by Brandon Mull
“You’re up,” Trevor said, taking a spool of kite string from his back pocket.
Setting the surgeon doll on the floor, Nate tore off the end of the Proxy Dust tube and slipped the tiny scrap of paper into his pocket. He sprinkled a little dust onto the doll. Upending the tube, he dumped the rest into his mouth. The dust tasted like slightly sour tangerines.
Nate instantly felt lightheaded, and reached out to support himself against the wall. The room seemed to teeter. He sat down on the floor, which swayed so steeply that he tipped onto his back, all sense of equilibrium lost.
When the room stabilized, Nate sat up, staring down at his plastic hands. He flexed his fingers, then rubbed his palms together, but felt nothing. He had no nerves. “No way,” he said, his mouth soundlessly forming the shape of the words.
He glanced up at Trevor towering over him, then over at the Indian version of himself, slumped unconscious against the wall. Trevor stooped, grabbed him around the waist, and lifted him up. Nate could not feel Trevor’s hand, and he experienced no sensation as Trevor raised him. If not for his sight, he would not have known that he was moving. “That you?” Trevor asked.
“Yes,” Nate mouthed, making no sound. He waved an arm instead.
“I guess you can’t talk,” Trevor said.
Nate made an okay sign with his fingers. Trevor tied the kite string around his waist. They had decided to always keep the doll fastened to the string, in case they had to extract it hurriedly. Trevor tossed Nate through the window and lowered him to the floor.
“Nate,” Trevor said, “since you can’t talk, give the string three hard tugs when you want to come back. Until then, I’ll feed you slack and shine the light through the window.”
Although he could feel nothing, Nate found he could move pretty much like normal, right down to blinking. He ran across the room toward the corner Mrs. White had identified in the plans. The room was full of tables and displays, so he had to zigzag to reach the distant cabinet. Trevor was not tall enough to angle the flashlight beam down into the room, but enough light reflected off the roof for Nate to see fairly well.
When he arrived at the display cabinet, Nate found it was tall, with glass doors. From his ten-inch height, the cabinet looked the size of an office building. The only way in without causing damage would be to squirt the glass, but he had neglected to bring the solution.
Nate raced back the way he had come and tugged on the string. Trevor pulled him up, looking befuddled when he saw that Nate was empty-handed. Nate pointed at the window and pantomimed like he was spraying it.
“Gotcha,” Trevor said, handing Nate the plastic bottle and lowering him back into the room.
Nate raced to the cabinet. Holding the bottle under his arm like bagpipes, he squirted the window with the clear solution. The glass dissipated into nothingness.
The lowest shelf held black-and-white pictures of coal miners, a pair of work gloves, and a large chunk of some green mineral. He would have to jump to reach the next shelf. There appeared to be just enough room between the cabinet door and the shelf for Nate to squeeze up to the next level. Leaving the plastic bottle behind, Nate jumped. Dangling from the lip of the higher shelf, he hoisted himself up with no strain. As a doll he was small but surprisingly strong.
The next shelf had more pictures, a pair of old glasses, a cracked glass mug shaped like a stout man in a tricornered hat, a cigarette case, and a deck of cards. Nate leaped and caught hold of the next shelf. Kicking out a leg, he boosted himself up. Here were more pictures, a leather-bound book, and a silver pocket watch with the numbers written in Roman numerals. Excited, Nate approached the book. Despite the dimness, he could read the title embossed in gold leaf: The Collected Reflections of Hanaver Mills.
Relative to his stature as a doll, the pocket watch was about the size of a manhole cover. Nate lifted it up, surprised that he felt no strain and bore the weight easily. Setting the timepiece down, he approached the book. It was fairly thick. He picked up one end of it. The weight was not a problem, but the shape made it unwieldy at his current size.
After trying a few methods of carrying the memoir, Nate decided he would probably have more luck sliding it, and then tying the string around it to get it up and through the window to Trevor.
The first dilemma was how to get the items down from the third shelf to the floor. His thinking was suddenly interrupted by the shrill sound of a whistle blowing. “Time to go,” Trevor called in an urgent whisper. The flashlight beam wobbled as Trevor began taking in the slack of the string. Nate froze, looking from the timepiece to the book.
*****
Summer peered out of the alley, waiting impatiently. How long did it take to grab two objects from a cabinet? It seemed like Nate and Trevor had been inside the museum forever. There had been a moment of tension when they first leapt up to the roof, but the action had not attracted any attention. Since then, she had seen a couple of cars go by on Main, but otherwise the uneventful waiting was mind-numbing.
“Do you think they’re all right?” Pigeon asked, breaking the silence.
“Of course,” Summer said. “Better off than we are, sitting in some stupid alley.” Looking at Pigeon, with his dark brown skin and leather jacket, it was like she was talking to a stranger. He crept forward, scanning the street. “I wish I had a mirror,” she said. “I’d love to see the Chinese rendition of myself.”
“Police car,” Pigeon warned, withdrawing deeper into the alley and crouching down. Summer shrank into the shadows as well, flattening herself against the wall. From farther back in the alley, she could see only a narrow slice of Main Street. The police car flashed by. Summer edged forward in time to see the taillights disappearing around the curve toward Greenway.
“Now, why are you kids hiding from the cops?” said a deep, no-nonsense voice behind her. Summer and Pigeon both whirled. Pigeon squealed. A few steps away, deeper in the alley, loomed a big man in an overcoat and a brown fedora. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, nothing,” Summer said, conscious of the Moon Rock in one hand, the Shock Bits in the other, and the whistle around her neck.
“Awful late to be hanging around a dark alley doing nothing,” the man observed. He had his hands in his coat pockets.
“We could say the same to you,” Summer said.
“I’m not doing nothing,” the man said. “I noticed you two hiding here looking guilty and it made me curious. Where are your friends?”
“Who?” Summer asked innocently.
“The other two boys you were with. The Indian kid and the redhead.”
Pigeon turned and tried to run, but the man sprang forward adroitly and seized him by the collar of his jacket. He had a big hand with thick fingers and hairy knuckles. Summer saw Pigeon stuffing the Shock Bits into his mouth, so she ran from the alley and blew hard on the whistle twice.
The man released Pigeon and chased her down the wooden sidewalk, catching up in a few long strides. He grabbed her elbow harshly in one hand and pulled the whistle off over her head with the other. Crushing the plastic whistle between his thumb and forefinger, the man hauled Summer back toward the alley. By the light of the nearest streetlamp, she could see his face better. Square jaw with a firm chin. Heavy eyebrows. Hard eyes. He was gripping her by the same arm that held the Shock Bits. She had a Moon Rock in her free hand, but didn’t see how it would help her as long as he was clutching her.
Pigeon emerged from the alley just before they reached it, fingers sparking in the darkness. The man stopped just out of reach. “Shock me, shock her,” the man said.
Pigeon furrowed his brow. The man changed his grip and swung Summer around, holding her out in front of him like a shield. “Shock me, shock him,” Summer said.
Pigeon hesitated. “Come on,” Summer insisted. He reached out a hand toward her, and the man tossed her aside and backed away. Pigeon charged him, arms outstretched, and Summer slapped her own handful of Shock Bits into her mouth. The bits of candy buzzed on
her tongue and made her teeth tingle. The man twisted away from Pigeon and pulled a miniature crossbow out of his coat pocket, leveling it at him.
“That’s close enough,” the man ordered. Pigeon froze. After having dodged Pigeon, the man was facing mostly away from Summer.
“A crossbow?” Pigeon asked.
“I left my battle-ax in my other jeans,” the man said.
Summer dove. The man must have caught the motion out of the edge of his vision, because he swiveled toward her, but her hand grazed his shoe before he could do anything. A dazzling flash accompanied the sound of a gigantic bug zapper claiming a victim, and the man was hurled several yards down the sidewalk. His crossbow clattered into the street. Tendrils of smoke curled from Summer’s mouth. The Shock Bits had entirely dissolved, leaving behind a charred, metallic aftertaste.
Pigeon rushed the sprawling man. As the man sat up, Pigeon swatted him on the side of the head. A brilliant flash accompanied by an electric crackle sent the stunned man tumbling into the street.
“Come on,” Summer urged. She and Pigeon ran off down Main, turning down the side street beyond the museum. Looking back before rounding the corner, Summer no longer saw the stranger in the overcoat lying in the street.
*****
Timepiece or book? Although Nate guessed that the book was more important, he knew the pocket watch would be much easier to carry, and resolved it would be better to get one item than neither. Picking up the watch, he ran to the edge of the shelf.
The slack on his string was almost gone as Trevor reeled it in, and there was no way to tell him to pause, so Nate held the pocket watch over his head and dropped down through the gap between the shelf and the cabinet door, bypassing the second shelf and landing on the first. Not only was the impact painless—he felt nothing. Despite his best efforts to hold the timepiece high, Nate heard a bad sound when he landed, and saw that the glass covering the face of the watch had cracked.
Holding the timepiece under one arm and the plastic bottle under the other, Nate flung himself through the empty space where the glass had been, hugging his possessions tightly as the string pulled him swiftly back along the route he had taken. His path had wound around several tables and displays, so the ride was not smooth. Since he felt no pain, Nate’s only concern was protecting the pocket watch from further damage as he bumped around corners.
As the string dragged him, Nate managed to contort himself as needed to avoid getting hung up on anything. He promptly reached the base of the door and began to rise. He clung to the watch and the bottle as he reached the window above the door and Trevor tugged him through. Trevor kept his hands high, so instead of crashing to the floor, Nate swung wildly. A moment later Trevor set him down carefully.
From the floor, still clasping the timepiece in his unfeeling plastic arms, Nate watched as Trevor crouched down over his actual body and used his fingertips to push apart the eyelids of one eye. When Trevor blew sharply, Nate felt the wind on his eyeball. The sensation made him blink several times. When his eyelids stopped fluttering, Nate found that he was back in his own body.
“What’s going on out there?” Nate whispered, patting his face experimentally, grateful to have nerves again.
“I haven’t looked,” Trevor said. “Can’t be good.”
Nate picked up the pocket watch, the plastic bottle, and the doll. The timepiece seemed so small relative to having carried it as a diminutive plastic surgeon. He shoved the doll into a pocket. Trevor took the watch and the bottle. “Mrs. White said none of the second-story windows had alarms on them, right?” Nate asked.
“Right,” Trevor confirmed. “You thinking we might not want to go out the front?”
Nate pointed to a window at the end of the hall. “That should let us out over the alley,” he said.
They dashed down the hall. Trevor unlocked and opened the window. There was no roof outside—just a straight drop to the alley and a view of the post office roof across the way. The window had a screen. Trevor shoved it, and the screen tumbled to the alley below.
Nate and Trevor each put a Moon Rock in their mouths. The alley remained quiet. They waited for a moment to see if the rattle of the screen would summon anyone. Nobody approached. “Think there’s anybody out there?” Nate asked.
“They might be chasing the others,” Trevor said.
“I guess we jump over to the post office roof,” Nate said, although no sane person would have tried it without a Moon Rock.
Nodding, Trevor climbed out the window and pushed off, floating lazily over to the post office roof. Nate followed him, moving in a trajectory that lifted him comfortably over the clogged gutters and onto the relatively flat roof. Staying low and stepping gingerly, they crossed to the far side of the roof. They found a parking area on the far side of the post office that continued around to the back. The next building over was two stories high. Even with the Moon Rocks, it did not look like they could make the jump to that roof.
Trevor pointed to the back of the post office. They drifted over and looked down into a parking lot with several post office trucks. Nodding at each other, Nate and Trevor stepped off the roof, landing in an empty parking space with the force of a small hop.
“One left,” Trevor said, holding up his final Moon Rock. “Summer has the rest. Do we spit and run?”
“Leave it in,” Nate said. Behind the post office parking lot ran a chain-link fence that served as the rear boundary for several houses on a residential street. Nate motioned toward the fence. “Let’s bounce into that neighborhood.”
They sprang toward the fence, gliding high. Two more bounds and they would be over it and into the backyard. A bright beam from behind suddenly spotlighted them. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” said a gruff voice.
Nate and Trevor touched down, leaping again. Nate glanced over his shoulder. A man in an overcoat was holding a long black flashlight with a blinding beam. Tall and bulky, he could certainly be the same man who had watched them from the front of the bar. The flashlight beam wobbled and Nate heard footfalls as the man sprinted after them.
“You go left, I’ll go right,” Nate said as they neared the pavement only a few yards shy of the fence. When they touched down, Trevor took off diagonally to the left. Nate veered right. Both of them easily cleared the fence. The flashlight stayed on Nate.
“You can go high but you’re not very fast,” the man threatened. Nate heard the fence rattle as the man reached it, heard the man crunch onto the wood chips on the far side.
The backyard was fairly large, with a swimming pool shaped like a peanut. Nate was about to land on the lawn. He could hear the man in the overcoat gaining, heavy footfalls on the grass. The house was too far away for Nate to vault onto the roof in a single leap. But there was a shed on the far side of the pool that might be reachable, and the water would serve as an obstacle for his pursuer.
When Nate landed, he turned and sprang toward the shed. As he soared over the pool, a light on the back of the house switched on, flooding the yard with white radiance. Nate realized he did not have quite enough distance to reach the shed—instead he was going to land on the patio between the shed and the pool. At least he would comfortably clear the water.
The man was sprinting around the pool, but Nate could tell he would land on the patio with enough time to jump again. Nate thought he could make it up to the roof of the house with his next leap.
The man slowed as he stooped to grab something. Nate hit the patio and bounded toward the house with everything he had. At the crest of his jump, Nate judged that he was going to barely clear the gutter. His next leap would be a light skip to the top of the roof.
Nate could hear the man running directly beneath him. As he was about to land a few feet beyond the edge of the roof, something whacked into his side and thrust him brusquely down to the lawn. It took Nate a moment to realize that the man had swatted him out of the air using a long pool skimmer.
The man in the overcoat s
eized Nate by the front of his shirt before he could try to escape, and effortlessly lifted him into the air. “You don’t weigh any more than a piñata,” the man said.
“Let me go,” Nate said.
“Not until you answer some questions,” the man said. “What are you sucking on?”
“The people who live here are already calling the cops,” Nate said, nodding toward the house.
“That was a motion-activated light,” the man assured him. “The people living here are sound asleep.”
“I’ll scream,” Nate warned.
The man instantly clapped a hard hand over his mouth and nose. The large palm smelled faintly of cologne. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Let’s try to keep this friendly.”
Nate gave a curt nod. The man removed his hand. “Tell me how you and your pal manage to defy gravity,” the man demanded.