“You want one?” he asked Jorgenson.
“No, thank you,” Jorgenson said. “Maybe after I clean out your attic, but not right now.”
So Nick made only one, and he sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat, pondering his growing sense of purpose and his need to defeat the Accelerati before they defeated him.
“Something to drink, maybe?” he asked Jorgenson. “We’ve got juice and milk, though I think the milk might be expired.”
“Very kind of you,” Jorgenson said. “If I feel dehydrated I’ll let you know.”
In a dim corner of his mind, where the electrical impulses of his brain were currently not able to reach, Nick felt a mild sense of unease. There was something wrong, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
There was a clatter of heavy footsteps on the stairs as two other men in pastel-colored suits struggled to get the weight machine down from the attic.
“Turn it on,” Nick told them. “It’ll be easier. Just make sure it’s on the lowest setting.”
And when they couldn’t figure out how to turn on the weight machine, he did it for them.
“Thank you,” one of the men said.
“Don’t mention it.”
There were four or five people in Nick’s house, all members of the Accelerati, going up and down the stairs, in and out of his attic. He wondered if he should be concerned, and then he realized how silly that was. There was nothing unusual about this, nothing unusual at all, and he laughed at himself for thinking there might be.
And yet…
As he watched a woman leave his house with the antique toaster that had nearly killed him twice, his stomach began to react in a way that his mind could not.
He looked down at his half-eaten burrito and somehow knew that the feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with his dinner. And since the inner voice in his mind had been shut down, his gut took over, like the battle bridge hidden deep within a ship.
And the voice from the battle bridge commanded him to call Caitlin.
When Nick’s number appeared on her screen, Caitlin hesitated. Last night she had seen a strange side of him—a side that maybe hadn’t even been there before. It was as if he were possessed. Not by any sort of spirit, but by an idea so powerful it was all-consuming. She knew that what Nick was doing was important, but she also knew he was in over his head—they all were. But she answered the phone, because although the path Nick was headed down was getting thinner and more fraught with peril, she knew she would journey with him, no matter where the journey ultimately led.
“Hello?”
“Caitlin, there’s something I need to ask you, and it’s important,” Nick said.
She found herself holding her breath, knowing his question would take her by surprise, which it did.
“Should I be worried that the Accelerati are here?”
“What? Where are you?”
“At my house. Should I be worried they’re here?”
Caitlin stood up. “Wait, start over. What are you talking about? They’re there? Why are they there?”
“Oh, they’re just taking stuff out of my attic,” he said casually.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“You know what?” Nick said. “I’m probably just being silly. I shouldn’t have called.”
Suddenly Caitlin figured it out. “Don’t hang up,” she said. “Answer me this—is Jorgenson there?”
“Yeah, him and a few others.”
Caitlin ran her fingers through her hair so rapidly she almost tugged some of it out. “Nick. Listen to me carefully. Remember I told you that Jorgenson has this thing on his key chain that messes with your head and makes you think everything is normal when it isn’t?”
“Oh yeah,” said Nick. “I remember that now.” He hesitated on the other end of the line. “What about it?”
“Nick—he’s using it on you!”
“You think so? Should I ask him?”
“No! Don’t ask him anything! What you have to do is get his keys away from him and turn it off!”
There was a moment of silence on the phone. “Don’t you think that would be rude?”
“Nick, do you trust me?”
“Yeah, usually. Mostly. Yeah, I do.”
“And do you trust Jorgenson?”
Another moment of silence. “Not…particularly.”
Caitlin hoped he’d be able to make the logical leap, even though his logic center was scrambled. “So if you trust me and not Jorgenson, doesn’t it make sense that you should do exactly what I say?”
“Yes, that makes sense.”
“Then do it. Do it now. Sneak up on him, take his keys, and turn it off!”
“Okay, Caitlin, if that’s what you think, I’ll do it.”
Caitlin hung up her phone, ran downstairs and out the door, then jumped on her bike and pedaled as fast as she could to Nick’s house.
Caitlin’s request seemed strange. It seemed fundamentally wrong. But his battle bridge told him he needed to trust her.
He went up to Jorgenson, who waited in the foyer as another one of his friends went upstairs for more items from the attic. Nick was about to tap Jorgenson on the shoulder and ask for his keys; then he remembered that Caitlin had told him not to alert Jorgenson of his plan. So he smiled and politely asked him again if he wanted a burrito.
Jorgenson shook his head, and the moment he turned to look the other way, Nick reached into the pocket of his pretty vanilla coat, pulled out a key chain, and saw the object Caitlin had told him about: a little glowing fob.
He pressed the fob’s button with his thumb, its light went out, and Nick’s mind returned in full force.
Jorgenson cursed himself for letting his guard down. So far he had retrieved only half of the objects from the attic. But even without the benefit of the neural disrupter, there were five Accelerati present and only one Nick Slate.
The old man who had given Jorgenson his marching orders did not want Nick Slate harmed, but Jorgenson was already going against those orders with this raid. If the boy was hurt, or even killed, the old man would eventually forgive Jorgenson, because the end always justifies the means.
Nick held the key chain in his hand. “Give that back!” Jorgenson commanded, hoping the authority in his voice would stop the boy long enough for them to subdue him. But it didn’t.
Nick pushed Jorgenson—just hard enough to put him off balance—then raced partway up the stairs. He grabbed a heavy antique fan from one of Jorgenson’s associates and pointed it in Jorgenson’s direction.
“Freeze!” Nick said.
“I don’t think so,” Jorgenson answered with a smile, and he gestured for his associate to take it back.
And so Nick, who wasn’t bluffing, turned it on.
Nick was taking a gamble. He hadn’t personally seen the fan in action—he’d only heard about if from Vince. And he didn’t know what setting it had been turned to. But since he needed every ounce of help he could get, he turned it to ten, its coldest temperature.
The effect was immediate. Frost formed on the walls, and the humid air condensed into snow. The Accelerati woman directly in front of him froze solid in about two-point-five seconds. Nick turned off the fan and touched the woman’s shoulder with his finger. She tipped over and fell down the stairs, a solid chunk of ice that nearly bowled Jorgenson off his feet.
Nick walked down a few steps, careful not to slip on the frost, and with one finger on the controls, he aimed the fan at Jorgenson. “Make one move, and I’ll polar-ize you.”
And Jorgenson moved—in one swift motion, he pulled from his pocket a remote control.
Nick knew what it was. It was the same type of device that had killed Vince with a push of a button—and now it was aimed at him.
Nick didn’t hesitate; he turned the fan on again. Jorgenson dodged, but the blast of icy air caught his arm. The remote, covered in frost, fell out of his hand. Jorgenson looked down, grimacing in pain—his arm, from elbow to fingertips, was fr
ozen solid.
Nick hurled himself down the stairs, taking advantage of Jorgenson’s disorientation, and grabbed the remote from the floor.
Jorgenson jerked his shoulder, and his arm flung back. His hand hit the door frame and his frozen pinkie snapped off like the delicate finger of a china doll.
Nick pointed the deadly remote at him and said, “Run.”
And he did.
As Jorgenson took off, he bumped into one of his associates, who was coming through the door. The associate quickly sized up the situation and did an about-face. Two more Accelerati came down from the attic carrying objects.
Nick pointed the remote at them. “Put those down, grab the frozen lady, and go,” he ordered. “Now!”
And, seeing the remote in his hands, they did as they were told.
Nick followed them out into the rain. Jorgenson was getting into an SUV that held the objects taken from the attic.
“When I said run, I meant run!” Nick shouted, and he aimed the fan at the car.
The SUV, drenched from the downpour, instantly froze solid, and its idling engine, unable to handle the sudden change in temperature, blew apart, sending the hood flipping into the air.
“Run!” Jorgenson yelled to his minions. “Just run!”
Nick followed them down the driveway. There had been few moments in his life more rewarding than watching Dr. Alan Jorgenson sprint down the street, trailed by three of his henchmen struggling to carry a fourth, frozen one.
Nick stood at the curb with the remote and the fan, not yet ready to relax, not yet convinced that Jorgenson didn’t have another trick up his sleeve, until he heard a voice to his right.
“Nick, turn that thing off before you freeze the whole neighborhood,” Caitlin said, coasting up to him on her bike. “You got rid of them.”
As she reached over and turned off the fan, Nick found himself falling to his knees, his adrenaline spent just as quickly as it had surged.
“Hey!” Caitlin jumped off her bike and helped him back to his feet. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said with a half smile. “Thanks to you.”
She smiled back, and Nick hoped she might give him a spontaneous hug. He suspected her battle bridge wanted to. But unfortunately her head was in control and didn’t allow it.
“They could come back…” Caitlin pointed out.
“Not for a while,” Nick told her. “They have some wounds to lick.”
At that moment Vince arrived on his bike as well. He looked at the frozen, blown-out SUV and said, “Uh…did I miss something?”
“Kind of,” Nick said, but he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Right,” said Vince, giving one more glance to the ruined vehicle. Then he apparently dismissed it as Not His Problem. “Anyway, I just wanted to show you this.” In spite of the rain, he was wearing a pair of sunglasses. “Check it out,” he said. “The wires run up my shirt, into the eyeglass frames, and connect to little patches behind my ears. Much more convenient than tape on my back—or electrodes in my mouth.”
“Electrodes in your mouth?” Caitlin repeated.
“I…uh, had to reanimate him on the fly,” Nick told Caitlin, but he didn’t go into details.
“I was ticked off about it at first,” Vince said, “but then I realized what you risked to pull me out of there. If it was me, I probably would have just taken off and left you to rot. Literally. So I guess I owe you one.” Then he caught sight of the object in Nick’s hand, and he took a step back. “Hey, if that’s what I think it is, would you mind aiming it somewhere else?”
Nick looked down to see he was still holding the killer remote. He also had Jorgenson’s neural disrupter fob in his pocket. The disrupter might come in handy, but the remote didn’t belong anywhere in this world. So he dropped the remote to the ground and crushed it beneath his shoe.
Then he went to the SUV, which was beginning to defrost, and opened the back, revealing the items from the attic.
“Whoa,” said Vince. “I really did miss the whole show, didn’t I?”
“Tell us everything,” said Caitlin. “Every juicy detail.”
“Let’s get this stuff back upstairs first,” Nick said. “And when we’re done, let’s roll this wreck down the street—I don’t want my dad wondering about it.”
As they carried the first objects into the house, Caitlin noticed something just inside Nick’s front door. “Ew, what’s that?”
Nick looked where she was pointing and grimaced. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
He got a napkin, reached down, and picked up Jorgenson’s thawing pinkie. Then he took it to the bathroom and heartily flushed it.
Atomic Lanes, in downtown Colorado Springs, was a bowling alley that had resisted modernization like a stubborn child resists spinach. It operated in its own peculiar sort of time field. Everything within its boundaries, from the parking lot to the back alley, was a relic from an era gone by, and perhaps best forgotten.
While newer complexes boasted color-coordinated neon balls and 3-D replays, Atomic Lanes featured beer-bellied guys with names like Rufus and Duke wearing age-worn bowling shoes that were too large and too tight at the same time. It was a place where men kissed their bowling balls more often than their wives, and no doubt their wives played things like cribbage and mah-jongg and other arcane table games that allowed them to show off big hair and bigger nails.
This was the bowling alley that Petula was required to take a picture of once a day. Of course, that was before the Accelerati had run off with the lens from her camera—which was why she had been willing to give the useless box part to Nick.
This was also the bowling alley to which Ms. Planck brought her the following Monday after school.
“Why are we going bowling?” Petula asked in a voice as flat as the Great Plains.
“If you want to meet the Accelerati, this is how it’s done.”
Petula couldn’t imagine a secret society of cutting-edge scientists hurling balls at pins for recreation. But then, hadn’t she read that Tesla had been an avid billiards player? And hadn’t Richard Feynman, the father of quantum physics, played the bongos? Petula supposed great minds needed simple pleasures to vent the by-products of genius.
The place was dimly lit and reeked of spilled beer and the malignant ghosts of cigarettes. Orange plastic chairs were worn maroon in the seat, and all the balls were black, with chips around the finger holes. That wasn’t a problem, because most people who bowled here brought their own.
Case in point: the man in the lane to their left. He bowled alone, with his designer ball, no doubt brushing up on his game for some tournament that would require even more hair gel than he wore now. In the lane to their right was a family with three children too young to successfully lift a bowling ball, much less throw one. With the bumpers up, however, every ball they dropped managed to meander its way down the alley, bouncing off the rubber sides like a lethargic pinball, until it hit the pins hard enough to make them wobble and occasionally tip over.
And Ms. Planck said, “Show me what ya got.”
Petula restrained a glare, and grabbed a ball. Then, with all the strength she could muster, she heaved it down the waxed aisle toward the pins, which always looked like grinning skeleton teeth to her.
Petula was breaking no teeth today. Without the benefit of kiddie-bumpers, her ball dropped into the gutter with a belligerent thud, and rolled off into oblivion. She knew this would happen, and she was furious. Petula detested any activity that she wasn’t already extremely good at. Her second attempt got a little closer to the pins but still dropped into the gutter.
“There, are you happy?”
Ms. Planck grinned. Petula took it as sadistic.
“Relax. Your problem is that you don’t have the right ball,” Ms. Planck said. She reached into her ball bag and pulled out a polished orb of royal blue that seemed to swim with galaxies all the way down to its core.
“Arresting, isn’t it?” said Ms. Pla
nck. “But, like so many things, looks aren’t its best feature.” Then she turned it around and showed Petula a small dial camouflaged against the resin surface. She made a few adjustments to the dial and then, with perfect form, threw her ball down the alley. Kinetic energy was exchanged from ball to pins, and they flew with the familiar thunder of what should have been a strike. But it wasn’t. The two outermost pins remained standing, making the lane look like the mouth of a six-year-old who’s been making the tooth fairy work overtime.
“Tough break,” said Petula, feeling a twinge of joy at Ms. Planck’s misfortune.
But Ms. Planck didn’t seem to mind. “Ordinarily, a seven-ten split is a bad thing. But not today.” Then she threw an intentional field goal right up the middle.
The pins reset and Petula went for her ball, but Ms. Planck stopped her. “For now you’re a spectator.” She tweaked the dial on her ball again and rolled. This time three pins were left: the seven and the ten pins again, with the five pin right between them.
“They call this split ‘the three wise men,’” Miss Planck said. Like the last time, she missed all of them with her second shot.
“Should I be keeping score?” Petula asked.
“Not necessary when you know what the score will be.” In the next frame Ms. Planck’s first ball left a pattern that was extremely improbable, if not entirely impossible. The entire back row still stood. And so did the head pin. Then she handed Petula the ball to finish out the frame. Petula threw a gutter ball, of course, which is exactly what was required.
“Now,” said Ms. Planck, “for the crowning glory.” This time she didn’t dial anything on the ball. She just went to the line, and she hurled a perfect strike. And the moment the pins cleared, things began to happen.
As dim as the light around them was, it dimmed even further, and the far end of the lane began to drop, until it became a ramp leading down to a hidden place beneath the bowling alley.
“To gain admittance to the Accelerati Lodge, one must bowl a precise combination of pin patterns, on this lane,” Ms. Planck explained. “The chance of bowling the patterns naturally is about one in one hundred billion, which is why it is necessary to have a key-ball that can be programmed to hit certain pins and not others.”
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