by James Phelan
At the bottom of a ravine is a dark patch of ground that I dig at and it soon pools with a tiny puddle of water. I crouch down on my hands and knees and sip it.
Damn.
Salty.
I sit back, resting for a moment.
‘Sam! Sam!’
Someone is calling me.
The voice comes down from above somewhere, the sound echoing around me in this gully.
I get to my feet and climb as fast as I can. I stand at the top of the dune and listen …
‘Sam?’
I know the voice—it’s my father. I turn around and see my mum and dad on the dune behind me, like they’ve been following my fading footprints in the sand.
‘Sam!’ my mum says, waving.
I run towards them, my exhaustion forgotten. As I reach the top of the dune, my smile and enthusiasm wane and are replaced with panic.
My parents aren’t there anymore.
I look all around—they are nowhere to be seen. I call for them, but no reply comes. I look at the sand at my feet and see only my own footprints.
A mirage?
‘Sam!’
I turn. There, a few dunes over in the direction of the ridge, my parents wave me over.
I run again.
Down, up, down, up, until I crest the dune where my parents are, and double over to catch my breath.
‘Sam!’
I look ahead—they are still six or seven dunes away, towards the ridge. I look back the way I’ve come. My footprints are everywhere, like I’ve been wandering around this one dune for hours. I look up at my parents—
Gone.
‘Sam?’
They are back the other way. A long way away.
‘OK …’ I say. ‘I know what this is. Let’s change it up.’
There is a crackle in the sky, lightning and then—
I am standing at the ridge and next to me are my parents.
‘Hey,’ my father says. ‘That was neat.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, dusting the sand off myself.
‘Getting good at this dreaming thing,’ my mum says.
‘At last,’ I admit. ‘Where are we?’
‘It’s your dream,’ my father replies.
I look around. The sand dunes are gone and from the ridge I can see a canyon. ‘We’ve been here before,’ I say.
We are at a lookout I’d been to with my parents when I was ten.
‘The Grand Canyon,’ my mother says. ‘Remember our trip here?’
I nod, then turn to them.
‘Where are you guys?’ I say. ‘Right now, I mean.’
‘We’re here,’ they reply.
‘In the Grand Canyon?’ I say.
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s where she took us,’ my mum says slowly.
‘Who?’ My heart starts to thump in my chest.
Neither answers. Then I see her.
Stella.
She stands by a car, holding a gun.
‘Why are we here?’ I ask.
My parents still don’t answer.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you worked for the Enterprise?’ I say.
Again they are silent. I turn to face them and they are gone once more.
I wait, expecting them to reappear somewhere near, on another ridge or maybe the dunes will return, but I am alone under Stella’s glare, alone at the lookout, left with nothing but memories of my parents.
Stella too disappears into the heat haze of the desert landscape.
Now I am completely alone.
‘Why?’ I shout at the sky. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’
The ground underfoot shakes and the sky changes. It starts to rain but then I realise that it is me, crying, and I wake up.
SAM
Sam was warm. He stretched out and woke, his body slowly coming online. He looked around and saw—sand?
I’m on the island … it was just a dream about my parents. No, not parents, Enterprise Agents.
He shook off the thoughts and sat up.
Then he saw feet. In boots.
Sam reached out for his dart gun. In one swift move he snapped up and aimed straight for—
‘Sam, no!’
‘Tobias?’
Sam sat up further and looked around. The shelter was gone. Behind Tobias stood a contingent of Guardians.
‘Maria?’ he said to Tobias. ‘Where are Maria and her father?’
‘They’re at their camp, along with Rapha and Xavier.’
‘Huh?’
Then Sam realised. He was still on the same island, just no longer at the shelter with Maria and Chris.
‘Did I … did I sleepwalk here?’
‘Looks that way,’ Tobias said then laughed. ‘There’s another talent we can add to your expanding skill set.’
Sam realised he was on the sandbar, and Maria’s boat, the Scaramanga, was tied up just in front of him.
‘How did you guys all get here? What happened to the coastguards?’
‘Thanks to the Guardian’s call to the Academy, the Professor had some friends from the Dreamer Council put pressure on the Cuban government.’
‘So then?’
‘They sent out the police to arrest those taking bribes from Hans. They missed out on apprehending Hans himself, unfortunately,’ Tobias said, then he pointed offshore. ‘But, as long as we’re in Cuban waters, we’ve got a Cuban navy escort.’
A gunboat was moored just off the island, flying the Cuban flag.
‘How’d you go with those cannons?’
Tobias laughed. ‘You know, it was pretty impressive. Might have been a pirate in a past life.’
‘Sam!’ Maria ran towards him, with the others close behind, and she hugged him. ‘We thought you’d been taken in the night.’
‘Apparently I sleepwalk now,’ Sam said.
Rapha and Xavier crowded around and Maria showed them the Gear that she’d found on the hidden galleon.
‘Excellent,’ Tobias said. ‘OK, let’s pack up and head to the boat.’
‘Where are we headed, back to London?’ Sam said.
‘The Florida Keys, actually, where we’ll connect to a flight to Canada.’
‘Canada?’ Sam said, as the group walked across the beach towards the Scaramanga. ‘What’s in Canada?’
‘Canadians,’ Xavier replied.
Sam smiled.
‘We’ve got a team in Vancouver now,’ Tobias said. ‘And they’re moving in on Lora and Eva’s position.’
‘You’ve found them?’
‘We’ve had confirmation that they’re fine. Mac has them in a compound there.’
‘And how do we bust them out?’ Sam asked.
Tobias turned to the huge captain of the Guardians next to him, who smiled and said in a broad Australian accent, ‘With brute force, mate. With brute force …’
38
Key West was an explosion of sound and vivid technicolour to Sam, who’d grown used to the calm of the ocean and the constant low thrumming of the boat’s engine on the way there. It was busy with cars and people and tourists—business as usual.
Little do they know the race going on to save them all …
Sam watched the world flash by as they hurried from the marina in a four-vehicle convoy: he, Maria, Xavier, Rapha, Tobias and Chris in a van with a couple of Guardians, the rest of the Guardians loaded into sedans surrounding them as they drove through the streets.
‘Why are we driving?’ Sam asked.
‘Flight leaves from another island,’ Tobias replied, watching out his window. ‘Maybe we’ll even drive across to the mainland.’
‘Why?’ Sam asked. ‘Aren’t we safer in the air?’
‘We’re safest when we change up our plans at the last minute,’ Tobias replied, ‘when we’re unpredictable. Then those against us don’t have time to plan their attack.’
‘Makes sense …’ Sam said. He’d lost count of the times that their enemies seemed to be too close for comfort
—or worse, there a step ahead of them. Sam knew that somehow they had advance knowledge of the movements of Dreamers and Academy personnel. ‘Maybe next time we shouldn’t have any plans at all.’
‘We’ve got safe houses set up all over,’ Tobias said. ‘If we’re lost or separated at all, the Guardians will take you to the nearest one.’
Sam glanced out to see the neighbourhood streets had ended and they were headed over a bridge, long and smooth, stretching out far over the water. He marvelled at this feat of engineering, of man over nature, before focusing back on the conversations around him.
‘… rescue Lora and Eva,’ Tobias continued.
‘Where?’ Xavier said.
‘Vancouver. And we’ve seen that Alex is there too.’
‘So we’re all going?’ Sam said, pointing to Xavier, Rapha, Maria and Chris.
Tobias looked at them. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Another new plan. We’ll form three separate teams, each with Guardians for protection, and split up.’
‘Split up?’ Xavier said.
‘Drive, fly, you name it. Spread the chase, see if we can distract our pursuers, at least for a while. Buy you and me a little time to do what we need to, off the grid.’
Sam nodded. ‘So we drive across the US?’ he asked.
‘For now,’ Tobias replied.
‘I like road trips,’ Sam said as they drove down the road.
‘Good—we’ve got a long one ahead of us,’ Tobias replied.
‘What makes you so sure that there are enemies close by?’ Maria asked.
‘Because they will know that we’ve been in the field,’ Tobias said. ‘They will know that we’ll likely head to the US. And we just can’t take any chances—they’re always just a step or two behind us.’
‘And they’ll know,’ Sam said, ‘that we’ve found the next Gear. Right?’ He instinctively looked to Maria.
Sam looked out the window and for a moment the image of his parents at the Grand Canyon from his dream flashed into his mind. He blinked it away.
Outside, the car behind, a white SUV with blacked out windows, pulled alongside to overtake but slowed a little, keeping pace with their vehicle. The back window rolled down.
‘Brake!’ Sam yelled, and without hesitation their driver hit the brakes hard as he could.
From the SUV’s open window a machine gun’s muzzle thrust out, the bullets tearing up the road right where their front wheel would have been.
Sam could see the Guardians’ cars in front had slowed and were now locked in a gun battle of their own with two more vehicles approaching from the other end of the bridge.
‘Get us out of here!’ Tobias yelled.
The driver didn’t reply. He slumped forward against the steering wheel as the windscreen disintegrated in a hail of bullets. The Guardian in the passenger seat leaned across to grab the wheel, hitting the gas pedal to send the van surging forwards.
‘Hold on!’ Tobias yelled out as—
KLAP-BOOM!
One of the Guardian vehicles up ahead exploded, twisting through the air and smashing back down, blocking off the road ahead.
The Guardian hit the brakes, but it was too little, too late.
Sam’s world seemed to slow. He looked at the faces around him. His friends were all flinching and bracing for the impending impact. As they hit, he felt his seatbelt tighten, heard glass shatter and saw steel twist.
Their car crumpled in the front as it hit the flaming wreckage of the other vehicle. The last thing Sam saw through the smoky mayhem was a car screeching to a halt as a dozen of Stella’s Agents spilled out onto the bridge, guns drawn.
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Published by Scholastic Australia in 2014.
Text copyright © James Phelan, 2014.
Illustrations & design copyright © Scholastic Australia, 2014.
Illustrations by Chad Mitchell. Design by Nicole Stofberg.
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eISBN: 978-1-925-06328-8