by Scott Rhine
“How long do we have to stall?” I asked.
“Depends on how close they can land the helicopter. Maybe thirty minutes after I make the call.” Then Blaise hung up.
I clapped Dina on the shoulder. “Thanks for having my back.”
Luca didn’t rip Pete a new one like I expected. Instead, she pointed to the lights on the sixth floor. “These buildings look like they’re connected. How can we reach that lab without going outside?”
Pete blinked. “You want to get closer to that noise?”
“Yes,” I said. “You can hide back here if you want.”
He bristled at the insult. “All these buildings are connected by a maze of tunnels. Some of them connect to the underground parking garage and others to the Strata lobby.”
Hand on our hip, Luca said, “You mean we could have parked right under where we needed to be? How do we get access to the tunnels?”
“One of the stairwells goes down that far,” he replied, uncertain. “We just need to find a map on one of these walls.”
Using her phone, Dina was a superhero with her thumbs. She pointed down the hall to the west and announced the stairwell number from a PDF map of the campus.
I felt my head go light. “You don’t have to do this,” I told her. “You’re not supernatural. This isn’t your fight.”
“We fight for the people we love,” she said. “Besides, who else is going to lead you underground?”
When we reached the stairwell to the pit, it was my turn to whimper. I stalled to gather my courage. Luca was right. I’d been fine for years. What had triggered this relapse? “Dina, are you sure you like my brother this much?”
She tucked one arm around mine like an escort. With the other, she held up her flashlight. “His first year, he called me Friday nights sometimes. When he gives me advanced warning, I fake a stomachache to stay home from the mosque. The evening of your mother’s funeral, he cried on my shoulder for an hour. He sent me flowers afterward as thanks for being a good friend. We haven’t discussed it since, but I want to marry him.”
I sensed hesitation. “Except?”
“He hasn’t called me since this semester started. When you ignored me too this week, it hurt.”
Luca rolled her eyes as she pulled a fire ax out of an emergency alcove. No alarm sounded without the power on. “Grow up. I’ve slept with half a dozen guys on the Riviera. That doesn’t mean I’m settling down with them or that I stalk them if they don’t call.”
“You, stay away from my boyfriend,” Dina ordered.
Pete’s attention was still focused on Luca’s last statement. “Could I get your number?”
She sighed. “I’ll text you a picture of me in a bikini if you don’t run away again.”
“Deal.” He wouldn’t be leaving our side if the bad guy pulled grenade launchers out of their butts.
Gripping Dina’s arm, I said, “The darkness actually makes it better. I can’t see how far the walls are. I mean, we could be walking into that parking structure right now. Right?” I focused on my breathing the way Mom had taught me. I was going to save my brother’s life. Then he would ask Dina’s father to take her out on a real date, or I’d kick his Book-thieving behind.
17. The Gates of Hell Café
My journey through the bowels of Moria didn’t suck as bad as I thought it would—mainly because I was running. I wanted to be above ground before the witch helicopter landed so they could track my phone. We jogged through a wide, echoing hall the length of two buildings. The cookies in Dina’s purse rattled with every footfall. They were going to be dust by the time we arrived. I was making a joke about it when we hung a right. Even with Dina counting steps, we got a little lost. Unfortunately, the exits from the northbound branch didn’t line up precisely with map Dina had. All hail the Internet, source of reliable knowledge. We went topside too soon and almost ended up feeding the wolves.
After taking a steadying breath and against my better judgment, I followed Pete back into the depths. He missed the turn we were supposed to take, and we dead-ended into another Vassar Street building. “Only one branch left,” I said as we descended for the third time. I wanted to scream, but that would only tell the bad guys I was coming.
Once under building thirty-two, we had three choices. I picked the middle route, mainly because the main lobby had huge, wide-open staircases. Since the power was out, we couldn’t take the elevators. Thank heaven for small favors. During our final ascent, I felt something cold drip on my face. “Ugh. If this is alien ooze, I’m going to back off and nuke this place from orbit.”
Pete laughed. “Great movie reference.”
“I was quoting Zak.”
“And he was quoting Aliens,” Luca said.
“The pipes leak,” Pete explained. “It was a big lawsuit. They had all kinds of weird problems during construction.”
“Nobody pays attention when American Indians warn them that they’re building atop a hell mouth,” I said. Serious, doesn’t anyone else listen to the universe?
Once we had cell service, I received a text from Blaise. “30 minutes to Boston.”
When I spotted an unpowered pop machine in an alcove, I had an idea. “Dina needs a weapon. If I bash the coin box in with my bat, we can fill her cookie tin with coins. Enough of them will be silver for her to affect these monsters.”
Dina clutched her purse protectively. “I brought these for Zak.”
“Which would you rather give him, you or the cookies?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Vandalism is wrong.”
Pete ignored the debate and kept climbing.
Rolling her eyes, Luca said, “I’ll pick the lock and catch up to you with the coins.”
“Stealing is wrong, too.” Dina crossed her arms.
“Dying is worse,” Luca replied.
I pulled out my hundred-dollar quest blessing from Aunt Audra. “Tuck this in the coin box. It ought to cover the damage.”
“A man has to like your cooking if he’s going to… you know.”
Growling with frustration, Luca held up a sandwich baggie. “I bring this to school each day with carrot sticks. You can use it to pick out any of the cookies that aren’t dust already.”
“You use the same baggie every day?” asked Dina.
“Not everybody is rich like you people,” Luca replied. “Now do you want a weapon, or do you want to live like a woman in the 1950s?”
Dina reluctantly opened the cookie tin and rummaged through the remnants for the best gifts.
I hung back with Luca for a moment. Her skin had returned to its normal tone. “What was the white putty that made you turn pale?”
“You caught that, huh? The wax came from my baptism candle. It’s a quick trigger for my strongest spell. I didn’t have to worry about bleeding while it was in effect.”
That would be handy against guns, knives, or even baseball bats. What are the side effects? Wait. She referred to it in past tense. “You’ve used all your defenses already?”
“I’ll be fine. You go keep the others safe. I need to be alone and concentrate on the lock because it’s not something I’ve done often.”
****
Sweating and panting, our group made it to level five using the open stairs. Pete grabbed his left leg and crouched on the ground. “Ow! Cramp.”
“Wus,” said Dina. The rest of us had been training with killer sprints every day.
“Could I get a drink at the Gates R&D café?”
I peeked at the snack area that was sealed off with a plastic and aluminum curtain. It wasn’t super high-tech, so I looked for a way to grab him a bottle. No alarms, right? When Dina swept the area with her flashlight, it revealed an arc of moldering black fruit and wrapped sandwiches festering throughout the room, like a weird fairy ring. “Gross. You mean Gates of Hell.”
“Don’t eat or drink anything from there,” Luca warned.
“Watch it,” he said. “Bill Gates is my hero.”
I nudge
d Pete into a nearby Men’s room to hydrate from the faucet.
While he was gone, Luca said, “It’s the Corruption. It happens where reality leaks. We shouldn’t stay in the building longer than absolutely necessary due to the possible radiation.”
“Thank you for not speaking in French anymore,” Dina said. “It was rude.” She dialed someone on her cell phone. When they didn’t answer, she left a message, “Zak, call me. It’s an emergency.”
“Why are you helping that warlock?” Luca asked. Her anger resounded through the open atrium. “If you hadn’t told him we were coming, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
The screech of metal grinding shook the building, so loud that my vision blurred. Dust fell from the ceiling until the tone smoothed out and stabilized. My heart skipped a beat when the walls became transparent. Once the tone was wineglass pure again, silence fell. Reality reasserted itself.
Luca had the ax slung over her shoulder like a lumberjack. “We’ve only lasted this long because he wasn’t ready for the final experiment yet. Our arrival forced his hand. If we don’t stop this warlock before his next attempt, this whole building could disappear into another dimension.”
“Warlock? Zak?” said Pete, standing at the bathroom door. He shook his head. “He helps me with my Economics class and works out with me.”
“Well, Hitler helped clean up the immorality in Paris,” Luca said.
“You witches are all the same.” He knows! “Men burned you because they didn’t understand your religion, and then you do the same to any guy who challenges the matriarchy. And I liked you, Lucretia.”
I guess guys fall for girls who remind them of their mothers.
Shaking her forefinger, Dina said, “Bigot. Maybe Zak is being forced to do this against his will. We just passed the public lab. The sixth floor is private offices.”
“He was a research assistant to some big shot with a Homeland grant,” Pete said. “I’ve been worried that if Zak did come up with the next big encryption scheme, the government would disappear him like Diffie while his professor reaps the glory.”
I decided to risk telling him the rest. “In twenty-five minutes, a witch strike team is going to solve this problem or at least cover up the evidence. We need to save Zak before they arrive.”
“Magic isn’t the solution to everything,” he replied. “Council secrecy was what created this mess to begin with.”
“So how would your hero, Bill Gates, solve the problem?” Luca asked.
Pete put a hand on the back of his neck. “We can’t pull the fire alarm. Anybody leaving the building would become lunch for those monsters, and someone might accidentally let them inside. We’re only safe because the wolves don’t know they can break glass.”
Okay, he wasn’t a complete dumbass. “I think the shadow wolves are blind, but sound attracts them.”
He paced. “The next Bill tactic would be to shut off the sixth-floor power at one of the utility closets.”
“That’s actually pretty brilliant,” Luca said. “Much better than my frontal charge. Isa and Dina, you keep Zak distracted while we cut his supply lines.”
“How do suggest we do that?” I asked.
Luca grinned. “Some as any man. Get him talking about himself.”
“I think I remember the power closet over this way,” Pete said, wandering off.
****
My bestie chatted with me as we crept up the final staircase. The heavy box of coins rattled against her hip worse than the cookies had. “I know I’m only a Junior in high school, but Zak is planning to do his graduate work at MIT, too. I could join him in twenty-one months.”
I lowered my voice to cushion the blow. “You wouldn’t like all the geeks.”
“Are you saying I’m not good enough?”
“I’m saying that Harvard is in the same town, but it may be a better fit. I might know someone who could put in a word for you there.” It would make me ill to cozy up to Salma, the queen bee, but I’d do it for Dina.
“That’d be awfully expensive,” she replied.
“One thing at a time. First, we have to stop the apocalypse. Then you have your first date, and so on.”
She was beautiful when she smiled. “You think Zak goes for the meek invisible type?”
“I think he’ll go for you when you break in there and save him like Wonder Woman.”
She took off her hood and shook loose her waves. “I do have her hair.”
“Stay close and quiet.” I pushed open the door into the sixth-floor hallway. The gray carpeting and navy office chairs reminded me of Colony Prep. The only dash of color was the fire-extinguisher and hose cabinet at the top of the stairwell.
Ahead, bootleg wiring was strung through the hallway. It resembled a black-and-white spiderweb trying to snare a boa constrictor. The heavy whine of air-conditioning units masked our approach. Toward the core of the tower sat a huge datacenter with endless racks of computers. Through the open doors, heat poured into the hall from the open door. All these attempts must be overloading his network.
Holding my bat under my arm, I texted Luca. “Hall snake unprotected.” It would only take one chop of her ax to cut the head off this threat.
Still sitting in a roller chair, Zak poked his head out of the office on the corner. “Isa? Run!”
Something jerked him back into the executive suite.
Dropping my bat, I grabbed an electrical gang box that bridged two sets of important-looking wires. “Let him go, or I’ll ruin your experiment.”
A backlit man in a tan sweater leaned out to regard me. He aimed a pistol at me, and I jerked apart as many cables out as I could. Sweater man fired. The shot miraculously bounced off the metal junction box—and hit Dina who stood a couple feet behind me.
She cried out as she crumpled.
That’s not fair. My one shield charge injured my best friend. “Where are you hurt?” I asked.
Something red was oozing out of a hole in her purse. She clutched at it, smearing the fluid onto her black skirt. Dina winked at me but wailed as if it were her own blood. The box of coins had saved her!
I sniffed. Hand sanitizer mixed with ketchup? Our job was to keep the bad guys talking. “You monster!” I didn’t have to act to make my voice shake.
“Drag her in here,” shouted sweater man over the air conditioning. He had gray hair at his temples and sideburns. The rest was brown.
“I’ll need help. She’s heavier than I am,” I replied, stalling.
Dina glared at me for the weight comment, but when Sweater sent Zak out, she hammed it up. “Ohh!” She grabbed her leg so the guys wouldn’t see how healthy it was. Though, her hands looked pretty gruesome.
Since Zak was wearing latex surgical gloves, he was either concerned about leaving fingerprints or the safe handling of a Book.
“Bandages.” Dina gasped. “I could bleed out.”
Zak immediately whipped off his Polo shirt. “Use this.”
I stared for a moment. My brother’s abs were a six-pack.
Dina drooled. “Ripped.”
He blinked. “Sorry. You’ll need it in strips.” Then he tore his shirtsleeve off to make bandages.
I really needed to ask more questions about my family. While covering the fake leg wound, I delayed further. “Go get that roller chair. We need a way to transport—”
Brother Clueless picked Dina up in his bare arms. “I’ve got you.”
She practically swooned as she hugged him the way a koala holds a branch.
“Run,” he whispered to me out of the corner of his mouth.
The cocked gun said otherwise.
Ducking under the rat’s nest of wires, Zak took Dina back to Sweater’s office.
All I had to do was convince the mad scientist to brag about his plans for world domination while my friends cut his power.
18. Delay of Game
Zak set Dina gently on the closer of two office chairs. He whispered, “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. D
octor Waterford threatened to pull my clearance if I didn’t break off contact with an immigrant Muslim family.”
This workspace was decorated with machine-drawn versions of the same hundred-pointed star. Wiring diagrams had been added beneath, all with Waterford’s name on the bottom.
I got a good look at his crazy advisor. His thinning hair was slicked back. He was too lean for a normal adult, as if he’d been sick lately or came to the soup kitchen I worked at. My heart did a little dance when I saw the open tome on the desk blotter. If I could touch my Book, I could be almost invulnerable, except to flames. The prospect of magic made me a little too brave. “Are you insane? Shooting visitors will get you fired, Professor.”
“She’s a suspected terrorist trespassing on my Top-Secret project, and I’ll shoot her again if Zak doesn’t repair that damage you did.”
I nodded to Zak. “It’s okay. We’ll be safe.” Once my brother was in the hallway, I told Waterford, “That accent isn’t from around here. Jersey?”
“Newark,” he said, amused when I winced.
“Rough town.”
“I’ve fought hard to climb out of that pit, and I’m not going to fumble the ball on the one-yard line.”
Mixed sports metaphors made guys sound like morons. “What’s a touchdown in this example?”
“We’re on the threshold of a completely new science, but I suspect Zak has been holding back. With you two in my possession, he’ll be more likely to complete the final harmonic.”
I eased around behind Dina to sit on the edge of the Book. Why don’t I hear it speaking to me? “Do you have any idea what your experiment is doing to the floor below your lab and outside this building?”
“Irrelevant. We’re transmitting massive amounts of data in a fraction of the normal time.”
“I’ll bet there’s a little noise in the line. Dare I say corruption?”
“How did you know?”
“How could you not?” I replied, stringing him along. Putting my hand on the Book, I could sense the power pent up inside, but none of it was for me. It was like making a phone call and getting a busy signal. I snuck a peek at the ancient paper. Zak had scribbled notes in the margins in ballpoint! Someone is going to get a whooping.
