by Seren Goode
“That’s good, Grace,” Breeze’s voice whispered in my head as if she was afraid thinking loudly would be overheard. “They are headed your way, but I don’t think they see you. Stay there.” The tense muscles in my body screamed as I locked them, legs trembling, trying not to move. I grasped tighter to my necklace, desperate for the link.
It seemed like a lifetime before I heard the tread of footfalls in the gravel.
Plunk, plunk. I watched sweat drip off my forehead to the concrete. I was afraid to move, even to wipe my brow. My heart beat faster, almost choking me as the sound grew closer and closer.
“Grace, don’t move. They are coming right toward you.”
“Grace, stay calm. I’m heading your way,” Shim reassured me.
“Me too,” Jaxon chimed in. I couldn’t even think, let alone respond to stop them.
In spite of the pounding in my chest, I tried to still myself even more till my breathing almost stopped. If I survived this, I was racing back up that hill and insisting we head home. Whatever was in this building just wasn’t worth it. The footsteps stopped at the base of the stairs and a radio squawked.
“Control One, G-423 and G-442 here. Perimeter’s clear. We are taking our break. Over,” said one of the booted guards.
The radio squawked back, “Received, G-423. You are both clear to take your lunch breaks. Be back for the greeting. Control One, out.”
Heavy steps climbed the stairs. One guard muttered something about the heat, the words lost in the pounding of rubber treads grinding into metal anti-slip spikes. There was a whirling and pulling sound, followed by a beep, swish, and clank. A door-shaped shadow appeared on the concrete next to me, followed by a blissful wave of cold air. I found myself leaning into the coolness and was half out from under the stairs before I realized I’d moved. I could see the back of one guard holding the door. Thankfully, the second guard had already entered the building. As the first guard moved to follow, I got a glimpse of a grey security card, the cord caught up on the guard’s radio. Quickly, before I had time to think, I reached up and grabbed the card. There was a tug and the guard followed through the door, the cord stretched, and the card was yanked from my hand as the door slammed behind the guard, blocking off the flow of cool. I collapsed on the concrete in relief, then quickly pulled myself back up and away from the burning surface. Something fluttered and fell down to lay flat in front of me. A grey rectangle about the size of a playing card with a broken reel attached to it.
“Uh, guys. I think I found our way in.” I picked up the security card and clutched it to my chest. Would the guard come back for it? I was still sitting there, stunned, waiting for the guard to return as Shim and Jaxon raced up.
“You okay?” Shim approached me cautiously, hands up in a gesture of peace. He and Jaxon crouched on the concrete on either side of the stairs.
I gave a trembling nod, then held up the badge with a weak smile. “I nominate today to be ‘Waters Appreciation Day.’”
Shim snorted. “Let’s get inside.”
∞
After the blinding brightness of the sun outside, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the interior of the building. I kept blinking until the dark spots disappeared from my vision, but still, all I could see was white. White walls, white ceiling, white floors. Goose bumps spread in waves across my body as the fridge air conditioning hit my sweat-soaked skin and clothes.
Shim tucked the badge in his back pocket, and we proceeded down the wide, white hall. The hall terminated at a door. We cautiously entered. The door opened up into a large space, a storage room or warehouse of some type. The walls were lined with huge crates on pallets, some stacked double and triple high. One side of the room terminated at a loading bay and the other a glass-walled room. The space was eerily quiet. Maybe it was the combination of it being a weekend and lunch time.
We entered the glass-walled booth and gravitated toward the bank of computer monitors lining two walls. They were security monitors covering dozens of doors, halls, and rooms.
“Where are the guards?” I asked.
“Don’t know, but look around for plans of the building so we can get an idea of the size of this place.” Jaxon started flipping piles of papers.
“Careful.” Shim gave him a shove. “We don’t want them to know we were here.” Jaxon rolled his eyes and poked at the papers.
While the brothers searched for plans, I studied the monitors. Each had a label with a number and a room or person’s name listed. Several were labeled by function: “laboratory,” “hall,” “door,” “break room.” There were private offices and conference rooms with cameras, and a disturbing number of monitors devoted to small observation rooms, some set-up with chairs and desks, others just a bed. Four monitors on the right were blank.
“This is odd,” I observed. I’m not sure why I was whispering, as we hadn’t seen anyone yet, but everything about this place felt wrong.
“What is it?” Shim kept working but glanced up at me.
I pointed to the bottom three-quarters of the screens. “Most of these screens show empty rooms, except for these ones in the top row. It looks like everyone in the building is clustered at a large entry door and in this big conference room. But there are a couple of monitors that aren’t working.”
“Let me see what I can do.” Shim stopped his search for plans and started examining the control panel near the wall instead. “I think they just aren’t turned on.” He walked along the wall and pushed the buttons under the blank screens. I held my breath. I knew my dad probably wasn’t here—they were being held by the government—but this place, those rooms, could have been where my mother was held—where she died. The monitors lit up. Nothing. They showed empty, dark rooms. I released my breath.
“Hello, hello, can you guys hear us?” Skylar’s voice broke into my head, and I realized I was the only one touching a stone.
“Yeah, sorry, we got distracted.” To the brothers, I raised my hand and gestured to my necklace. They hopped on with their stones.
“There is something big going on out here,” Skylar reported. “One car just arrived, and I think it’s Cambridge.”
“There’s a lot of dust, so I think more cars are coming,” Breeze broke in.
“We should be okay. We are in the back, in the warehouse area. We found a bunch of monitors, and it shows all the activity happening up front,” Shim relayed to the twins.
“Ha, I found plans,” Jaxon crowed and shoulder slammed Shim.
I frowned and tilted my head. “Does it look like they are preparing that conference room for a meeting?” I said aloud. Shim studied the monitor and agreed. “Now that would be something to hear. Do any of these monitors give sound?”
Shim played with a few of the screens and tried typing in a few commands. “No, these are only video. Probably to give some level of privacy while maintaining security.”
“Too bad.” Jaxon sank into a chair and pulled out plans on a lower shelf. “We could look forever through this building and never find anything, but if we overheard a meeting with Cambridge, we could learn a lot.”
“Well, I know one place we could look.” I pointed up to the monitor on the top row labeled “Smith 206,” then turned to Shim. “Can you find that room?”
“Down the hall.” Shim and I followed the instructions. Jaxon had found the room on the maps and was trying to track us using the monitors in the control room. Every so often, he would tell us to duck into a side room. Fortunately, they had been unlocked so far. “Okay, room 206 should be the third door on your left.” We walked farther down the hall, and I reached for a plain door. “Nope, make that on your right.” I eyed Shim. He shrugged, and we turned to the door on the opposite side of the hall. Restricted signs covered the door, and a security pad was by the handle. Pulling out the badge, I swiped it across the pad and held my breath. My heart pounded as the longes
t seconds of my life ticked by before there was a click and a green light appear on the pad. I breathed a sigh of relief and opened the door.
Inside was a laboratory with shelves and tables full of testing equipment. The surfaces were clear, and one full wall was lined with locked metal cabinets. Shim immediately went to work on the locks of the closest set of cabinets. I headed for the workstation with the computer set up in the corner. It held the only personal items in the room, a photo taped to the wall, and a chair with a lab coat draped over it. I folded back the lapel, hoping it would say “Smith,” but it was blank. A quick survey of the desk showed nothing, so I pulled out the top drawer and rooted around. Nothing, at first, but shoved in the back was a box. Business cards! I picked one out and ignored everything but the name at the top: Agent Erica Smith. That was the name Cambridge had mentioned.
“Bingo. Shim, it’s the right office.” I turned in time to see him crack the lock on the first cabinet. He looked up and noted the card I held up with a nod, then turned back to his work. Shoving the card into my back pocket, I turned to the second, then the third drawer. Nothing jumped out at me, so I yanked on the bottom drawer. It was locked. “Shim, can you get this?” I could pick it, but he was faster, so we swapped spots and I resumed his search through the first cabinet. It was depressing. More bags of clothing and other matter I didn’t even want to think about. Some shelves held jars of liquid with body parts floating in them. Cringing, I stooped to check the wooden boxes on the bottom shelf. They all contained carefully labeled reddish-green rocks that looked very similar to our stone but lacked the silver threads.
“Grace.” The tone of Shim’s voice called to me more than the sound. I looked over. He wasn’t smiling. In his hand, he held a small green book—my mother’s diary. Gasping, I stumbled toward the diary, barely aware of my feet moving, hands out. Shim placed it gently in my hands, and I held it like a sacred object. The cover was worn, there was a scratch I didn’t remember, and the pages were warping. The sealed plastic bag it was wrapped in, like a piece of evidence, angered me, and I was going to rip it off when Shim tugged on my hand and indicated Jaxon wanted to speak to us. It was just as well. If I opened the diary, I’m not sure I would have been able to stop reading it. I gently tucked the book in the detestable plastic bag into the back waistband of my jeans and tucked my shirt in over it to secure it.
“How bad do you want to hear what’s going on?” Jaxon’s voice was tense as he efficiently laid out his plan. “It looks like a ventilation access crawl space leads over the conference room.”
“He wants to climb through the ventilation shafts?” I asked to Shim, then repeated the question in my head for Jaxon.
“Ha, you’re funny. I’m not going. I need to stay here and watch the monitors and direct you.” I could hear his evil smile “Have a nice trip.”
Chapter 29
Eavesdropping
For the second time in less than an hour, I was absolutely terrified to even breathe. I was in a metal duct the size of a small oven with my arms pinned to my sides. But instead of baking, I was being flash frozen as the AC blasted cold air around us and into the room. We could only move by making a snake-like wiggle accomplished by our shoeless feet pushing us through the duct. There was no room to turn around, but Shim, who was in the front, found a way to back-up into a t-bend we passed through earlier, so now he was facing me, and we could both press our ears to the vent. We had to maintain absolute silence as we looked down through the vent slats onto the top of the conference room table. Fortunately, the ceilings were high, and it was unlikely the people in the meeting would look up.
We were fortunate that G-423 seemed to have full access, and that the absence of the badge hadn’t been noticed yet. With the building plans and from watching the monitors, Jaxon had kept us from being seen as he guided us through the warehouse, past laboratories and open workspaces, and into a secure area that contained sealed observation rooms. Let’s hope no one comes back from break and finds him.
There were just two people in the room. One was a huge, slick-looking guy in a suit stretched to capacity. He looked like he had eaten the team of suited operatives we saw in Portland for breakfast. I couldn’t see his face, but the top of his head was trimmed into a tight military-style cut, and the back of one hand had a vicious scar in the shape of a circle. The only other person in the room was Cambridge. I shuddered, and my shoulder started to ache just seeing him again. I’m not sure if that was an emotional response or because of the tight fit, but I tried to move my elbow a little to relieve the pressure on my arm. Shim watched me, and I remembered I was supposed to be holding onto my necklace too.
“Okay?” He asked through the stones.
“Yep, never better,” I replied through the stones.
“Did you guys make it?” The twins piped into our heads.
“We did,” I responded for both of us.
“What’s going on?” Skylar asked.
“Cambridge is in the room with a suit—like the Portland gang but bigger. They seem to be waiting for something else. But the suit keeps telling Cambridge what he did wrong, and Cambridge keeps whining excuses…and he has a broken nose. Way to go, Grace!” Shim laughed, and we felt the amusement through the stones.
Bringggg, bringggg, bringgg, bringgg. “The director is on the line for you now,” a disembodied male voice spoke out of the conference phone in the center of the table.
“Yes,” drawled the suit, “we’re ready for her. Patch us in.”
“Why are you wasting my time?” The original speaker was replaced by an older female voice.
“Director Koch, thank you for taking our call. Something completely amazing has happened and…” The suit cut Cambridge off and pushed him back from the console.
“Apologies, Director. This idiot has created a complete cluster, and he requested the agency to come in and clean up for him.”
“Explain.” The female voice was dry and unemotional.
Cambridge pushed his way back to the table and leaned into the phone console. “As I told your man here, they have a stone. I wasn’t able to get my hands on it for more than a few minutes, but I can assure you it’s one of the cuts I did years ago from the original rock.” His excited voice sounded nasally through the broken nose.
“And you don’t have possession of it now?”
“Well, no,” Cambridge explained. “The kids took it with them.”
“There were five of them. We searched the area when he contacted us, but they were already gone,” the agent injected calmly.
“So, you lost the stone and the children,” the cool voice said.
“Well, yes, but I was able to verify it was one of the stones we were looking for.”
“Cambridge, what do you think we really do?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you think we are really a solar manufacturer?”
“Well, n-no,” the professor stammered.
“Exactly. We need those kids, their stone, and anything else connected to them. The safety of our planet depends on it.”
Shim and I stared at each other; his eyes had bugged out at the word “planet.”
I put my hand up to my necklace.
“What do you think she means?” I asked Shim.
“What did you hear?” the others chimed in, and Shim replayed the conversation.
“Ssshhh. There’s more.” I signaled to Shim.
“Those kids must be tied to the original children somehow. One of them even had green hair—maybe it was genetic,” Cambridge supplied, like the idea had just occurred to him.
“You just figured that out?” The suit leaned back in his chair full of sarcasm.
“Yes,” Director Koch responded dryly, “the children are most likely their offspring. We can’t access the originals—the government has them locked up tight. We think they are at Gitmo, but our co
ntact can’t confirm—that’s what makes these kids that much more important…and you lost them.”
My thoughts exploded out to Shim, “What’s Gitmo?” He didn’t respond, and I looked up at him. The alarm on his face had me reaching out, awkwardly, trying not to bang my elbow in the tight space, trying to calm him. This was no place for a panic attack. “What is it?”
“They can’t mean Gitmo. That’s what they call Guantanamo Bay.” He carried on with his explanation even as I felt the ice race through my veins, “It’s a detention center they send people to disappear.”
“A detention center? Why? What are they doing to them? We have to get them out.” I felt so helpless. We had focused all our energy on evading the people that had taken our parents and trying to unravel their secret, hoping that would help us find them. A small part of me even thought that we might find our parents here, that maybe the government agency that had taken them was tied to the Helios somehow. But all along, they were at a secret government base. Would we ever see them again?
“Grace, we don’t know for sure our parents are there. These Helios guys don’t know where they are, and it looks like they aren’t tied to the government, even if they have spies there,” Shim returned. Frustrated, I returned my attention to the conference room while Shim relayed the conversation to the others.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Cambridge exclaimed. “I called Dawes, I followed procedure. It’s not my fault he wasn’t quick enough and gave them time to break into Stringham’s house and find the journals.”
“Excuse me?” Agent Dawes grabbed Cambridge’s upper arms and pulled him out of his seat. His feet dangled while Dawes got right up into his face. “They found the journals? The ones you were supposed to find? And you didn’t mention it until now?”