Meanwhile, Chess’s mother—his real mother, the only one he had in either world—was in handcuffs and shackles. And she’d just finished confessing to murders Chess knew she didn’t commit. Because she couldn’t have. He knew that, even if certainty about everything else had abandoned him.
Chess looked down.
On the floor by Chess’s feet, Finn and Emma bent protectively over Joe, hiding whatever he was assembling out of tiny bits of plastic and wire.
“Ooo, Emma, this is like when you built that mechanical insect for me,” Finn squeal-whispered. “After all this is over, you two should go into business together. Mr. Gadget and Kid Gadget!”
How could Finn flip from fear to excitement so fast?
He trusts Joe, Chess thought. He believes we really are going to be able to save Mom. And ourselves. And—the Gustanos?
Chess crouched down. Now he was at eye level with Joe, Emma, and Finn.
“Tell us exactly what you’re doing,” he asked Joe. “So we know our part. And so . . .”
So if anything goes wrong, the rest of us can still save Mom.
Chess didn’t want to say that in front of the younger kids. Or even Natalie. He didn’t want anyone else thinking about possible problems.
Joe’s eyes met Chess’s over the top of the man’s glasses. Chess clenched his jaw and kept his gaze steady. Wouldn’t that make him look older and more trustworthy himself? Joe raised an eyebrow at Chess, a shadowy motion in the near-darkness behind the pillar. But this was like the looks Mom sometimes gave Chess over the top of Emma’s and Finn’s heads, the looks that said, I know you are almost an adult, and so you are old enough to know things that I can’t tell Emma and Finn. You understand, don’t you? You trust me, right? But this was different, because Joe wasn’t Mom. He’d been a stranger until a few moments ago. Regardless of any heart drawing, he was a stranger still.
Chess wanted so badly to trust Joe anyhow. It felt like Joe wasn’t just looking at him adult-to-near-adult. It felt like his gaze and his raised eyebrow were more . . .
Man-to-man.
“Are you building a drone?” Emma demanded, before Joe had a chance to answer Chess. “Do you think you can fly a microphone up to Mom? Won’t the whole auditorium see that? You need to tell us your plan so we can double-check everything, make sure it’s foolproof.”
“I do want this to be foolproof,” Joe murmured as he twisted a tiny screw into whatever he was building on the floor. He shifted his gaze from Chess to Emma, and it felt like he was answering both of them. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if you could build this without me, given enough time. But there isn’t time to explain. Just be ready to run.”
“Where to?” Finn asked.
“Safety,” Joe said.
Yes, Chess thought. Get Finn to safety. And Emma. And Natalie. And Mom.
He had to trust Joe. He didn’t see any other choice.
Forty-Nine
Finn
“Now,” Joe said.
Finn had to hold himself back from jumping up and down with excitement. The five of them had wormed their way up to the front of the auditorium. Now they were right by the see-through wall that separated the crowd from the stage. Toward the center of the auditorium, the people beside the clear wall were pressed in close, pinned together by the pressure of the crowd behind them. But Joe, the Greystones, and Natalie were off to the side, away from the bulk of the crowd. They were beside a door in the clear wall. The only door.
“You really think Natalie’s going to be able to open that because of her genes?” Finn asked. He wanted someone to congratulate him for remembering the science word.
Instead, Joe tugged gently on his shoulders.
“Stand back,” Joe said. “An alarm might go off if the wrong person touches it. They might have set up that level of security.”
He meant that the Greystones were the wrong people. But so was Joe, so Finn couldn’t get offended.
All the others seemed to be holding their breath. But Finn couldn’t tell if that was because they thought the air was dangerous or because they were scared.
Natalie reached one shaking hand to the knob of the door. She wrapped her hand around the knob.
Nothing happened. No alarms sounded.
Natalie let out a huff of air.
“Slowly, slowly,” Joe coached her.
Natalie turned the knob and pushed forward, as gently as breathing. The door opened a crack.
“Yes!” Emma whispered.
Chess’s pale, terrified-looking face turned even paler.
“Good girl,” Joe said to Natalie. He glanced quickly over his shoulder. “And . . . nobody’s watching.”
He slipped his hand down onto the side of his leg. To anybody farther away than Finn, it would have looked like a man merely shifting positions. Joe didn’t even look down. He peered off toward the giant screen behind the stage, just like Natalie, Chess, and Emma were doing. Just like everyone else in the auditorium.
But Finn couldn’t resist watching a tiny crawling thing slither out of Joe’s hand and down his pant leg. It moved like a lizard or a snake.
Joe hadn’t built a drone that could fly a microphone up to Mom, in plain sight of the whole auditorium. He’d built one that could creep along the floor and up the side of her chair, unseen.
Joe tucked his other hand into his coat pocket, where Finn had seen him hide a remote. The drone lizard scampered through the doorway and up the first step toward the stage.
“It’s working!” Finn couldn’t help whispering.
“Shh,” Emma warned him.
But she grinned, too.
Chess put a hand on Finn’s head and one on Emma’s shoulder. It felt like that was Chess’s way of grinning, too.
Natalie hesitated by the door.
“Should I shut it now?” she asked. “Or open it wider?”
“Just wait,” Joe whispered.
He still seemed to be peering intently toward the giant screen at the front of the room. But Finn knew Joe was really watching the screen embedded in his own glasses. That was how he could see the progress of the lizard drone as it moved the rest of the way up the stairs and onto a part of the stage completely cloaked in darkness.
Up on the screen, the too-serious, too-grim version of Ms. Morales—the judge—was using a lot of big, unfamiliar words.
“Some would contend that this confession would obviate the need for a lengthy trial,” she said in a cold, heartless voice that made Finn miss the real Ms. Morales. Even when she was yelling at Natalie, Finn had never heard the real Ms. Morales sound so cruel. “But we are a society that believes in justice and—”
Joe snorted, blocking out her next words.
“This isn’t justice,” he muttered.
But behind him, the crowd cheered, as if they believed every word Evil–Ms. Morales spoke.
No, not just that—it was like they adored every word Evil–Ms. Morales spoke. Like they worshipped her.
“It’s at the base of the chair now,” Joe whispered, and Finn shivered with anticipation.
If the crowd could worship the evil judge, just wait until they heard Mom.
Finn watched Joe’s face: His eye twitched, he winced, then the corner of his mouth moved just a little higher.
“It’s in her hand now,” Joe said. “Success!”
Finn resisted the urge to grab Joe’s glasses so he could see Mom’s face when she looked down at the lizard drone. It’d probably be like her face on Christmas morning, or on Mother’s Day when Finn made her two cards. She’d glow.
Because the drone lizard didn’t just carry a miniature microphone. It also held a tiny paper with a message: another of Finn’s crooked hearts with the smallest of words written below, “Kids=safe.”
“Won’t that make her think the Gustano kids are all safe now?” Finn had asked anxiously as he watched Joe write the words. “Won’t that kind of . . . trick her?”
“Kiddo, there’s not room on this page for fut
ure tense or conditional verbs or nuance,” Joe had said. “We can’t write out that Natalie’s our secret weapon or that we’re going to grab the Gustano kids next. What if the guards intercept this? Or . . . Judge Morales?”
Now Finn glanced toward Natalie, who stood with her hands pressed against the clear wall. How awful it must be for her to have a good mom and an evil one.
Or, at least, an evil one who looked like her real mom.
“Shouldn’t Mom start talking already?” Emma whispered anxiously.
“Give her a minute to figure out what we sent her,” Joe muttered.
Finn’s heart started beating too fast. He hated waiting.
Then a boom sounded overhead—the exact kind of feedback boom a cheap, quickly built microphone would make when it was switched on.
Evil–Ms. Morales’s frowning face remained on the screen, but another voice spoke over hers: “This entire trial is a fake!”
Mom! Finn exulted. Go, Mom!
“Your leaders are lying to you!” Mom’s voice was steady and strong and perfect. It was everything Finn wanted. “I never—”
There was another boom, cutting off Mom’s words.
At the same time, the whole room went dark.
Fifty
Emma
“Did you know this would happen?” Emma hissed at Joe in the darkness. “Did you know they’d shut off the electricity to shut up Mom?”
“No!” Joe protested. “I thought—”
“Finn!” Chess called, reaching out.
His hand brushed Emma’s arm just as Finn shoved past them both, toward the door to the stage.
“We’ve got to get to Mom before the guards do!” Finn called back over his shoulder.
Usually Emma’s brain worked as fast as Finn could move, but now she wanted an extra moment to think, an instant to figure out the consequences of every action.
Behind her, the crowd went from shocked silence to a loud buzz. Did they believe Mom? Whose side were they on now?
Emma couldn’t tell. She couldn’t make out any individual words, just a deafening roar of . . . more anger? More fear?
“Finn’s right! We can use the darkness!” Natalie called. “It helps us!”
In the next instant, some kind of emergency backup lights switched on. They were so minimal they only cast shadows—they seemed to emphasize the darkness, rather than fighting it. But now Emma could make out the dim shape of her little brother beyond the door, halfway up the towering stairs to the stage.
He looked so small, so defenseless. And that made Emma forget everything else: logic, Joe’s plan, the crowd. . . .
“Finn, wait for me!” Emma called after him.
She pushed her way through the door, letting go of any worry about security systems or alarms.
Wouldn’t a security system need electricity, too? she told herself. Or is there a backup generator for that, also?
She didn’t touch the doorknob, and no alarm sounded, so it didn’t matter. She took the stairs two at a time. She didn’t look back, but she thought maybe Chess, Natalie, and Joe followed.
She caught up to Finn right at the edge of the stage and pulled his head down beside hers.
“At least look before we climb on up!” she whispered in his ear.
Together, they peeked over the rim of the stage.
The dark shape of someone in a long robe stood over Mom behind the wall of her witness stand.
It was Judge Morales.
“Never . . . hello?” Mom was saying doubtfully, probably speaking into the microphone.
“Give up,” Judge Morales sneered. “Can’t you tell all the mikes are off now? And there’s a practically soundproof wall between you and the crowd—no one could hear you, even if they weren’t all shouting.”
Emma realized the crowd noise seemed dimmer now, more distant. Maybe she could only hear it at all because they’d left the door open.
“I—I—” Mom stammered.
A cluster of guards rushed up beside Judge Morales.
“You want us to guard the prisoner?” the man in the lead asked. “Search her? Punish her?”
“There’ll be time for that later,” the judge snapped. “She’s not going anywhere. We can look for accomplices later, too. The priority has to be subduing the crowd. This is a Protocol Six-Oh-Two situation. All of you—go!”
She led the guards to the other side of the stage, past the large wooden structures of the judge’s podium and the empty jury box.
Now Mom was alone.
And again Finn was a step ahead of Emma, scrambling up over the edge of the stage and scurrying toward Mom.
Emma wanted to scream as she took off after him: Mom! Mom! We’re here! She wanted to yell, We love you! and Aren’t you proud of us for finding you? and Oh, Mom, I thought we’d never see you again. This is the happiest moment of my life! But she pressed her lips together and held it all in because they were still running through darkness, and Judge Morales and the guards were just on the other side of the podium and jury box, and the whole angry crowd was just on the other side of the wall.
And Mom wasn’t free yet.
Still, as Emma caught up with Finn, she threw caution to the wind and launched herself around the wall of the witness box and into Mom’s lap. Finn did, too. The two of them tumbled together into Mom’s arms.
“We’re saving you!” Emma whispered, just as Finn sighed happily, “Oh, Mom.”
And then Mom gasped and began laughing and crying all at once, and alternately holding her hands over her mouth and holding on to Emma and Finn.
“My Emma?” she whispered in disbelief. “My Finn?”
And Emma understood why Mom might be confused in the near-total darkness, when she’d thought her three kids were still safely back in the other world, and only the Gustano children had been brought into this one. Mom began running her hands over their faces, as though she could identify them solely by touch.
“Yours,” Emma assured her. “All yours.”
It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t see Mom’s face in the shadowy darkness. She wanted that so badly—not just to see Mom, but to see Mom seeing her. At least Emma could snuggle close; she could hold on tight.
“Mom?” Chess whispered behind her, moving around to the side of Mom’s chair. Dimly, Emma saw that Natalie and Joe had arrived with him, and Joe was already bending low, diving toward the shackles that trapped Mom in her chair.
“You’re all here?” Mom said numbly, reaching for Chess, too. “But—”
“We figured out your codes,” Finn bragged. “Well, some of them. I’m the one who found the butterflies on your websites!”
“What? I never thought you’d see that until later,” Mom whispered. “Years later. If ever. It was really meant for other—”
“Probably better not to talk much right now,” Joe muttered. He seemed to be lying on the floor beside the witness box, his arms outstretched. Emma was pretty sure he had a screwdriver out to pry off the shackles, but she couldn’t actually see it in the darkness.
“Joe?” Mom whispered, looking around. She let out a strangled cry, and her voice turned strangely bitter. “Funny how I know your voice so well, though I’ve never seen your face . . . you brought my children here? Into danger? How dare—”
“I found them here, Kate,” Joe corrected. “They were a step ahead of me. And they even taped over the doorway to the tunnel, to try to guard it.”
Emma thought that should make her feel proud—or proud of Natalie, anyway—but it didn’t. There was something wrong with how Mom and Joe were talking, almost as though they were still using code.
Mom buried her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’ve made a mess of things. But you came, and now you’re all here, and—”
“And we’ve got Natalie, too,” Finn interrupted. “She—”
Emma put her hand over his mouth, because if it was a mistake to talk about codes right now, it would be a really bad id
ea to talk about Natalie being their secret weapon. Finn pushed back at her.
No—he was falling toward her, because the platform beneath Mom’s chair gave a little jerk.
“Something’s happening,” Natalie hissed from the other side of the witness box. “Everybody down!”
Fifty-One
Chess
“Kids, save yourselves!” Mom whispered. “Hide! Now! Away from me!”
Chess wanted to argue, We’re not leaving you behind! We’re not going anywhere without you! But the words stuck in his throat. Joe was still working on the shackles on Mom’s legs that bound her to the chair, but he hadn’t even managed to pry away the first one.
Still, Chess crouched down behind Mom’s chair, so that even if the lights came back on, no one would be able to see him from the crowd.
“Natalie’s standing lookout for us,” he assured Mom. “We’ve got time. And even if someone sees her . . .”
Surely Mom knew that Natalie could just impersonate the Natalie Mayhew of this world; surely she knew that those two would look like exact doubles.
Mom turned her head toward Chess, and even though Mom’s face was completely in shadow, he could feel the anguish in that one motion.
“Natalie’s not . . . Have I just endangered another woman’s child, too?” Mom moaned. She raised her head toward the crowd, and Chess understood: What if this world’s Natalie was already standing somewhere out there? She would know that the other world’s Natalie didn’t belong. So would everyone around her.
The odds were, this world’s Natalie was somewhere in the crowd.
“Natalie! You hide, too!” Chess whispered out into the darkness.
What other problems had he missed, because there hadn’t been time to think?
Finn and Emma hadn’t left Mom, either. If anything, they were holding on tighter.
From the other side of the stage, Chess heard Judge Morales’s voice—so uncannily like and unlike the kind Ms. Morales’s voice, all at once—as she called out, “Yes, we have enough power for that, even if we’re making it look like a total outage otherwise. The plan’s a go as soon as everyone’s in place.”
Greystone Secrets #1 Page 21
