by Jeremy Scott
Just then, a phone rang, and nearly everyone jumped through the ceiling. It took a second ring for me to figure out that it was the phone in my pocket. I jammed my hand inside, pulled it out, and flipped it open.
“Hello?”
“Phillip?”
“Dad.” I exhaled, relieved. I’d half expected it to be Finch.
“Get out of the house, Phillip. You hear me? We’re under attack. The city is under attack, and you’re not safe there.”
“It’s him, Dad.”
“I know, Phillip. That’s why I’m calling you. Get your brother and the rest of those kids, and get out now. Go somewhere where you know you’ll be safe … someplace random and far away. I’ll call you when this is done.”
“But, Dad, what about you?”
“I’ll be fine, Phillip. Just go. That’s an order. We don’t have time to argue. Go now.”
I heard the sounds of battle raging behind his voice, and then he hung up.
I looked up at the rest of the group, each of whom had turned several shades whiter upon hearing my side of the conversation—I think they heard the explosions, too.
“The city is under attack. We have to get out of here.” Something snapped and I sprang into military mode. “Everyone come over here—you too, Patrick. We’re leaving, right now.”
No one was in any position to argue with that plan. We gathered our things, huddled around James, and popped off to Central Park and relative safety.
***
I felt guilty the moment we arrived in the park. Even though my father had given me explicit instructions, we had effectively just run out on our city, leaving them to fight a massive evil on their own. I felt like a terrible hero for deserting them.
Bentley’s camera feeds were still accessible. Since he’d hooked them all up wirelessly to his home computer, he could access them from anywhere there was an Internet connection. So we found a bench and sat down to watch our parents defend our city in a movie that was all too real.
I was sick to my stomach as we watched camera angle after camera angle, each showing either tragic destruction of property or horrific brutality against the townspeople.
Finch and his massive army of cloaked Believers—there had to be at least one hundred of them—looked set on destroying the city completely. There were several people injured or killed, but a great many could be seen being led away in chains.
“They’re taking prisoners,” I exclaimed, pointing at the screen where three Freepoint citizens were being led away by Finch’s soldiers. “Do you have a better angle? They’re moving off screen!”
“Hang on,” Bentley said, punching a couple buttons.
A new angle came up on screen, slightly closer to the action but with a view from the opposite side of the street. The prisoners were more centered in the picture on this angle. They came to the intersection, and the street lamp threw light on their faces.
“Oh my God, Phillip, isn’t that your dad?!” Henry gasped.
I instinctively reached out and pulled the laptop on the table into my hands, tilting it toward Henry’s face and focusing on the image of the screen he was sending me.
My father had been taken prisoner along with the two men from the hospital the night Mom died. Three of the bad guys were serving as guards, but I had to assume they were also under an NPZ, because otherwise, I think my father would have been letting them have it. This was Finch’s reason for kidnapping heroes with certain powers—like NPZs—so he could use them to mount his siege against Freepoint.
A sinking feeling came over me … a moment of despair. I nearly had a panic attack, I think, before something unlikely came along and saved me: anger.
Just as I was about to lose hope completely upon the site of my captured father, anger swooped up from the pit of my stomach and brought things sharply back into focus for me.
And that was all it took. Once I allowed my rage to take over and settle me down, I was all business. It was “kill Finch” or bust at that point. I simply didn’t care anymore. I was going to take this man down myself or die trying, because if I failed … well, that was a world I couldn’t bear to live in anyway.
I sent the laptop gently back down to Bentley’s waiting grasp.
“We have to find out where they’re taking them.”
I think the guys expected a more emotional response from me because they seemed stunned at first and said nothing.
“Bentley … what can you tell me? If they’re taking prisoners, they have to be taking them somewhere, right?”
I heard him clicking through the camera angles already, but I don’t think he was finding much.
“I’m not sure, Phillip. I don’t seem to have an angle that shows that.”
“Well, how is that possible?!” I demanded, displaying a flash of the anger that had saved me from blacking out under the pressure.
“I’m sorry, Phillip,” Bentley said, sounding genuine. “I know I have a lot of cameras, but they’re not infinite. Finch must be taking them somewhere that I don’t have coverage on.”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered, frustrated by technology’s inability to help me for even one quick moment.
“They could be taking them to Arkansas, for all we know,” Bentley continued. “There’s no guarantee they’re even in Freepoint.”
“No, they’re there,” I said, almost sounding as confident as I felt. “He’s not going to start ferrying groups of prisoners through some makeshift teleporter network. He’s going to get them out of the way and continue to ravage the city. It begins and ends in Freepoint tonight, I can feel it.” As usual, I didn’t have any idea how right I was.
“Well, unless you think it’ll work to give your dad’s cell phone a try, I’m not sure there’s any other way for us to know.”
“I’m sure they’ll let him answer it, Bentley,” I said with a fair amount of sarcasm. I knew he hadn’t been serious in his suggestion, but I still wanted him to know how little I appreciated it.
Everyone got quiet. No one wanted to say what we all feared. No one wanted to admit we had no way of finding where they were taking my dad.
I shoved my hands in my pockets—at this point, a typical thinking posture for me. I liked to roll the communication disc my mother had given me around in my fingers. It helped me concentrate and think. On this one occasion, it helped me do more than think; it presented itself as a solution.
“Bentley, do you know anything about these?” I asked, holding out my palm containing the disc.
He cocked his head, as though confused, but then seemed to realize where I was going. “Yeah, sure,” he said, picking up the disc and examining it. “They developed these about ten years ago. It’s a personal GPS communicator.”
“Right,” I said. “I click it, and whoever has the corresponding receiver knows where I am in the world, right?”
“Right. And vice versa.” And as soon as he uttered those words, Bentley’s eyes lit up. “It’s both a receiver and a transmitter.” He continued explaining, growing more excited in his speech, all the while pulling out tools and gadgets from his back pack. “Have you ever seen the other unit, Phillip? The one your dad has?”
“Yeah, sure. It looks just like this one,” I said pointing at the disc, which he had placed on the table.
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “Because it is just like this one. They’re identical. They’re not transmitter and receiver sets … they’re sold as pairs of identical devices that both send and receive a signal so that the bearer of either could instantly know if their partner or loved one was in trouble.”
“Are you kidding me?” I didn’t really think he was kidding, but the expression came out before I could stop it.
“Nope,” he said, taking a pair of pliers to the disc. “Your parents probably just didn’t tell you … didn’t ever intend to push their device’s button to signal you, because … well … they’re parents. Since when do parents need rescuing by their kids?”
“Since now,�
� I said somberly, glancing back at Bentley’s laptop monitor.
He kept working and had the device in two pieces in no time.
“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “You’ve broken it.”
“It’s made to come apart, Phillip. Calm down.” He set the cap down and held the remaining half in his hand, bringing it up to his face. “They’re still pretty simple devices. They can’t carry much data in their signal.”
While Bentley tinkered with the device, most everyone else went back to watching the computer screen, which displayed a grid of camera feeds three across and three down. In the middle square, a firestarter stood in the center of the street, shooting twelve-foot flames at the Freepoint gas station. Suddenly, it exploded. Bentley’s cameras took outstanding video, but there was no microphone. But even without the audio, the explosion caught everyone by surprise, and we all gasped.
I turned to Bentley. “Work fast, buddy.”
Bentley simply nodded and went straight back to work. With a few twists of his screwdriver and a spliced wire, Bentley was satisfied, and he carefully put the device’s two pieces back together again.
“I boosted the signal,” he said, like it was the easiest task ever. “Now it’ll be more clear, to help him differentiate.”
Differentiate? I looked at him a moment. Then I looked at Henry, who looked back at me.
It means to tell the difference between things, he spoke into my brain. I glared at him.
I know what it means. “Differentiate what?” I asked, unable to hide my confusion.
Bentley wrinkled his brow but then shrugged and said, “The beeps.”
I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone, as Bentley’s answers only produced more questions.
I sighed. “What beeps?” I asked.
“For Morse code, obviously.”
The picture had finally become a bit clearer. “You want me to send my dad Morse code?”
“Well, I didn’t imagine that you knew Morse code.”
“I don’t!” I was growing frustrated.
“It’s okay, Phillip,” he said smiling, “I do.”
“But what makes you think my father knows Morse code?”
“Well, doesn’t he?”
“How should I know? He’s certainly never talked about it. What if it’s all just a series of beeps to him?”
Bentley took a moment to ponder that question and then made his decision. “I’m pretty sure any former crime-fighters, like your parents or any Freepoint protector, like your dad currently is, would know Morse code. It’s one of the fundamentals of military and police training.”
It was my turn to think for a minute.
“Okay, so … we send my dad a bunch of beeps, hope he understands it, and maybe can tell us where they’re being held. Or … he doesn’t understand it and thinks I’ve lost my mind.”
“Or maybe he doesn’t even have the other receiver, and it’s in a guard’s pocket … or a dog is chewing on it,” Henry offered, unhelpfully.
“There’s not really a lot of downside to giving it a try,” Bentley argued, making a lot of sense, actually. The worst case scenario was that he either didn’t know Morse code or didn’t have the device on him as a prisoner. We’d be no worse off in those cases than we were now.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s give it a try. Let’s send my dad a bunch of beeps.”
“What do you want to say?” Bentley asked, adding, “But keep it short; Morse code can get pretty long.”
“I don’t know,” I said aloud. “I guess … ‘Where are they holding you prisoner?’ Do you think that’s enough, or do I need something more?”
“Love, Phillip?” It was James, offering his two cents. I cocked my head at him in complete bewilderment, and he said, “Well, I imagine he probably already knows you love him.”
“Plus,” Bentley added gently, “they’re a pair. He’ll know that it’s Phillip’s signal because the two devices only work with each other. I think ‘Where are they holding you prisoner?’ is a fine message.”
Bentley then set about tapping out the Morse code sequence on the disc’s button. There were short taps and long taps and virtually no discernible pattern or meaning to them at all, to my ear. Though I certainly trusted that Bentley knew what he was doing, Morse code struck me as a needlessly complicated affair.
It seemed like he was tapping out beeps for several minutes, but finally, he finished. “Sorry,” he said. “You have to punch out the symbol for each letter separately, so I had to spell every word, and some letters have a bunch of beeps just for that one letter.”
“I’m not sure I could remember all that if my life depended on it,” Henry said.
“So, now what?” I asked.
“Now we wait and see if he responds,” Bentley said, holding the disc in the palm of his outstretched hand.
Everyone sat silent and still, eyes and ears honed in on the device, as we waited to see what would happen. Would my father still have his device? Would he understand the code and respond? It was an agonizing wait. The crickets in Central Park were droning in the background. In the distance you could hear the faint sounds of the city traffic. But none of us made a peep.
After several quiet seconds, the shrill beep of the disc device cut through the silence like a screech. It took only seconds to realize the beeps were continuing in the same stilted short-long formats as Bentley’s.
“All right,” I cheered, in complete awe of Bentley’s genius. Everyone celebrated and high-fived.
Bentley had a pencil out and was scribbling down the message, one letter at a time, as it came through.
“Wait a second,” Henry said, interrupting our jubilance. “How do we know this message is coming from Phillip’s dad?”
“What,” I said with disdain, “you think that Finch’s goons are going to go to the trouble of responding to a Morse code message, assuming they even confiscated it?”
“I’m just saying—“
“Shut up, I can’t concentrate!” Bentley chided, silencing us immediately. He continued transcribing the message until the beeping finally concluded. It seemed like a lot longer a message than Bentley’s had been.
“That’s it,” he said, scrawling the final letters. “Here’s the message: ‘School basement. Don’t be stupid. If want to help, contact Goodspeed.’”
We all soaked in the content of Dad’s message but quickly got into battle-planning mode.
“Okay, gang, you heard him. They’re holding prisoners at the school … in the basement. That could be an advantage for us,” I said. “And that’s where Finch’s soldiers are holding our parents and the rest of Freepoint’s adults and students … the ones that are still alive, at least,” I added rather grimly. “So that’s where we need to go.”
“Why would he keep any of them alive?” Freddie asked cautiously, hitting his inhaler before continuing. “I mean, we saw him kill the Vipers without any reservation at all. Why keep some of them alive?”
“Their powers,” I said, realizing the answer as it came off my lips. “He’s building an army, even if they’re unwilling participants.” With hundreds of Freepoint citizens held prisoner, Finch would have access to nearly every power known to our kind. He’d be unstoppable. “Which is why we have to stop him!”
“But your dad just said not to come,” Henry argued.
“I don’t care what he said. You know as well as I do that if we do nothing, Freepoint is going to fall to Finch. Now, which one of you wants to let that happen? What falls next, after Freepoint, if we let that happen?” I turned my head from person to person, daring each of them to tell me they wanted to let the city fall. None of them did, of course.
“Well, then, what do we do?” It was Chad, a bit more eager for battle than I’d expected.
Chad’s question forced me to face the fact that I wasn’t at all sure what we should do, where we should start, or how a band of tiny super-misfits should go about attempting to defeat an entire army of villains. “I’m
not sure,” I answered honestly.
“Guys,” Bentley gasped, with some measure of alarm. “You’d better take a look at this.”
We all scurried over to Bentley’s side so we could see what he was watching. It looked like the field in front of the high school. We could see the school’s entrance on just the right top corner of the image, but the rest of the screen was grass.
“I don’t see anything but grass,” Henry stated, still sounding impressed with himself despite his rather obvious findings.
“Hang on a second … I think you will. He was spraying some kind of liquid all over the grass a second ago.”
We all watched intently, with nothing happening for thirty seconds or so. Until, finally, a figure strode out from the left side of the picture. It was Finch: I could tell by his measured, practiced steps. He looked small—he was a good fifty yards from where the camera was placed, but there was no doubt it was him. When he was almost exactly in the middle of the video picture, he stopped, whirled, and faced the camera directly. It was almost as though he knew it was there.
Finch’s arm went up into the air, and a tiny flame burst forth from his fingertip, flickering like a star on the tiny video monitor. He lifted it to his face and drew from his pipe for a moment. Then, with a flash, he threw the flame to the ground, and instantly, sections of the grass around him came ablaze.
He’d used lighter fluid to spell a message in the grass, and it was a message to me. We all saw it, plain as day. There, in the front lawn of my high school, were horrific flaming letters arranged to say, “Phillip. It’s time.”
I cursed under my breath—but everyone still heard me.
“Jesus,” Henry said, exhaling in disbelief. “He wasn’t kidding. This whole thing really is about you, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” I was dumbfounded. “I thought he was just … you know … messing with me. Inviting me to be on his ‘team’ and whatnot.” Before I could recover from the shock of the fire message, a new thought occurred to me. How does he know about the cameras?
A new thought, one I hadn’t had before, but which made perfect sense even as it chilled my bones.
Henry, can you send a message to Bentley for me … privately? I mentally asked my good friend.