The Nancy Experiment

by McKenna, Tess

  “Ahk! Ahk― Alarm!!” The second guard chokes. “Alarm!!”

  I sprint down the hall, a white vortex with black lights at each six-foot interval, in the opposite direction of the guard. Two men in long blue lab coats with a cart of colorful test tubes stand star-struck in front of me, staring at me with wild owl eyes. With a running start, I leap at them, locking my arms around the scientist-on-the-left’s neck, swinging my legs around to kick scientist-on-the-right’s head, and pulling scientist-on-the-left to the floor with a loud thud.

  EERRR!!!! EERRR!!!! EERRR!!!! A yellow light flashes all through the hall, and probably through the entire building. Two guards turn into my hall and charge at me, shouting into their watches. I shove the scientists’ cart toward them and jump on top of it. I ride the cart into the first guard then pounce onto the shoulders of the second. I twist my torso and bend backward, carrying the head of the guard with me. I roll to the floor, and the guard’s skull smashes the hard, white floor, stained with glass and vibrant chemicals. I roll to my feet and peel into the stairwell where the two guards came from.

  A line of six guards jog up the stairs toward me. I throw myself at the leader, landing my feet on his chest. He falls backward, creating a domino effect. I slide down the cluster of bodies and land on my feet at the bottom of the stairs. I burst out of the stairwell and into a white-vortex hall of the third floor.

  A shot rings out as I sprint down the hall. I glance back at the guard with the rifle then dodge down another hall. Three guards are there and running toward me. I sprint at them then slide under them before we collide. I roll to my feet and keep sprinting down the hall. More shots echo down the hall as I come to the end of the hall, but they don’t concern me. At the end of the hall is his office, and that’s all I’m concerned about.

  “Stop Him!” I hear Jericho shout from way down the hall.

  Two men in black with steel-toed shoes sprint out of Dr. Nancy’s office. I swerve away from the first as he reaches for me. He grabs the hood of my jacket, so I let him yank the sweater off me while I hold onto the sleeves. Using the guard for balance, I scale the wall and backflip over him; the sweater wraps around his head. I pull the sleeves of the sweater, throwing the man into the other guard. They slam against the wall and fall to the floor.

  I peer into Dr. Nancy’s office, but it’s empty. He’s not there. Shit! I turn and face the wrath of guards coming at me― Jericho leading the pack. Our eyes lock, and he recognizes me. His eyes blaze then turn ice cold, frozen in shock as if frozen in absolute zero. He comes to a complete stop, and his hounds halt behind him. He stands there with his mouth half open and his eyes crystalized. A guard raises her rifle at me.

  “Hold your fire!” Jericho says.

  She obeys. Jericho keeps staring at me, and his mouth moves like he’s trying to say something to me. I stand there breathing heavily. Last time I saw him, he saved me from the giant by the church and then stood by as Bruce and his sister carried out their plans to kill Nate and me. Now that I think of it… he might have been one of the ones in the boat when Bruce tossed Nate and me overboard.

  I take a step toward him, and a hard, blunt object smashes the back of my head. My body feels heavy, and my vision goes black…

  XXX: This is Worse Than Detroit

  Saturday, April 5, 2065; 9:36 a.m.

  Author’s view

  The sirens scream through the hall of the second floor as Annika runs down the hall and disappears into the stairwell. The yellow light still flashes throughout the floor and into the presumably deserted hole in the wall where the intruder broke in. A body chokes then collapses, and the hall is still again.

  “Go,” Zoë tells Marissa.

  Marissa slides through the square hole in the wall and into the second floor. Zoë is right behind. The girls head to the right, opposite the direction of Annika, and stop at the double doors twenty-five feet from the chute. Marissa disengages the large, locked doors to the children’s room, and Zoë somersaults into the great auditorium.

  The place is like a prison, and, as the girls quickly realize, this is a prison. A cafeteria-like arrangement of tables with metal chairs sits in the middle of the white and black auditorium. Two levels of barred, shallow rooms each just big enough for two twin-sized cots outline the long lengths of the prison room, and inside each of the barred-in rooms, two to three children ages ranging from four to sixteen stare wide-eyed at the two girls in black.

  Some of the children look like normal children, healthy and harmless, but there are others with gruesome, distinct features: the boy with eight eyes; the girl with silver, scaled skin; the twins with yellow and red eyes and long tails; the girl with a large pink scar across her auburn face, the boy with a mechanical arm and shoulder. Yet there is something identical and unifying in all of them―in their eyes―a sense of loss, a sadness―and all stare silently at Marissa and Zoë.

  “My God…” Zoë mutters, gaping at the room and the eyes of the children.

  “Guards, where are they?” Marissa asks a group of boys and girls in the closest confinement. They stare at her blankly. “Are there any guards?” she asks.

  The children shake their heads. Zoë rushes over to the children pressed against the bars.

  “Don’t worry,” Zoë tells them. “We’re friends of Cassie. We’re going to get you all out of here.”

  The children glance back and forth at each other and smile. Suddenly, a sparkle behind their solemn eyes. Cassie’s name echoes through the room and spreads with smiles from room to room until all the children whisper “Cassie! Basia Nancy!” and wear the same smile. Meanwhile, Zoë fumbles with the lock, thinking of the easiest way to blow up the lock without the risk of hitting any of the children―what did Annika call them… ECs.

  “Marissa, a little help here?” Zoë asks.

  “How about this button?” she replies.

  Zoë turns just as Marissa presses a giant red button. Eerrrr― click! The bars slide into the ceiling, and the children are free. Most of them swarm Zoë and Marissa, unsure of where else to go, and others, mostly the younger ones, struggle to climb out of their second-level rooms. They mumble Annika’s name with questions and slurred pleas.

  “What’s your name?” Zoë asks two older girls.

  One, blonde with bright blue, glittering eyes, looks about sixteen, and the other, just as tall but a few years younger with dark skin and short, curly hair.

  “Raven,” says the dark-skinned girl.

  “Sonny,” says the blonde.

  “Alright, Raven, Sonny, we need you two to lead all the others out to the top of the sloping hallway. Do you know where that is?”

  They nod.

  “Good, can you do that for us while we help the others out of their rooms?”

  They nod again.

  “Great, wait for me there, and hurry!”

  “What are we waiting for?” the deputy director of the Cleveland Police Force asks the Metanites.

  He stands behind one of the police cars stationed in a semicircle around the deserted barber shop. A collection of FBI, the federal SQUAT team, and Cleveland Special Forces position themselves behind the cars with automatic and tranquilizer rifles pointing at the empty shop. Kiaria turns toward the deputy.

  “Our people are in there now and will give us the signal when we’re clear to enter,” Kiaria says.

  “And they’re in there with Basia Nancy.”

  “Get your facts right, side-kick. Basia’s dead,” Abraham says. He’s leaning against the front of a sliver Buick.

  “Abe, you shouldn’t be here,” Kono says.

  “Seriously? This is like the safest place in the world right now,” Abraham replies.

  “How did you―”

  “I brought him,” Moton says, stepping out of the driver’s seat of the gray Buick.

  Kono, Lazz, and everyone else stares at Moton, dressed in a tailored, dark gray suit with dark shades over his eyes.

  “Abraham is the only one here
who’s recently spoken with our people on the inside. We need him here,” Moton says.

  “Well, if Basia Nancy is in there, we have an obligation to the people to make sure she doesn’t escape,” the deputy says.

  “Basia Nancy is not the one you should be concerned about,” Kiaria says. “Our people on the inside―”

  “Alright, your people on the inside have one minute before my men blow our way into the building,” the FBI director says.

  The Metanites look into the deserted barber shop in anxious anticipation.

  Nate and Elijah crawl out of a vent on the ceiling of the fifth floor into the small dark room filled with drooping wires and pipe lines, unmarked machines with glass and glowing, colored buttons on them, large pillars for the ventilation system, and the generator stationed in the center of the dark, fuming room. They land on the ground, and Nate walks over the generator while Elijah keeps guard, eyeing the door to make sure no one comes in. Nate locates the control system of the generator, opens the glass protector, and starts to configure the ventilation system. They can hear the echoes of the yellow alarm ringing from outside the room, but they ignore it, knowing that time is as delicate and as precious as the tedious generator. One wrong button, one miss-touched wire and the entire factory could turn into a ticking time bomb.

  “Alright, that’s the last,” Zoë says, placing a young boy on his feet and watching him run off to join the others down the hall.

  The yellow sirens stop, and all is quiet again.

  “We better hurry and get to the others before―” Zoë says, but she’s cut off by the sound of a gun clicking at the ready.

  Zoë freezes, knowing the gun is pointed at her back.

  “Don’t move,” Marissa says.

  She’s holding the rifle with both hands and pointing the weapon at Zoë’s back.

  “And don’t try anything.”

  Zoë starts to turn around, but Marissa warns her not to.

  “Hands.”

  Zoë lifts her hands up and slowly raises them to her head.

  “Down on your knees.”

  “Marissa―”

  “Knees.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Marissa says. “Xander and Izzi weren’t the only moles Dr. Nancy had in Kenyon. When Annika and the rest of you caught our trail, we needed two of us to take the fall so one could continue with the mission.”

  “Which is?”

  “Destroy the tangible dirt.”

  “All this time?”

  “Don’t be sentimental, Zoë. The past doesn’t suit you well.”

  “You’re a bitch, Marissa.”

  “And you’re wasting my time,” Marissa says.

  Zoë glances to the doors of the EC’s room where the blonde girl peeks her head into the room. Zoë meets the girl’s glittering eyes and, without Marissa noticing, mouths to her to go on.

  “Now excuse me, but I have to meet Izzi in the generator room to stop Nate and Elijah,” Marissa says.

  Zoë watches the girl with glittering eyes raise her arm toward Marissa. The girl’s glittering eyes shine as a blinding, bright light shoots from the girl’s outstretched hand to Marissa’s eyes. Marissa gasps and takes a step back, blinded by the light, giving Zoë the perfect opportunity to kick the gun out of Marissa’s hands and start the fight. Marissa is quick to react and is able to rebound from a shot to strike Zoë in the face. The girls go back and forth, each taking and delivering a beating, until Zoë grabs a metal chair. She throws the chair at Marissa, but Marissa pauses the chair before it hits her.

  “You think you can beat me with my own element?” Marissa taunts Zoë.

  Zoë shoots a potent, blue beam of energy at Marissa, sending her flying backward through the air and through the back wall. Her body is unseen.

  “Bitch,” Zoë mutters.

  A cut on her forehead drips red blood down the side of her face. She turns back to the blond girl standing at the doors.

  “Nice job, Sonny,” she says, and she runs with the blonde girl to join the others at the top of the slanting hallway.

  “Basia Nancy. Come out with your hands above your head and surrender yourself to the authorities,” the deputy director calls into a microphone.

  “Just wait! They’ll be here any second now,” Kiaria says.

  “We’ve waited long enough,” the FBI director replies. “Special Teams, prepare to enter the facility. You,” he says to the deputy, “give me that microphone.”

  The deputy obeys, and the FBI director clears his throat before speaking into the microphone.

  “Basia Nancy, this is your last chance. Come out now.”

  Silence… silence…

  BOOMMM!!!!!!!!!

  An explosion erupts from the back of the barber shop, shooting dust and boulders of the back wall of the shop out the front of the shop. The Metanites and others wait motionless as the dust settles. Then, a cheerful humming grows from the back of the shop, and over fifty children run out of the deserted barber shop and head straight for the police officers. A blank, confused expression spreads across the faces of the officers and onlookers.

  “How much longer?” Elijah asks Nate.

  “Just… a… second…” Nate replies.

  Elijah glances back and forth at Nate and the door to the generator room. They no longer hear the yellow alarm ringing above them.

  “The alarm is off,” Elijah says.

  “I noticed.”

  “It went off a while ago.”

  “Seventy-eight seconds ago.”

  “What do you think that means? Did they catch Annika?”

  “Annika knows what she’s doing.”

  “Yeah, but she could be in trouble.”

  “You don’t think I’ve thought of that already?”

  “What if she needs us?”

  “She needs us to smoke the place out, and then we’ll go look for her.”

  “I know… I know… I’ve just got this bad feeling that she or Zoë, or maybe even Marissa… I don’t know… I don’t like this place… this is worse than Detroit… you don’t think they would’ve shot Annika if they―” Elijah goes on.

  “Eli, would you―” Nate says, turning to look at Elijah. He sees the metal bat levitating toward his friend. “Eli, Look Out!”

  Elijah turns to see the bat swinging at him, but he can’t do anything to stop it. Suddenly, a blue ball of energy hits the invisible body holding the bat, and the body and bat fly against a ventilating pillar. Izzi’s body flickers as she falls to the floor.

  “You’re welcome,” Zoë says. She’s standing at the door of the generator room then paces toward the boys.

  “Whoa, what happened to your head?” Elijah asks.

  “Marissa.”

  “What?”

  “She’s the third mole,” Zoë says.

  Nate and Eli glance at each other, but they have no time to ask questions before Marissa, Eva, Bruce, and six other men march into the generator room through the door.

  “Don’t touch that,” Eva warns Nate. “You don’t want to cause a scene, now, do you?”

  “Now it’s a party,” a female voice says from the door.

  Kono, Kiaria, Lazzer, and Nickel charge into the tight room behind the hunting crew, and Kono initiates the fight by kicking Eva in the head. Zoë and Elijah join the fight, and suddenly a fierce, fiery battle is in full swing.

  “Help me with this!” Nate shouts to Kiaria through the fight. She slides over to him and inspects the system.

  “There seems to be a wire you need to disconnect in there, somewhere,” Kiaria says.

  “Yeah, but which one?”

  “Look Out!” Kiaria shouts.

  She pushes Nate’s head down and points her gun at the man sprinting at Nate. She fires once, and the bullet sinks into the man’s forehead, directly between his eyes. Nate stares at Kiaria’s perfect shot then turns back to the generator.

  “Annika needs us to smoke the place out,”
he says. “But if we cut the wrong wire, this entire facility could―”

  Marissa shoots a shard of jagged metal between Nate and Kiaria. The shard slices through every wire and stabs the core of the generator. Most of the lights in the room and in the entire factory turn off immediately, and the humming power of the other machines decrescendos to silence.

  The SWAT team breaks through the doorway and shoves its way into the room with rifles pointed at the hunting crew. They, and the Metanites, dominating in their hand-to-hand combat, apprehend Dr. Nancy’s men and start filing them out of the room.

  “Special Agent Reilly, what’s the situation?” the leader of the SWAT team asks Nate.

  “The generator is down… facility will explode in less than three minutes,” Nate answers, staring at the generator. Zoë kneels by Kiaria and studies the damaged machine.

  Marissa laughs as she’s handcuffed. “Destroy the tangible dirt,” she says, and she laughs to herself.

  Kiaria swings her arm around and strikes Marissa’s head with her gun.

  “Get everyone out of the building now! Don’t leave anyone behind!” Kiaria instructs the leader of the SWAT team.

  “Yes, Special Agent Ying,” he replies.

  He barks the orders to his men then shouts the message to all other forces through his watch. The Metanites follow the SWAT team out of the room and up the stairs toward the second floor, sprinting away from the ticking time bomb. Nate tries to veer from the crowd and head down a hallway on the third floor, but Lazzer pulls him back toward the others.

  “Hey! Where are you going?!” Lazzer shouts at him.