“I’m sure Alyssa will give you another chance,” whispered Shade. “You shouldn’t worry about it.”
At first, the random subject change confused Winston. Then he realized that Shade was trying to get them back on safe, comfortable ground.
“I wasn’t worrying about it. But now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll start worrying about that, too.”
“No, I’m saying you don’t need to worry. She’d been planning on asking you out for a while. I think she was just waiting until after the robotics competition.”
“Wait. What makes you think that?”
“June,” whispered Shade. “She told me Alyssa was going to ask you to the Sadie Hawkins dance last year, but she chickened out. June thinks you’re a total freak, and that’s always kept Alyssa from approaching you.”
“You know this how?”
“June’s little sister is friends with my little sister. All they do is sit around and gossip.”
Alyssa was going to ask you to the Sadie Hawkins dance last year.
Last year. Could this possibly be true?
“Why talk to me now?” Winston asked. “What changed?”
“I dunno. Maybe because of the fight with Steinhoff? Maybe she wanted to cheer you up. Or maybe you give off some kind of alien pheromone now that she can’t resist.”
Winston threw a half-hearted punch at where he thought Shade’s arm should be and only connected with empty air.
He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that the girl he’d wanted to date since grade school had been interested in him for almost a year, and he’d never known.
“That’s another thing,” said Shade. “Now that you know, what’s it feel like to be part alien?”
Winston thought about it for a moment. “About the same as yesterday. It’s like having a birthday: a little different on the outside, but nothing’s really changed on the inside.”
“Is there anybody else…like you?”
“My mom,” said Winston. “Although the QVs don’t seem to have done much to her. My father. This guy they used to work with named Bledsoe. I’m the only one born with QVs, though, which is why my mom thinks my symptoms or whatever may be stronger.”
Two ideas clicked together in Winston’s mind. The officer had said “soon as whoever called this shows up and figures out it was a wild goose chase.” Who had called it? The FBI was after him, not the Portland police. Could it be Bledsoe? Was his mom right and the old creep had found his way back into the government? Or was somebody else calling the shots for Project Majestic?
“I’m so jealous,” Shade muttered.
Winston wondered if he’d misheard his friend. “Jealous? Of what? I’m on the run from the government. Who knows where my mom is? And because I’m different, nobody wants to be my friend!” Winston realized his gaffe as soon as it was out of his mouth. The silence between them seemed to pulse with Shade’s hurt feelings. “I mean…except for you. Because you’re much smarter and handsomer than all the others.”
“Nice.” After a moment of silent thought between them, Shade added, “You know why I’m friends with you?”
That caught Winston by surprise. “Why?”
“Because you’re the only person in the world who knows everything about me. To you, I’m not the short, big kid. Or the football guy. Or the science guy. Or anything. I’m just Shade. You don’t care that I live in a tree house. You’re OK with me giving advice about girls even though I’m too chicken to ask for a date myself. And it’s cool that we can just sit sometimes. Neither of us has to act or talk a certain way. It’s just us being us.”
Winston thought of Shade more as a brother than a friend, although he never said so. Yet Winston realized that if he were captured or killed, he’d likely never see Shade again — or anyone else he cared about. There would never be time to say how he felt. Realizing that made his throat tighten with sudden fear and sadness.
“You know why I’m friends with you?” he whispered.
There was the tiniest hitch of breath from Shade. “No. Why?”
“Your pheromones. I can’t resist.”
Of course, Shade’s shoulder punch did connect. They both chuckled in the deep gloom.
“No,” said Winston. He had to do this right. “Because you’re my brother. Actually, you’re better than a brother. Normally, siblings want to kill each other. And I…I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
There was a moment of dead silence, then Shade surprised Winston with a powerful hug. He let out a little “oof!” as the air whooshed from his lungs.
“Thanks, Winston,” said Shade. “I’m gonna cry now.”
From anyone else, Winston would have assumed this was sarcasm.
“See?” added Shade. “Who else could I say that to? They’d think I was soft or femmy or something.”
“Well, you kinda are sometimes,” said Winston as he hugged his friend in return.
“I know,” said Shade. “Don’t make me kill you.”
Winston let go and stepped back. Shade released him and sniffled.
Not trusting himself to say anything else without shedding his own tears, Winston changed the subject back to their immediate problem. He set down his backpack and fished out the bottle-shaped artifact. An idea had been nagging him, and he wanted to try something.
“What are you doing?” Shade asked through the blackness.
“Remember how I used that thing to open the door upstairs?”
“Ugh,” said Shade. “Vlad.”
“I’m not calling it Vlad!” Winston slid his right hand inside the device’s bottom ring and gripped the crossbar, immediately feeling it warm against his palm. “I can sense it in my head when I hold it. There’s like this…energy connection.”
“Like lightning bolts and superhero stuff?”
“No. I mean…” Winston wasn’t sure how to describe the feeling, which was something between flexing a muscle and feeling the buzz of a nine-volt battery through wet fingertips. “In my mind, it’s just a little trace of energy, but I can push and pull it. Does that make any sense?”
“Nah. Doesn’t sound too impressive for something that’s supposed to shoot laser blasts.”
“Well, can you give me a minute to learn how to use it?” Winston sighed. “It’s not a laser gun. It’s about energy. It’s…” The name flowed into his mouth like the sensation he was attempting to describe. “Little e.”
“What?”
“Yes. In my brain, the energy is small, but through this…interface…I think it can be hugely magnified. So, I’ll call it Little e.”
“Why not Big E? Or Vlad?”
“I’m not trying to impress anyone. It’s Little e.”
“More like Little Creepy.”
“Anyway.” Winston felt for the support wall under the drop chute and ran his hand up the rough surface. At the top of his reach, he felt the slide’s smooth metal. “When I used this to open the staff room door upstairs, I could actually see the electrical circuits. Maybe I could see something here that would help us.”
Their only way out of here was through the old exit at the back of the stacks room, but that would necessitate triggering the alarm. Winston recalled the little wire at the corner of the inside double doors. There must be some way to disable the fire alarm.
“Yeah, but we’re stuck in here,” said Shade. “You can’t reach the alarm.”
“Not directly, but let’s try something.”
Winston held up Little e and mentally felt its tips flay out, almost like his own fingers spreading to support a large bowl. Only the metal rods weren’t trying to support anything physical. They were searching for a signal, and in a moment they found it. Winston knew all about networking. He knew that computers needed network adapters, and Wi-Fi required radio transceivers. There were system device layers and network protocols and dozens of other things. The aliens either had brains optimized for networking and electronics or had designed these QVs to make changes in their host’
s brain capable of better handling such things. In his case, the difference didn’t matter. Could his brain be Wi-Fi-compatible? With a twinge of disappointment, Winston realized that this would explain his telepathy with the Stadlerator 7000 and possibly his lifelong knack for sensing how to fix electronics. However, the ability also just might get them out of here.
Winston was quickly learning that the best thing to do with the device was to think about what he wanted to do and then apply a sort of mental shove. Like controlling a game console with physical gestures, the system in his head seemed set up to perform functions based on thought cues. This made perfect sense. Engineers had already created affordable headband-type devices that could detect brain wave activity and convert it into numeric data. One only had to write a program to do something with the detected activity.
With Winston, those programs seemed to be already planted in his brain — embedded firmware that he’d grown up with and never known he had. Understanding this made him feel a bit better. These things happening with him weren’t that alien. Now, he needed to figure out what programs were stashed in his skull and how these devices helped to execute them.
Up on the library’s third floor, Winston had sensed the building’s electrical systems by touching Little e’s rods to some sort of outlet, such as a sensor pad — only he hadn’t actually touched the electronics. The device’s rods had explored the pad, but they had never penetrated the plastic shell to touch wires or leads. The metal only moved into an optimal arrangement for the “best fit” with their target, almost like tuning into an analog radio station with a dial, listening for the clearest, strongest signal. If the connection could work across millimeters, maybe it could work across twenty or thirty meters.
Winston concentrated, trying to visualize the exit in his mind: double doors, old wooden frame, glass panes revealing the small, dingy chamber beyond, brass lock, wire in the top-right corner, fire alarm. He focused on that little bit of wire running over the frame molding and into the wall. He saw it clearly in his memory, and it began to glow blue. Winston tried to follow the glow into the wall, to make the wood and sheetrock turn translucent as it had before, but he couldn’t. He was already gripping the crossbar hard enough to make his fingers ache.
He felt a slight compulsion to move his arm upward. Some sort of attracting force guided Little e like a dowsing rod, and his body along with it. Winston quit resisting the pull and let his arm drift. Gently, the rods made contact with the metal book drop chute and slid along its surface with a soft rasping. Little e grasped the chute’s corner, and the wiring in the far wall sprang into focus as if someone had suddenly flicked on the lights.
Winston gasped.
“What?” Shade asked. “Did it shock you?”
“No. It’s using the chute as a giant antenna. I can see the security system.”
“Oh. Well…good! Can you do anything with it?”
“I can play Call of Duty.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Winston watched as more and more of the security network grew visible. Energy pulsed along the many lines weaving through the walls and floors like blood flowing through a network of veins and arteries. Resistors acted as congestion points, wires bent around wall studs, and fuses served as little drawbridges. More importantly, he could feel the circuit board at the far end of the electricity loop. Activity flooded across the board, registering in his mind as only a dizzying block of energy, glowing white. The more Winston concentrated on the block, the more his awareness narrowed onto it, making the lines of electricity magnify and separate. He knew that if the circuit board malfunctioned, it would trigger an alarm. In fact, the whole system was probably designed with fail-safes so that if any piece failed, the alarm would sound.
Understanding this, Winston knew what he had to do. He pulled his awareness back, zooming out from the circuit board, and examined the hundreds of connections running into it. Dozens of these were thin, slow capillaries. Those would be lines from the door and smoke sensors throughout the building. No, he needed…
There. One large line from the circuit board branched into four, and each of those branched into another four. Those would be the connections out to the alarm speakers placed around each of the library’s floors. He couldn’t disable the alarm system, at least not without wasting more time to figure it out, but he could render it mute and buy them another minute or two.
Winston zoomed in to the point where this speaker artery connected to the circuit board. When he could see it clearly, he thought about how to attack it. If this was a circulatory system, how could he give it a heart attack? His hand clenched tighter still around the alien device. The device’s tips gripped into the book drop chute, starting to crumple the thin metal. Small flecks of blue light, like radiant dust motes, ran across the chute’s surface.
The more he thought about that spot where the alarm speakers joined the circuit board, the more that area of the board glowed. He mentally pushed energy into the electrical conduits, gathering it into one area, forcing the pressure on the connections higher and higher.
The connection snapped. With an almost imperceptible burst, the artery ruptured, probably melting down, and the entire web of wires stretching out to the alarm klaxons went dark. The instant that happened, another area on the circuit board lit up. The alarm had activated, only no one could hear it.
“Got it!” he whispered. “OK, time to go. The alarm triggered, but I killed the speakers. In a minute, emergency services will be all over this place.” He zipped Little e back into his pack and crouched down on all fours beside the chute wall. “You first. Step off of my back.”
Shade set one foot between Winston’s shoulder blades, shifted about for balance, then whispered, “One…two…three.”
All of his weight pushed down on Winston. He had braced himself, but with a hundred and sixty pounds suddenly shoving his already bruised hands and knees into the cement, he couldn’t help but let out a strangled groan of pain. Then most of the weight lifted away as Shade found a handhold.
“Quietly,” Winston hissed.
“Trying…” Shade said.
Winston felt the tip of one shoe scrape across his neck. Shade groaned, using years of strength training to heave himself up and hook an arm over the chute’s edge. A moment later, after much slipping about but thankfully little banging of body against slide, Shade called down for Winston to take his hand.
Winston stood and winced as he tightened his pack straps on his shoulders. He blindly waved his arms about until his fingers smacked into Shade’s wrist. The two of them clasped hands, and Shade pulled Winston off the ground. Getting back up onto the chute proved much harder than dropping off of it, but finally Winston got a hand over the chute edge and crawled over Shade’s back. Both of them clung to the slide, panting and bruised, but able to see dim light and the canvas bin at the bottom of the chute.
“I’m lighter and won’t make as much noise,” breathed Winston. “Let me make sure the coast is clear.”
Using his palms and the rubber soles of his shoes against the chute’s side walls, Winston gradually slipped down the book slide. At the bottom, he turned sideways, forcing his legs to hold him in place while he slowly leaned out to peer into the stacks room. Fortunately, they were screened from the room’s main area by a line of bookshelves. Winston waited but saw no movement. Slowly, he lowered himself into the canvas bin. Hardbacks and audiobook cases shifted under him. Soon, he was out of the chute and standing on the cement floor.
Winston gently pulled the bin several feet away from the chute, allowing Shade to drop quietly from the slide onto the floor.
They tip-toed back along the side wall, turned right at the corner, and were soon back at the exit doors.
Winston pressed down on the handle lever and pushed, tensing for some alarm that he had missed to sound. None did. The door opened stiffly, and the first whiff of air from what had once been the vestibule to Library Hall smelled of dust and
age. When the hinges started to creak, Winston froze. The door wasn’t even open halfway, but it was enough. Winston slipped off his backpack to slim down his profile. Shade did the same and followed behind him, guiding the door back to a slow, quiet closing. Before turning away, Winston peered through the door’s window and saw an officer appear around a bookshelf and scan the spot where they’d just been standing. The officer’s glance passed over the door, then he walked on.
Winston jogged several steps to the room’s far door, withdrawing Little e from his pack before slipping the bag onto his shoulders again. He twisted back the door’s deadbolt, leaned hard against the pushbar, and almost fell out into the fresh air. Shade came up behind him. They stood in a concrete-lined hollow, a sort of pit in the library’s landscaping. Half a dozen stairs before them led up to a short gate, and beyond that waited Yamhill Street.
They crept up the stairs and peered over the top of the concrete. Shade started to stand, but Winston put his hand, still grasping the artifact, on Shade’s back, holding him in place.
“Dude, don’t touch me with Little Creepy,” said Shade.
“Wait,” Winston said, eyes following one navy-blue car as it idled at the red light on Eleventh Avenue.
Sure enough, red and blue lights buried behind the car’s front grill and near the top of its windshield began flashing. The cruiser ran the stop light, gave off a couple of alarm chirps, and suddenly turned left. The vehicle ground to a halt directly in front of them.
17
The Past Over Pizza
Winston and Shade crouched in the library’s stairwell, hands and knees powdered with dust and dirt. They gazed over the top of the concrete stairs at the unmarked cruiser idling just twenty feet away. Its lights still blazed, and the policeman behind the wheel didn’t move. Obviously, he’d been told to guard this side of the building and watch for them. If they stood up, they’d be spotted instantly.
Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine Page 18
