Omega City

by Diana Peterfreund

  “It’s Aloysius Underberg,” I insisted. “It’s his handwriting. I think it’s his diary.”

  Now Eric paused his game and turned to me. “What are you talking about, Gillian? Dr. Underberg’s diary was destroyed when that pipe burst. Remember? The Reistertown Historical Society banned Dad for life.”

  “Exactly!” I said. Eric and I had shoveled soggy pulp out of the office for two days. “And yet, here are pages from the diary. What does that say to you?”

  “That someone was smarter than Dad and scanned it a long time ago, before it was destroyed?”

  “Nope.” I tapped the page. “The scan is date-stamped. Date-stamped last month. Which means that this diary wasn’t destroyed in the flood. Maybe none of Dad’s notes were. Maybe that pipe in the wall didn’t even burst.”

  “Don’t joke about that,” said Eric. “I lost my comic book collection and my PlayStation in that flood.”

  “Just hear me out,” I argued. “Someone out there didn’t want Dad to publish that book about Dr. Underberg. That part we know.”

  “You know.”

  “What if the flood wasn’t an accident?” I pushed on, ignoring Eric’s crack. “What if it was all part of the plan? They broke into the house and staged it to look like the flood ruined Dad’s stuff, but really they broke the pipe and stole his files, hoping that if his research was gone, he’d have to stop writing the book.”

  “Ha,” Eric interrupted. “They’ve clearly never met Dad.”

  I ignored him. “And when he published the book despite everything, they knew the only thing to do was ruin him.” Ruin us.

  “They?” Savannah asked, wrinkling her eyebrows. “Who is they?”

  Eric snorted. “With Dad and Gillian, there’s always a they. They covered up the Roswell experiments. They know who killed JFK. They destroyed Dr. Underberg and now they are out to get me—”

  “Well, if there is a they,” I said, cutting off my brother, “then Fiona is one of them. Because she has pages from Dad’s Underberg diary, which supposedly doesn’t even exist anymore.”

  “If she’s part of the conspiracy, she must be getting a real laugh from the nuts in Dad’s beginner classes,” Eric said.

  Savannah looked more contemplative. “What do you think she’s trying to do, Gillian? I mean, your dad can’t do anything to expose”—she made air quotes—“them anymore. After everything that’s happened, well . . . people just sort of think he’s crazy.”

  “You can say that again.” Eric unpaused his game and went back to killing zombies like the conversation was over. Fine. He could waste his time chasing video game monsters. I was going after real ones.

  “I don’t think she’s trying to do anything to my dad,” I said to Savannah. “I think she’s trying to get something from him.”

  “Like what?”

  “She said last night that Dad was the greatest scholar of his generation. If anyone can figure out what happened to Dr. Underberg, it’s him.”

  “I thought you said Dr. Underberg was dead.”

  “Right, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about how he died. Or where. Or what happened to his stuff.” Soon after the government fired him over the Underberg battery, he stopped filing patents, sold his house . . . and then one day, he disappeared. Like he got bumped off by the CIA or the KGB or some other organization with a couple of letters and a lot of spies. The prototype for the hundred-year battery disappeared, too. Official sources say the battery never worked. But Dad’s book says different.

  “Look.” I pointed at the first page. “The things Underberg is writing in these pages, it’s all really weird, like he’s talking in code.”

  “Underberg?” Eric mocked as he battled the undead. “Weird? You don’t say.”

  Savannah read the top page. “‘X marks the spot has been done. I far prefer IX.’ Yeah, that makes no sense.” She picked up the next one, which Fiona had given the file name of “Omega-AU-pg125.” “‘My last and lasting gift to mankind . . .’ blah blah blah ‘. . . we are not ready for the stars, though there are those who would Shepherd us there against our wills. While the Earth remains, so shall I.’” She glanced at me over the top of the page. “Your dad read this whole diary?”

  “And it all sounded just as nuts,” said Eric. He tossed the controller to the couch. “I can’t listen to this anymore. I’m going to be in my room. Come get me when the pizza’s here.” He leaped over Savannah and stomped off.

  Savannah nodded at the other papers. “So what do the rest say?”

  I handed over the spreadsheet with a shrug. “There’s this one, which is just a bunch of numbers to me. And then this one, which I can’t even figure out why she bothered scanning.” I passed Savannah the last scan, which simply showed the edge of a torn-off sheet. The only writing visible was a few pen marks on the edge of the ragged page.

  Savannah looked at them all, then tapped the edges against the coffee table until they were in a nice, neat stack and laid them down carefully. “Gillian,” she said slowly. “Let’s say Fiona did break into this house two years ago and stole your dad’s files and caused a flood and then ruined his life. If all that’s true, then she’s already got whatever information he has about Underberg. So why is she dating him now? Why is she going to all his conspiracy theory lectures and stuff?”

  “You’re siding with Eric?” Some friend!

  “No.” She held up her hands in defense. “I’m just saying . . . it’s a big leap. Maybe she’s not one of . . . them or whatever. Maybe Fiona doesn’t have the diary because she stole it from your dad. Maybe she bought it off eBay or something, not realizing it was stolen. You said she met your dad in one of his classes. What if she’s just interested in this stuff, same as him? Maybe your dad even knows about the scans.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “If my dad knew that diary was still around, he would have mentioned it to me.” He’d complained often enough about it being gone. Fiona was fishy. Why didn’t anyone believe me?

  The doorbell rang. Savannah perked up. “He’s here! How do I look?”

  “Great,” I said. Sav always looked great.

  This was the thing about Thursdays.

  “Girls,” came the voice on the other side of the door. “Can we not do this today? I’ve got, like, ten deliveries to make.”

  Savannah, already crawling toward the windows near the door, covered her mouth with her hand and squealed. She twisted around and beckoned to me, eyes glittering with excitement. I sighed and crawled after her. Paper Clip followed, yellow tail flicking in the air. When we reached the window, Savannah lifted the curtain a fraction of an inch, peeked out, then slammed her body to the floor.

  “He’s there! Gillian!”

  “Of course he’s there,” I whispered. “We ordered pizza from him.”

  “Girls?” came his voice again. “Please? I’ll give you a free order of egg-roll calzones.”

  Savannah crouched beneath the windowsill and lifted the curtain again. I caught a glimpse of his truck, a beat-up red pickup with a magnetic General Tso’s Pizza sign affixed to the side. Our town’s too small to have more than one delivery place, so General Tso’s does pizza and Chinese food—and to be honest, they’re kind of bad at both. The only decent thing they have going for them is this delivery guy, who Savannah, in keeping with the military theme, has christened Private Pizza.

  Private Pizza is really, really cute. He’s very tall, very tan, has very dark hair and very beautiful green eyes and as far as we can tell, he only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  Savannah was now putting on lip gloss and arranging her long, stick-straight blond hair over her shoulders. She handed me the lip gloss but I shook my head. Banana-flavored. Yuck. I did, however, tighten my ponytail.

  She stood up, smoothed her top down over the waist of her jeans, and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going in.”

  I gave her a thumbs-up.

  She yanked the door open. “Hi,” she cooed.

  Privat
e Pizza stood under the porch light, pizza in his hands. He wore his red General Tso’s T-shirt with its ironed-on military fringe and Mandarin collar under an unzipped blue hoodie. “Hi.”

  “Is this our pizza? Tomato, cheese, and sesame chicken?”

  “Should be.”

  Savannah cocked her head to the side. “I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to say.”

  Private Pizza rolled his eyes. “Come on, kid.”

  “I think,” Savannah went on coyly, “that if you don’t say it, we get it free.”

  He sighed, straightened, and clicked his heels together. “I present to you, lovely maiden, this golden disk of the seven heavens, baked by the flame of four noble dragons.” He bowed his head over the pizza box and held it out.

  Savannah giggled, took the box, and handed him the money Dad left for us. “Awesome.”

  Private Pizza stepped back. “Yeah, no free egg-roll calzones for you,” he said, and jogged off the porch.

  Savannah closed the door, but watched him as he got back in the car and peeled off down the driveway, gravel spinning out from under his wheels. “He’s so hot.”

  “Hotter than the pizza,” I said, grabbing the box. “Since you make him stand out there for five minutes first.”

  “He’s my future husband!” Savannah insisted, following me back to the dining room table. “I want to spend as much time with him as possible.”

  “Your future husband?” I asked skeptically. “You don’t even know his name.” I opened the box. Nestled into the corners around the pizza were four wrapped fortune cookies. I yelled for Eric.

  “That’ll come later,” Sav declared, and snagged a slice.

  “I’m just saying, we could have had calzones if you’d just answered the door and didn’t make him do the whole routine.”

  “Egg-roll calzones?” Eric asked, materializing by my side.

  “Forget it.” Savannah peeled the cheese off her pizza. “They’re fattening anyway.”

  “So how’s the Fiona conspiracy coming along?” Eric asked as we all sat down with our pizza. “Have you figured out her evil plot of evil against Dad yet? Just tell me if Paper Clip is in on it. And to think of all the catnip I’ve given that traitor.”

  “Paper Clip is on our side,” I said as the cat rubbed against my legs and whined for her dinner.

  “That’s what she wants you to think.” He turned to Savannah. “See, it’s not enough for conspiracy theorists that there’s a they. There also has to be an evil plot, and it usually involves taking over the world.”

  “I don’t think Fiona is trying to take over the world.”

  “No,” said Eric, with his mouth full. “Just Dad.”

  That was it. I’d had enough of the doubters. I pushed back from the table and stood. “Okay. I’ll get proof.”

  “This ought to be good,” Eric said. I ignored him and stalked into Dad’s office. His inner sanctum.

  After the flood and the scandal, Dad became much more careful about his records. He even invented a filing system—of sorts. As he’d pointed out to me, if the system was too straightforward, it would be easy for them to get in. So, for instance, Eric’s and my medical and school records aren’t filed under our names. They are filed under K for “kids.” You have to be one of us to figure out the secret codes and find anything.

  On top of that, the whole cabinet is housed in a fireproof safe, every file is enclosed in a waterproof plastic bag, and—because it’s Dad we’re talking about here—he’s even made sure to include some tamper-proof elements, just in case they come around. Every single plastic bag is sealed with a minuscule hair trapped precisely one inch from the left side of the bag. That way, if someone came and opened it without Dad’s knowledge, the hair would fall out of place and he’d know.

  It’s truly brilliant, and not paranoid or whatever Mom called it on her last visit.

  “If Fiona really was into the whole conspiracy theory thing,” I said loudly, storming over to the safe, “then she would have had at least basic password protection on her laptop files. I wouldn’t have been able to copy them.” I dialed in the combination to the safe, then yanked open the cabinet marked P–Z. “And if Fiona really was into my dad, and had gone out of her way to get copies of the Underberg diary for him, then she would have given them to him.” S-section for scientist, A-folder for Aloysius. I flipped to the appropriate waterproof bag. “And he would have put them away . . . right here.”

  I looked down at the seal.

  No hair.

  4

  LOST AND LAST

  I LOOKED UP AT ERIC, MY MOUTH OPEN IN SHOCK. “ERIC, THERE’S NO hair.”

  “What?” Savannah asked, her eyebrows knitting.

  “My dad always seals these files with a hair. That way he knows if someone comes along and tampers with it. There’s no hair on the seal of this file.”

  Savannah blinked at me several times, then turned to my brother. “Okay, Eric, I’m officially on your side. This is ridiculous.”

  But the color had drained from my brother’s face. “No, Gillian is right. Dad’s nuts about his system. I mean, he might forget to turn off the iron, but he never, ever forgets the hair seal on his files.” I was sure he was already envisioning Dad breaking out the tent and mapping a secret campsite. Eric would go into video game withdrawal. “If he’d shown this to Fiona, the hair would still be there.”

  “Eww, really?” Savannah asked. “Whose hair does he use?”

  “His,” Eric said, pushing past Savannah to join me at the cabinet. “He almost went bald after the flood when he first set this up.” Eric turned to me. “Is there any way to tell if something’s missing?”

  I glanced at the file, the pages and CDs of info contained within. “I don’t know. But I do think I know Fiona’s plan. Savannah said maybe Fiona had somehow bought Dr. Underberg’s diary for my dad, like maybe she thought he’d like some extra information on him.”

  “So?” Savannah asked.

  “Well, what if it’s exactly the opposite? What if she needs some extra information about Underberg—something that’s not in the diary—and she thinks my dad still has it?”

  “And she’s dating him to sweet-talk him into giving it to her?” Eric had definitely dropped the sarcasm.

  “Or to get close enough to him so she could get into his office and see what he had left.”

  My brother nodded slowly. “That would explain what she sees in him, at least.”

  “All her files were named Omega,” I said. “Whatever she’s looking for, it’s called Omega.”

  “You could look under O?” Savannah suggested.

  Eric snorted. “Dad’s system doesn’t work like that. We’d need to know what Omega means to Dad.”

  “Or what it meant to Underberg.” I closed up the filing cabinet and grabbed a copy of Dad’s Underberg book off the shelf. We have loads of copies lying around, ever since the publisher stopped selling them. I turned to the index, looking for any mention of “Omega.”

  “Nothing in the book,” I said. “What does Omega even mean?”

  “I think it’s a Greek letter,” said Savannah. “My cousin is a Chi Omega at college. Sororities all have Greek-letter names.”

  “So maybe Underberg was in a fraternity called Omega?” I asked.

  “It also means ‘last,’” Eric pointed out. “Like The Omega Man is a zombie movie about the last human on Earth. And a lot of final bosses in video games are Omega this or Omega that.”

  Savannah was already paging through Dad’s dictionary to O. “We’re both right. It’s the last letter in the Greek alphabet, so sometimes people use it to mean ‘last’ or ‘end.’”

  “G for Greek?” Eric asked me, turning back to the filing cabinet. “F for foreign languages?”

  I smiled at him. Finally, he’d seen the light. I pulled open a drawer. “Let’s try L for Last.” But there was no file marked “Last” in the drawer. Just one marked “Loose Pages.” I lifted it out and open
ed the waterproof bag, making sure to press my finger over the hair seal to keep it from slipping out.

  The file was pretty thick, with all kinds of paper scraps—what looked like everything from old grocery lists to a few notes scrawled on the backs of receipts. A small, yellowed page of lined paper caught my eye and I yanked it out of the stack.

  The size and shape matched the scans from Fiona’s computer. The edge was ragged, as if it had been torn from a notebook. The handwriting was Aloysius Underberg’s.

  I clutched the page to my chest and ran back to the living room with Paper Clip—who knew quite well never to enter Dad’s office—hot on my heels from the second I hit the hall. The printouts of Fiona’s files were still sitting on the coffee table and I lined the loose page up against the torn edges on the final printout, the one marked “Omega-AU-pg127.”

  It was a perfect match.

  I heard Savannah and Eric behind me.

  “This is what she’s looking for,” I whispered, holding up the matching pages. “It’s the missing last page of Underberg’s diary. It must have fallen out and gotten lost with Dad’s stuff before the rest of the diary was stolen.” I dropped back on the couch.

  “So Omega means the last page of Dr. Underberg’s diary?” Savannah asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Wait, no,” said Eric. “That doesn’t make sense. All Fiona’s files are named Omega, not just the one for this page.”

  “True.” So if she wasn’t looking for this one piece of paper, what was she looking for? Paper Clip leaped up beside me and scratched her cheek against the edge of the page. “But then what is it?”

  “Well,” prompted Eric, plucking the page out of my hand. “What does the magical page say?”

  I tried to grab it back, but he held it out of my reach, vaulting over the back of the couch.

  “A whole lot of gibberish,” he said with a shrug. “Typical Underberg stuff.”