“Look for anything peculiar on the back wall,” I say.
“There seems to be several old posters…” Izzi says. “But I can’t make out much more than that…”
Ugh. Just my luck. Our one lead: garbage.
“Oh…” Izzi exclaims.
“What is it?” Nate asks.
“There seems to be cement or something… some seal that is molded along the base of the back wall. It runs perpendicular to the floor, too… right in the middle of the wall.”
“That’s it. That’s the door,” I say. “They must have sealed it off since the last time it was used.”
“Great, now let’s get out of here,” Kono says. “I’m sure they’re watching this place closely if it was ever an entrance.”
“What, you afraid they’re going to find us, Kono?” Nickel teases. “You want to quit the mission.”
“No, and no,” she responds.
“Well, I’m worried they could find you,” I say. “So now we know an entrance is here; come back, and we can decide what our next move is. Nice work guys.”
“Wait, you don’t want to see what’s inside?” Elijah asks.
“Not right now,” I reply. “Not with the three of them out there by themselves. There could be booby-traps all over the barber shop.”
“Booby-traps?” Lazzer pipes up. “Like bombs?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“On our way back to the Base,” Izzi says. The video on the left billboard turns away from the barber shop and to the road where cars and people pass by, oblivious to the importance and probable danger of the abandoned barber shop.
“Nice work, Annika, Nate, and Zoë,” Marissa says. “This is good.”
“Yeah,” Lazzer says. “I just wish we knew what entrance they use to get in and out.”
“We do, but there’s no way we can use that entrance without catching them by surprise,” Nate says.
“And where is that?”
“The hospital is one of them.”
“So there’s more than one entrance they use?”
“There’s several, but those are all highly monitored and in public places.”
“They must have places all over Cleveland,” Abraham murmurs. We turn to him, but he’s staring at the screen. He shakes his head and looks at us. “Maybe they own the big Meat Brothers downtown, too! God! How terrible would that be?! They’d have to shut it down when they go to jail, and then we’d have no more burgers!”
The others shake their heads, clearly not as concerned as Abraham that the burger economy in Cleveland could be in a crisis if Dr. Nancy and his men are caught and sent to jail.
“Abe, I doubt one of the most famous names of the Cleveland hospitals owns one of the greasiest fast-food restaurants in the city,” Zoë counters.
“And with a concussion, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the screens for very long.
“Besides, it’s not like Five Guys has―” Nate starts to say.
“Annika!” a voice calls from behind us.
We turn and see Cliff standing fifteen feet behind us.
“Cliff!” Nate says. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be down here―”
“Moton wants to see Annika in his office,” Cliff says.
Cliff’s voice is automatic, and his mouth is the only muscle in his body to move. His crystal blue eyes shift from Nate to Zoë to me, then back to Nate again. Nate looks at Zoë, his eyes vibrating and his skin pale, as if Cliff had told him the building was on fire or Jericho had returned― oh, now that would be something. Zoë’s face mirrors Nate’s, and suddenly I feel butterflies in my stomach, and my palms sweat. Something is wrong, very wrong, and no one seems to notice except Cliff, Nate, Zoë, and me. Wasn’t there an FBI agent who came in to speak with Moton this morning? But Nate said he left hours ago… right after lunch… Somehow, going to Moton’s office is the most dangerous thing I feel I could do right now.
“Immediately,” Cliff says.
I pull myself out of the chair and saunter toward Cliff. No one says a word. I guess the ominous aura spread to the others, because no one dares to make even a sound. I reach out and hold Cliff’s arm. He nods, and before I know it, the gray, spacious Base swirls away, and I find myself in the waiting room outside Moton’s office. Cliff is right next to me, though he appears completely insensible and unconcerned of my presence.
“Cliff,” I whisper. Not another soul is present, yet to speak above a whisper feels inappropriate. “What does Moton want?”
He turns to me with hollow eyes. “I don’t know,” he says. He turns away, thank goodness―those hollow eyes―and he knocks on the door. Moton answers:
“Annika, come in,” he says. His voice sounds inviting but false. “Thank you, Cliff.” Moton closes the door on the boy.
In Moton’s office, a desk sits at one end with a large bookshelf behind it, and two identical black chairs rest across from the single, gray chair behind the desk. Moton moves behind his desk to that gray chair.
“Please, sit down,” he says, motioning his hand to the twin chairs. I take a seat in one of them and fold my hands together on my lap. The chair is not as comfortable as it looks; the sides are too solid and stiff, threatening to close in on me.
“What’s wrong, Dr. Reins?” I ask, almost forgetting his formal name.
He doesn’t make eye contact with me― not yet. He opens a drawer in his desk and starts searching through its contents. Then he stops, stares at the drawer for a good ten seconds, closes the door and focuses all his attention toward me.
“Annika,” he says. His voice is low and commanding, and I finally see how the opponents he faced in his years as a “superhero” must have dreaded him. “I’ve been very patient with you since you’ve been here, let you in with the children I live to protect and instruct.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Answers, Annika. I need answers.”
I swallow. I knew this was coming.
“Your name is Basia Marie Nancy, daughter of Dr. Stefan Nancy and Diana Finch?”
I nod.
“And you were born June tenth, the year two thousand and forty-six?”
“The second, not the tenth,” I correct him.
Moton nods in approval.
“How many children had Dr. Nancy experimented on?” he asks.
No answer.
“Annika,” he says. “I’m looking out for your interests by asking you these questions. Either you explain these things to me and start answering, or I have to take whatever actions necessary based on the information I just received from the FBI this morning.”
“The FBI? You trust the information the FBI gives you?” I ask.
“What came in today went through the CIA, the International Crisis Committee, and MI6 before ever reaching the FBI,” he says.
Oh God… what information could they have found that would involve all those divisions? What could they have shown Moton that would make him threaten to restrain me, or worse?
“Annika, how many child experiments?”
“What did they tell you?”
“How many?”
I’m taken back, astonished. “I don’t know,” I whisper, looking down at the grey, metal desk. “Too many.”
“What kind of experiments did he perform?”
“Things like… like chemical and blood mixtures, genetic mutations, implants… a lot of different ones.”
“Hmm,” Moton hums. He straightens his back. “And you participated in some of these experiments?”
I stay silent.
“You lived in his laboratory, underground, correct?”
I nod.
“So you knew about the experiments, of course. You must have helped with some of them, yes?”
“No.”
“But you participated in the experiments?”
“I was a test subject. Nothing more,” I snap.
Moton looks at me for a while, really looks at me. Some
part of what I said he doesn’t believe, probably because he’s right. I am more than just a test subject. I always was.
“And then you left?” he asks.
“I ran away,” I say.
Who does he think he is to fire these questions at me? I feel the fire burning in me again, angry and growing.
“Yes, almost two years ago,” he continues. “Where did you go in those twenty-two months?”
No response.
“Where did you go?”
No response.
“Is Austria one of the places you went?”
What? Moton reopens the draw, pulls out a laminated picture, and slams the picture on the table in front of me. It’s her. The girl. The girl from Austria.
“Do you know this girl?” he asks, frowning.
I swear he could jump over the desk and strangle me to death and that would have the same effect as his menacing frown. That was like her eyes. Oh, God! They found her.
“Answer me!” Moton shouts, and for a second, I believe he would actually jump over the desk and strangle me to death. “Look at her!”
I force my eyes to study the picture. There she is: her long, dark hair, pale-blue skin, and those piercing, grey-green eyes half open. Dressed in all black, a dark magenta stains the front of her where a dark, burnt, fleshy crater hollows the center of her chest.
“She was found in Austria, washed out from a sewer. The CIA, ICC, and FBI all confirm her to be Basia Nancy. Tell me how that is possible!”
No response.
Moton slams his fist on the desk. “Tell me ‘yes’ or ‘no’: is this Basia Nancy?”
Why? He already knows it’s her.
“Yes. She is Basia Nancy,” I reply.
“Then who the hell are you?!” Moton yells.
I can’t respond.
I have to get out of here. They know― they know! I have to get out of here before they turn me in or let the hunting crew have me for supper. Kenyon isn’t safe. The Metanites, when they find out, if they don’t know already, will hate me, and then they’ll hunt me, too. I have to go. I have to go…
“Are you a spy? Who do you work for?”
“No one.”
“Well, if she’s Basia Nancy, then I don’t know who that makes you, but we both know your name is not Annika,” Moton persists. “Who are you?”
No response.
“Look back at the picture! Do you know what happened to this girl? She was killed―killed when a blast of nuclear energy struck her in the chest!”
No response.
“Did you kill her?!”
No response.
“Basia Nancy was the only one with that nuclear ability, and her death was not self-inflicted. But you… you have that kind of power. I can see if you lost control and―”
“Lost control?” I snap. I shake my head. “No. No, I had control.”
“Then you did kill her?”
No response.
“My hands are tied. If you don’t tell me who you are, then I will have to turn you over to the FBI and―” he says.
I stand up and shove the desk at him, trapping him between the desk and the bookshelf. Several books fall from the shelf and hit the floor, crumpling pages and bending paperback covers. I lean over the desk and glare at him with my piercing, grey-green eyes.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” I mutter wickedly. And then I do what I always do, what I’m best at: I run.
I burst through the door and sprint down the hallway. I’m almost to the elevators when a flaring, red siren screams around me. The doors to the elevators close automatically. Shit! I sprint to stairs start ascending. The Metanites… they’re already on their way up their secret elevator, but this time they’re looking for me. What am I doing? I should be going down the stairs to get to the ground.
“Annika!” someone yells from the tenth floor. As I turn to the next flight of stairs, I see Zoë chasing after me. “Annika, wait!”
The “wait” catches me, and for some reason I don’t fully understand, I slow down and let Zoë catch up to me. She doesn’t stop when she sees me though; no, she runs past me, grabbing my arm and pulling me with her.
“No time no explain,” she says as we race up the stairs. “Just get to the roof.”
“What? Zoë, do you know―” I stammer.
“Don’t worry about the others. I’ll take care of them; you just worry about getting to the roof. We come to a door marked “18” and she pulls me out into the hall. The hall reminds me of a school. There’s not a soul in the hallway, but lockers line the hall with posters of clubs and motivational quotes, and every door is locked shut. Most of the lights are out too, which makes sense, because there wouldn’t be school still at five o’clock in the evening.
“Come-on, come-on,” Zoë mutters, pulling me down the hall. Soon, Cliff teleports into the hall some thirty feet in front of us.
“Get her to the roof,” Zoë says.
Cliff nods and stretches his hand out to me. The red siren still rings through the hall, reminding me that my welcome here has died, but then again…
“Whoa, wait!” I exclaim, stopping before we run into Cliff. “What is going on, here? Zoë, why are you helping me?”
“No time, Annika,” she replies.
I open my mouth to object, but I feel a hand touch my arm, and soon the lockers and the posters swirl away, replaced by a gray, cloudy sky overcasting the city of Cleveland.
“Cliff, you―” I say, turning to the hand, but then that vanishes, too, and I’m alone on the roof.
“Annika,” another voice says. It’s Nate’s voice. I spin around, and he’s standing at the other corner of the roof, separated from me by a field of solar panels lining the center of the roof. He runs toward me, but I backpedal.
“Annika, hold on!” he says.
“What―what is going on? Why are you here? Why am I here? Do you―” I stutter.
“Just hold on. Wait―” he says. He’s close enough now that he tries to grab my arms, but I push him away.
“No! Tell me what you’re doing here!!” I shout.
“Careful―you’re going to fall off the edge―”
“Tell me, Nate!” I shout. He stops and stares at me, his eyes like crystals. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to help you… and I’m trying to stop you from falling backwards off the roof,” he says.
“You knew why Moton wanted to see me in his office?”
“Not exactly, but Zoë and I figured it was bad after the FBI was in Moton’s office all morning. Look, Annika―can we talk about this later? Right now I have to get you out of here,” he says.
“You don’t even know what’s going on?!”
“No―I mean yes―I mean―” he says.
BOOM!!! The door to the roof explodes from the small compartment it connected to and crashes into a square of solar panels. Xander, Elijah, and Lazzer storm from the compartment and sprint toward me. I jump and take a giant step backward― too far backward. I hit the railing and tumble over the edge. I reach for anything to hold onto and barely catch the railing. My legs swing over me then bounce off the side of the building below me and dangle there, some eighty-ninety stories above the ground.
Nate calls my name, but I can barely hear it above the whipping and howling wind. I shut my eyes, tight. Don’t look down. Don’t look down, I repeat to myself, or maybe I’m speaking aloud. A strong hand grips my wrist so forcefully I think I might drop. I open my eyes and see Nate bending over the railing, his arm outstretched and gripping mine.
“Nate! Nate!” the others shout, stampeding toward us.
“Annika,” Nate whispers. “Let go.”
“What?!” I choke, tears welling in my eyes.
“Trust me, Annika,” he whispers. “You have to trust me.”
“No! I can’t―”
“Annika,” he whispers.
His eyes reflect the sun peeking out from behind the clouds to take a look. I watch as a single te
ar threatens to fall down my face.
“Let go.”
I hear the echoes of the other Metanites on the roof and countless voices from my past whipping past me in the slicing wind. I close my eyes… and let go of the railing.
XXV: Sanctuary
Wednesday, April 2, 2065; 6:39 p.m.
First person
My body plummets down toward the pavement as I descend the stories of Kenyon at increasing speed. I can’t tell if I’m the one screaming or the rush of air howling around me. A strong hand still rings my wrist, and fearfully, I open my eyes to take a look. There’s Nate, falling like I am, with the rooftop of Kenyon shooting toward the sky. He wears a determined look on him, the look I saw when he and Lazzer trained together, and I’m almost afraid he might try to strangle me.
But he doesn’t. He pulls his other arm in front of him and holds strong further up my arm. He pulls again with his other arm, this time clenching my shoulder. He continues to― sort-of climb― closer to me until both his arms fasten around my middle and our chests press against each other.
The wind alters directions while a wave of heavy pressure runs through my body. Then, I am weightless, racing through the wind like a rocket. My face buries into Nate’s gray, billowing shirt, so I turn my head to see what had happened. We are flying. No more than a story from the street traffic and honking yellow cabs and gray and blue Toyotas and Cadillacs, we are flying.
Nate’s left shoulder dips, and we swerve, turning down another busy street. His chest rises, and we ascend to a safer distance from the traffic and pedestrians. Tiny, frozen pellets mixed in with the icy wind collide with us. They are sharp, and they sting, but I feel invincible to them― no. I feel completely separate from the tangible world. I glance up to the sky where a dark gray cloud has conquered everything in its path. For some unfathomable reason, Thunder comes to my mind. I had not seen him since I interrogated Jericho, but now he’s my front most thought. Could he cast this ominous cloud threatening to conquer the entire sky and all below it?
“WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF THE CITY!” Nate shouts through the howling, biting wind.
I almost forgot he’s here. I shake my head in agreement.
“THERE’S TOO MANY… WILL SEE US!” I hear. I think he said something about cameras.
The Nancy Experiment Page 24