Judging by the way his cheeks were squished up against his palms, the cuffs were a little on the tight side. His head was down, his gaze fixed on the floor. Despite all this, though, Daryl recognized him at once.
"Oh great, it really is him," Daryl said.
Ash Stone raised his head. His eyes were puffy and ringed with red like he'd been crying. It took him a moment to compose himself enough to speak.
"Finally!" he barked. "You people have thirty seconds to get me my lawyer, or I swear to God I'll have your jobs."
"Ssh," Daryl urged.
"Hey, man, don't you shush me. You got any idea who I am?"
"Sadly, I do," Daryl said. He turned to Riley. "What do we do now?"
Riley puffed out her cheeks. "Beats me," she said.
"We're so dead," Daryl groaned.
"Ha, gotcha," Riley replied. She punched Daryl lightly on the shoulder. "Joking! I'm joking! Wow, you look like your budgie died or something. Relax. Me and Hath had this all planned before we even busted you out."
"You did?"
"Of course we did!" She gave Ash a wave. "Hi, by the way. Loved you in Band Camp Bad Boys."
Ash's perfectly plucked eyebrows knotted in the middle. "What?"
"Remember that time you accidentally set your hair on fire?" Riley grinned. "I laughed until I was sick. Really. I frickin' hurled everywhere, all over my legs, my shoes, the carpet…"
She fell suddenly serious. "It was disgusting, actually. And, you know, playing with matches? Not cool."
Ash's stare shifted from Riley to Daryl and back again. "What are you talking about? Who are you?"
"We're here to rescue you," Daryl said. "For reasons I'm still not one hundred percent clear on. Riley, what's the plan?"
"OK, step one," Riley announced, "you disarm his handcuffs."
Daryl blinked. "What?"
"His handcuffs," Riley said. She pointed to the metal bonds around Ash's neck and wrists. "You disarm them. That's the first thing. Step two—"
"Whoa, whoa, let’s revisit step one," Daryl protested. "How am I supposed to disarm his handcuffs? And what do you mean 'disarm' anyway?"
"Hath reckons they're probably explosive," Riley said.
"They're what?" spluttered Ash. His eyes swiveled in their sockets, straining to get a better view of the restraints.
"And what does he expect me to do about it?" Daryl asked.
"He says you're all, like, superbrain. He says you should be able to figure it out."
"Should?" yelped Ash. "What's should? I don't want should, I want can."
"Shut up," Daryl hissed. "Someone might hear."
"Good!" cried Ash. "Better that, than being blown to pieces. Help!" he cried. "Help, there are people in—"
Riley's hand shot out and clamped across Ash's mouth. "Remember that episode of Band Camp Bad Boys when your character made so much noise his friends were forced to gut him like a fish?" she asked. Her voice was still light, her mouth still smiling, but there was an intensity to her gaze that drilled deep into Ash's panic-clouded brain.
Ash shook his head as much as his hands and hers would allow. "Would you like me to remind you?" Riley asked.
Again, Ash managed the slightest shake of his head. Riley nodded, released her grip, then stepped back. She shot a nervous grin at Daryl. "Off you go, then," she suggested. "See how you get on."
Hesitantly, Daryl took a step in Ash's direction.
"Try not to kill us all," Riley added.
Daryl licked his suddenly dry lips. "I'll do my best."
It was clear as soon as Daryl looked at the cuffs that they were indeed more than bog-standard restraints. They were made up of three metal hoops, with the one in the middle being three or four times larger than the two on either side. Ash's neck stuck through the center hoop, and with no obvious way of opening it, Daryl wasn't sure how to get him out.
Not that he was in any rush to just prise the thing open. Whoever had built the restraints looked to have done so in a hurry. Wires were clumsily spliced together and secured in position with electrical tape. Circuit boards had been cut to size and fastened in place with cable ties and solder.
An LED light blinked on each of the three hoops, each one working at a slightly different speed to the others. The spaghetti of cables was a rainbow of different colors that looped and circled and tied itself in knots.
Daryl's dad had once thrown their old DVD player at the wall—Daryl had never really found out why—and the casing had smashed completely open. The cuffs reminded Daryl a bit of the inside of that, only several times more confusing.
"If you get me out of this I'll give you a million dollars," whispered Ash. "I swear. A million clams."
"Shut up," Daryl said.
"You know what you're doing, right?"
"No. Not a clue," Daryl answered, although that wasn't quite true. A second ago he'd had no idea what he was looking at, but the longer he looked, the more it made sense.
Those little fuse-shaped parts were resistors. The little knobbly brown bits? Capacitors, he thought. He flicked his eyes over the circuits. Yes, capacitors, definitely.
"How do I know this?" he muttered, as the tangle of components began to unravel itself into something resembling a circuit diagram. Those black cables connected to what was probably an OR Gate. Daryl followed them back through the spaghetti. Each of the wires connected to a different wrist cuff. That made sense.
The longer he looked, the easier it all became. His mind raced, flooded by concepts he had previously not even been aware of. He understood the resistance of the circuit. He saw the switches and knew how they worked. It was all just waiting there in his head, like there had never been a point when he didn't know it. (Grasp of Electronics: 10. Or 1010 in Binary.)
"Binary," he whispered. "I can speak Binary."
"Is that… what? Like French or something?" asked Ash.
"No," Daryl said. He blinked as new synapses fired-up deep within his brain. "But I think I might be able to speak that, too."
He shook the thought away and concentrated on the matter at hand. He understood the workings of the entire circuit now, and he grasped at that moment the consequences of making one wrong move.
"It's not a bomb," Daryl said.
"Thank you, Jesus!" Ash proclaimed.
"Let's not celebrate yet," Daryl said. "It's a trigger."
Riley stepped in close behind him, her head appearing over his shoulder. "A trigger?" she asked. "A trigger for what?"
"For him."
A hush fell over the cell. Daryl thought back to the video he'd seen earlier. Had it really only been that morning? A lifetime seemed to have passed since then.
"That thing you were doing with your hands on the TV. Was that real?"
"Yeah," said Ash. "Started last night. Power beams or laser blasts or whatever. I blew up a limo. It was pretty awesome."
"Well, if we mess this up you'll blow up your own head," Daryl said.
"Awesome!" said Riley. Daryl and Ash both turned to look at her. She seemed to shrink beneath their gaze. "That was inappropriate," she said, fiddling with her fingernails. "Carry on."
"Can you do it?" Ash asked. "You can do it, right?"
Daryl tilted his head first to the left, then the right, studying the restraints from different angles. At last, he nodded. "I can do it," he said. "I can get them off, it'll just take me a bit of time to—"
AWOOOOOGA! AWOOOOOGA!
Daryl closed his eyes. "Right. Course," he sighed.
Ash's eyes widened. "Is that an alarm?"
"Seriously?" said Daryl. "You really need to ask?"
He cracked his knuckles and cricked his neck and burrowed his fingertips into the tangle of wiring. From beyond the doors he heard raised voices—distant now, but getting closer.
"Maybe it wasn't us," Riley whispered. "Maybe… Maybe it's a fire!" she said, hopefully. "Maybe someone knocked over a scented candle and the whole place is going up in flames!"
"How is th
at better?" Ash gasped.
"I think the bigger question here is, why do they have scented candles in a place like this?" Riley wondered.
"They don't! You made it up!" said Ash.
"Will both of you please shut up?" snapped Daryl. "It's us, they know we're here, they're coming for us, I can hear them."
Ash's gaze went to the door. "You can hear them? How can you hear them?"
"Not important," Daryl said. His fingers ferreted furiously through the wiring. "Riley, what can you do?"
"About what?"
"Your power. You've got a power, right? That's why we're all here. You flipped the van. You told me before, you flipped the van."
"Right," Riley said, breathlessly. "I did. I flipped the van."
Daryl tracked the flow of the circuit. Binary ones and zeroes trampled through his head like ants at a picnic. "How? What's your power?"
Riley shifted awkwardly. "Rocks," she said.
Daryl hesitated. "Rocks?"
"I can control rocks."
"Rocks," said Daryl again.
Ash breathed out slowly. "Rocks. Wow. That's totally… Like, I mean…" He shrugged. "That's just stupid."
"Stop moving," Daryl warned him.
"It's not stupid," Riley insisted.
"They're here," Daryl announced, not looking up from the wiring. "Only one right now, but more on the way."
Riley eyed the door, hopping from foot to foot. "What do we do? What do we do?"
"They need two to get in. Just give me a few more… Got it!" Daryl yanked on a wire, tearing it free. All three LED lights stopped flashing.
"Alright!" Ash cried.
All three lights returned. Red, this time, and no longer blinking on and off. From inside the cuffs came the low hum of electrical current.
"Hey, that tickles," Ash said. "What's happening?" His hands began to tremble, a faint shake that rose quickly to a violent shudder. Panicked tears sprang to Ash's eyes. "What have you done?"
"Oh God, there must have been some kind of failsafe," said Daryl. "It's started."
"Then stop it!" Ash cried.
"There isn't time."
"What do you mean there isn't time?"
"It's… it's too late," Daryl said. "It's too late. It's started." He stared into the wide, red-ringed eyes of the most famous teenager in the world. "It's started and there's nothing I can do to stop it!"
Eleven
Riley stepped back. Ash's hands were vibrating furiously, squashing and stretching the skin around his eyes over and over again. The air inside the cell seemed to tingle, and Daryl felt every hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
"Do something!" Ash howled. "Help me! Jesus Christ, do something!"
There was a clunk from the door. As it began to open, Daryl felt the world slide into slow motion.
He caught the cuffs where they joined around Ash's neck and dug his fingers down into the gap between metal and windpipe. The door was still opening behind him, the people outside still readying themselves to bound in.
Ash's eyes swiveled slowly down, following Daryl's fingers but nowhere near fast enough to keep up. He said something, but it sounded to Daryl like a long drawn-out groan as if time itself were grinding to a halt around him.
The cuffs were strong. Daryl gritted his teeth and tightened his grip and pulled with all his might. The lock resisted, but only for a second. With a screech it tore apart, turning Ash's hands away from his own head, and pointing them toward the door instead.
The room was lit up by twin blasts of energy surging from Ash's open palms. Daryl dropped to the floor, the beams cutting through the air just a few inches above him.
With a roar of rending steel, the half-open door exploded outward, the metal buckling as it ripped from its reinforced hinges. The PPA agents pushing their way inside were sent hurtling backward, pinned beneath the metal as it spun across the corridor and slammed against the wall on the other side.
Still the beams fired. In moments, the door began to glow first orange, then red, the metal sizzling and running in rivulets to the floor. There was a hiss and a scream from one of the agents cowering behind the molten metal.
"Um… you do know you're going to kill them, right?" Riley asked.
Ash gritted his teeth. "Damn right," he barked, and Daryl saw the flames of fury flicker on behind Ash's eyes. "Teach these assholes to kidnap me!"
“Stop!” Daryl yelped. He shoved Ash's hands, turning the beams away from the trapped agents. Both blasts arced upward, shattering what was left of the doorframe and smashing through the wall above it.
Riley screamed as the wall and part of the ceiling came crashing down, filling the cell with dust and smoke and so much noise even the screeching alarm was drowned out. Above her, a chunk of light fitting broke free, a jagged tear of metal scything toward her head.
"Look out!" Daryl cried. He dived for her, head down, arms outstretched. A ripple passed between them, knocking Riley sideways against the wall.
Daryl hit the ground and rolled clear, just as the blade of broken metal embedded deep into the rough stone floor.
With a whoosh that made Daryl's ears pop, Ash's energy blasts stopped. The ceiling cave-in had blocked the doorway, cutting the room off from the corridor beyond. Without Ash's energy beams the cell was plunged into darkness.
Somewhere in the shadows, Riley coughed. “Well, that all went better than I expected.”
"You idiot!" barked Daryl. "You could've killed us!"
"Hey, don't blame her, man," said Ash.
"I wasn't! I was talking to you!"
"Me?" Ash spluttered. "How is this my fault?"
"How is this not your fault?" Daryl demanded.
"You're the one who knocked my aim."
"You were going to kill them!"
"So? Better than them killing us!"
Daryl opened his mouth to argue, but just shook his head instead. "What's the point?" he muttered.
Although there were only the faintest whispers of light seeping through the cracks in the rock, Daryl found his eyes adjusting quickly. He hurriedly undid the buckles that pinned Ash to the wall, then waited just a moment for a thank you that never came.
"You're welcome," he scowled, before turning to Riley. "What now?"
"Hath will beam us back up."
"Who'll do what now?" asked Ash.
"When?" said Daryl, ignoring him completely.
"As soon as we're up on ground level."
Daryl felt his stomach tighten. "What? He can't beam us up from here?"
"What are you talking about?" Ash demanded.
"Yes and no. It's shielded from his scanners," Riley explained. "He can't get a lock on us. He needs to see us. It's fine, we just need to get above ground."
"We're blocked in by a ton of rubble," Daryl reminder her. "How are we just going to get above ground?"
"Easy," she said, and through the gloom Daryl saw her smile. "Rocks are my thing, remember?"
She leaned over and pressed her fingertips against part of the crumbled wall. A tremor rolled across the floor, then the barrier of boulders rumbled outward, tumbling into the corridor like a landslide.
Light flooded the room, and the screaming of the alarm returned at full, ear-splitting volume.
"On the ground! On the ground, now!"
Through the gap, they could see a dozen or more PPA Agents, all dressed in black and all glaring down the sights of their automatic weapons. They were spread out in a semi-circle around the opening, keeping their distance from the molten mound of metal that was now unrecognizable as a door.
Ash opened his hands wide. Before he could raise his arms and fire, though, Daryl sidestepped in front of him, blocking his aim.
"Don't," Daryl warned. "It's no use."
"On the ground!" repeated one of the agents. "Get down! Get down!"
Slouching down onto her knees, Riley glanced back at Ash. "Say rocks aren't stupid."
"What?"
Riley brushed her fing
ertips against the debris. The cell was suddenly filled with the whistle of stones speeding through the air. There was a chorus of cracks as each stone struck a different agent, catching them on the forehead and spinning them to the floor.
She looked to Ash again. He gaped in awe, then pulled himself together. "Rocks are still stupid."
A tiny pebble pinged off his forehead.
"Ow!"
"Come on, let's move," Daryl urged.
He scrambled over the rubble and into the corridor. Some of the fallen agents were lying motionless on the floor. Others rolled around, clutching at their heads. Blood oozed from their wounds, seeping into their eyes and down their faces, but a few of them were recovering quickly, already grabbing for their guns.
With a flick of his foot, Daryl kicked an agent's rifle out of reach. "Hurry," he urged, as Riley and Ash joined him in the corridor.
The door at the far end was wide open. Beyond it, a red light flashed in time with the alarm. Daryl was halfway to it when Corporal Carter stepped around the corner. She trained a small but deadly-looking handgun on him, right between his eyes.
"Don't move," she barked.
Daryl skidded to a stop and heard Ash and Riley do the same. Around them, a few of the other agents got to their feet and took aim with their rifles.
Daryl put his hands up in surrender. The alarm's screeching echoed off the narrow walls. Above the din, though, Daryl could just make out another sound. It took him a moment to identify the soft whirring of the camera above the door turning to focus on them.
Carter took a step closer, her gun still trained on Daryl. "You're him, aren't you? From the video. With the basketball. I thought I recognized you."
"I didn't do it," Daryl replied automatically. "It wasn't me."
His eyes flicked up to the camera again. Come on.
"You'll forgive me if I don't believe that," said Carter.
"Yeah, well, I'd love to stay here and discuss it, but we're just leaving."
He straightened his shoulders and waited. Carter looked him up and down.
"No, you aren't."
Daryl shot the camera a pleading look. "Please tell me we're just leaving," he whispered, but before the sentence was fully out of his mouth, a swirl of sparkling color enveloped him, and the corridor, Carter, and all the PPA Agents faded like shadows in the sun.
World Killer: A Sci-Fi Action Adventure Novel Page 7