by Jon S. Lewis
“What, like comic books?”
“I’m in my local shop every Wednesday.”
Stacy’s eyes lit up. “Really? What do you read?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The usual, I guess. Stuff like the Fantastic Four. X-Men. Justice League.”
“What about the Phantom Flyer?”
Oz looked at her sideways and pointed at Colt with his fork.
“You know who his grandpa is, right?”
“Should I?”
“Um, yeah. He’s the Phantom Flyer—as in the real deal.”
Stacy frowned as though she might have misunderstood, but then a smile broke out. “You’re the kid who brought down Trident?”
Colt looked away, embarrassed, as his neck flushed bright red.
“Don’t be shy,” Oz said as he wrapped his massive arm around Colt’s neck, pulling him close. “You’re famous.”
“Knock it off,” Colt said, pushing him away.
There was a loud crash as plates shattered near one of the buffets. Everyone turned to see the green-skinned Undarian sitting on the floor, his uniform smeared with sauce as Pierce Bowen stood over him, laughing.
“Nice move, freak show!” Pierce said.
Colt pushed through the crowd until he was standing between Pierce and the alien. “Are you okay?” he asked, offering Bar-Ryak his hand.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Pierce grabbed Colt by the arm and swung him around. “What are you doing? That thing knocked in to me!”
“I’m sure it was an accident.” Colt grabbed Pierce by the wrist, applying pressure with his thumb until he let go.
“The only reason you’d care is if you were one of them,” Pierce said, his eyes boiling.
“You realize that you just made an enemy, right?” Oz said as they walked back to the table. He sat down, grabbed a dinner roll, and used it to sop up a pool of gravy.
Colt shrugged as Oz plopped the roll into his mouth and licked his fingers.
“Don’t get me wrong, I admire what you did,” Oz said. “I’m just saying that you better sleep with one eye open. That’s all.”
“Trust me, I already do.”
“Which is why you and I are going to be roommates.”
“Seriously?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
Colt hesitated, not wanting to answer the question. He didn’t know what to think anymore. There was a good chance that Oz had been lying to him since the day they met, but he had no way to prove it—at least not yet. Then again, Oz was acting like everything was normal between them.
Oz frowned when Colt didn’t answer, but the moment passed. He shrugged, looked at the empty dinner plates in front of him, and stood up. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready for seconds,” he said. He headed back to the buffet line.
“I’ll join you,” Stacy said. “I think I saw some chocolate cake. Do you want to come?”
“In a minute.” Danielle slid into the chair next to Colt and lowered her voice. “Let me see your communicator.”
“Why?”
She looked over her shoulder. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Colt wasn’t sure what she was up to, but he unfastened the strap and handed it to her. “So are you going to tell me what you’re doing, or do I have to guess?”
“Is anybody coming?” she asked as her fingers tapped feverishly on the buttons.
Colt tried to be discreet as he glanced around. Oz was at the carving station with Stacy, who was holding an enormous slice of chocolate cake. Pierce was over in the corner, probably plotting his revenge, and everyone else was distracted by their own conversations. Then he spotted Agent Graves. He was looking their way and frowning as though he knew Danielle was up to something, but she had her back turned to him, so it would have been difficult for him to see what she was doing.
“How much longer?” Colt asked.
“I’m almost done.” When Danielle was finished, she wrapped the communicator in a napkin and handed it back to him. “CHAOS monitors everything that goes through these things, but Ms. Skoglund gave me a code that will encrypt our transmissions so we can have some privacy whenever we need it. Just make sure you activate it before you send me something that you don’t want anyone else to see.”
Colt unwrapped the communicator and put it back on his wrist. “Do you trust her?”
“Who, Ms. Skoglund?”
“It’s just kind of weird. I mean, she showed up with those files out of nowhere, and ever since then things have gotten kind of crazy.”
“Things were already crazy,” Danielle said. “Besides, your grandpa trusts her, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t have told her where to find you the other night.”
“I guess,” Colt said, more confused than ever. He decided to join Oz and get some more of the prime rib, but as he stood up he realized that Agent Graves was still staring their way.
:: CHAPTER 33 ::
The boys’ dormitory was a three-story brick building that stood across from the library, separated from it by a small pond. Smoke wafted from a pair of chimneys, offering the promise of warmth as the snow continued to fall across campus. The walkway was lined with a trail of footprints as the cadets marched silently, heads down, as they were ushered up the steps and inside.
The front door opened to a large room that looked like some kind of parlor. A fire crackled inside a hearth that was flanked by a sofa and a few chairs. The rest of the room was filled with tables that sat six, and Colt figured it was a study room. Portraits of former academy instructors hung on the wall, most of them old men with piercing eyes and a cluster of medals hanging on their jackets.
“Let’s go!” the instructor shouted as the cadets filed in. His name was Agent Nixon, and he couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five, with dark eyes and darker hair that he kept short and combed to the side. Unlike the cadets, he was wearing a black uniform, though it had the same CHAOS insignia over the left breast pocket. “You all have your room assignments. Everything you’ll need is waiting in your dresser drawer—for some, there might even be a pacifier to keep you from crying all night.”
The cadets laughed as they trudged up the steps, leaving a trail of mud and snow that didn’t go unnoticed. “Now I don’t know about you, but I was taught to wipe my shoes on the mat before I walked inside someone’s home,” Agent Nixon said. He grabbed the closest cadet by the collar, a lanky kid named Grey Allen who refused to look him in the eye. “Did you wipe your feet, Cadet Allen?”
“Yes, sir,” the kid said, his voice hardly a whisper as he tried to keep from falling down.
“Then where did that trail of mud come from?”
Grey was so frightened that his mouth was moving, but no words came out. All he could do was make a series of strange sounds as Agent Nixon rolled his eyes and sent him to get a bucket and mop.
One of the house rules was that first-year cadets weren’t allowed to use the elevators, so Oz led Colt up two flights of stairs and stopped at a door at the end of the hall. He placed his enormous hand on a biometric sensor, and his fingertips lit green as the door clicked open. “Welcome home.”
It was smaller than Colt’s bedroom back in Arizona, but somehow they’d managed to pack in two bunk beds and a single dresser with four narrow drawers.
“You’re kidding, right?” Colt said. “There’re going to be four of us in here?”
“Relax.” Oz walked over and pressed his thumb against a small sensor on the top drawer, and it lit orange. “We’re just here to sleep,” he said. “If you aren’t training or eating, you’ll spend most of your time down in the study lounge.” He placed his thumb against the sensor again, and this time it lit green. The drawer opened, and inside were a second uniform, enough socks and underwear to last a week, some toiletries like deodorant, a toothbrush, some toothpaste, and a small silver case that wasn’t much larger than a hardback novel.
Oz pulled it out and sat down on one of the bottom bunks with his back against the w
all and his long legs hanging over the side. He removed the metal case, and underneath was a sleek tablet computer with a touch screen. “Most of the campus is a dead zone, so you can’t go on the Internet, but Danielle said she’d help us try to find a way around.”
The door opened and two more cadets walked in. The first was Grey, the kid who got stuck mopping up after everyone. He took the top bunk, leaving the bottom for Ethan Foley, who had recently moved back to the States after spending a few years in Dubai, where his father had overseen the construction of a luxury resort that boasted the world’s largest swimming pool.
Colt looked at the clock on the dresser. He didn’t feel much like conversation, and there were still twenty minutes before lights out, so he decided to get some fresh air. “I’ll be back in a while,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I just want to clear my head.”
Snow covered the landscape in a blanket of white as he walked down the winding path that led past the girls’ dormitory. He wondered how Danielle was getting along with the other girls, and if she had already found a way to patch into the school’s network so she could send an e-mail to her parents. She’d never been gone from home for more than a week, and that was to a summer camp with the youth group at her church. Since her mom was one of the chaperones, Colt figured that didn’t count.
Right now everything seemed like an adventure, but in a few days the reality of the commitment that it took to be a cadet was bound to sink in. The walls around the school grounds were meant to do more than keep unwanted guests from getting inside; they also made sure that nobody wandered away.
Colt crossed under the shadow of a bell tower that rose above the chapel. In a few minutes the bell would ring ten times, and at that point the cadets were expected to be in their rooms, lights off and quiet. He thought about heading back; after all, he didn’t want to get in trouble on his first day. But just then he heard the sound of feet shuffling down the path toward him.
He skirted off the path and slipped into a cluster of trees where he could see the headstones in the cemetery. The canopy of branches kept most of the snow at bay, but the ground was covered in rotting leaves that crunched with each step, making any attempt at stealth nearly impossible.
It wasn’t long before he saw two figures walking down the path, shoulders hunched and heads down. Colt felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and his heart started to pound inside his chest. That only happened when Krone was around, but the person on the left was Agent Graves, and he was walking with Giru Ba, who didn’t look anything like one of the Thule. So where was Krone?
Colt tried to shift his weight, but as he did his heel came down on a dead branch.
Agent Graves stopped. “Did you hear that?”
“It was probably just the wind,” Giru Ba said.
“I don’t think so. It came from over there.” He pointed directly to where Colt was hiding.
“I don’t see anything,” she said.
Agent Graves took a step toward the trees, and for a moment Colt thought he’d been spotted. He held his breath and considered running, but Agent Graves turned and headed down the path with Giru Ba, back toward the main building.
Colt exhaled, but he didn’t relax—not if Krone was out there somewhere watching him. Besides, according to the clock on his wrist communicator, there were only a few minutes until lights out. His only chance was to cut through the woods and hope he didn’t get turned around.
He forged deeper into the cluster of trees, hoping that he could reach the dorm before he ran into Krone. The moon was little more than a sliver in the night sky, offering precious little light as he tried to avoid gnarled roots and annoying bushes with nasty thorns.
Something moved in the distance, and he spun to see the silhouette of a raccoon scamper into a tree. Relieved, he shook his head and exhaled, wondering why he had gone on the walk in the first place. It felt like the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, and even though the heated fibers of his uniform kept him relatively warm, he was ready to crawl into bed and fall asleep beneath his wool blanket.
He kept walking, keeping the rushing water from the Potomac River off to the right, but he should have found the dorm by now. There wasn’t enough time to backtrack and make it to his room before curfew, so he decided to make for a nearby hill, hoping that would give him a clear view of the campus.
Distracted, he didn’t notice rotting slats of wood that spanned what looked like some kind of mine shaft. The boards creaked at the weight of his step before they snapped. Colt had no idea what had happened as he fell into the darkness.
The impact sent the air rushing from his lungs, and he groaned, disoriented as he writhed on the ground. He rolled over and forced himself to sit up. Remnants of moonlight slipped through a narrow opening that was at least ten feet up.
The minute remaining before curfew was the least of his problems. From what he could see, he had fallen into a tunnel. The walls were curved, and so was the ceiling, so climbing back out would be difficult, if not impossible. He tapped on the display of his wrist communicator, trying to reach Danielle, but he couldn’t get it to work underground. Frustrated, he wondered who had built the tunnel, and why. Thoughts of subterranean monsters filled his head, but he pushed them away as he tried to determine which direction to take. There was no point of reference, which meant one direction was as good as the next. He decided to go left.
Unable to see, he used the wall as his guide. It was damp and cold, and he could feel the hairy roots of the trees sticking out from the dirt surface. Panic tried to grab hold of him with each step, but Colt pushed forward, knowing that his only other option was to sit where he’d fallen through and wait for morning. Even then, there was no guarantee that anyone would find him.
He was about to give up when his hand fell on what felt like a ladder that was bolted to the wall. When he got to the top, he found another wooden grate. With one arm locked around the rungs, he pressed his hand against the slats. They resisted at first, but with a little effort he was able to push them away. He was in a well—or at least something that was built to look like a well. The library was nearby, which meant he was close to the dorm. There was only one problem. He was past curfew.
His first thought was to try and get hold of Oz using his communicator, but he forgot how to scramble the message, and if their transmissions were monitored, the staff would know he had broken the rules. He decided to at least try the doors to see if they were unlocked.
He crawled out of the well and headed back toward the dorm, but stopped when he saw someone standing on the front step. “I was starting to think that you wouldn’t make it,” Giru Ba said.
Colt glanced about the shadows, looking for Agent Graves.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m alone.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“That answer is more complicated than you might think. For now, let’s just say I thought you might need a bit of help.”
:: CHAPTER 34 ::
Colt woke up the next morning with his bed shaking violently. Not knowing if it was an attack or an earthquake, he jumped out of the top bunk and onto the floor. His eyes were wild as he stood in a crouch, his tired brain trying to assess whether he should run or stay and fight.
It didn’t register that someone was laughing until he saw Oz. “What are you doing?” he asked as he stood in his boxer briefs.
“Consider it your wake-up call.” Oz walked over and flipped on the lights. “Hurry up and get dressed or you’re going to miss breakfast.”
“What time is it?” Colt asked as he looked outside the window. It was dark, and the moon was still out, though it was hidden behind a bank of gray clouds.
“Almost five thirty.”
Breakfast wasn’t anything like the feast they had eaten the night before, but it was better than Colt expected. There were scrambled eggs—the real kind, not that powdered mix like they serve
d at summer camp—along with sausage, oatmeal, and whole grain toast. They even provided energy drinks.
“You better take two.” Oz grabbed a second from the cooler and placed it on Colt’s tray. “What’s with you, anyway? Were you up all night or something?”
Colt shrugged. “Kind of. I’m not used to the mattress.” He wasn’t about to mention how he had seen Agent Graves and Giru Ba, that he was almost certain Krone had been tracking him on campus, or how he’d fallen into some kind of tunnel. None of it made sense.
He needed to talk to Danielle, but she wasn’t in the dining hall. Most of the cadets had already left for their first-hour classes. He spotted Pierce in the back of the room, hunched over as he whispered something to the other cadets at his table. Colt made eye contact for a moment, then turned away, picking a chair so that Pierce was stuck looking at his back.
He ate quickly, wondering how he was going to keep from falling asleep in class. He barely had the energy to keep his eyes open, much less walk from one building to the next. “I’d do anything for a mocha cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso,” he said as one of the service bots took his empty plate.
Oz grabbed an energy drink, cracked the lid, and plopped it down in front of Colt. “I’m telling you, one of these will wake you up. Two will make you think that you can fly.”
Colt brought it to his nose and sniffed. “It smells like an orange Creamsicle.” He took a swig, and the effects were almost immediate. It was like someone had injected caffeine straight into his bloodstream. His fingers and toes started to tingle, and his eyes opened wide. “What’s in this thing?” he asked, looking at the label.
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, it works.”
According to the schedule, their first class was Basic Combat Techniques. The building was on the other side of campus, on a hill that overlooked the Potomac River. It looked like one of those warehouse clubs, except instead of metal shelves crammed with bulk food items, everything inside was dedicated to the art of self-defense. Lohr stood in one of the boxing rings with a cluster of cadets, including Danielle and Stacy, waiting for class to begin. Colt wanted to pull Danielle aside to tell her what had happened, but he didn’t get a chance before the bell rang.