reached into the box and pulled out all of its contents. Holding everything about Project Herakles close to her chest, she bolted toward the central aisle and started toward the metal door. “We need to get out of here,” she said telepathically to Landon as she flew by him. “Hurry!”

  Landon followed close behind her. They both ran at full speed to the exit, but as they approached, the metal door began to open slowly. Celia skidded to a stop and Landon followed suit, stopping himself just before he collided with her. She turned to him with a panicked expression on her face.

  “Landon, you have to knock me out.” Celia’s voice echoed through his head with hurried purpose.

  Landon’s eyes jumped between the steadily opening doors and Celia. Her expression was fearful and pleading. This was exactly what he had been trying to avoid. They had spent too much time in the Vault, and now their only way of escape was blocked. We should’ve grabbed the stuff and ran! There was no need to read it here! He berated himself for getting caught up in the moment.

  “Knock me out!” Her voice screamed over the sirens, spurring him into obedience.

  He couldn’t believe what he was about to do, but it was necessary to give them any chance in the end. It was their only choice. Landon pulled back and with his full weight behind him, punched Celia on the side of her face. It knocked her out instantly. Her body crumpled to the floor, and the contents of Project Herakles slid from her grasp and scattered across the floor.

  “Ouch!” Landon exclaimed as a jolt of pain shot from his hand up his arm to his face.

  The floor’s lights stopped pulsing and resumed their solid glow. The alarms shut off with an almost jarring silence, but then a melodic ring of rolling glass caught Landon’s attention. One of the test tubes had fallen out of the rack and was slowly rolling away. Landon held his breath as he watched it, hoping they’d break and wishing he’d done it at the locker. Suddenly, it rose off the floor a few inches, hovered there for a few seconds, and shot into the air. When he looked up he found Dr. Brighton clasping the vial in his outstretched hand. Dr. Wells, Washington Sykes, and Maureen Hammond, the grief counselor brought in after Joshua’s death, stood beside him looking at Landon, the scattered papers, and Celia’s limp body.

  “Apollo, what are you doing down here?” Dr. Wells asked.

  Dr. Wells, Dr. Brighton, Washington and Maureen stood in close proximity to one another, blending together into a single monstrous body with four heads. Yet each with a different sentiment upon their face: Dr. Wells bore a furrowed brow and slightly parted lips as he confusedly attempted to piece the scene together; Washington Sykes had a self-gratified air of long-awaited validation in catching Landon; Maureen looked intrigued, but stern; and Dr. Brighton appeared both pleased and surprised in a strange amalgamation of facial expression and body language.

  “I . . . uh . . . I—” Landon kept his eyes forward. “I followed her in. I was working out and saw her as I was leaving. There was some secret door in the wall of the Palaestra. When I saw her leaving with all this, I knew I had to stop her.”

  “But the Vault is quite secure,” declared Dr. Wells. “How did she manage to get inside?”

  Landon felt a drop of sweat trickle down his neck. “I’m not sure,” he lied. He certainly didn’t want to give away her secret talent, and tell them that Celia had phased through the metal door to gain access to the Vault. “When I got down the steps, she’d already opened the door. I only managed to sneak in as it closed.”

  “And how did she happen to get all that research before you were able to stop her?” Washington chimed in.

  “Well . . . uh . . . when I saw how big this place was and that there was only one way in and out, I figured it made more sense for me to hide and wait for her to come back than try and find her and risk letting her slip past me.”

  Washington appeared skeptical, but Dr. Wells interjected, “Very clever reasoning, Apollo. Very clever, indeed.” Time seemed to slow as a momentary silence fell upon them. Dr. Wells turned to Washington Sykes with a proud smirk. “I believe Apollo here has incapacitated our mole, Washington. Now there’s just the task of discovering who she is. Maureen, if you would do us the honors.”

  Maureen Hammond stepped forward, her reddish-brown hair bouncing around her face as she walked, and with her hand extended, telekinetically flipped Celia over to reveal her identity to the group. When she rolled onto her back, Landon noticed the side of her face was puffy and red where he had punched her. It would definitely bruise and possibly leave her with a substantial black eye.

  “Celia Jackson?” Dr. Wells sounded genuinely surprised. “I would’ve never guessed.”

  “Me neither,” Dr. Brighton said. Landon shot him a contentious glare knowing the utter falsehood of his statement. You planned this whole thing! Don’t try and pass it off as if you are surprised!

  “Maureen, if you would collect our intruder and take her for questioning, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  At Dr. Wells’ command, Maureen tightened her thin fingers, which in turn pulled Celia up off the ground. She dangled under Maureen’s hand like an oversized marionette supported by invisible wires. With deliberate steps, Maureen began to walk out of the Vault; the sound of her shoes echoed in the open space while Celia silently hovered at her side.

  Dr. Brighton broke from the remaining pack. Papers on the floor rustled around before floating off the ground and stacking themselves into a neat pile in his outstretched arms. This was followed by the tinkling sound of glass as the rack of test tubes and the atomizer topped the neat stack.

  “I’ll return these,” he said over his shoulder to Dr. Wells. Remembering what he said in the pagoda, Landon watched him as he walked away. Before he disappeared behind an aisle, Landon saw him slip the atomizer under his coat. He could see Landon watching him, yet he deliberately pocketed the device. It was a subtle but effective way for Dr. Brighton to tell Landon that he’d won. Landon assumed he would do the same with the vials.

  “Apollo, it’s very late. I think you’d better head off to bed. We can take care of the rest.” Dr. Wells’ words regained Landon’s attention. “Washington, would you please escort Apollo to the dormitories?”

  “With pleasure.” Washington shot Landon a swift, pointed look.

  Landon nodded in agreement, but he could sense a strange tension in the air. It made him uneasy as he followed behind Washington. His mind raced with conflicting action. Should he obey Dr. Wells’ instruction and go to bed? Should he, instead, incapacitate Washington and rush to save Celia? Should he tell everyone to watch out for Dr. Brighton? The onslaught of thoughts slowed Landon’s pace, and as he reached the doorway, he turned back to get one last glance of Dr. Brighton stepping out of the aisle. Landon’s eyebrows twitched with anger. What is he planning?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE ACOLYTE

  “So Celia Jackson is the elusive Artemis,” Washington said as they reentered the Palaestra. “Interesting how things work out.” Landon took a deep breath. “I wonder if you would mind answering a few more questions for me before I take you to your room?”

  “Sure.” Landon tried to sound nonchalant, like he had nothing to hide, but his voice squeaked unexpectedly. He coughed to clear his throat, and repeated with a more solid intonation, “Sure. Mind if I put some shoes on first?”

  Landon wiggled his toes as Washington looked down at his bare feet. Since waking up in Dr. Brighton’s garden apartment, Landon had scarcely had a moment to think about anything besides saving Celia, especially that his shoes were sitting beside the doorway of the pagoda. In fact, that mi
ssion was still top of mind, but in walking up the staircase into the Palaestra, he became suddenly aware of his shoeless status. And in that moment, Landon realized that might give him just enough time to figure out how to handle the situation.

  Landon sauntered up to his locker as Washington watched him closely. He tried so hard to look calm, but his heart pounded in his chest and he could physically feel his blood pumping up his neck. As he opened his locker, he felt a pang of anxiety course through him, but he fought to maintain his composure. The only things in his locker were the lightweight, self-adjusting shoes he used on missions and the Gecko Gloves, both of which he’d tossed in there in a fit of panic after his altercation with Brock. He grabbed the shoes and, sitting on the bench, pulled them onto his dirty, bare feet. Trying to keep up the charade, Landon stayed down and mimicked tying his laces as the shoes automatically adjusted to his feet. He hoped Washington wouldn’t notice they were not normal sneakers.

  “Hurry up!” Washington grew impatient.

  Landon shot up off the bench and closed his locker before returning to Washington, who was leaning against the doorway. Washington didn’t speak as he escorted Landon up to the interrogation room located in the back of the Forge.

  Landon entered with hesitant steps, recollecting the last time he’d sat in the room with Washington. Memories of the pain he endured when Washington tried to hack into his mind suddenly rose to the surface as if the wounds were still fresh. The door closed behind him and made him jump, and a second later the light over the table flickered on.