“Did you really think Merlyn would abandon us?” Dr. Lawless had regained his composure. He stood up and brushed glass from his suit, chuckling. “You have no idea how powerful the Lawless family is.”
“You like games, don’t you, Lawless?” M asked. “Let’s play a game. Truth or dare. You go first.”
Lawless began pacing around M. He seemed willing to play along, especially after seeing what her magblast was capable of. “Truth: You knew this was a trap, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” answered M as she matched his steps, keeping him in front of her at all times. “Truth: You really need that cane, don’t you? Someone beat you up?”
“Yes, but you should see the other guy,” taunted Lawless. “Truth: You trust everyone in your little group?”
“No, I don’t,” said M. “Dare: Shake my hand and you’ll never see me again.”
“It’s been a dishonor and misfortune ever meeting you in the first place, Freeman.” Lawless spat as he shoved his left hand forward. “Double dare: Shake my hand and you’ll wish you’d never met me, either.”
M held out her left hand, then used her magblast to pull Lawless right to her. The move surprised the school principal and he instinctively raised his right hand to block her. As soon as he did, M snatched Lawless’s glove off his hand and was floored by what she saw.
Lawless’s hand was no more than a fleshy stump with four fingers missing. The sight stunned M as strongly as if a lightning bolt had shot through her.
“Four fewer fingers, yes. But four more reasons to hate you, Freeman,” snarled Lawless as he unsheathed a blade from his cane and kicked her furiously in the stomach. M flew back as Lawless slashed down with his sword. Luckily, she caught the blade with her own glove.
“You!” she exclaimed as he leaned over her, pushing the blade lower with all of his might. “You were the Fulbright … you killed Jones … you gave me a shot … made me forget … everything … everything that happened.”
“Oh, my dearest.” Lawless grinned as he loomed above her. “I’ll never know what he sees in you.”
“What who sees in me?” M felt the tip of the sword inch closer to her own beating chest.
“Our fearless leader, of course,” snapped Lawless. “Or don’t you know?”
The whites of M’s eyes flared and she felt a ripping sensation in her right arm muscle. Without the rest of her suit on, she could not hold the sword back from its target much longer.
“Oh, you don’t know,” said Lawless, in an almost giddy tone. He eased off his sword and M’s arm deadened into pins and needles. “Here’s one more truth for you to take to the grave: John —”
The stylish house suddenly rattled as if it would shake to pieces. Lawless dropped the sword and clutched his head in agony. But he wasn’t alone. M felt it, too. She heard it. A low, gnawing tone that made it feel like her brains were being scooped out like ice cream from an almost-empty container. It was ten times worse than the wall of sound she’d suffered through while saving Jules. The ground swelled and shook as if the atoms that made up the entire world were separating to swallow M whole.
And just as everything in her field of vision was going white, a set of oversize earmuffs clasped over her ears and as suddenly as the sickening racket had started, it was silenced. M gazed over the now soundless room. A crowd of panicked faces tried to fight against the inescapable noise that surrounded them like waves crashing over flailing swimmers in a hurricane.
Merlyn, in another set of earmuffs, helped her up and pushed her toward the door.
“I’m not leaving you!” M yelled at him.
But Merlyn shook his head and pointed toward the door again with wholehearted hysteria. Then he held up a scribbled note that read Go or die! M paused and grabbed the paper and pen. She wrote two words and held it up. Find Sercy. Then M crumpled the note and pulled Merlyn in for a hug one last time, realizing this was possibly the last time she would ever see him. Then she punched him square in the nose.
He flopped backward as his earmuffs flew off his head and skipped across the floor. M marched over, picked them up, found Zara scrunched in the fetal position, and placed the earmuffs on her. Together, the two girls grabbed Foley and Evel, then dragged them back to the van outside.
Zara jumped in the driver’s seat and tore off down the driveway. Then, swerving into the road, she rocketed away from Merlyn’s house as fast as she possibly could.
The whole time Jules waved her arms and her lips moved frantically, but no sound came out. At least not until M removed her earmuffs. “What happened! What’s wrong with Foley and Evel? Where’s Merlyn?! M, tell me what’s going on!”
The boys were doubled over in the backseat, whimpering and moaning. Even the minute or two that M had suffered through the loudspeakers had rewired her insides and she was still having trouble pulling her pieces back together.
“It was an ambush,” M panted, catching her breath. “Dr. Lawless … waiting … Merlyn …”
“Where’s Merlyn?” pressed Jules. “We can’t leave him there.”
Her voice was so loud, M winced in pain. She couldn’t imagine what Jules’s voice must have sounded like to the others who had been trapped in the sound waves longer.
“I knocked him out,” admitted M.
“You what!”
“It was the only way to save him,” M said, almost shocked at her own brutal logic. “He risked his life to save us. His mom, his dad, Dr. Lawless, he turned on them to help us escape. I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“But you did leave him there,” snapped Jules.
“She left him there as a hero who tried to stop us from escaping,” clarified Zara from the front seat. “That bloody nose proves he’s on their side. So quit jumping down Freeman’s throat. She barely escaped Lawless this time.”
The dark shadows in the forest outside were deep and mysterious, but they were nothing compared to the murkiness that M was sorting through right now. Dr. Lawless in a Fulbright costume, working with John Doe — it could mean only one thing. It was unthinkable, irrational, and insane. But when the impossible has been ruled out, no matter how crazy it seems, what’s left must be the truth. “The Lawless School and the Fulbrights aren’t fighting each other anymore.”
“What are you saying?” asked Zara.
“I’m saying that the game has changed. The Lawless School and the Fulbrights are working together. And we’re the last ones standing in their crosshairs.”
With nowhere else to go, the crew drove to a deserted campground tucked away in the mountains. Zara and Foley worked quickly and robotically, peeling a giant black sticker wrap off the van to reveal a forest green color underneath. They switched the license plates, too. Madame V had trained them for these moments, where a few misdirections could buy them just enough time to escape.
The evasive maneuvers did little to make anyone feel safer, though. A fresh coat of paint was little comfort when the Fulbrights were involved. Add Lawless to the mix and the group would be foolish to ever sleep again.
Evel and Jules helped Keyshawn out of the van and propped him up against a mossy tree. M leaned in and took his pulse. A weak smile spread across his face as he tried to talk, but the poor guy could still barely breathe. His words were little more than wheezes that clung to his lips, hollow and thin.
“It’s okay.” She tried to put him at ease. “We just need to regroup and refocus. And you need to rest and get better. Think of good things. What about your family? You saved them, right?”
Keyshawn shook his head and it rolled weakly to the side. “I … made … my … choice … I … saved … you …”
The weight on M’s shoulders grew like a hundred-pound anchor. “I’m sorry,” she apologized.
“Don’t … get … sad …” he breathed. “Get … even.”
M nodded and, as if by her permission, Keyshawn finally closed his eyes and fell asleep. At least, she hoped he was only asleep.
The others in the group join
ed them, some sitting cross-legged on the ground and others lying down as if they’d just finished a marathon.
As the clouds pulled back and the stars rolled out above them, M knew that she owed the group as much of the truth as she knew. In the quiet of the forest, she described what had happened during the last night in her house. How she’d been summoned there by John Doe, the leader of the Fulbrights. And how she’d watched her friends sit trapped in a deep freeze as they were carried away one by one to the chamber that would steal their skills. By Professor Bandit.
“No way,” cried Zara. “That no good, double-dealing … What was he doing there? How could he —”
But M held up her hand. “It gets worse.” She continued her story with her escape from Doe and finding the passageway hidden in the basement, where she was attacked by a masked Fulbright soldier. She fought and bested the soldier only after her friend Jones had been killed. “That Fulbright was Dr. Lawless.”
In the moonlight, M watched the color drain from the group’s faces. Everyone went silent, processing what they’d just learned.
“So what does this all mean?” asked Evel.
“Here’s my theory,” started M. “Zara told us a story in France about a man named Jonathan Wild. He was famous in London during the sixteen hundreds for being the head of the police and the leader of the criminal underground. And this may seem crazy, but he started both the Lawless School and the Fulbright Academy.”
“That’s impossible,” said Zara. “Wild was executed for his crimes way before these two schools started.”
“It gets worse,” said M.
“You keep saying that,” said Evel. “I hate it when you say that.”
“Wild is still alive.”
“Now I know you’re crazy,” said Foley with a laugh. “How does someone alive in the sixteen hundreds survive all the way until now?”
“I don’t know,” admitted M. “But we all know him by a different name. He’s John Doe.”
M stretched her legs and stood up. She opened the van door and pulled out the yearbook. “This used to have a picture of Jonathan Wild in it. He was the founder of the Lawless School. In the photo, he looks exactly like John Doe.”
“Shut the front door!” said Jules as she grabbed the yearbook to study it.
“And you’re telling us this now?!” Zara’s whisper barely contained her fury. She marched over and pointed her finger at M, almost touching her nose. “You knew this the whole time and you’re telling us now!”
“I wanted proof,” said M. She snapped a small branch off a tree. The crack nearly made the others jump out of their skin. She whiffed the stick through the air like a sword as she paced around the outside of the circle. “Without that missing page, no one’s going to believe me.”
“I would have believed you,” said Jules. “You know that, right?”
M smiled slightly at hearing that from her friend. “I let you down again, Jules. This is the last time I do that.”
Jules extended her hand to M, almost like they were back in the Box the first time they’d met, and M took it.
“Okay, super-happy-fun-time is over,” said Zara. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if what M says is true then we’re probably at the top of the most wanted list for both groups. Madame V is in the wind and we have nowhere else to turn.”
“Zara’s right.” M scribbled lines absentmindedly in the dirt with the branch. “Lawless can tell the underworld that I attacked him and technically he’d be right. Doe can tell the Fulbrights that I attacked him and technically he’d be right. That’s the only part that people will hear and believe.”
Another moment went by and the woods began their nighttime banter. Soft rustling in the underbrush, branches lifting with the gentle hush of waving leaves. It was all background music on the sinking ship that M and her friends were struggling to keep afloat.
Then Evel spoke up. “What if there were a group of people who didn’t like either the Fulbrights or the Lawless School?”
“That’s what Madame V is,” Zara told him. “If I could just get in touch with her …”
“No.” M’s voice was little more than a whisper.
Foley moved forward. “What’s going on, M? Do you have any other secrets we should know? You’ve been steering Zara away from Madame Voleur all night. You wouldn’t let us try to find her at the cabin. And now you won’t even let Zara mention her name without shutting her down. What happened to her back there?”
Zara joined Foley’s side. “Yeah, M. You obviously have trust issues. Look, we’re your friends … sort of … but we’re the only friends you’ve got right now. What’s going on?”
M held her breath and exhaled. “I lied.” Her hands shook and her throat went dry. The words felt like bile in her stomach.
Zara stepped swiftly up to M, like a rattlesnake uncoiling to strike. “You lied about what? And think real hard about what you say next.”
“Madame V … she was … in the fire.” It was all M could force out. The rest of her words choked somewhere in her chest, her voice caught between her heart and her lips. The girls stared at each other. It was the first time M could remember silence settling between them.
Then Zara shoved M. Hard. M fell to the ground, and Zara leaned over her. She was fighting back tears and her mouth turned down into an ugly sneer. “Now I know why your mother left you.” Then Zara marched off into the thick trees that rose all around them. Five steps in and she had disappeared.
“Zara!” M cried out before Foley held up his hand to block her.
“Let her go,” he said angrily. “You’ve done enough damage for one night. You can’t keep lying to your friends. We don’t stand a chance if we can’t be honest with one another.”
“But how could I tell her something like that?” asked M.
“It’s Zara. You just tell her,” Jules chimed in. “She’s the toughest person I know. But lying to her and then surprising her with the truth later probably made the truth hurt that much more. You gave her hope, M. Then you took it away.”
M wondered if hope really was so dangerous. She’d held on to hope so many times in her life. Hope that she’d save her mother from the Fulbrights. Hope that her father may be still alive. Hope that she held the key to solving whatever mystery tied the moon rocks, a meteorite, and the Mutus Liber together. But right now, all of that hope had fled into the woods with Zara.
Evel stepped into the group circle again. “As I was trying to say, you know someone else who hates both the Fulbrights and Lawless. Ronin, like me. We were rejected and made invisible. We were kept under constant surveillance, sent away from our families, and told that we were worthless by the groups that ruined our lives. We wanted to rebel, but we’ve never known how. You saw how the Fulbrights attacked us. Now we have a chance to strike back. Let us help.”
Jules nodded. “ ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ It could work, M.”
“We have resources, you’ve seen that,” continued Evel, as he became more excited about the idea. “I have the finances. Sercy can be our digital eyes, ears, and voice.”
“I don’t like it.” Foley had a look of scorn on his face.
“Why not?” M asked.
“There’s a reason people become Ronin. Am I the only one who remembers that? They couldn’t cut it at either school. They’re not special like us; they’re average at best. So why in the world would we want to put together an army of outcasts and losers?”
M had never heard Foley sound so negative before. “Yeah, but Foley, welcome to the club. We’re outcasts and losers.” She waved her hands around to show him. “Jules is a plain old kid. Evel flunked out of the Fulbright program. I’ve basically been kicked out of both schools. And maybe it’s hard for you to see this in your new life, but neither the Masters nor Dr. Lawless seemed especially pleased to see you alive and on our side.”
Foley snatched the stick from M’s hand and broke it over his knee. “You know what that is? That’s ex
actly what the Fulbrights are going to do to us if we walk into a war with Ronins on our side. That snap you heard, it wasn’t a stick. It was your spine.”
“Well, at least she’s not spineless,” said Jules. “Like some people here.”
Foley growled in frustration, spun, and threw the sticks into the forest. He ran his fingers through his hair, then breathed deeply to calm down. “It’s not that I’m spineless, okay? But I am trying to keep us alive. There has to be another plan, a better plan. What if we found your mother, M? She’d know what to do next, right? And that would fall into Madame Voleur’s original operation that we were already working toward, yeah?”
“We’re not the only people looking for my mother,” said M. “You saw what just happened when we tried to save Merlyn. And no offense to him, but finding my mother won’t be as easy as driving to her house. What happened to Madame V should only drive my mother deeper underground. She’s going to vanish in a way none of us can track.”
“How do you know that?” asked Foley. “Seems like you barely knew your mother at all.”
“I know it because that’s what I’d do.” M stepped right up to Foley. Their noses almost touched, but there was nothing tender about the moment. She could almost feel the static bouncing back and forth between them. “She’s turned into a drop in the ocean and you want to find her in the waves. Good luck. She’ll slip through your fingers and evaporate into the air before you know how close you were to her. So no, we’re not going to just pick up and look for her. She’ll find us when she’s ready.”
M moved to the edge of the woods and stared in the direction that Zara had drifted. “If you really want to help, go find Zara. She needs a friend right now.”
Foley breezed past M in a huff, nudging her shoulder along the way. And he had every right to be upset. M had already witnessed what the Ronin were willing to do to not be Ronin anymore. But they had axes to grind … and M had a feeling that she would need some axes on her side sooner rather than later. “Evel, get in touch with Sercy. Fill her in on what’s happened and have her reach out to Merlyn. He deserves to be part of this, too. Then tell her we need to get a message out to all Ronin.”
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