by Greg Pace
Tyler’s face brightened as if I had just saved him from certain death. “You’re right!”
Kwan threw up his hands. “Whatever.”
We heard the shower water stop. Kwan glanced over his shoulder. “I bet hotshot in there knows something. Pellinore seems to really dig him,” he whispered.
I considered telling them what I had heard about Pellinore “grooming” Malcolm for X-Calibur, but decided against it. I didn’t want them to think I was privy to any more information than they were.
“But Merlin picked Ben,” Tyler countered. “Isn’t that just as important?”
I wasn’t in the mood to get on the discussion of Merlin championing me again. “What we do know is that this whole project is called X-Calibur, right?” I said quickly.
“So?” Kwan asked.
“So, the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table was all about a super-powerful sword called Excalibur,” I explained, leaning closer like I was telling a story around a campfire. “At first, nobody could even use the sword because it was stuck inside a big stone. A bunch of people tried to pull it out, but nobody could.” I paused for dramatic effect, just like Dad used to do with me. “Until . . . Arthur came along.”
Tyler leaned closer. “Then what happened?”
“Arthur became king after that. And leader of the—”
I stopped when I spotted Malcolm standing in the bathroom doorway. He had changed into shorts and a T-shirt for bed, his wet hair combed back. For a moment I was struck by how much he looked like a young Pellinore.
“Leader of the what?” he asked.
“. . . the knights.” And that’s when I spotted something on the wall under the window: a small control panel with buttons. I crossed the room.
“Any idea what this is?” I wondered, running a finger over the panel.
“Try pushing one of the buttons,” Kwan prodded, joining me.
“No way—” I began, but a hand reached between us and pushed one with no hesitation. It was Malcolm.
“No risk, no reward,” he said coolly, looking at me. Challenging me. I probably would have said something in return (something equally cool, I’m sure), but I was too busy gaping at the window. Instead of looking out at foggy London, we were now looking out at a dazzling beach. The sky was a vivid blue, and so was the ocean. In the distance, a group of dolphins was diving in and out of the water. The whisper of an ocean breeze and the relaxing shu-sshhhh of waves.
“Whoa,” Tyler gawked. “Is that real?”
“I don’t think so.” I pressed another button that had a little “up” arrow on it, and the view changed again. This time it was a desert, the pristine sand stretching for miles.
“It looks so real,” Kwan gaped. “You sure the entire HQ didn’t just teleport somewhere?”
“Of course not,” Malcolm snapped, then hit another button, bringing us back to the original view of London.
“This is the only real view. The others are probably just a relaxation technique. I bet you’re going to need it, too.”
“How can you be sure the London view is real?” I challenged. “Maybe they’re all fake.”
He sighed and jabbed a thumb at the glass. “I walk those streets every day, remember?”
Oh. Yeah.
“Well, at least we have something to look at now,” Kwan grumbled, then jumped onto his bed again so he could reach one of the large countdown clocks. “If you ask me, Mr. P. is cuckoo about these countdown clocks. I’m surprised he didn’t have them installed on the insides of our eyelids, so we’d see them in our sleep.”
“I’m sure he considered it,” I muttered.
Malcolm got into bed. “Lights out,” he announced.
Kwan reeled as if punched. “No offense, bro—but who made you camp counselor?”
“You heard what Pellinore said. Tomorrow’s going to be busy. It’s either lights out in here or I’m going to ask for my own room. I intend to be at my best tomorrow.”
The three of us exchanged a look. He had a point. Five minutes later, we were all in our beds. Even with the curtains closed and the lights off, the two large countdown clocks bathed us in an unsettling red glow. My brain swirled with a million different thoughts. The next few days were going to be tough enough without being under a microscope because of my connection to Merlin. Why had Merlin chosen me, anyway? Why would any kids be chosen to defend the world?
I looked to my nightstand, where I had placed the framed photo I brought from home. Me, Mom, and Dad. Smiling. Like it was another lifetime. I turned my focus to the countdown clock on the opposite wall instead, watching the seconds as they ticked down. Forty-two seconds. Forty-one seconds . . . forty seconds . . .
When sleep finally came, I dreamed that I was standing in the atrium of HQ. But it was eerily deserted.
“Hello?” I called out, but the only answer was my voice echoing back to me a dozen times. Two doors slid open, startling me, revealing the hallway we had been in earlier. The ceiling lights were dark, the hallway shrouded in shadow.
As I walked to the mouth of the hall, the light nearest me suddenly started pulsing, beckoning me. I took a cautious step, and another light above me lit up, as if guiding me somewhere. I swallowed and looked back over my shoulder.
Just like that, I was suddenly outside, back in Texas, watching Denny’s diner from the parking lot. It was a gorgeous day—clear sky, gentle breeze—and the diner was bursting at the seams, probably a Saturday afternoon. I could see guys from school in there—laughing, smiling, eating burgers and ice cream. Todd Byers, The Dorf, everyone.
And Mom, too. She was in her waitress uniform, bustling from table to table. My eyes widened when I saw her give a slice of apple pie to . . . Dad. He was seated with a bunch of the guys from the firehouse, all of them in their bulky gear and covered in soot. Mom and Dad glanced at the window and saw me. They gave a little wave, but just as I lifted my hand to wave back, the sky over the diner opened up in a flash of blinding white light. I shielded my eyes.
Then the diner exploded in a mass of flames and debris.
I woke up with a jolt, my chest heaving. I looked to the countdown clock on the wall, then the one on my wrist. I had only been asleep for two minutes.
I gulped; it was going to be a long night.
12
121:02:57
I AWOKE TO THE SOUND of someone knocking.
“Who is it?” Malcolm called out from the floor. I looked over the side of my bed. He was already awake, back to his push-ups. I groaned. You’ve gotta be kidding me.
“I’ve got uniforms for you, knights. And breakfast,” came a voice from the hall.
Malcolm got to the door first (shocker, I know) and whipped it open to reveal a bespectacled, disheveled young tech. He had a large metal cart with four sets of clothing boxes sitting on top. Malcolm immediately grabbed a stack. I spotted my name on another one and did the same.
“There are pajamas and everyday wear, padded sparring outfits if you choose to work out in the gym, and flight training jumpsuits,” the tech explained. “All custom fitted to your exam measurements.”
So we were going to be flying something—but what? I prayed that Kwan wasn’t right about us being stuffed into missiles.
Malcolm had finished changing into his training gear before the rest of us had even opened our boxes. The jumpsuit was impressive—gray with a silver shimmer, as if there was steel woven into the fabric, with a patch on the upper left: the bold letters “RTR” embossed in the middle of a solid black X.
Malcolm stood even taller in his new uniform. He turned to his nightstand and grabbed something from his top drawer. I couldn’t see exactly what was clasped in his hand, but it looked like a tattered ribbon.
“When are we going to fly?” Malcolm asked the young tech as he rushed back to the doorway.
“I’m . . . not entirely sure,” the tech stammered. “My orders were to bring you the uniforms and breakfast, that’s all.”
He opened two steel doors on the side of the cart. We were immediately hit by the smells of warm breakfast. My stomach went into a growling fit.
“Normally everyone eats breakfast in the cafeteria, but the schedule today will be too tight for that—” the tech began.
“The schedule you apparently know nothing about,” Malcolm cut him off.
“Dude, chill,” I murmured to Malcolm, and he turned to look at me.
“When the whole world is watching in five days, you can ‘chill,’ all right?” he snapped.
I kept quiet after that. The ribbon he’d grabbed from his nightstand had wound him up, big time. He was gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white.
“What’ve you got in there?” Tyler asked the tech, pushing between the rest of us to get at the food inside the cart.
The tech brightened. On the matter of breakfast options, he had all the answers: “Pancakes and sausage, fruits, pastries, egg dishes with ham, cheese—”
“I’m a vegetarian. Nothing with meat, please,” Tyler interrupted.
“Vegetarian?” Kwan scoffed. “But you wrestle alligators and crocodiles.”
“I wrestle them, I don’t eat them,” Tyler replied matter-of-factly. “There’s a difference.”
As the tech handed Tyler a heaping plate of pancakes, fresh fruit, and a piping hot bowl of oatmeal, I looked to my left and noticed Darla standing outside her room, watching us. Her clothing boxes were stacked at her feet, and she was eating an omelet with hash browns.
“Morning,” I said as I smiled to her. “Are the eggs good?”
She hesitated a moment, then mumbled “fine” and stepped back into her room. Small talk obviously wasn’t her forte. I guess that’s what happens when you become good enough at video games to be a world champion, I thought.
I turned to the tech. “One of everything you got, please. I’m starving.”
• • •
With our bellies full (me, Kwan, and Tyler had devoured enough to feed a family of sixteen, but Malcolm only had an apple, a banana, and skim milk), our official tour of headquarters began in a seemingly unending hallway. Even more intimidating than its length, the curved ceiling and walls seemed to gradually slope downward, leading deep below ground.
On my right, Darla’s face looked pale as she stared down the length of the tunnel.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“Worry about yourself,” she snapped. She resumed staring down the tunnel like it was the entrance to a haunted house.
Next to me, Kwan gave me a nudge. “See? The chick has issues.”
“Prepare for movement, knights,” Merlin announced. He and Pellinore were standing at the front of the group.
Movement? I braced myself, thinking we were about to drop through the floor again, but instead my feet almost slipped out from under me as the floor began to glide forward, like a giant conveyor belt.
“Sidewalk surfing,” Kwan grinned. “If only it moved faster.”
Pellinore raised an eyebrow and barked an order into the air. “Initiate passenger bond and accelerate, please.”
I felt a familiar magnetic pull in my feet and legs, and the floor suddenly raced forward with us fixed to it, soaring down the endless tunnel at sixty miles per hour as our hair blew everywhere. We approached the end of the main tunnel in about ten seconds, then made one dramatic turn after another. I cursed myself for eating so much earlier.
“Yee-ha!” Kwan shouted. Tyler had his eyes closed, and I think I actually heard him humming softly to himself, like he was trying to meditate. Darla didn’t look pale anymore. She looked green. And Malcolm was taking the ride in stride, ribbon still clutched in his hand, a little smile on his face as the wind blew past him.
“Decelerate,” Pellinore ordered, and the moving floor slowly came to a stop. After a beep, we were no longer magnetized to the floor.
“That was one seriously sick ride,” Kwan gushed.
Tyler grimaced and touched his belly. “Yeah. Sick.”
We had stopped at an observation window that looked in on a massive room full of techs—dozens of men and women of various ages, all seated in front of holographic touch-screen monitors. Most of the displays focused on satellite images of muddy shapes and sinister-looking specks in outer space.
“This is where our techs monitor the aliens’ movements—speed, trajectories, anything and everything that’s pertinent,” Pellinore explained.
I decided to finally ask a question that had been on my mind for a while now. “Do you and Merlin work for the government? Is that what all this is?”
“Quite the opposite, Ben. The last thing we want is for the governments or armed forces of the world to get involved in this project. In fact, the less people know about us, or the coming threat, the better.”
“Why, sir?” Malcolm asked.
But instead of answering him, Pellinore looked up and said, “Next bay, please.”
There were no techs in this next room, just one large, ominous black box, a perfect ten-foot-square cube made of shiny black panels. Millions of little lights were blinking over every square inch of it.
“Wow,” I breathed. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it sure was impressive.
“You’re looking at decades of work here, knights,” Pellinore said proudly, and he pressed a button on the wall. After the bay window slid up, we could hear something coming from inside the strange black box. Incredibly, it sounded like a miniature war was going on inside. There were the sounds of explosions and buildings crumbling, along with screeching cars and screams.
“What the heck?” Tyler murmured as the lights all over the box began to blink faster and faster.
Just as the cacophony reached its peak, the box suddenly stopped shaking. You could hear a pin drop, and I felt an overwhelming sense of dread; the sudden silence was the non-sound of everything gone. And then—
Ding.
A slip of paper appeared, sticking out of a slot in the box’s side. Pellinore took a deep breath and grabbed it quickly. He had a look, then handed it to Merlin with a grim shake of his head.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What is this thing?”
“An alien invasion simulator,” Pellinore informed us. “Day after day, week after week, it runs war scenarios, analyzing what would happen to mankind if Earth was attacked. Specifically, the millions of possible outcomes that might occur once Earth’s governments and armed forces get involved.”
Merlin was still looking at the slip of paper when he added, “The outcome for mankind is always the same.”
He held up the slip of paper. It had just one word on it: EXTINCT.
13
119:00:49
“INFORMING THE WORLD of the coming threat will almost certainly bring about our extinction.” Merlin crumpled the slip of paper.
“But how can you keep everyone from seeing aliens when they arrive?” I asked doubtfully. “Won’t that be impossible?”
“Next bay, please,” Pellinore ordered, and the hallway floor started moving again. I was thrilled to get away from the eerie black box. That thing was the largest, scariest fortune cookie ever created.
The next room was the most impressive so far. It was circular, like the atrium, but at least three times as large, and every inch of space of the curved walls was lined with thousands of flat-screen TVs showing broadcasts from all over the world. From a series of control panels in the room’s center, lab techs with high-tech earphones closely monitored the footage.
My heart skipped a beat when I noticed a screen showing the early morning newscast we watched at home every day. These techs really were monitoring every single newscast, even from Breakwater.
“As you’ve probably
figured out already, this is where we keep an eye on the news,” Pellinore said dryly.
“Why?” Kwan asked, but Malcolm was the one to answer quickly.
“To intercept alien sightings. Right, sir?”
“Correct. We must be ready to intercept any and all human communications related to aliens. As you saw just moments ago, we’ve proven time and again that the aliens’ arrival must be kept secret.”
“Wait, so even after the aliens show up for battle, nobody will know we’re the ones defending Earth?” Malcolm asked, deflated.
“Exactly. This project will always be a secret. Before, during, and—hopefully—afterward,” Pellinore replied.
“This is only our first line of defense, knights,” Merlin added. His face looked shadowy against the light from the screens behind him. “Once we become aware of intel, we can hijack or block any transmission known to man before it spreads. TV signals, radio, cell phones, internet, email. If people use it to communicate, then we have access to it.”
Something dawned on me. “At home yesterday I saw on the news that NASA was tracking space debris headed toward Earth. Are they actually tracking the aliens?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Merlin replied. “But NASA doesn’t know they’re tracking alien ships yet. They really do believe it’s just space debris—”
“You mentioned an elite team of fighters . . . You mean us?” Darla asked from the back of the group.
“Absolutely,” Pellinore confirmed.
Tyler raised his hand. “Will we be fighting alongside older people, too? You know, adults?”
“Just you five,” Pellinore said bluntly.
“You can’t be serious,” I blurted. I had seen the devastation these aliens were capable of. This was suicide. “How the heck can five kids fight off an alien attack?”
Pellinore grinned. “That’s where X-Calibur comes in.” He looked up. “Accelerate, please. Destination: X-Bay.”
The hallway floor surged forward, the force so powerful that a few of us swayed backward. I gritted my teeth. The incline of the moving floor got steeper, and we rocketed deeper and deeper below ground.