Thirteen Forgotten Worlds (Seam Wardens Book 1)

by Brant Williams

  “Nice work! We’re tied!”

  I smiled. “Not for long.”

  I ran through the maze of rooms and corridors looking for a final target. There were only seconds left. I let go of my conscious mind and went on instinct.

  Left. Right. Right. Left.

  There!

  I turned a corner, and my instincts screamed danger at me. I dropped to slide on my back, barely avoiding a rampaging Bryling in full spider form. I swung my Boom Sticks up and hit the Bryling on its soft underbelly.

  Score.

  Time expired.

  A roar went up from the other cadets. We had won! Kathryn and I exited the city and enjoyed the cheers as Reid declared us the winners.

  That night while Alexa and I studied together, I got the message we had been waiting for.

  Shortly after our visit with Amy, Alexa had shown me how to hack my data pad to get access to my email account. I had several thousand junk emails that I deleted, but nothing from Amy. So I set up a rule to notify me if I received any emails from Amy’s address.

  After more than a month, I finally got the alert:

  Dear Pierce,

  I’ve tried writing you a hundred times, but each time I have deleted it without sending. I don’t know what is appropriate to say or what I even have the right to say to you after all this time. So, I am just going to stick to business and give you the information I have.

  I spoke with my manager and got the name of his contact, Cal Sykes. I’ve attached his information below. I hope this helps you find the people doing this and stop anyone else from going through what I did.

  Thank you for coming to rescue me, despite how I treated you. How I ended things with you is one of my biggest regrets. I hope that we can keep in contact and that you will let me try to somehow make it up to you.

  Please write back soon.

  Love,

  Amy

  Well, that was awkward. I mean I was glad to get the information, but the rest of it – pure awkwardness. I looked at Cal Sykes' contact information. His address was in a really dangerous part of LA. It looked like we were going back to California.

  16

  Web of Lies

  Alexa read the email with an obvious mixture of excitement and anger. Excitement that we finally had a lead, and anger that Amy was so obviously flirting with me.

  "You do know it's over between Amy and me?" I asked.

  Alexa gave me an examining look. She seemed to be trying to read the truth directly from my mind or at least look for any hint of a clue on my face.

  Whatever she found must have been reassuring because after a moment she nodded and smiled at me. “I do,” she said.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. “Do we tell Reid and Abby? They were so not helpful last time. All they’re going to do is tell us to sit back and wait, and I’m not willing to do that. I want to make this right. This is our chance to find out who is selling the stuff and stop them once and for all.”

  Alexa nodded. “And after that little lecture about staying out of trouble that Spencer gave us, I don’t think we can expect to get any more help from him to sneak out again.”

  “Do we need his help?” I asked. “It seemed like you knew one of the Sasquatch, what was his name?”

  “Olmus? He’s a sweetheart. What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe you could convince him to look the other way while we slipped out?”

  Alexa furrowed her brow in thought. Looking at her, I was once again struck by how absolutely breathtaking she was. There was a science to beauty having to do with symmetry and size of facial features, but I didn’t really understand the details behind it. All I knew was that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

  Man, I was pathetic. Sometimes, it was hard to concentrate around Alexa.

  “I suppose I could ask,” Alexa said slowly, clearly still thinking it through. “He’s rather straight-laced, but he does owe me for the time I managed to get him a live goat for his lady-friend.”

  “Why did he need a live goat?”

  “It’s a Sasquatch thing. Trust me, you’re better off not knowing.”

  Two days later it was all set up. Olmus had come through, and the arrangements for us to leave unnoticed were all set. We only had a morning practice that day, and the rest was set aside for studying and individual training time.

  Olmus looked nervous as he let us through the door that led back to Los Angeles. “You can’t let anyone know I helped you,” he said. “I could lose my job for this.”

  “Our lips are sealed,” Alexa said. “We should be back before evening.”

  We slipped through the door and into the warm California sunshine. Cal Sykes' place of “business” was in a pretty sketchy part of L.A. When the cab driver heard the address, he looked at us like we were crazy.

  “No way, man,” he said when I gave him the address. “I don’t drive over there. Good luck finding a driver.”

  Alexa pulled out a hundred dollar bill and casually waved it around.

  “No way, it wouldn’t be right to leave you kids there,” he said. “That would make me an accessory to your murder, or something. How about we go to Disneyland, huh? It’s the happiest place on earth. There aren’t crazy gangs with guns shooting people for being on the wrong street.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” I said. “I think we can take care of ourselves.” I pushed several enhancers into strength and lifted the front of his car off the ground with one hand.

  The driver's eyes went wide. "Ok, ok," he said. "I'll take you." He grabbed the hundred dollar bill from Alexa, and we climbed into the car.

  The ride there was uneventful, but as we got closer to the address, the city around us began to deteriorate. Trash littered the streets, overgrown lots, dead lawns, and large apartment buildings with high fences around them that smelled strongly of urine became the norm.

  We turned into a commercial area filled with run-down strip clubs, adult video stores, and smoke shops. It was truly a classy area. Just the kind of place you’d want to take a date – if you never wanted to see them again.

  The address led us to a door stuck between an adult video store and a pawn shop. The door was covered with peeling red paint and spray-painted gang markings. I had no idea what was behind the door, but it was probably disease-ridden and gross beyond description.

  Ah, the glamorous work of tracking down low-life criminals.

  I looked at Alexa who shrugged. I reached out a hand and knocked loudly on the door. A small hole slid open in the top of the door. I had never actually seen that in real life before. I thought the sliding panel was something that only happened in the movies.

  Was he going to ask me for a password next?

  “What’d you want?” asked a deep, male voice.

  “We’re here to see Cal Sykes,” I said.

  “Why?” The voice asked.

  Alexa spoke up. “We want to discuss a business proposition with him.”

  “Cal don’t take no business without a trusted referral. So, unless you got one of those, you had best make yourselves scarce. This place ain’t too kind to children.”

  “Well, we—” But that was as far as I got before the man closed the sliding panel.

  That was just rude. I hadn’t even had a chance to say whether or not I really did have a referral.

  I activated an enhancer for strength and knocked again. This time it was much louder and shook the door.

  The hole slid open again. “I said you need a referral,” the voice said. “Go away.”

  “You haven’t even given us a chance to tell you if we have one,” I said.

  “Well, do you?”

  “No, but…”

  The panel slid closed again.

  Alexa gave me a rueful smile. I felt her activate her enhancers – two to strength and one to speed. “I guess we go to plan B and invite ourselves in.”

  I was totally down with that.

  I put three enhancers to strength,
four to speed, and the last one to healing. Then, I pounded on the door.

  With a loud crack, the door splintered into pieces, and I pushed my way in.

  A short man with sallow skin, long hair, and an even longer mustache stood in front of us, a look of terror on his face. Not exactly how I had imagined the guy based on his voice. I had at least expected someone who was big enough to be a bouncer in one of the strip clubs around here, but this guy couldn’t have cleared out a rowdy Sunday brunch crowd from Applebee's.

  I gave the man my most unnerving I’m-using-every-ounce-of-self-restraint-not-to-kill-you smile and picked him up off the floor. I held him above my head and then very calmly said, “Where is Cal Sykes?”

  He pointed off to the left just as I noticed the large, wet spot spreading across the front of his pants. Seriously? I had never actually seen someone so scared they peed their pants, let alone be the cause of that fear.

  Achievement unlocked: Fear Pee!

  I quickly dropped him to the ground, and Alexa and I headed in the direction he pointed us. The hallways were narrow and strewn with trash. It smelled rank, and I could tell that the guard was not the first person to pee in this hallway. The sooner we got the information we needed and left this stinking cesspool the better.

  At the end of the hallway was another door. It was locked. I twisted the handle until it broke and then kicked open the door.

  I may have overdone it a bit with my enhancers. The door kind of burst into shards and flew into the room. Several people cried out in pain as Alexa and I pushed our way through the destroyed door and into the room.

  The room was large – much larger than I would have thought from looking at the outside of the building. Dozens of people sat at tables, some counting stacks of money, while others were taking large bags of various substances – clearly drugs – and dividing them into smaller bags. I wasn’t the most streetwise kid, but I would've had to be really dense not to know that this was the processing and distribution center for a drug operation.

  Four people lay on the floor moaning or screaming with large splinters of wood sticking out of their various body parts courtesy of my dramatic entrance. Given the activities going on in this room, I had difficulty working up much sympathy for their pain.

  Alexa stepped forward and put her hands on her hips. “Which one of you is Cal Sykes?” she demanded.

  There was silence for a moment as everyone stared at Alexa and then me. Some with fear, but others were sizing us up, wondering how we had destroyed the door and how easily we could be killed.

  Finally, a rather plain-looking man in his late forties stepped forward. He wore jeans and a polo shirt. His hair was cut short and slightly receding. He wore a pair of thick glasses and was clean shaven. He didn’t look like a drug kingpin, but more like a suburban dad. He wouldn’t have looked out of place cheering on one of my teammates at a cross country meet.

  “I am Cal Sykes,” he said. He had a clear, measured voice and pronounced his words distinctly, annunciating every syllable with precision.

  “We would like a word in private,” Alexa said.

  The man spread his arms wide. “We have no secrets here,” he said. “Anything you want to tell me can be said in front of my men.”

  I looked about at the people counting money and dividing drugs into sellable quantities. This was not a place of openness and equality. Operations like these only thrived in the dark, unexamined areas of society. Truth and honesty put them out of business, so telling us that they had no secrets was clearly a ruse.

  I just wasn’t sure what the end game was.

  “Fine,” said Alexa. “We know you’ve been selling more than just ordinary drugs. We want to know where you’ve been getting your enhancers from.”

  Cal paused for just the slightest moment before answering, clearly thinking up what lie to tell us. "I don't know what you are referring to. We sell a lot of things, but I've never heard of enhancers."

  Alexa bent down and picked up one of the large shards of wood from the shattered door. She examined it, testing its weight and heft. It was roughly the size of a three-foot-long two-by-four. “I don’t like to be lied to,” she said. “It makes me angry.” She snapped the wood in half, the splintering sound reverberating around the silent room.

  “We know you’ve been selling them,” I said. “Black, worm-like things? Give you extra energy and stamina? Makes it so you don’t need to sleep? Sound familiar now?”

  Cal's face visibly paled, and he took a step back.

  “Don’t even think about running away,” I said. I put six enhancers into speed and ran around the room and grabbed a hat off of one of the guys and placed it on Cal’s head before ending up back where I'd started. The entire thing took me less than a second.

  Cal blinked stupidly, reaching up to remove the hat. His eyes widened as he realized what had happened.

  "Look," he said. "I don't acquire for that side of the business. I just distribute what Marcus tells me, and I don't ask questions."

  Alexa’s eyes narrowed. “Marcus who?” she asked.

  Cal shrugged. “It’s not a secret. Marcus Booking. He’s the one who runs this operation. I’m just fulfillment.”

  Upon hearing the name Marcus Booking, Alexa’s expression darkened. I still remembered how she had described the man who had taken too many enhancers and became a sociopath.

  “Marcus Booking?” she said. “The Spider?”

  Cal nodded. “Yes, there are those who call him by that name.”

  “Where is he?” Alexa asked. Her voice was tight and full of anger.

  “Now, that is a secret,” said Cal. “One that would have dire consequences for me if I were to reveal it.”

  “Not as dire or as immediate as the consequences if you don’t reveal it,” Alexa said. She picked up another large chunk of wood and shredded it with her bare hands. I had to admit that was pretty impressive. She was both gorgeous and physically intimidating. Quite the combination.

  Cal watched her destroy the chunk of wood with feigned indifference. He was trying to play it cool, but large sweat stains had appeared in both armpits, and he kept licking his lips nervously and glancing around the room as if looking for an escape.

  It was a bad idea to have not talked to him in private. There was no way he was going to snitch on Marcus Booking with all these witnesses here. From the sound of it, he would be signing his own death warrant. I couldn't blame the guy for not wanting to give up the information. We just needed to make him more afraid of us than he was of Marcus Booking.

  Once again, I put my enhancers into speed and ran around the room, scooping up all the drugs into several large sacks. Before they could do more than start to stand up, I had gathered his entire supply and held it up.

  “Well,” I said to Alexa. “Since he won’t talk, let’s go see if we can trade this to get the information we need.”

  "Wait!" said Cal, his impassive facade gone and panic visible in his eyes. Clearly, the drugs were worth a lot of money and he would have to account for them missing to Marcus Booking. “You don’t want to do that. Let’s be reasonable. Why don’t you let me make a call to tell him you’re looking for him? Perhaps he could, uh, arrange for a mutually agreeable location to meet?”

  I knew stall tactics when I heard them. “No deal,” I said. “Give us the address now, or you can explain to Marcus how you lost all his drugs.” I reached into the bag and pulled out a smaller bag of what looked like black marbles with a pattern of three red dots in a row on them.

  I could recognize a few drugs from the movies and some parties I had been too, but these black, spherical things were like nothing I had ever seen.

  Whatever they were, the fact that I was looking at them made Cal extremely nervous. He took an involuntary step forward, his arm up as if somehow he could reach them from across the room.

  “Please!” he said. “Just gently set the bag down and I will tell you everything.”

  I smiled at Alexa. “Se
e, he can be reasonable.”

  Then, I felt the sharp pain in my left shoulder.

  I twisted my head and saw what looked like a giant, mutant spider sinking its long fangs into my soft flesh.

  Only, it wasn’t a spider. It had a spider’s head, but it was standing upright like a human. Eight hairy legs stuck out from its sides. I recognized it from my studies immediately – a Bryling. I managed to look up and see that it was attached to a thick web and had descended from the ceiling to attack me from behind.

  My vision blurred, and consciousness began to slip away. I tried to move my enhancers to healing, but I had a hard time concentrating. Each time I tried to activate one, it slipped through my mental grasp, leaving me empty and powerless.

  The last thing I saw before I passed out was a second Bryling with its fangs in Alexa.

  Then, everything around me went black.

  17

  I Am Spartacus

  I slowly opened my eyes, unsure of where I was or how I had gotten here.

  Vertical lines swam into focus in front of me. I appeared to be in some sort of cage, but I had difficulty keeping my eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. My head ached, every joint in my body felt stiff and sore, and I had the faint taste of black licorice in my mouth.

  What had happened to me?

  I remembered fangs.

  And… a giant spider?

  Memory came rushing back, the last few moments before unconsciousness rising to the surface. I had been attacked from behind by a Bryling.

  But why wasn’t I dead? They had the ability to inject an acid that liquefied their prey's internal organs which were then sucked out as juices. I should be dead – a blob of skin and hair left on the floor to rot.

  But I wasn’t. That meant that someone must want me alive.

  A sudden jolt of fear went through me – Alexa.

  What had happened to her? The last thing I remembered was her being bitten as well. Was she still alive?