William Wenton and the Lost City

by Bobbie Peers

  “Then the Orbulator Agent suddenly appeared,” she continued, sneering. “Goffman knew I would do everything in my power to get the orbulator and to destroy it.”

  “Were you inside the hand when he touched it the first time?” William asked quietly.

  “Of course,” Cornelia said. “After the incident at the Crypto Portal, it was the only way I could get away. I defragmented myself and stored myself in the hand. I knew it would only be a question of time before someone put it on. And then I would be free again, like a genie in a bottle.”

  Cornelia grinned nastily. “But it was a big surprise that Goffman was the one who put it on. He just wanted to try it on, poor man. What a huge mistake!”

  “Where is Goffman now?” William could hardly bear to listen to the answer.

  “He’s gone for good,” Cornelia responded.

  “But . . . ,” William began.

  “Enough chitchat,” Cornelia said, and turned toward the submarine. William looked up.

  “Where is she?” Cornelia’s hoarse voice shook.

  “Here!” Iscia popped up from the hatch again.

  “Give me the orbulator,” Cornelia demanded. Without looking at William, she pointed her mechanical hand right at him. “Or I’ll pulverize him.”

  William could see that Iscia was planning something. She was staring down into the dark water. William followed her gaze but saw only darkness.

  “Give it to me!” Cornelia’s piercing voice reverberated through the massive space like an echo.

  Now William spotted something down in the water, a small fleck of light. The fleck was coming closer, growing and becoming larger.

  “Catch.” Iscia tossed what she was holding in her hands down to Cornelia.

  Cornelia ran toward the submarine with both hands outstretched. She stopped right at the water’s edge and actually managed to catch what Iscia had thrown.

  Cornelia was holding the old radio in her hands, the same radio that William had used to summon Emma.

  “A radio?” Cornelia asked, looking to Iscia. “Why did you give me a radio?”

  Her face contorted with rage. She aimed her mechanical hand at Iscia and, with a loud zap, fired off a beam. Iscia ducked, and the beam flew past the submarine and exploded against the ceiling.

  “I’m going to—” Cornelia began to shriek, but she didn’t have a chance to finish before a colossal tentacle shot up out of the water and grabbed her. It lifted her high into the air. Cornelia screamed and dropped the radio. A tremendous cloud of sparks shot into the air as the radio hit the water.

  The tentacle vanished into the depths, taking Cornelia with it. She screamed as her body hit the electrified water. She twitched and cramped violently before going limp. The tentacle let go and slid silently into the water.

  William and Iscia stood there in shock and looked at the lifeless body.

  William’s legs were trembling, and Iscia was already climbing down the ladder on the outside of the submarine.

  Once she was down, she turned to William.

  “You think he—or she—is dead?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” William said solemnly.

  He knew that it was actually Cornelia Strangler who lay in front of them. She had taken over Goffman’s body, and they had paid the ultimate price. Now they were both gone.

  40

  William and Iscia were standing outside Big Ben. The door behind them in the clock tower wall shrank and disappeared.

  The pyramid was hidden inside William’s sweater. The place was crawling with cars and busy people. None of them seemed to notice William or Iscia.

  He looked up at the clock face at the top of the tower.

  “It’s running again.” He smiled.

  Iscia didn’t seem to care about the clock right now. She was staring at something in front of them.

  “Who’s that over there?” She pointed into the crowd.

  William spotted a man in a baseball cap and a puffy blue jacket. The cap cast a shadow over his face, but he seemed to be staring in their direction. It was impossible to tell who he was.

  “Come on.” William pulled Iscia along behind him. “Someone has noticed us.”

  They climbed over the fence and fought their way through the throng of people. William turned to see if the man was following them but couldn’t see him. William hoped he was just a completely normal tourist who’d happened to notice two kids inside the security fence.

  At any rate, they needed to find a safe place where they could plan how to get back to the Institute with the orbulator.

  They kept fighting their way through the crowd, and a few minutes later they were standing beside a large statue of Winston Churchill. There were fewer people here, and they were able to heave a sigh of relief. Sweat was pouring down William’s face. It was hard work clearing a path like that while also safeguarding a heavy metal pyramid.

  “He’s still after us.” Iscia nodded back in the direction they’d come from.

  The man was coming straight at them, and there was no longer any doubt that they were being pursued.

  “Who could it be?” Iscia asked.

  “Dunno. Maybe a totally normal tourist? But we can’t take any chances now since we have the antiluridium with us.”

  They ran across the street.

  “There!” Iscia pointed to a line of trees at the end of the street.

  They were running as fast as they could now.

  William glanced back as he ran. The man was still after them and moving fast.

  William and Iscia continued right out into the roadway, and a car honked and had to swerve to avoid hitting them. They jumped over a low wrought-iron fence into a green park and ran down one of the paved footpaths. They were heading for a large lake where two white swans were dozing.

  “In there!” Iscia declared.

  Soon they were surrounded by tall trees and dense shrubbery. The vegetation filtered away the noise of the city. All they could hear now was a distant hum.

  “Up here.” William gabbed a branch on a big tree and started climbing.

  The bark had been worn away by the thousands of hands of the children who’d climbed and played here before them. But William and Iscia weren’t here to play. They were here to hide. They climbed higher, in among the branches.

  Soon they were sitting in the middle of all the foliage, trying to hide behind the branches, for the second time in a short while.

  William startled when he heard a sound behind him. A little squirrel hopped along the branch they were sitting on and then jumped over to a nearby branch. It settled down there and started gnawing on a large nut while watching them curiously.

  “Do you think he’ll find us?” Iscia whispered.

  William looked down at the ground. He had a hunch that whoever was following them wouldn’t give up that easily.

  The dense bushes rustled, and the man came into view. He continued toward their tree and stopped right below it. It was as if he knew they were there.

  William held his breath. He thought about all they’d been through in the last few days. He couldn’t let anyone take the pyramid away from him now, not after everything he’d done to get it.

  William looked over at the squirrel, which seemed to have lost its appetite. The squirrel appeared to look back at William, as if checking his reaction, before it dropped the nut it was holding right over the man below.

  Now it was as if William experienced everything in slow motion. The nut fell slowly toward the man. For a moment, William thought the nut was going to miss him, but no. It grazed one of the branches, changed course, and hit the man’s cap.

  The man tilted his head back and looked up. Soon he would discover them. Suddenly it was as if William was operating on autopilot. He pulled the pyramid out of his sweater and gave it to Iscia. Then he jumped off the branch he was sitting on, aiming for the man below.

  The man tried to move out of the way, but it was too late.

  William hit him ful
l force, and they both fell to the ground.

  William stayed on him. He had to hold the man down so Iscia could get away with the orbulator.

  “Run, Iscia,” he yelled. “Run!”

  He heard Iscia climbing down out of the tree. And he heard her land beside him.

  “William” he suddenly heard from underneath him. “Get off of me!” William looked down. Why did the man talk like a robot?

  William sat up. “You know who I am?”

  “Of course,” the man replied. “Maybe you could let me stand up?”

  William removed the man’s cap and gasped when he saw who was hidden beneath it.

  A robot lay there looking up at him with glowing eyes. William recognized it right away. It was the robot Goffman had taken from Benjamin, the crypto-bot he was going to use to solve the pyramid, the one Benjamin had loaded William’s grandfather into.

  William didn’t budge. He wasn’t planning on letting the robot go yet.

  “Why are you following us?” he asked.

  “It’s me,” the crypto-bot said. “Grandpa.”

  41

  William was seated between his grandfather—his robot grandfather—and Iscia on the top deck of a red, double-decker London bus. It felt strange to sit on a bus like this after what had happened in the underground reservoir. On some level, William thought he could still feel the heat from that smoldering bus wreckage.

  He was having a hard time taking his eyes off his grandfather.

  “Someone will pick up Goffman’s body and clean up the place,” Grandfather said. “He deserves a proper funeral.”

  William nodded. They sat in silence for a little while longer.

  “It’s a little strange that you can walk around without anyone reacting,” Iscia finally said.

  “This is London,” William’s robot grandfather said. “It takes more than this to make people react.”

  William glanced down at the pyramid, which was once again safely tucked inside his sweater. “We have to get this back to the Institute as quickly as we can,” he said.

  Grandpa seemed like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to express it.

  “I have some bad news.” He watched William’s face.

  “What?”

  “About the Institute.”

  “Yes?” William waited anxiously for him to continue.

  “We can’t go back there,” Grandpa said. “The place is in ruins. The Institute was destroyed in the battle between the new and old robots. And Goffman—I mean Cornelia—made sure to raze what was left before she set off in pursuit of you two.”

  They were silent for a moment. William stared blankly into space. He couldn’t believe it. Was the Institute really gone?

  “We’ve decided to team up with the Center for Misinformation. Benjamin has taken over as director and decided to move everything to a secret location,” Grandpa continued. “Go underground.”

  “But then what will we do?” William looked down at his sweater. “The orbulator needs to be somewhere safe.”

  “I know,” Grandpa said, pushing the stop button. “That’s precisely why we’re here.”

  A moment later they were standing on the sidewalk watching the bus drive away.

  “Come on.” Grandpa started walking.

  “Where are we going?” William asked.

  “To a secure location. You’ve been there before.”

  “I have?” William looked at Iscia, who merely shrugged.

  Grandpa turned off the busy main street down a narrow side street. There wasn’t a soul in there, and it smelled of rotten food. The street was full of trash cans and rubbish that people had discarded.

  Grandpa looked around before ducking behind a big green shipping container. William and Iscia followed. Grandpa stopped in front of a round manhole cover.

  “Keep a lookout.” He squatted down. “Tell me if anyone’s coming.”

  He pulled an old key out of his jacket pocket, ran his metallic fingers over the pattern on the manhole cover, and stopped by something that at first glance looked like a crack.

  Grandpa inserted the key into the crack and turned it. A faint click came from inside the manhole cover. Grandpa stood up and took a couple of steps back.

  With a jerk, the manhole cover disappeared, pulled down into the darkness with a screechy scraping sound. The scraping faded away and was replaced by a distant hum.

  The hum grew louder, and a shiny metal tube rose out of the hole. Grandpa stepped up to the tube and entered a code into a control panel. A door opened with a metallic swish.

  “Come on.” Grandpa stepped into the tube.

  “After you.” William nodded to Iscia.

  She disappeared into the tube. Once William had also squeezed in, the door slid shut, and they whizzed downward at tremendous speed.

  William felt the tube turning back and forth and up and down. It was like riding a roller coaster, only much faster.

  They jerked to a stop. The door slid open, and bright light flooded in.

  Grandpa got out with William and Iscia right behind him.

  William looked around. They were in a large room. The tube they had just stepped out of was sticking up out of the floor behind them.

  “Welcome,” said a merry woman’s voice.

  A large, plump woman was approaching them on a sort of golf cart mounted atop a hovering air cushion. She was wearing dark sunglasses. Two wires ran from either side of her glasses and into her head. William recognized her immediately. His grandfather was right. He had been here before.

  The woman driving toward them was Professor Wellcrow. She was the head of the Center for Misinformation. This was where William, Goffman, and Benjamin had hidden when they went down into the secret tunnels deep beneath Victoria Station to look for Grandpa. It felt like such an incredibly long time ago now. So much had happened since then.

  The hovercraft stopped right in front of them. Professor Wellcrow was grinning broadly.

  “Do you have it?” she asked. “The orbulator?”

  William looked at his grandfather, who nodded to him.

  “I have it here.” William pointed to his sweater.

  “Perfect.” Wellcrow clapped her hands together in satisfaction. “Put it in there.” She pointed to something that looked like a safe that came wheeling over to William.

  The safe stopped right in front of him, and a hatch opened on its top.

  “It’ll be safe in there,” the professor said.

  William pulled the orbulator out from under his sweater and looked at it. It felt strange to hand it over after all he’d been through.

  “You’ll get it back soon enough,” Grandpa said. “After all, you’re the only one who can use it.”

  William walked over to the safe and carefully placed the orbulator down in it. The lid closed, and the safe drove off.

  Suddenly William felt a tremendous sense of relief at being rid of the orbulator. It was as if he had gotten rid of all the other things that had happened as well.

  “We’ll take good care of it.” Professor Wellcrow smiled. “If there’s anything we’re good at here at the Center for Misinformation, it’s keeping things secret.”

  William nodded and looked over at Iscia. She smiled at him. Her eyes beamed in triumph.

  “William,” a familiar voice suddenly said.

  Benjamin came striding toward him on those long legs of his. And before William could say anything at all, Benjamin had caught him up in a gigantic bear hug.

  “I was actually a little afraid I wouldn’t get to see you two again,” he said, setting William back down. He proceeded over to Iscia and gave her a hug too.

  Once the hugging was done, Benjamin gave them a serious look.

  “You heard what happened to the Institute, then?” he asked.

  “I told them,” Grandpa said.

  “And you know that we’ve gone underground and that the Institute for Post-Human Research is going to join forces with the Center for
Misinformation?”

  William and Iscia nodded.

  “It’s going to be great,” Benjamin said, and looked over at Professor Wellcrow, who smiled and clapped her hands together, and the sound reverberated through the room.

  42

  William closed the door to his room and walked over to his newly installed desk.

  They had returned home from London the day before, and the work of setting up the furniture that was being delivered in flat boxes was still underway.

  “Dinner!” his mother called from the kitchen downstairs.

  “Coming!” William replied, and sat down on his new chair. He just had to take one last peek at what was in the drawer.

  The new desk wasn’t as big as the old one, but it had several drawers. And William liked that. He looked into one of them.

  It was still there, the box that Benjamin had given him right before they left the Center for Misinformation. It was brushed metal and the size of a shoe box. There were nine glowing buttons on the lid with numbers on them.

  William lifted the box out of the drawer and set it on the desk in front of him. He entered the combination, and the lid flipped open with a brief blip.

  William took out what was inside and sat gazing at what he now held in his hands.

  An orb.

  His own orb.

  The orb he’d received the first time he went to the Institute for Post-Human Research.

  William ran his fingers over all the symbols on its surface.

  “The food’s getting cold,” his mother called from the kitchen.

  William put the orb back in the box and flipped the lid shut again. It felt comforting to know that it was in his desk drawer in his room.

  William went downstairs and stopped when he saw his father sprawled on the floor in the middle of the living room. He was scratching his head while moving around the parts that would eventually become a bookshelf.

  “Are you still at it?” a robot voice asked from somewhere else in the room.

  Robot Grandpa entered the room. His big robot body clanked against the wood floor. He was wearing mechanics’ coveralls and holding a toolbox in one hand. He stopped beside William’s father and set the toolbox down.