Upbeats

by Erin Sheena Byrne

  Chapter Eighteen

  "You think that was our man?" Robyn asked as we dragged Smithy out of the city. To avoid suspicion, we took back streets.

  "Had to be," I said. "You don’t miss something like that."

  Robyn looked, sadly, at Smithy. "I hope he’s alright . . ."

  "It was just your run of the mill anaesthetic. Bit more powerful then what I thought they’d use on a rowdy patient but he’ll pull through . . ."

  "Do you think Gemini recognized him?" Robyn asked, suddenly.

  The question hit me like a fist and made me stop walking and think. I had noticed that look on Gemini’s semi-metal face when he saw Smithy. Maybe he was just seeing the striking resemblance between them. Smithy had reacted in much the same way when he first laid eyes on Gemini.

  I carried on walking. I didn’t respond because I wasn’t sure. "Let’s go to the cave, the others are probably still busy."

  We continued our journey in silence. I was avoiding the subject. The truth was that I just didn’t know Smithy and I couldn’t understand him. He was always off on his own and trying to evade eye contact but if he could help, as much as he didn’t want to do it, he would buckle down and do it.

  We were halfway to Robyn’s house when her phone started going off again with the violin solo. Robyn lowered Smithy down, gently, onto the damp road and answered her phone.

  I listened to this half of the conversation. "Uh huh . . . yeah, we’ve just finished now . . . yup . . . yeah . . . no . . . uh huh . . . your place . . ? We’ll be right over."

  Robyn shut her phone. "They’ve found something," she announced, excited all over again. "They’re at Brooke’s place: her brother Arthur’s out. C’mon, we’re not far from there."

  Distances seem to stretch further when you have to drag an unconscious person along with you.

  We got to Brooke’s house. She only lived across the road from me so standing on her front step, I could see my house. I thought for a second I saw my sister looking out through her bedroom window. I shook my head: I was getting paranoid.

  Robyn knew where Brooke kept a spare key: under a flat stone in the front garden. She unlocked the door and we carried Smithy inside and up the stairs to Brooke’s room.

  By the time we got inside, our arms were sore from carrying Smithy. Whatever that Brandi gave him, it knocked him clean out.

  Everyone raised an eyebrow when we walked in half carrying, half dragging the limp body of Smithy.

  "Is he dead?" Ned asked.

  "No, but my arms feel dead," I replied as Robyn and I hoisted him onto Brooke’s bed.

  "What happened at the dentist’s?" Brooke asked, suspiciously.

  "Well, it’s definitely Gemini running that dental clinic," I said, sitting down on Brooke’s desk chair and rubbing my aching arms. "He even recognized Smithy. Well, I can’t say for sure but maybe he knows Smithy from somewhere. Smithy never said he doesn’t know him."

  "Luke, enough with the suspicions," Robyn chided. "Smithy hasn’t done anything . . ."

  "That’s where you’re wrong," Ned said, suddenly. "Up there in that building, Smithy didn’t get that little girl out when Luke ordered him to . . ."

  "He couldn’t do it!" Robyn defended, hotly. "He tried and tried and tried but he just plain old couldn’t teleport a passenger further than a couple of metres."

  Robyn had a way of making people shut up when she got defensive. It’s probably because she was the last person you’d expect to explode.

  Smithy stirred. He groaned and rolled his head to the other side but he didn’t fully wake up.

  "We’re still young," Robyn said, resuming her air of gentle grace. "And we don’t have proper powers. We’re bound to stuff up sometime. We shouldn’t jump on each other when we do. I even forget how to tap into people’s thoughts, singularly. I was hearing everyone’s thoughts for a moment. It was crazy. And I was scared. Because I didn’t like not being in control even for a second. I felt lost. Smithy probably felt all that and more when he couldn’t rescue that little girl."

  Brooke found something interesting to look at on the floor, Ned bit his lip and looked away and I turned to each one of my friends. "Robyn’s right: we can’t just distrust someone because their power goes on the fritz. We’re team, let’s stick together and help out each other."

  Everyone nodded and we calmed down. Smithy groaned again and sat up, dizzily. He held a hand to his head, as if he had a headache.

  "Next time, remind me to teleport far away when Luke suggests we go to some medical establishment to spy on some intergalactic felon," Smithy said, dazed.

  "Did you find out anything else?" System enquired.

  "Um . . . yeah, the dental nurse has a thing for Gemini," Robyn said, giggling.

  That reminded me of the note. "Oh, yeah. When she was in Gemini’s office, she took a quick peek at his papers and when she saw this:" I pulled the note from my pocket and unfolded it, "she freaked."

  I read the note out loud:

  "Phone Monica Mia, midnight, Sunday."

  "So, he has a girlfriend and it isn’t her," Ned shrugged. "What’s the problem that could mean our death and the death of this planet?"

  "What makes you think he has a girlfriend?" Brooke asked.

  Ned shrugged again. "That or it’s his mother or his sister. Whoever it is, it would have to be someone he knows well to phone them at midnight."

  But System had stiffened all of a sudden. He was standing on his hind legs, his black beady eyes wide.

  "System? What’s up?" Robyn said, softly.

  "Monica Mia . . ." he echoed.

  "What does it mean?" I asked.

  System shook his head, as if to get out of his trance. "Well, it could just be a coincidence, maybe it is just the name of someone he knows but . . ."

  "Spit it out," I ordered, wearily.

  "Monmia," System said, darkly. "Monica Mia is their nickname. They’re a race of backwards speaking, honourable in their own minds, dictating, pathetic, cowardly creatures with only a sense of hearing and power. They’ve been known to destroy entire races so that they could inhabit their planet. Earth has been their main target for many centuries. But Intergalactic Police have been keeping a constant guard on Earth so the Monmia, try as they might, have been unable to sneak even a simple cherry bomb through Earth’s atmosphere."

  If System’s words didn’t carry so much weight, I would have asked how he knew what a cherry bomb was.

  "It makes so much sense," System continued, as if talking to himself. "We found something, a blueprint, if you will, in Gemini’s apartment. A blue print of planet Earth."

  "And those grey patches?" Brooke asked. "Do they have something to do with the Monmia?"

  System blinked, thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, I remember my teacher once saying that Monmia have many methods of destroying races. They generally like to do it so that there is no mess left over when they want to start inhabiting it. They use a kind of artificial chemical gas that would reduce the predominant species . . . to dust, literally."

  I raked a hand through my hair and yanked on a handful. I had been doing that since I was little. It was my way of coping with something distressing.

  Humans could be destroyed soon. A bunch of aliens would come in and live in our houses, eat our food, sleep in our beds, deface our property . . . and who was standing in the way?

  If the rest of the world knew that five ordinary kids who had powers they couldn’t control and a major trust issue, along with a skunk that talked and knew more about stars than any scientist alive, were going to save them all . . . I doubt the order "Don’t Panic," no matter how big and friendly the letters, would be obeyed to any degree.

  I found it hard to keep the panic down myself. All I could think of was: "We won’t make it out. There is no way we can make it through something like this . . ."

  "What did you find at Gemini’s apartment?" I asked, steadily.

  "The guy has a thousand and one collection of A
tlas’s," Ned commented. "And coins, and stamps, and shells, and stones, and international knick-knacks . . . honestly, that chap has more collections than a museum."

  "He also keeps his apartment very clean," Brooke remarked. "It looks just like a normal apartment."

  "No, I mean, what did you find, like that blue print?"

  "I only found the blue prints of Earth and a map of Rockwell," System said. "The grey areas in the blue prints of Earth are probably to show the holes in the O-Zone layer. The Monmia will need that information to blast the gas into Earth. The shells that carry the gas are so fine and fragile; they need a weak spot to get in."

  "I saw the blue prints as well," Brooke said. "That big grey area I saw, where was that over again?"

  "An island called Australia," System said.

  "Makes sense," Ned muttered. "That sun bites you there. You don’t just burn silently, no. It likes to make sure you know you’re being burnt."

  "How would you know?" Robyn asked.

  Ned shrugged. "My family travels . . ."

  "So Gemini has gathered all of this information," I said, mostly to myself. "He knows where to let the gas through, we know he has to tell the Monmia, he’s going to do that at midnight, tomorrow, I’m assuming. But where is he going to do it and what can we do?"