Winston lowered the phone and covered it with his left hand. “Is there another way out of here?” he asked Melanie, who now seemed genuinely alarmed.
She pointed toward the back of the chamber. “There’s a little stairway that leads up to a steel hatch cut into the sidewalk on Couch Street.”
“Is it locked?” he asked, then shook his head. Of course it was locked. “Do you have a key?”
“No, sorry.”
Winston returned the phone to his ear as he started walking toward the back exit. “You only want the Alpha Machine piece? Nothing else?”
“Oh, I want lots of things,” said Bledsoe with the same lazy sing-song as if he were trimming his nails. “You should see my Amazon Wish List.”
“Would you let me go?”
“Hm? Go? Well…no. I guess I did sort of forget that part.”
“What about my friend?”
“Well, I guess that gets trickier. How much have you told him?”
“Almost nothing,” Winston lied. “He’s ADHD. He couldn’t pay attention to one of my stories if I covered it in chocolate and taped it to his face.”
“What?” objected Shade. “I’m the one with ADHD?”
Bledsoe gave a single, low chuckle. “Ah, boys being boys. I suppose you come by your sense of humor naturally.”
Winston found this a little disconcerting. His mom was a lot of things, but funny and sarcastic weren’t on the list. He must mean Claude. Either way, the reference was probably meant to get under his skin and distract him.
They reached the back of the cellar, where a doorway-sized gap in the brickwork revealed several feet of empty space and the beginning of a new wooden stairway. Shade and Melanie shone their flashlights up into the stairwell’s shadows, revealing two steel plates, hinged at the sides and locked where they met in the middle.
“What is going on here?” asked Melanie. “I’ve got a twelve-year-old waiting for me at home. What is the Alpha Machine?”
“If I told you, they’d have to kill you,” said Winston flatly.
Melanie laughed reflexively, but when she saw Winston’s face, her laugh withered almost instantly. “What have you got me into? Who is out there?”
“Bad guys,” said Shade.
“I’m not a bad guy,” said Bledsoe, emphasizing and elongating the two words. “I’m actually the good guy.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard,” replied Winston. “You and your laboratory-spawned army of world-conquering superfreaks.”
“‘Superfreaks’ is a pejorative term, young man. We prefer ‘peculiarly enhanced.’”
Winston heard footsteps thud on the other side of the steel plates and someone call, “Here! Right here!”
Whatever forces Bledsoe had on the street above them were obviously getting into position. That explained why he was wasting their time.
“I need another exit!” Winston hissed at Melanie as he covered the phone again.
She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Sorry! I can’t just make one!”
No, she couldn’t. But he could.
Winston remembered the photo of Claude and the construction crew up in Old Town Pizza. They had filled in all of the exits over forty years ago, but why would his dad have been on such a job? Why would he have sent them down here, knowing that it was an impossible quest because he himself had filled in the passages?
Because they weren’t all filled in, Winston realized. Claude had made sure of that. All Winston had to do was find the passage that had been left for them.
Except they were out of time.
Winston heard a male voice from the street above them say, “Ready?” Someone else answered in the affirmative. Winston heard the jangling of keys.
“You’re not going to win,” Winston said. “Bet on it.”
“Young man,” growled Bledsoe, “I already have. If you surrender now, I win. If you keep running, I win. The only difference is how much pain I’m going to cause for the people you care about.”
Winston almost felt his knees give out under him. “What?” was all he could manage to say.
“We don’t have your mom yet, but we will. And meanwhile, your ancient cribbage buddy, dear old pops, just can’t wait to start sharing everything in his head with me…whether he wants to or not.”
“Wait.” Winston tried to understand what this man meant. “Don’t do that.”
“Buzz, buzz,” said Bledsoe cryptically. “Another day in the name of science.”
A key inserted into the lock above them. Almost without thinking, Winston leapt forward as the key turned and the lock disengaged. He gripped Little e tighter and thrust its tips against the underside of the steel plates. Blue sparks sprayed from where they contacted the steel, and Winston heard a man right above him cry out in sudden pain.
“What?” someone called. “What’s wrong?”
Winston heard another couple of footsteps pound overhead, and just as there was the briefest rattle of keys in the lock, another man gasped and shouted, cursing loudly. “It shocked me! They’ve got it electrified somehow!”
That would slow them down, but only for a minute.
Winston returned to the main room and found Shade and Melanie staring wide-eyed at him. Shade had found a loose brick and held it ready in his hand.
Winston needed everything to freeze for just sixty seconds so he could think through what was happening, but there was no chance for pause.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
“Oh, thank God,” said Melanie, making an obvious effort to smile. Shade cocked his head at Winston and mouthed the word, “What?!”
Winston closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath as he disconnected Bledsoe’s call and dropped his pack onto the cement floor. After slipping the phone back into his pocket, Winston’s hand fumbled with the zipper and drew out the thin ring of the Alpha Machine artifact.
How was he supposed to use this? In the motel, he’d gripped the ring firmly, but now, as he brought it close to Little e, he felt the two objects drawing together with some sort of magnetic force. Winston held the ring above Little e, but the edge of the time viewer closest to Little e’s rods quivered slightly as it tried to tug downward. The rod tips separated and widened, unfurling like an opening flower.
Winston followed the device’s lead. He guided the time viewer within Little e’s rods. When it was a few inches within the bowl formed by the rods, that magnetic force surged, and the time viewer snapped into place. Winston let go, and the ring hovered. Fleeting arcs of blue-white electricity danced between Little e and the time viewer, flashing a deeper hue where they contacted metal. Faint crackles sounded as the arcs winked in and out of existence. The ring started to rotate within Little e and picked up a slight wobble.
Winston instantly realized the significance of the ring’s bulge. It wasn’t a place to insert energy marbles. When active like this, it resembled an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus.
“I admit,” exhaled Shade. “That is cool.”
Winston struggled to relax his mind. In the space of a few rapid heartbeats, he saw the world about him pale, but the effect wasn’t as pronounced as before. In one layer of reality, he saw the chairs in the main chamber sitting in their ring while, in the second layer, they suddenly shifted to the room’s far wall. The brick pile never budged.
Of course, Winston thought. It’s been there a long time. The past and present look the same. I need to go back further.
When he tightened his grip on Little e and tried to force his view deeper into history, the second layer faded and began to dissolve into the first.
Don’t push it, he told himself. Relax. Float.
After a moment, the layers separated again, and Winston could tell from the flickering of light in the past layer that his view had resumed its backward slide. Every so often, a person or two would wink in and out of existence. Boxes appeared and vanished along the wall.
Suddenly, the old layer revealed several men
surrounded by construction tools, and Winston’s breath caught. He involuntarily squeezed Little e. The men vanished into shadows, then rematerialized.
“You see something?” Shade whispered.
Winston nodded. Clad in heavy boots and overalls, the men had their backs turned to him. Electrical cords snaked across the basement, a few of which fed into dangling work lamps slung from the ceiling rafters. A wheelbarrow filled with gray sludge — concrete, he realized — stood beside them. The group worked in the small room beyond the wall’s break. Winston couldn’t see what they were doing, but all seemed focused on some task before them.
He wondered if one of these men was his father.
Winston recalled Melanie’s photo showing that the Shanghai Tunnels had used two levels, the bottom one used for flood drainage.
That was the access point. It had to be.
“Go!” yelled someone from above them, and suddenly the back exit’s stairway flooded with daylight. Reality’s second layer disappeared from around Winston as he instinctively grabbed for the Alpha Machine piece and shoved it into his backpack, like a little kid trying to hide his stash when caught stealing candy.
Something small and dark green thumped down the wooden stairs as Winston pulled his bag’s zipper closed. For an instant, he thought it was a can of energy drink.
An energy drink sounds good right now, mused some strange, distant part of his brain.
Winston’s eyes followed the canister as it rolled onto the floor, even as most of his mind still mulled over that group of men working over something in the next room.
The access hatch above the back exit slammed shut.
“Stun grenade!” cried Shade.
Then it exploded.
19
Cuffed in a Cruiser
Even through the thick flooring, the blast caused several Old Town Pizza patrons to shriek in alarm. The thump of the concussion rattled the whole building. From his position on the street, Bledsoe heard a couple of bottles or glasses fall from shelves and crash to the floor. People peered around the building corner nervously, trying to figure out if something in the kitchen had exploded or maybe a terrorist bomb had gone off. Onlookers seemed both reassured and frightened by the sight of officers in black body armor rushing through the open street hatch into the space below.
Lynch and a pair of uniformed police officers pulled a short, blonde woman from the service passage and into the middle of the sidewalk. She blinked incessantly. Her cap sat askew on her head, almost covering one eye, and she seemed unable to balance without the help of an officer supporting her under each arm. Her hands were bound behind her with yellow plastic zip ties. Three police cruisers blocked the street around the metal hatchway. They placed her in the back seat of the closest one. Bledsoe could hear her complain that this was all a mistake, that she’d never seen these kids before half an hour ago. No one listened to her.
The Tagaloa boy came next. He emerged, again supported between two black-suited officers, wide-eyed in his sweats like a puffy, orange owl and stumbling as he tried to navigate the narrow steps. His hands were also bound behind his back. An officer carried what was presumably the boy’s backpack in one hand. They brought him to the second patrol car, forced his head down, and pushed him into the back seat.
“Put the backpack in the front,” said Bledsoe, approaching the officers as he flashed his recently issued FBI badge. They complied.
Finally, two more officers brought up Winston Chase, and Bledsoe couldn’t have been more elated. The kid was just as scrawny and gawky as his pictures indicated. Cellar dirt dusted his clothes, and a scrape across one cheek bled slightly. Bledsoe observed with fascination that the cut glowed with a faint but quite familiar blue.
Oh, this was going to be the high point of his decade. Simply performing pain and healing tests could keep him occupied for weeks. Of course, he had more pressing business. Testing could wait. Or perhaps it could be delegated.
A smile tugged at the corner of Bledsoe’s lips. No, definitely not delegated.
He stood in front of the handcuffed boy, and the two met eye to eye. Unlike his two companions, Winston didn’t seem to be suffering the continued disorientation of the stun grenade. Could the QVs really aid him that quickly? Or had he been behind a wall or something that shielded him from most of the blast?
Winston merely squinted at him and said, “What do you want?”
Bledsoe shook his head, not trying much to suppress his elation. “To put things right, boy. That’s all.”
The kid seethed with anger, and that suited Bledsoe just fine. Let the sins of the father be visited upon the son.
“You’re going to regret this,” Winston said. “I promise.”
“I regret a lot of things,” Bledsoe replied. “But this—” He waved around to indicate the entire scene around them. “—will not be one of them. And even if I did…” He leaned in close to Winston’s ear and whispered, “It’s never too late for second chances.”
Winston’s gaze burned into him, and again Bledsoe heard the loud ring of tinnitus in his ear. Each of them tensed and cringed slightly at the same time, and both registered the other’s reaction.
Winston appeared surprised. Bledsoe only smiled and said, “You see? We both have tons to talk about! This is going to be fun.” He glanced at the officer holding what must have been Winston’s backpack. It was large but stuffed to the gills. “Put him in with his friend, but leave me that,” he ordered. The officer handed the heavy bag to Bledsoe and shoved Winston in alongside Shade.
Bledsoe took the liberty of slamming the cruiser’s back door in Winston’s face.
Hefting the backpack, Bledsoe set the bag on the trunk. He unzipped the main pouch and set about rummaging inside.
“I haven’t had time to get to a laundromat yet,” called Winston as he stared at Bledsoe through the back window. “Just warning you — watch the underwear.”
Bledsoe ignored him and continued shoving around the contents of the bag. Then he saw the ring, silver and gleaming between a T-shirt and a bundle of socks. He held up the Alpha Machine piece in his fingertips, studying it in the bright sunlight. Yes, he dimly remembered this from the set of artifacts they had tested back in Area X. He recalled the faint ripples in the texture that had, under microscopic investigation, revealed themselves to be intricate folds, akin to Damascus steel or the human brain. Bledsoe was sure this was the real thing.
For the first time, he was on the path to recovering the machine and achieving his true goals. He gazed through the ring, saw Winston still glaring at him, and winked.
“Outstanding,” he said as he slipped the circle over his forearm, where it dangled like an oversized bracelet. “What other goodies have you got?”
“Let me go and I’ll show you,” said Winston.
“No doubt. However — Aw, look.”
Bledsoe held up a small photo album covered in blue fabric. He set it on top of the backpack and flipped through enough to see there were only two photos. Bledsoe studied the images, recognizing the Alpha Machine component in the first photo, the map of Portland, the waterfront. The significance of the second photo showing a work crew about a dirt pile eluded him, but it didn’t matter. They were on track now. He knew everything the Chase boy did, and he would continue following Claude’s whimsical clues while the kid got in the habit of being a rat in a cage somewhere in the middle of a Rota island mountainside.
He dropped the scrapbook into the backpack and threw the bag into the cruiser’s passenger seat alongside the Tagaloa boy’s. They could inventory everything later. Right now, they needed to get this scene buttoned up, convince the few dozen gawkers spread across the adjacent block to go away, and start scouring that cellar.
Bledsoe tapped on the glass next to Winston’s head.
“Comfy?” Bledsoe asked.
“Bite me,” said Winston.
Bledsoe smirked. He almost wanted to like this brat. “I’ll see what I can do. You relax, all right
? I’m putting together a little family reunion for tonight, and I’m sure you won’t want to miss it.”
That shut the kid up.
Bledsoe found Lynch standing guard over the sidewalk hatch, arms crossed and sunglasses on, the perfect image of a faceless Bureau tough guy. This man had really missed his calling as a Hollywood action hero. Most FBI work involved sitting in meetings and writing reports. It must drive him crazy.
Good thing I’m not true FBI, thought Bledsoe. Just stopping in to say hello and put some taxpayer dollars to work.
“Sir,” said Lynch in greeting as Bledsoe approached.
“Lynch, I want you to go down there and sweep that cellar, but make it quick. We want as little attention as possible. Search for signs of digging. Or anything else suspicious.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man went cautiously down the steps into the darkness.
A black car suddenly pulled up amidst the police vehicles, near where the two boys sat. Bledsoe noticed a large, green paint smear across the driver’s side door handle. The car jerked to a stop, and an FBI agent practically jumped out. What was his name? Jones? Brown? Something forgettable.
Smith. That was it. The young man looked like he’d been involved in a paint factory explosion.
Before Bledsoe could say anything, the agent had already spotted Bledsoe and was making a beeline for him.
“Sir!” he called. “I have a question for you!”
***
“This is the most terrible thing ever,” said Shade.
“It’s not that bad,” said Winston.
Only it was. Winston had never imagined that he would be captured as a fugitive by the FBI, wanted as a nuclear terrorist, watching the alien artifact that his father — his father! — had left for him forty years ago walk away on an evil maniac’s arm while he sat handcuffed in the back of a police car that smelled unmistakably of urine.
He wondered what Alyssa would say if she could see him here, cuffed and crammed into the back seat of a police cruiser with so little foot room that his knees nearly touched his chin. She would be horrified, no doubt. It was one thing to go a little Goth and wear a snarky T-shirt or two. But only a certain kind of girl would like a captured alien nuclear terrorist. Winston felt pretty sure that his mother would not approve of such girls.
Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine Page 21
