The Elementalists

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The Elementalists Page 33

by C Sharp


  She turned back to Kirin as her head started to spin. “I’m not going to let this world die,” she announced with a thick tongue. Then her legs gave out, and she slipped back toward the mud and the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.

  Chapter 25

  Home Invasion

  It turned out that Angela had run the fastest 5K in Virginia AAA high school girls’ history. Chloe and the girl from T.C. had also beaten the old record by more than twenty seconds. Even the fourth through eighth place finishers crossed the line within seconds of the historic best, and it was considered to be the most competitive team totals race in memory. Charlottesville High came in second overall, losing out to T.C. Williams by only four points from the total standings of the top seven girls from each school. The Richmond Raiders came in a close third.

  But it was Chloe’s heroic sprint that was highlighted again and again on local TV stations. Angela and Sarah had both been interviewed on camera, and Coach Barnes was smiling so big that it looked like her face might split open on the Channel 5 Evening News. Of course, Chloe had missed all the hoopla, having instead spent those moments in the back of an ambulance on her way to her favorite hospital.

  She’d woken in Kirin’s arms, slumped unflatteringly in the middle of the chute less than a minute after she’d gone down. But the race officials and on-site medical team had squirreled her away from the crowd just as quickly, and she’d lost sight of his reassuring smile in her mother’s smothering hug.

  She wound up with five stitches on her leg and a big bandage on her chin before they let her go, and by then she felt like she really had been hit by a truck. Chloe didn’t remember much of what had happened, though in truth she’d been in a relative fog of distraction and forgetfulness since her headaches the week before. She saw the first footage of her final, grimacing, mud-caked sprint on Channel 7, but it was some of the other stations that really focused on all the fanfare and adulation that apparently followed. Luckily they had refrained from putting the images of her least dignified moments of dry heaving and unconsciousness on air…

  But, of course, Kendra had gotten the whole thing on an iPhone video. By 8 p.m., she’d been nice enough to e-mail it to Chloe, along with EVERYONE else, so that Chloe might relive it again and again and again. The red-headed hag had gotten there just in time to catch Chloe’s eyes rolling into the back of her head and Kirin’s lunge across the ribbon to catch her before her face hit the dirt. The attached message said, “Only Love Can Tame the Wild Beauty of Lightning!”

  As always, Kendra’s work had been put together with a good eye for composition, but her first foray into Chloe-based mockumentary video showed a keen understanding of slow motion and graphics as well. Audrey had tried not to laugh when Chloe had shown it to her, but she was so relieved by the time they’d gotten home from the hospital that she was laughing at pretty much everything she saw.

  Chloe could tell that her mom was deeply proud of her and more than a little thankful that she was all right, but she suspected that Audrey was particularly happy after Coach Barnes had called to check in and casually mentioned that Chloe could have probably procured a full-ride agreement from UVA before she’d left the field. Audrey was practically bouncing off the walls and had stopped to give Chloe unsolicited hugs at least five times that night. Chloe, for her part, just wanted to sleep. She never even made it off the sofa.

  She woke the next morning with a blanket tucked in lovingly around her, a little puddle of drool on the pillow, and Shipwreck eyeing her closely from the armrest. She’d slept for eleven hours without moving. Audrey was already in the kitchen, whipping up blueberry pancakes and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Chloe’s phone was waiting for her on the kitchen counter along with a note: Kirin called twice last night and you have 14 unchecked texts. With that, her grounding was over.

  Her mom had left for work later that morning with the unspoken understanding between them that Chloe would still be expected to come clean about her reasons for the theft and stonewalling, but that she would be trusted to bring it to light when she was ready. Chloe could barely walk on her abused legs, though she still managed to hobble into the next room and call Kirin within seconds of her mom’s departure.

  He answered on the third ring. “Hey, how are you feeling? I was trying to get a hold of you all night.”

  Chloe was bouncing, though her calves screamed every time her heels left the floor. “My mom just gave me back my phone. I’m pretty sore,” she answered. “Is this too early?” she added in a hurry, realizing that it was only 8:45 in the morning.

  “Nope,” he said with the hint of a yawn. “Are you still grounded?”

  “Nope,” she replied with a smile.

  “Hmmm…how ’bout I pick you up at noon?” he asked. “I want you to meet someone, and we could have lunch.”

  Chloe was beaming. “Okay.”

  “Okay then,” he said with finality. “I’ll see you in three hours.”

  • • •

  Chloe spent that time in a joy-tinged anxiety spiral as she tried to make herself look effortlessly pretty. She changed her outfit at least ten times and still ended up feeling unprepared when the knock sounded from below at 11:43. He’s early! She peeked out the window of her room, but didn’t see the Jeep in the driveway. Still, she went to answer with a sudden upswing of nervous energy.

  At the end of the upstairs hallway she caught sight of her winning outfit in the mirror on the closet door: a pair of jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt over an arguably “cool” T-shirt that depicted a T. rex with an AK-47 and sunglasses. Ugh! She contemplated going back to her room to try again, but the knock returned softly from below. Despite the prescribed half of a Tylenol 3 she’d taken with her orange juice at breakfast, she limped down the stairs with a wince on every step.

  She brushed a strand of hair from her face and unceremoniously flung open the back door with her best casual smile. No one was there. Then the knock sounded again at the front door, this time with a little more conviction. Come on, Kirin, no one uses the front!

  Shipwreck leapt from the sofa and slid around the banister to retreat up the stairs as Chloe shambled along the downstairs hallway, past the questionably valuable wall hangings that Audrey had inherited from Ray’s mother. There was a framed mint of old Chinese coins and a collection of regal-looking mid-nineteenth century miniatures painted on ivory of the last Punjab dynasty. She’d only ever known it as the Court of Lahore, and it, along with the rest of her dad’s leave-behinds, had always made Chloe want to go out and explore the world—find the places where these coins and interesting people had come from.

  The front door was perpetually locked, and Chloe fumbled through the steps of undoing the dead bolt and then turning the key that her mom left in the doorknob. “Just a second,” she called. It seemed to take forever as her stomach fluttered with butterfly aerobatics.

  Finally the door creaked open with a visible sprinkling of dust. Chloe pulled it back to reveal the startlingly non-Kirin smile of Dr. Markson. Her own smile dropped as she unlatched and cracked open the storm door suspiciously.

  Dr. Markson’s grey hair was unintentionally messy, but the pronounced crow’s-feet behind his glasses made him look dignified nonetheless. He was an attractive man, like his son, but with an obvious intelligence in his eyes that Paul didn’t possess. An unmarked brown paper bag with a folded top sat on the stoop beside his foot. “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday,” he said with convincing sincerity. “I’m Dr. William Markson. I was hoping to speak with you and your mom, if you had a moment?”

  Chloe opened the door a little wider and looked out to the black Lincoln Town Car, idling at the side of the street, then back to her visitor. Echoes from her nightmare the week before came back to her: Dr. Markson referred to them as stress fractures across the earth’s crust, and they, too, were increasing in number. She hadn’t been able to focus on that night since… Had Uktena been in my room when I woke up?

  Dr. Markson’s smile seemed genu
ine, but Chloe could tell that he was a little unsure of himself. “My mother isn’t home.”

  “Actually, I’m more interested in talking with you,” he admitted. “Just for a moment, here on the porch if you’d like—it’s important.”

  Chloe stepped out and zipped up the sweatshirt to cover the suddenly NOT cool T-shirt. She closed the door gently and leaned against the iron railing. Kirin, please come now!

  “I’m sorry we haven’t actually spoken before,” he said with a sheepish nod. “I tend to let my partner do most of the talking.”

  Chloe nodded back. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “I’ve been hearing a lot about you as well,” he acknowledged. “I saw you on the news last night; very impressive.” His calculating hazel eyes scanned her face and narrowed ever so slightly. “And before that, I’d heard your name spoken on a few occasions. You were at the pond when you were struck by lightning, and then again when the tower was destroyed. Then you were videotaping when the cow was taken, and Dr. Liou even mentioned your recent interest when he was talking about his work.” He spoke as if he was pontificating out loud rather than engaged in a conversation.

  He seemed to notice Chloe again and the smile returned. “Chloe, I was wondering what you knew about, for lack of a better word, dragons?” He watched her closely, gauging her response.

  She raised an eyebrow with a skeptic’s smirk, but she wasn’t sure if it was convincing. “Dragons?” she repeated.

  Dr. Markson nodded. “Yes, like the myths that Dr. Liou writes about.”

  “I’ve always been more into science than fantasy,” she countered.

  “Then why seek out Dr. Liou to ask him about mythological monsters and doomsday prophecies?” he probed with a wry turn at the corner of his lips.

  I opened myself up for that one. “It was for a term paper,” she said, not even buying it herself. She recovered with a well-timed blush. “And I’m kind of more interested in Dr. Liou’s son than his studies.”

  Dr. Markson furrowed his untamed eyebrows. “Yes, Kirin was with you the night of the cow snatching, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Actually, he’s on his way to pick me up right now…so—”

  “Damn it!” he said with a sudden burst of frustration that took Chloe by surprise.

  She shut her mouth and took an involuntary step toward the door.

  “I’m sorry, Chloe, I don’t have time for games,” he stammered. “I need to know if you’ve seen something strange recently.”

  “Like what?” Chloe forced the words, but could hear the futility of her continued deflection.

  Dr. Markson reached down and opened the paper bag at his feet. He removed the pair of Audrey’s flattened green dress shoes that Chloe had left on the hillside after Homecoming. “I believe these belong to you,” he said, handing them over. “I found them buried in a five-clawed footprint the size of a car… I know that you know what I’m talking about, Chloe. I need to know what it is and how to find it.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “Whatever it is you think I’ve seen, why do you need to find it?”

  Dr. Markson settled down and leaned back against the opposite railing as he ran his hand through his hair. “You say you’re interested in science, well, so am I. I’ve devoted my life to it, and now I am on the cusp of doing something that could change everything.” He glanced back toward the waiting car, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I can’t believe that it’s just coincidence that some…thing that seemingly defies the laws of physics and evolution would appear at the same time and place where I’m about to prove that mankind can harness the true power of lightning.”

  “Like how Oppenheimer harnessed the true power of nuclear energy?” Chloe challenged.

  Dr. Markson met her gaze. “Ah, so you’re a student of history as well,” he observed. “No—nuclear energy is messy and volatile, and Oppenheimer was naive. This, this is clean and elegant and three times more potent. It would replace rocket fuel, get us farther and faster into space than we’ve yet thought possible. It could end our dependency on fossil fuels entirely.”

  He started to gesticulate passionately as he spoke, as if he had too much energy for words alone to demonstrate. “The towers themselves don’t just attract lightning; they summon it! Two oppositely revolving shield walls laced with amber and iridium to produce a powerful static charge of its own. The lightning can’t stay away, and when it strikes, it acts as a wholly independent self-perpetuating power source.” He pointed his finger to the sky. “But the real prize is the antimatter that rises from the clouds above, flowing right where we want it to toward the positron traps on our satellites.”

  Now he spoke with the intensity of a zealot. “Once the one tower is proven, we’ll go global with tower fields on lands already purchased in Venezuela, Florida, and the African plains. We’re not the bad guys, Chloe; the Daedalus Group can help to save this world before it’s too late.”

  Chloe remembered—Uktena had told her what was coming…next month! How much time do we have left? It was as if the urgency and gravity of the Tipping Point Prophecy had somehow gone dormant again until now… “You heard Dr. Liou’s theory on that cauldron,” she said. “What if the world is ending sooner than you think?” Chloe wished she could take the question back as soon as it spilled out of her mouth.

  “Yes, Dr. Liou’s story of the five dragons that will bring about the end of days for mankind.” His focus suddenly switched from that of a hummingbird to a hawk. “The fifth claw was called Uktena by the Eastern Cherokee. A giant winged serpent shrouded in lightning.” Dr. Markson followed Chloe’s involuntary glance toward the barn, and the intensity of his gaze settled on the flaking red door.

  “I don’t believe in dragons,” he said, almost as if to himself. “And I don’t think that the world is coming to a quick end either.” His eyes returned to the flattened shoes in Chloe’s hands. She leaned over and dropped them by the door.

  “But I also know that there are an estimated two million native species on this planet that we have yet to discover,” he continued. “Most of them are microscopic, and most of the rest are minor variants on known species, extremely isolated and small. But a couple big species might have slipped through the cracks as well…or maybe just one very old, rare, and large species at the top of the food chain, capable of hibernating for centuries at a time… Scientifically, it is possible.”

  Should I tell him? Maybe he would know what to do? “That sounds kind of crazy,” Chloe announced instead with her heart thundering and the pain flaring in her jittery legs.

  Dr. Markson reached back down into the paper bag and removed a plate-sized scale with a pearly-grey sheen. “We’ve found nine of them now buried in the sediment at the bottom of the pond.” He handed it to Chloe, and she did not have to pretend to be momentarily mesmerized by the smooth feel of it. It was oddly warm to the touch, despite the brisk autumn air. “Brent Meeks tells me that you spent your whole summer break at that pond… Do you know where it is, Chloe?”

  YES! “No,” she answered flatly. That was when she heard the gravel crunch of her savior’s arrival in the driveway. She peered over her shoulder to see the woody siding of the Grand Wagoneer and turned back around, trying to hold in a relieved grin. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of help, Dr. Markson, but I really have to go.”

  He nodded coolly and reached out to take the scale back. Without thinking, Chloe jerked it away from his approaching fingers, suddenly feeling a possessive urge swell over her.

  Dr. Markson eyed her closely and waited.

  She handed it over. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s really cool, whatever it is.”

  He returned the scale to the brown paper bag and took it with him as he stepped down the stairs. The car revved to life street side, but he turned back just as Chloe grabbed the handle of the storm door for a quick retreat. “You know, I’m not going to be in charge of this project after today,” he admitted sadly. “You would be wise to steer clear
of this whole matter from now on.”

  “Is that a threat?” she asked.

  “It’s a warning,” he stated. “A lot of people you care about could face some serious difficulties if they get caught up in this: Stan Strakowski, Kirin, your mom… Dr. Liou signed a detailed funding agreement. If they find out he knows more than he told us, he could be bankrupted and possibly even jailed under breach of contract. The people who are coming are not known for their kindness, and they own everything we do.”

  Dr. Markson truly meant it as a warning, and Chloe nodded in thanks. “Do you ever worry that your work is being used to help the wrong people?” she asked quietly.

  Dr. Markson stared at her for a long moment and then walked away toward the waiting car without another glance back.

  The wind seeped out of her, and the tremble that had been threatening shot through her body. She had to brace against the rail to keep her legs from giving out. As Kirin stepped from the car and waved, Chloe breathed in again… Already her legs felt a little stronger.

  • • •

  Chloe was shaken by the tense encounter with the head engineer of the Daedalus Group and even more so by the newfound memory of Uktena’s words about the fast-approaching dragon apocalypse. She wanted to tell Kirin everything, but wasn’t sure which would be worse: him thinking she was bonkers or him believing her and getting on the wrong side of the most powerful people in town and the shadowy government agency that backed them?

  “Dr. Markson wanted to know if I knew anything else about the Cow Thief,” she finally answered.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  Chloe nodded begrudgingly. “Yes…it’s kind of why I’ve been meaning to talk to your father again, but I didn’t want to get him into any trouble.”

  Kirin glanced from the road to her face. “My dad isn’t home today, but you can tell me if you want.”

 

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