by Walter Jury
“Maybe this will help us reach an equilibrium,” I say.
His laughter is oily. “Oh, we were never equals.”
I nod. “True.”
He takes a step back, trying to see what I’m holding in my hand. “Don’t try any of your tricks, Tate.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. I know this isn’t a game.” Then I hurl the user’s manual as hard as I can . . . about five feet to the left of Mr. Lamb. He might be tall, but even his lanky arms don’t reach that far. He’s totally fooled by the black rectangle sailing past him and lunges for it—backward off the stone fence. There’s an angry shout as he lands on the other side.
I dive into my car and jam the key in the ignition, and then I’m barreling down the narrow lane. Lamb heaves his torso onto the wall, already holding his phone to his ear. I’m just glad he’s not shooting at me.
I pull my father’s phone out of Christina’s pack and use the GPS to get myself directions to the nearest Walmart. Thankfully, it’s so early in the morning that the streets are nearly empty, but I hear a distant siren and know the authorities are probably on their way. I hope there’s an ambulance coming for my mom, and I hope she still needs it. And that’s all I’ll allow myself to think about now, because I need to off-load this scanner and get Christina, and then I’ll do whatever else I have to do as soon as my mom is safe.
The Walmart, one of those massive supersized stores, is about fifteen minutes’ drive, and its parking lot is dimly lit as I pull in. There are a few campers parked at its far edge, but apart from that, it’s empty. It’s five minutes to five.
I make a full circuit of the store and finally settle on a spot near a side entrance.
My father’s phone buzzes with a text.
From my mother.
They left me alive. Ambulance here. Be careful.
I stare at those words, my heart beating hard. The honk of a horn jerks my head up.
A car rolls to a stop in front of mine. The driver’s-side door opens, and George Fisher steps out. Relieved to see a friendly face, I get out of my car.
George gives me a sad smile. “I’m so sorry about your dad, Tate. He was my best friend.” His silver hair is disheveled and he looks like he’s aged years in the last few days.
“I know he trusted you,” I say. “My mom does, too. But how much contact have you had with Charles Willetts? He has Christina, and I don’t know what side he’s on.”
“I trust Charles Willetts completely,” he says as he walks toward me. “Do you have the scanner?”
I pull it out of the backpack. “Are you sure you can keep it secure? A lot of people are after this thing—”
He smiles. “I can guarantee you that neither side will control this technology, Tate. It’s too important.”
He holds his hand out, and I pass the scanner to him. As he takes it, his fingers hit the power switch and it lights up. For a second, this bright orange light washes over George’s skin, and then he quickly flips it off again, chuckling. “Oops.”
I stare at the bare skin of his arm, where the scanner’s beam flashed orange. “What was that?”
He backs up toward his car. “I promise you, we’ll talk about all of this when I see you again, okay?”
I swallow, unable to push back the unease that’s lodged in my throat. “Hey, maybe I should take it—”
The roar of an engine distracts me, and I look up in time to see a navy blue Volvo sedan come to a screeching halt less than ten feet away. My mouth drops open as Christina jumps out, her eyes flashing. She smiles grimly when she sees me. “His reflexes weren’t as fast as mine.”
“Is that Charles’s car?” I choke out, already walking forward to touch her, to make sure she’s real.
She nods. “Hand controls. Really weird. But I’m a quick study.” Her expression grows solemn and she jogs the final few steps to me. “As soon as you took off, they stopped shooting and pulled back,” she says, her voice muffled as she buries her face against my shoulder. “I called the ambulance for your mom right before I left.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, then raise my head as I hear the distant thumping of a helicopter.
George curses, and his voice sounds so guttural and odd that Christina flinches in my arms. I turn to see him getting back into his car. “Wait!” I call. “You can take us—”
He slams the door and floors it.
The black helicopter roars along the river across the highway from the Walmart, then turns, heading straight for us. It takes me a few seconds to shake the desperate wish that it’s just a news crew or whatever.
The blast of a large-caliber weapon helps.
“The car won’t give us any protection,” I shout to Christina, grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the store.
She yanks me in the opposite direction, back toward the car. “The store’s closed, Tate! Pop the trunk!”
I do as she says. There’s an old tire iron nestled next to the spare, and she pulls it out, then sprints toward the store with her shoulders up around her ears.
As I follow her across the parking lot, I see George streak toward the road, little clouds of dust and gravel kicking up behind him as the bullets strike the blacktop while the helicopter pursues. He makes the sharp right turn onto the narrow thruway between the big-box stores, heading for the highway with the helicopter still behind him. Christina makes it to the side entrance of the store a second before I do. “The police will come if the alarm goes off. Whose side will they be on?”
“Race’s. Unless he warns them off.”
She gazes through the locked doors and into the darkened store. “Do we have a choice? Do you think George will lead him away from us?”
Before I can answer, that helicopter roars over the roof of the store and begins to turn toward us again. I know who’s on it and what he’s capable of, so the decision is easy. As Napoleon once said, When the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.
I hold out my hand, and Christina gives me the tire iron. I ram the angled tip between the two doors and wrench it back. The alarm starts immediately, but I figure we still have at least ten minutes before the police get to us, and I think that’s enough time. I pry open the second set of doors and run into the Walmart with Christina on my tail.
“I need your help,” I say, pushing a cart toward her. “Go get every bottle of hydrogen peroxide they have. And every bottle of nail polish remover, too. One bottle of toilet bowl cleaner. Got it?”
She takes the cart from me. “Got it. Meet you where?”
“Sporting goods.” I dart toward the hardware section, stopping to jam a plastic bin, a push broom, a few packages of dishwashing gloves, and a box of plastic baggies into my cart on the way. In the hardware section, right next to the caulking guns and how-to books, I find what I want—about a dozen cans of contact cement. They go in the cart, too.
I race toward sporting goods, wincing at the pealing scream of the alarm, listening for the sound of agents. By the time I get there, Christina’s waiting, and she’s already got my ingredients sorted out. She’s sitting on the floor in that Amish-looking dress, methodically opening each and every bottle. “You’re awesome,” I breathe, pulling out a plastic bin.
“Just tell me you’re going to use this to kick their asses,” she says, wrenching open another bottle of nail polish remover.
“I’ll do my best.” I slide the plastic bin toward her. “Fill this with the hydrogen peroxide and the nail polish remover. Then I want you to stay as far from here as you can.”
She pales a shade but does what I say while I pry open the cans of contact cement. When this stuff is wet, it’s sticky as hell, like super-thick caramel. When it’s dry, it’s kind of tacky, no big deal. But when two surfaces covered in dry contact cement are pressed against each other: instant unbreakable bond.
Christina gets up and peeks int
o the aisle. “I would have thought the cops would be here by now.”
“The last two times he chased us, he didn’t have local cops with him, only his agents.” I open the toilet bowl cleaner and squirt a generous amount of it into the plastic bin, which is full of fizzing clear liquid. It sizzles as I use the tire iron to stir it up, and I smile grimly as the white crystals begin to form in the solution.
“Oh my God,” Christina whispers. “The helicopter is landing out front.”
Since he didn’t catch George, he’s coming after us. “Help me fill these bags with the contact cement.”
We both slide bright blue dishwashing gloves onto our hands. She holds the plastic baggies open while I pour in the caramel-like stuff, wincing at the sharp smell. “I need you to be really careful with this,” I tell her. “Whatever you do—don’t step in it, all right?”
She nods. Her hands are trembling, but she moves fast to help me fill the last of the bags with the gluey substance.
I give her my instructions as I start opening cans of tennis balls, raising my voice so she can hear me over the wailing alarm. “Your goal is to get this stuff all over them, okay? Throw the bags so that they burst open at their feet and this stuff gets on the bottoms of their shoes. Throw it at their faces so they have to wipe it off with their hands. Doesn’t have to be a lot, but the more surfaces you hit, the more likely they’ll end up with their hands glued to their faces and their feet glued to the floor. It’ll be like tossing water balloons. But as soon as you hit them, get the hell out of there. Don’t let them catch you.”
She doesn’t look convinced. “What if I miss?”
I wave a can of tennis balls at her. “Plan B.” I nod toward the tennis ball machine sitting in a nearby display.
“You’re going to fire tennis balls at them?”
I nod solemnly. “Now get going, and stay hidden.” I can hear heavy footsteps at the front of the store.
The beeping of the alarm goes silent.
Toting an armload of contact-cement-filled bags, Christina skirts around the edge of the store, heading toward the front.
I check the chemical reaction going on in the bin. Excellent. I’ve got more than enough peroxyacetone to keep everyone busy. As dangerous as it is to send Christina off to throw contact cement at whoever just came through the Walmart door, it’s much more dangerous to sit here next to the contents of the bin. Like I’m going to do.
While I strain to hear what’s happening to Christina, I take a few more cans of the contact cement and use the push broom to spread a thin layer of it in the wide aisle right under the huge hanging bike rack. It won’t take more than a few minutes to dry.
I tug the dishwashing gloves up my forearms, say a quick prayer that I end this day with all my fingers still attached, and gently place each tennis ball into the white slurry in the plastic bin.
That’s when I hear the shouted curse, followed by two shots and the sliding crash of some huge shelf being emptied of its stock. I switch on the ball machine and lean out of the aisle in time to see Christina whip across an open space, still carrying a few bags of contact cement.
“There are four of them,” she screams, amazing me with her ability to keep her head while she’s running for her life.
I aim the ball machine toward what she’s running from, pull one of the soaked, white-powder-coated tennis balls from the bin, stick it in the machine, and let fly. It sails out of the barrel of the machine with a resounding thwock, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Which becomes a gasp when the thing hits a hanging sign in aisle seven and explodes with a deafening bang.
“Get down!” a guy shouts.
Now I know I have just successfully synthesized peroxyacetone, one of the most volatile contact explosives known to man.
I load the hopper with the wet balls, shove it into the open space between sporting goods and home goods, set it on corner-to-corner random oscillation, and run.
The Walmart becomes a war zone.
It would be a lot more devastating if I lit the things on fire, but each ball is already exploding with a flameless bang that sounds like cannon fire. And if I live through this, I’m thinking it’s probably better not to get charged with burning Walmart to the ground on top of everything else.
I sprint through sporting goods and into home goods, hoping Christina’s hunkered down somewhere, that I’ll find her safe and be able to get us out of here. I nearly trip over a downed agent, who’s clearly suffering a tennis-ball-related injury, probably a direct hit. One arm is wrapped protectively over his ribs while another is clutched to his head. His eyes are closed tightly and he’s pale as a ghost. He doesn’t even notice me there.
I slip into the hardware section, looking for any hint of blond hair or purple dress, any sign of Christina.
What I see instead is Race. Buzz cut, lean, his face angular and sharp in profile. He’s crouched low, peeking around the edge of the shelving, gun in hand. Right at the end of my aisle.
He’s got a thin smear of dried contact cement on his pants, but doesn’t seem to have a smudge on him otherwise. With all the thunderous chaos around us, he could have shot Christina already and I’d never know.
I charge up the aisle, but at the last second, he spins around. I catch his wrist and slam it against the metal shelving. He drops his gun but kicks me in the stomach. Before I know it, I’m on my back, my head bouncing off the hard tile floor. I wrap my legs around his waist, trying to get control.
“Tate Archer,” he huffs. “How nice to meet you face-to-face.” He sends a quick jab to my ribs that drives the air from my lungs. He twists his hips, and that’s when I realize how strong he is. He outweighs me by at least thirty pounds, and all of it’s muscle. He’s going to open me up and lay me out in a bare second. “You have something I need.”
Sucking wind through my gritted teeth, I grab his sleeves, yank him to the side and roll him onto his back. As we struggle, my face crashes into a hanging row of caulking guns, knocking them loose. I’ve still got control of his sleeves and hold them tightly while I lean my weight onto his chest. “Yeah, it’s fucking delightful to meet you. And the scanner’s in a safe place. You won’t be able to use it against The Fifty.”
“We have no desire to use it against The Fifty, or any human,” he says in a deep, strained voice as he tugs at his sleeves and tries to throw me off. It’s not going to take him long to succeed.
“This isn’t about some petty struggle between H2 and The Fifty. It’s about protecting ourselves. All of us.”
I dig my fingers in, fighting to keep my grip on him. “Protect us from what?”
“Do you really think we came here by choice?” His face contorts as he struggles. “My ancestors were forced to leave our planet.”
Charles said they were refugees. At least I know he wasn’t a total liar. “Who forced them?”
For a second, Race goes completely still. He looks up at me with this piercing glare. “Pray you never find out.”
He bucks his hips, nearly sending me flying, but I slam my knee into his upper thigh. He jerks to the side to protect his soft spots as he speaks again. “I need your help, Tate!” He grunts as I use all my strength to hold him down. “Your father discovered something we’ve needed for centuries. Something we were depending on when we arrived on this planet. It was aboard a ship that was lost, but your father must have somehow gotten hold of some of the wreckage. I have to gain access to his work.” He tries to wrench himself away, but I slam him back down. “Please,” he says, his expression softening. “You have no idea what’s really going on. This technology is crucial to our survival.”
The scanner is the key to our survival. My father’s words scroll through my head, along with the memory of the population counter and those password-protected plans in his lab. I look down at Race, my thoughts spinning out of control. Could he actually help
me figure this out? Would my dad want me to work with him? He told me Race was dangerous. He wanted to keep the scanner away from him. But did he know exactly what Race was after, or did he—along with the rest of The Fifty—misunderstand Race’s intentions?
Race sees me wavering. “Tate. We could work together. You could help me.”
At those words, something inside me goes supernova. “Your agents shot my mother,” I breathe. “You killed my dad. You nearly killed my girlfriend. And you want me to help you?”
His expression hardens into resolve in a split second. He rips his sleeves from my grasp and twists to the side, catching one of my feet between his legs. Maybe he thinks he can break my ankle, or maybe he’s just trying to escape, but it gives me the leverage I need. I hook my heel under his thigh and throw my full weight into my shoulders, somersaulting over his back and bringing my legs up. It catches him by total surprise, and he gasps as I roll him over.
I waste no time pulling him against me, wrapping my legs around his torso from behind, coiling my arm around his throat. He wheezes. He bats at me with his arms, even landing a few good punches to the side of my head. His legs thrash, knocking cartons and boxes from the shelves and scattering them through the aisles. He’s fucking strong, but it doesn’t matter, because I’ve got a lock on him that he will never escape from.
If this were a tournament, he’d be slapping the mat.
But it’s not a tournament.
So I squeeze.
I grind my teeth to nothing as I watch his face turn purple. It’s not enough. Will never be enough.
I don’t know how long I hold on to him after he stops struggling. I have no idea. All I know is that I snap back into myself when I hear Christina scream.
I RELEASE MY ANACONDA GRIP ON RACE AND SHOOT to my feet. His head lolls, his eyes half closed. He’s out cold and will be for a while. The store is eerily quiet—the hopper must be empty of tennis balls.