He added a log into the fire. “So it’s definitely your mother, then?”
“Yes.” Zoey stared at the fire. “I know it’s her. She’s alive somewhere, and I’m going to find her.”
Simon gulped down some hot cocoa and smacked his lips. “So, what’s our next move, people? I’m in the mood for a little adventure again. We can’t leave it all to the agents, they lack imagination.” The fire reflecting in his big eyes, gave him a sinister look.
Tristan got up and fell into the sofa next to Simon.
“We can’t do much stuck here in Cold Creek. How are we supposed to help, when the all the action is happening in London? This really sucks,” he said.
“It’s not like we’re useless—we have been trained to fight. We could be out there fighting with them. We could be helping them.”
Zoey sighed. “But how can we? They’re all in London—and we’re here, sitting comfortably and doing absolutely nothing.”
“I’m sipping hot chocolate,” suggested Simon.
“Apart from sipping hot chocolate,” said Zoey a little irritated. “We’re not very helpful. I wish I were there. I know I could help them. I wish they’d let us go with them.”
She felt miserable, deflated, and anxious. She rubbed her sweaty palms on her jeans, wishing that Agent Barnes had seen her potential—her true devotion to the agency—and let her come with them. Part of her had believed that revealing the traitors’ plans, and finally winning the directors’ trust, would have been enough for them to offer her a place on the recovery mission. She felt that they owed her at least a glimpse of the interloper—after all she’d been through. But it seems they still didn’t have enough faith in her, yet.
“The hive’s practically deserted,” said Simon. He took another sip of his drink. “Maybe we could go back into the Supernatural Affairs room and look for more clues about your mother, or maybe even you father? You’ve never talked about him.”
“That’s because I’ve got less information about him than I do about my mother. I wouldn’t even know where to look.”
“Well, I say we start with the same place you found the information about your mother,” continued Simon. “Your dad was an agent, too—I’m positive. Besides, I’ve always wanted to explore that place, to look for information on the agents. I’ve always wondered if Agent Ward is really a woman.”
Suddenly the door to the inn opened, and a man wearing a long, black wool coat and light blue cashmere scarf walked in. His black hair was greased back and parted on the side, just like Zoey had seen in the old black-and-white photographs from the nineteen twenties. He looked like a posh gangster—handsome, with a square jaw and sharp chiseled features.
He moved with grace, like a predatory cat, and sauntered over to another man sitting alone at a table. Zoey recognized the man at the table immediately. He was the same sickly looking man she had seen sitting by himself earlier. She wondered why he was alone. They exchanged words, and when he got up nervously, his chair crashed to the floor behind him. He leaned over and picked it up, and then brushed his hair to the side. With his head down, he followed the other man towards the door.
As they neared Zoey, she could hear what they were saying.
“…we still stick with the plan,” said the man in the wool coat. They didn’t notice the three kids sitting in the den, watching them.
“But they know,” said the other man, as he made his way towards the front door. His fingers twitched at his sides. “It’ll never work. It’s over. It’s all over. They’re going to send me to the Nexus—I’m as good as dead.”
Zoey’s breath caught in her throat—she recognized that whiney high-pitched voice.
“Zoey? What’s wrong?” said Tristan. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
The two men turned around. The sickly, sweaty man glowered at Zoey. He looked crazy and violent. He hesitated, fidgeting like he was about to pounce, but at the same time he looked as if he was restraining himself with great effort. And then the man in the coat pushed him out the door, and they disappeared.
Zoey jumped out of the chair. “That’s him! I recognize his voice. That’s the guy who stole the codes—the same guy that attacked me when I was eavesdropping on him and Mrs. Dupont. He’s working with the Alphas. He’s one of the traitors!”
Simon dropped his cup. “Oh man—and he’s been sitting here all this time. What do we do now?”
Tristan got to his feet. “If the traitors are still here, then maybe we still have time to stop them before they attack headquarters. We have to tell someone.”
“Most of the agents have gone to London,” said Simon, looking pale. “The retired agents have probably gone home already. There’s no one left but us. Oh, this is really bad, isn’t it?”
Zoey looked at them both. She was excited—and frightened. “Then it’s our job to stop them.”
Without waiting another second, Zoey ran towards the door.
“Zoey, wait!” Tristan called out to her as she disappeared through the front door and sprinted across the grounds.
Icy rain slapped her face as she tore through the grounds. She could just make out the nervous man’s shape hurrying through the rain and gray mist toward the hive. She thought about shooting her boomerang at him, but her visibility was too poor. There was no sign of the man in the black coat.
The man vanished into the hive. She would be there in just a few more yards. For a whiney type of man, he was surprisingly fast—he was running like his life depended on it.
She was soaking wet when she pulled open the front doors and ran after him down the main hall. She stopped in front of a large silver oval mirror with the inscription, United Kingdom at the top. A silver mist lingered inside it for a second and then shifted and vanished—the mirror had just been used. The man was gone. She was too late.
Simon and Tristan came up beside her.
“He just mirror-ported,” she said, breathlessly. “If we go now, we might still catch him in time to stop him.”
“He? So where’s the other guy in the long coat?” asked Simon looking around. “We didn’t see anyone outside.”
Zoey shrugged. “I don’t know. I lost him. He didn’t use the mirror-port, though.”
“So where is he then?” Tristan clenched his jaw. “He’s still here somewhere—”
“OUT!” bellowed a voice.
The three of them turned to see a very angry Mrs. Andrews. She marched up to them, pointing her long finger. Her face was twisted in fury.
“Look at the state of you. You’re soaking wet! Dripping dirt all over my clean floors! Out! All of you! Get out!”
Zoey was not intimidated, “Mrs. Andrews, did you see a man here, moments ago? He just used the mirror-ports.”
Mrs. Andrews pursed her lips, her anger diminishing slightly. “Of course I did. I work the main desk, don’t I? I see everything. Why do you ask?”
“Do you know who he was?” asked Zoey.
“Agent Sylvester Stokes, a mighty good agent. He’s always so polite to me. He said he was off to lend Agent Barnes a hand on something very important. He also dirtied my floors. What business is it of yours, anyway? Shouldn’t you kids be at home?”
Zoey looked at Tristan and Simon and said in a low voice. “He’s going after the interloper. We have to warn Agent Barnes.”
Mrs. Andrews crossed her arms. “What are you three conspiring about? You have the look of mischief—don’t think I haven’t seen that look before. You kids—always getting yourselves into trouble!”
“We could try to get a message to him somehow,” said Tristan, ignoring Mrs. Andrews who was leaning closer to hear what they were saying. “Maybe we could try to contact London from here first?”
Zoey shook her head. “No, it’ll take too long to explain, and we’re wasting precious time. We’ll have to stop him ourselves,” she said with a flutter of excitement.
“What?” Simon nearly spit out his tongue. “Are you serious? You mean—the three
of us—going after the double agent on our own? Of course we are, how stupid of me. Hang on while I go fetch my spy gear from my secret spy car.”
Zoey turned to Mrs. Andrews, who was still eyeballing as if she was one of their supervisors.
“Agent Stokes is the traitor, and he’s going after Agent Barnes. He’ll probably try to kill him to get the interloper.”
Zoey waited for Mrs. Andrews to close her mouth and then continued.
“You have to get a message to management and to the other agencies right away, Mrs. Andrews. Tell them what I’ve just told you. And please hurry up before it’s too late.”
Mrs. Andrews frowned. “These are very serious accusations, Zoey St. John. You can destroy a man’s career by saying things like that. Are you sure he’s the one?”
“We are,” said Zoey, Tristan, and Simon together.
“There has to be some mistake,” started Mrs. Andrews, “it can’t be Agent Stokes—he was always so well-mannered—so nice to me. He even brought me flowers once.”
“It is him. Do you want Agent Barnes’ blood on your hands?” said Zoey dryly. Her voice rose as she started to lose her patience. “Well, do you?”
“No.”
“—because that’s what he’s planning on doing if we don’t warn them in time. Please, get the message to management. Tell them that I recognized the traitor. If you don’t believe us, then do it for Agent Barnes.”
Mrs. Andrews nodded. The color had drained from her face.
“All right then. It doesn’t hurt to transmit a message, even if you might be mistaken.” She hurried off towards the front desk.
Zoey exhaled and turned to her friends. “You guys ready?”
“Yes,” answered Tristan.
“No,” said Simon.
There was a moment of silence. “Okay, but let’s hurry. Do you have weapons on you?”
Tristan smiled and pulled his S9 slingshot from his back jean’s pocket.
“Never leave home without it,” he said and then shoved it back.
Simon searched his pockets like someone who was fighting against their own clothes. He pulled out his slingshot triumphantly. “Got it! Thought I’d lost it. Whew.”
Zoey stepped towards the control panel, lifted her fingers, and paused.
“Uh, guys—where’s headquarters anyway? Am I supposed to type just Headquarters?”
“I don’t know,” said Tristan.
Simon shrugged. “I know it’s in Knightsbridge, London—but I’m not sure if you’re supposed to type—”
BANG!
Someone screamed.
Zoey turned to see Mrs. Andrews collapse. Her head hit the floor with an echoing thud, and then she was motionless.
The man in the black wool coat stepped over her casually, and pointed a very large gun at them.
“I hate kids,” he said in a deep voice. “—and I hate the ones that don’t mind their business even more! I didn’t want to have to do that to poor Mrs. Andrews, but you made me do it. I couldn’t let her blab all of our plans now, could I?”
Zoey stared at Mrs. Andrews’s body. The gun’s blast still rang in her ears, and she felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She never really liked the woman, but she didn’t deserve to die. “You—you killed her,” her voice wavered. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
“No, you killed her,” he said, aiming the gun at Zoey.
“You should have kept your big mouth shut, Drifter. Now, look what you made me do. Her death’s on you.”
Tristan stood protectively in front of Zoey. “What do you want?”
As the man got closer, Zoey saw that he had one milky white eye and that the other was blue. He was over six feet tall, broad shouldered, and under his coat he wore an expensive black, tailored suit. He looked like a villain from a James Bond movie.
“I don’t want to have to add child murderer to my list,” continued the man. “But I will if you make me. I can’t let you ruin our plans, you miserable little brats. Not when we’re so close.”
He held out his free hand. “Your DSM’s. Now.”
“Oh no, not again,” whined Simon. He pulled out his metal compact and held it out reluctantly. “Are you going to give it back?”
“You won’t need it back,” said the man.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon tried to pull his DSM back, but the man scooped it up swiftly. He then grabbed Zoey’s and Tristan’s DSM’s and pocketed them in the folds on his long coat. When he was done, he pointed the gun towards the stairway.
“Move. Down to the basement level.”
The three of them obeyed and walked over to the staircase.
Poor Mrs. Andrews was dead. Zoey couldn’t get that awful scream out of her head. The image of her body sprawled on ground, twisted and bent unnaturally haunted her. If she hadn’t told her about the traitor, she’d still be alive. The man in the suit was going to pay for what he had done, that was a promise.
Every minute that passed endangered not just Agent Barnes’ life, but the fate of the entire agency. They had to get past the man with the gun—but how? She was positive he would shoot them in a heartbeat if he had too. They were all armed, but their weapons weren’t faster than an automatic handgun.
They slowed when they reached the bottom of the stairs and arrived at a set of large metal double doors. The sign over the doors read:
WARNING!
Hostiles inside, proceed with extreme caution
“Inside,” ordered the man.
She had always wanted to visit the basement area, but she hadn’t imagined it with a gun in her back.
Tristan gave Zoey a worried look, opened the doors, and stepped inside. The others followed.
Zoey wasn’t sure what she had expected to see, but this was not what she had anticipated.
The room was enormous, the size of an entire floor at the hive. In the middle of the room was a series of desks and tables with chairs. Glass compartments that looked like individual prisons lined both sides of the chamber. And inside each compartment was a mystic.
Over a hundred mystics of every race and size stared at them with loathing through the glass. Zoey saw a winged human woman with snakes for her hair, a small single black cat with red eyes, and a hairy ghoulish creature the size of a grizzly bear with a human face that looked neither female nor male. There was a moving rock with human legs, a twelve-inch girl with purple pigtails in a pink ball gown, a pile of steaming green blobs with hundreds of staring yellow eyes, and many other mystics she had never seen before.
The cells on the left side had metal doors. The small square openings in the doors were large enough to get a glimpse of the dangerous looking mystics lurking within. The words, Maximum-Security Holding Cell were written in black above each compartment.
Zoey could almost feel the evil seeping out through the glass cells like a cold sweat, chilling her as she passed.
The cells on the right side were mostly made of Plexiglas, and the mystics that occupied them seemed a little more docile. But she was sure that if they escaped, they wouldn’t be so friendly—especially not to the people who had put them there.
What she saw next made her heart ache—that beautiful fire stallion she had seen on her very first day at the hive was locked away in one of the compartments. Its sad eyes met Zoey’s, and she felt tears sting her eyes. Disturbing the Peace was written on the small screen next to its cage. Horses didn’t belong in cages.
As they walked further inside, Zoey noticed that a flashing sign on the side of their jails identified the crimes that had been committed by each mystic. Illegal Border Crossing was written beside an enormous spider with the head of a snake. It startled Zoey when it suddenly threw itself against the glass with a loud boom
“Keep walking.” The man pressed the gun against her back.
Zoey released her breath and kept moving. She spotted a large Krakenite and felt her heart race. Caution – High intensity Voltage, was written on its compartment. It would ge
t zapped if it tried anything.
They were all locked up in these compartments. The mystics couldn’t touch them. They were safe.
Their immediate danger was the man with the gun.
To her surprise, three booths were crammed with fairies. Their ugly faces were wrinkled in hatred. They flew into the glass of their cages like a giant swarm of angry bees. They hit the glass with their fists. Some stood back and spit at the glass, while others made obscene gestures with their hands. Zoey suspected that these were the same fairies that they had caught. She was relieved that they were all trapped behind the glass.
They came to a cubical where an elderly man was writing in a large ledger. With his pinstriped shirt and navy-blue tie, he looked like a two hundred year old accountant. Above his cubical was another large flashing screen, which read:
FREEDOM BAIL BONDS, call now: Fre-e-dom —1Z1)373-3366
MYSTIC LAWYERS AVAILABLE - HELP US HELP YOU!
Stacks of cards were littered across his desk. Zoey leaned over and read:
Get out of jail free—This card may be kept until needed or sold
“I feel like I’m in a game of Monopoly,” said Simon with a weird smile on his face. “Love that game.”
The old man jumped when he saw them. “Leaping lizards! What’s going on? Who are you? What are you doing here?”
He adjusted his glasses. “You’re not allowed in here! Get out! Get out!”
He wiggled out of his chair and came shuffling up to them, pointing a long crooked finger. “I will report you! This is a direct violation of agency rules—”
The man in the coat backhanded him with the handle of the gun. With a frightening crunch, the elderly man crumbled to the floor. Blood seeped through a large wound on the back of his head. Zoey stared in shock—it had happened so fast—she didn’t even have time to react.
She turned around and faced their captor. “How could you kill him? He was an old man just doing his job. You’ll pay for this! I swear you will.”
The suited man was unimpressed.
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