The Elementalists

by C Sharp

  He closed the folder and gave the football a little twirl before smiling again. “No, I’m cool… Actually, things are starting to make a little more sense.”

  Chloe wasn’t sure what that meant, but oddly she agreed. She returned the smile and turned back to Stan. “Just give it a little gas and take this left. The pull-in for the service entrance is just up the road a couple hundred yards.”

  Stan looked at her in the rearview. “Just tell me that this isn’t completely insane, dude. Tell me it’s all going to work out just like we planned.”

  Chloe swallowed the urge to cough. “I can’t tell you that this isn’t crazy. It’s probably the craziest thing that any of us will ever do. But it’s still going to work out just like we planned—it has to.”

  Stan watched her for a moment longer as the idling engine trembled in anticipation. “Okay.” He sighed as the van lurched ahead and made the turn.

  Chloe looked down to see Kirin’s fingers link with her own on the torn vinyl seat cushion. She squeezed back and felt the swell of courage she needed in that moment to believe what she was saying. This is all happening for a reason. This is meant to be.

  Stan turned left again, just after a sign that read “Daedalus Group: Service Entrance and Deliveries.”

  Kirin pulled his hand away from Chloe’s and grabbed the box of rubber surgical gloves that he’d lifted from AP Biology. “Gloves and masks,” he announced before taking a pair and passing the box on. A moment later and he grinned through the mouth hole of his ski mask.

  Chloe and Stan scrambled to follow suit, and when they rolled down the gradual decline toward the back lot, all three were decked out in ski masks and rubber. Ezra struggled with the last glove, unable to pull the stretchy plastic over his king-sized sweaty fingers until the third attempt. Chloe tossed him a black bandanna, and he fastened it around his face like a bandit before giving her a thumbs-up.

  Aside from an empty eighteen-wheeler parked beside the dumpsters, there were no other vehicles in the service lot. The giant corrugated metal doors were closed at the four cargo bays, and security cameras were mounted above each one. Chloe looked to the schematic drawing in her lap and saw the spot where Dr. Markson had made a crude pencil drawing of a car. It was positioned directly in the center of a shaded V pattern in the line-of-sight gap between two camera angles.

  She pointed past Stan’s face. “Pull around wide and come to a stop just on the other side of that lamp post.”

  Stan did as he was told, and the van came to an abrupt halt before he hastily killed the headlights. They sat in silence for the better part of a minute as nothing happened. Ahead was a little stairwell that led up to an unadorned metal door. A fifth camera was mounted above it, but the corresponding camera on the map had been crossed off with a little ‘x,’ and the barely legible words “Enter here” were scrawled beside it.

  “That’s where we go in,” said Chloe.

  “This kind of seems like the point of no return,” Stan mentioned.

  “There may be no stopping what’s coming whether we do this or not,” Chloe countered. “At least this way we have a chance.”

  Stan removed the key from the ignition, and the van went totally quiet. All four of them stared at the door for a moment longer, trying to gather their courage and wits.

  “All right then,” said Kirin, breaking the tension. “Just like we planned: I’ll get the meat bag, grappling hook, and lock picks, Stan takes the coffee and camera, and Chloe handles the radio and leads the way.”

  “I’ll take the meat,” Ezra interjected.

  Chloe snapped out of her funk and slid into gear. “Right, Ezra’s got the meat. We count to three and then go. Move in a straight line to the stairs and then up and in without hesitation.”

  “Hold on, dude.” Stan unzipped the camera bag on the floor and took out the video camera, now equipped with an extra device with an antenna duct-taped to the bottom. He switched on the camera with a series of beeps and then powered the device beneath with a red light of its own.

  “What’s that?” Chloe asked, a little wary of added elements that weren’t part of the agreed-upon plan.

  “Well, I figured that shooting video wouldn’t be much of an insurance policy if they could just confiscate the tape like before.” He tapped the red blinking box, “So my dad helped me set up a wireless transmitter that streams the footage to a hard drive in my room.” Stan smiled beneath his ski mask. “I figure if we get nabbed now, my dad will find the footage and there will at least be a record of what happened to us.”

  “That’s brilliant!” Chloe exclaimed with a supportive punch to Stan’s shoulder.

  Stan winced. “Thanks.”

  “Okay, is everyone ready?” she prepped. The others secured backpacks and grabbed their assigned gear before nodding. “Then we go on three… One, two, three—” All at once, doors opened and the team spilled out. Chloe led the way and they fell in line, scurrying across the pavement with eyes and camera swinging back and forth. Ezra wasn’t even slowed up the steps with the eighty pounds of meat slung over his shoulder. At the top, Chloe wrapped her gloved fingers around the cold, metal handle of the door and yanked.

  The darkness was flooded by the overlit fluorescent glow from within. The foursome scrambled in and closed the door behind them with an abrupt click that echoed down the empty white hallway. They froze, allowing themselves the luxury of a joint exhale as their eyes adjusted to the brightness. The path before them was lined with a series of closed doors marked only by numbers and letters corresponding to the layout of rooms on the schematic diagram.

  Chloe clipped the walkie-talkie to the belt at her hip and affixed the earphone jack to her head with a bendy microphone that protruded annoyingly in front of her face. She curled it away, foreseeing no good reason to broadcast her voice to the entire Daedalus Group security team. From over her shoulder, she met Kirin’s and Ezra’s wide-eyed gazes with a nod, and then she caught her own reflection in the lens of Stan’s camera. Her freaked-out eyes stared back at her from within the eyeholes of her mask, and telltale strands of brown hair jutted out of the neckline in a way that made it seem obvious that she was just a little girl far out of her element.

  She thought for a moment about all of the tragic stories she always heard about on the news, where reckless kids got themselves, or each other, killed in profound acts of brazen stupidity. But she brushed that aside, and after her best imitation of a hand motion for ‘tactical advance,’ they moved forward down the hallway.

  A series of arrows had been drawn on the map, intended to lead them on a circuitous route to the red ‘X’ in the center of the warehouse-sized room. There was a much more direct path from the main freight entrance to get where they needed to go, but little camera icons dotted that way at every turn. Instead, when they reached the intersection, she paused to listen and then looked both ways before leading them to the right and away from their goal. Chloe wondered if maybe Dr. Markson had himself walked this path in a test run a few weeks prior.

  “This is Car 1—the Tower is going live now—over,” came the voice of the security chief in Chloe’s ear.

  “Copy that—Air 1 is picking up increased electromagnetic field currents across the area—be advised, they’re saying it may cause intermittent disturbances with our camera and radio feeds—over.”

  “Copy that, Air 1—all units on standby—over and out.”

  Chloe heard the distant rumble of thunder, followed by the distinct impression of Uktena stirring nearby. She stopped at the next intersection to check the map and give Ezra a moment to rest. He slid the bag off his shoulder and leaned against the wall with a deft twirl of the football.

  “You brought the football?” Chloe whispered.

  “It helps me think,” he answered from behind the bandanna.

  She shrugged and addressed the team. “The tower is going operational now. That should give us some time. We take a left here and another left at the end of the hall, and then w
e should be close… Let’s get ready to move out.” A part of her had to admit that she was really enjoying this.

  She peeked around the corner, just as Kirin grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back. He pointed toward the ceiling, and both Chloe’s eyes and Stan’s lens followed his finger to the camera above them as it swiveled back and forth between the two hallways. They watched as it slowly swung back in the other direction before it began its gradual return to the stretch they had to clear.

  “Dude, maybe someone else should carry the map,” Stan suggested with a nervous chuckle.

  Chloe glanced down to the corresponding intersection and saw no sign of a camera there. “This camera isn’t on the map,” she said in her defense.

  “They must have added more security ahead of the test,” Kirin observed.

  Stan’s quiet chuckle took on a desperate edge. “Or, I don’t know, it might have something to do with the hundred-foot-long monster hanging out a few rooms over.”

  Chloe tracked the camera’s movement, waiting for the instant it swiveled away from the target hallway. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. She met Ezra’s gaze. “Do you think you can clear this hallway in about eight seconds?”

  Ezra waited for the camera to turn again before poking his head out. “With an extra eighty pounds…it’ll be close,” he admitted.

  Chloe nodded in agreement and turned back to the camera. This time, she counted out loud—getting the timing down. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” And then again, “One, two, three,” the others joined in, “four, five, six, seven, eight.”

  “Got it?” she asked. They nodded. She looked to Ezra. “All right, when I say GO, you take off along the left wall and start counting.” Her look shifted to Kirin and the watching lens, “Kirin, then Stan, you follow after and pass him on the right, but don’t slow him down. I’ll be on your heels, and when I go by,” her eyes slid back to Ezra, “you lock on my pace for the rest of the way.”

  Ezra smiled. “I know that pace well.”

  “My queen, it will be done,” whispered Stan with a grin and a salute.

  Chloe grinned too. “Good, now shut up and get ready.”

  Ezra returned the straps to his shoulder and positioned the weight for the sprint; the football was in the crook of his arm, just like another day on the field. All four of them tracked the swivel of the security camera and counted in unison for two full passes.

  “Ready?” said Chloe as they all braced for the starter’s gun. “GO,” she barked as Ezra shot around the corner and the world slipped into motion.

  “One, two, three,” Chloe was counting out loud as she tore down the hall behind the others. Ezra had gotten off well, but he was already starting to lurch. “Four, five, six,” Kirin and Stan blew past him on the right and skidded around the corner ahead as Chloe locked into step just ahead of Ezra and picked up the pace. “Seven, EIGHT,” they lunged around the corner together and banged into the far wall before coming to a heaving stop.

  Ezra dropped the bag and put his hands on his knees as Chloe gave him a pat on the shoulder. “I think we made it,” she whispered.

  Kirin smirked. “You’re kind of a badass, huh?”

  Stan’s camera was zoomed in on the end of the new hallway. “Uh, guys?”

  Chloe followed his focus and saw another identical security camera swinging their way. A jolt of panic fired through her, and without knowing what she was doing, she reached toward the ceiling as her hand began to vibrate painfully. She recalled the frequency from her lightning dream, the feeling that the molecules of her fingers might come apart or burn away—and in that instant, a deafening crack answered from above. The hall went dark.

  Everything was pitch black for a moment before red emergency lights flickered on every ten feet along the hallway. The security camera had stopped moving. They all just stood there, dumbfounded.

  Stan lowered his camera. “Holy shit!” he yelped without any attempt at caution.

  Chloe was light-headed as a deep, resonant grumble rose from her belly to echo the thunderclap that rolled out from above. Just then voices started to clamor in her ear.

  “This is Foot 1—we’ve had a direct lightning hit on HQ—I think we fried a transformer, and we’ve lost the camera feed—standby,” said Mr. Fitz in an exasperated voice.

  “This is Car 1 to Foot 1—let me know when the back-up generator kicks in.” Mr. Duncan’s tone was unflappable.

  “Copy that,” answered Mr. Fitz.

  “We’ve got to move,” Kirin announced as he grabbed Chloe’s shoulders and pushed her down the darkened passage. The others followed without question as the voices continued to banter in Chloe’s ear.

  “This is Car 1 to Air 2—status?”

  “My whole body is tingling, but I’m okay, I think,” said Air 2, with a shake in his voice. “That wasn’t more than fifty feet from me!”

  Chloe shook it off and scanned the map midrun. Dr. Markson’s next penciled arrow passed through a rectangular icon in the wall that corresponded to the imposing metal door that loomed ahead. They came to a panicky halt before it as all eyes fell to the perfectly polished knob and the brand-new ten-digit keypad on the wall beside it.

  “Kirin?” Chloe pleaded.

  “What?” he said, taking his reassuring hands from her shoulders and leaning in to the keypad. There was no keyhole. “I got nothing for that!”

  “Maybe it’s Kendra’s birthday again?” said Stan hopefully.

  Chloe actually reached her gloved fingers out and tried: 10—17—1. She half expected the little status light above the numbers to start flashing red just before the alarm went off, or maybe nets would shoot down from the ceiling. But nothing happened at all, just the continued low hum of the red emergency fluorescents and the sound of Ezra’s heavy breathing at her shoulder.

  “This is Foot 1—the backup generator will be up in ten seconds—over.”

  “What do we do?” she asked desperately.

  “The grappling hook!” barked Stan. “We climb up to the ceiling and go in through the ventilation system like in the movies!”

  Kirin didn’t seem to hear either of them. He turned his furrowed brow away from the stagnant camera above and reached out to the doorknob. It opened without resistance, revealing a continuation of darkened space with hazy pockets of the bloodred glow within. “How about that?”

  “Go,” barked Chloe as she pushed them through the door and quickly latched it again behind her. The main lights clicked back on a second later, and all four of them cringed beneath the comparatively blinding onslaught. Before she could even fully see, Chloe found that her arms had wrapped around Kirin in a bear hug as they jumped up and down.

  “That was ridiculous!” exclaimed Stan, with the full spread of his horse grin returned for the first time in weeks. “That’s got to be less likely than winning the lottery.”

  “Maybe it was the dragon,” said Kirin. “Nai Nai always said that to be in a dragon’s favor is to be blessed by great fortune.”

  “No, man, I saw what happened,” Ezra said, stepping closer to Chloe. “You put your hand up to the sky; I could feel the charge coming off you… You called that lightning, didn’t you?”

  Chloe shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe?” The others waited for more. “I’ve been having weird dreams about turning into living electricity, and this was kind of like how it felt in the dream. In the moment, it just made sense.”

  The others were silent, until Stan spoke up from behind the camera. “Dude, I’ve been having strange dreams about flying and becoming a tornado.”

  “I’ve been dreaming about water—actually being the ocean itself—and in one, I become a tidal wave,” said Kirin.

  Ezra was still skeptical, but he was nodding. “Yeah, me too, but mine is about an earthquake, and I’m making something to harness whatever is coming up from below.”

  Realization struck Chloe. “It’s the dragons, the Five Claws.”

  �
�And it’s just like Nai Nai’s story about the xian,” Kirin added.

  “Hey guys, check it out,” said Stan.

  They were in what appeared to be an observation deck with a full wall of windows that overlooked a massive two-story room that stretched below. There was an impressive array of cameras on tripods spread out along the window. Each had a long lens pointed down and a thick bundle of cables that snaked out to feed the various monitor banks on the opposite wall. It looked like a lot of money had been spent here very recently. As they watched, the cameras and monitors clicked to life as the full electrical feed came back online.

  But the fancy AV equipment didn’t do justice to the subject below. In unison, the team moved to the window and looked down at the huge shape sprawled across the stone floor. None of them said a word as they took in the sight of the dragon. The boys were stunned by the sheer majesty of the creature before them, but Chloe was shocked to silence by the sickly grey color and waxy sheen that had come over him.

  Uktena was smaller than she remembered, shriveled and old compared to the way he’d looked when he’d first emerged from the pond. His back rose and fell with the ponderous effort of every breath, and his once bright, piercing eyes had been reduced to half-closed slits that held none of the vitality or intelligence that she’d last seen there.

  Ezra was speechless.

  Stan scratched his knit-covered head. “Duuude.”

  “He’s magnificent,” Kirin added.

  “He’s dying,” Chloe countered. “We need to get down there.”

  “Chloe,” Kirin said gently with a cautionary hand on her arm. “There are bound to be people watching those camera feeds. How do we get close without setting off every alarm in the building?”

  Chloe didn’t know, but stalling any longer wasn’t an option. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for an idea. They settled on the coat rack by the door that led to the stairwell down. Every hook was fitted with a white, full-body hazmat suit…

  Chapter 30

  Busting Out