The Indigo Thief

by Budgett, Jay

  Phoenix scanned the badge again and held his eye to the scanner. “We’ve got them.”

  The woman placed her eye in the scanner after him. Five clicks sounded, and the door swung open.

  “We needed two different retina signatures,” he explained to me as the woman ran back to her colleagues.

  Behind the door, a towering warehouse five stories tall loomed. Rows of glass racks stood perfectly aligned, filled with cases of Indigo that sat undisturbed below dimmed lights. The room’s refrigeration sent a shiver down my spine as it leaked through the open door.

  The vaccines were kept at a constant temperature of fifty degrees to ensure their viability. There were no workers or drones roaming the warehouses’ hundreds of rows.

  We stepped inside, and the door clicked shut behind us.

  Mila shook her head. “This isn’t right.”

  A clock flashed 12:00. The room’s power had been recently reset. I wondered if the grand chandelier’s fall down on the seventh floor had caused it.

  “You got the stuff, Meels?” asked Phoenix. She shoved her hands into her pockets and nodded. “What about you, Kai?” he said. “Check your pockets.”

  I reached into my front and back pockets, and felt the lint balls I’d touched earlier. “Just these stupid things.” I moved to toss them.

  “WAIT!” He grabbed my wrist. “Didn’t you learn anything from the paper clips?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can’t trust anything around here.”

  Mila rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure you thought that before the paper clips.”

  Phoenix gripped my wrist tight in his hand. “Those are gum wrapper bombs. Altogether, they have a combined force of ten kilotons when detonated.”

  “Holy shit,” I said, remembering Bertha’s comment. The others nodded. “And you wonder why I can’t trust things around here…”

  Phoenix ignored my comment. “We’re going to line them along the warehouse’s left wall, spacing them equally to make the most of the blast.”

  “Won’t that knock out the Indigo?” I asked.

  Phoenix gestured toward my recently acquired gun. “Shoot the rack.”

  “Uh… what?”

  “Shoot the rack,” he said again.

  I fiddled with the gun the woman had slid me, pointed it at a rack of Indigo, and fired.

  Nothing. I tried to pull the trigger again.

  Nothing. The stupid gun was jammed. I shook it and tried to fire again. Mila rolled her eyes. Maybe I had the safety on. I slapped its sides with my fingers.

  Mila grabbed it. “Give it here before you shoot your brains out.”

  She fired at the nearest rack of Indigo. The space around the rack rippled, and the bullet dropped to the floor.

  “Force fields,” I muttered.

  Phoenix rubbed the stray hairs on his chin. “Something of the sort.”

  We lined the gum wrapper bombs along the wall, hid behind a rack farther back, and poked our heads out to watch.

  I stared at the line of gum wrappers that seemed incredibly unlikely to explode. “How do we set them off?”

  “It’s a somewhat scientific process, really,” said Phoenix, sucking in a breath. “Significant force must be applied to the wrapper at just the right angle to trigger an appropriate chemical reaction within its solution-soaked paper. The first bomb’s detonation will trigger a similar process in the others, instigating a chain reaction, and, subsequently, a series of detonations.”

  Phoenix was really well read.

  Mila shrugged. “I’m gonna shoot one until it blows.”

  Phoenix nodded. “That works too.”

  Mila fired at the first bundle of gum wrappers along the wall. An explosion of fire erupted. I jammed my fingers into my ears as I fell to the floor, knocked back by the chain of explosions that followed. Smoke and debris slammed against the rack’s side, but the force fields appeared, absorbing the blows and protecting both the Indigo and us. The wall the gum wrappers had been lined against wasn’t nearly as lucky: it was blown to smithereens.

  My ears rang as the smoke cleared. One side of the warehouse was now exposed to open air, and the cooling system’s engines hummed furiously as they fought to keep the warehouse chilled.

  Mila pointed to helicopters hovering overhead. Shit, she mouthed. Feds.

  Phoenix shook his head and grinned. Not Feds, he mouthed.

  Music blared and trumpets thundered as the ringing in my ears gave way to the blistering beat of mariachi music.

  Big Bertha was here.

  Phoenix stared at the other copters. “Caravites,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Vern kept his end of the deal.”

  I pretended not to catch the last part. Bertha’s helicopter door swung open, and Dove poked his head out, aiming a gun in our direction. I leapt out of the way as he fired. His projectiles hit the ground just below the first rack of shelves. Thin, clear nets with metal prongs rushed across the tiled floor. Phoenix and Mila each grabbed an end and secured them to the racks’ sides. As soon as the prongs were secured, they sprouted small metal legs and crawled along the racks, wrapping them in the clear net like industrial-strength saran wrap.

  There was a flash of light around the racks, and then Dove held three fingers to the side of his left eye. Phoenix did the same, and the helicopter pulled away. Dove—or more likely Sparky, remotely—must have deactivated the force fields. The Lost Boys salute was merely the signal to go. The racks of Indigo flew from the building in chunks, the Indigo cargo secured by the clear, crawling net.

  The other helicopters repeated the process. Nets were fired, prongs were attached to the racks by Phoenix and Mila, and then a signal was exchanged and the racks were carried away. I watched from the corner as a third of the racks disappeared through the hole we’d blown. It seemed too easy. Where were the Feds? Hadn’t they felt the chandelier fall? Or the gum wrapper explosions? Hadn’t Howey called them?

  As Phoenix and Mila clipped the last copter’s net to a shelf, a plane dropped from the clouds and knocked the copter toward the ground, pulling the shelf of Indigo with it. Vaccine cases smashed into the ground, and I wondered how many kids would have to go for weeks without their Indigo as civilian screams echoed from below.

  Phoenix turned to Mila. “That went better than I expected.” She nodded.

  I felt sick to my stomach. The thought of crumpled bodies burning in the wreckage of the fallen helicopter made me want to puke. I ran to the warehouse’s edge and hurled through the wall’s opening.

  “I’m sorry!” I yelled below, hoping my voice would carry down with the wind, but realizing that from ninety-nine stories high it was probably futile.

  “No need to apologize,” called a deep voice from within the warehouse. The chancellor stood at its entrance, flanked by two dozen Federal guards. His lips twisted into a sick smile. “After all,” he continued, “we’re the ones who are late.”

  Chapter 34

  “Hide!” shouted Mila as more guards poured in.

  “Find the Lost Boys!” ordered the chancellor. The Feds formed two lines along the front perimeter as I stood there, dumbstruck. I pulled up my cheeseburger socks: it was time to be brave.

  Mila hit me hard in the side, knocking me to the ground. “I’m starting to think you’ve got a real death wish.”

  “If only I had a magic lamp.”

  What good would it do to try and escape? I was dead either way. The Lost Boys wanted to kill me. The chancellor wanted to kill me. With the exception of Kindred, lately everyone seemed like they wanted to kill me. (Kindred probably just wanted to bake me muffins.) There’d be no escape. In all honesty, my odds were probably best with the megalodons. When it came to killing, at least they were indiscriminate.

  Mila dragged me behind a case of smashed Indigo and pointed to the ledge where the copters had once loomed. “We’ve gotta jump, Kai, and soon.” She stared at my socks. “You better pull those socks up so damn high you get a wedgie.”

&
nbsp; “It doesn’t work that way,” I said.

  She yanked them to my thighs. “Today, my friend, it’s going to have to. We’re jumping out and diving down.”

  Blue fluid trickled along the floor. Indigo, gallons of wasted Indigo. Vaccines that wouldn’t find their way into the veins of kids who were dying. Outside, the rain poured. The world was crying for the vaccines that were broken and the lives that would now be lost.

  The Feds fired a round of projectiles I recognized as Dummy Darts. They hadn’t come here to kill us—if they had, they would’ve brought bullets rather than Dummy Darts. No, they wanted to capture us. Probably put us on trial. I thought about Charlie and her shaved head. Her bright blue eyes, hollowed, and her chopsticks long gone. I thought about jumping from the building. I thought about saving Mom from the Caravites and Charlie from the Feds. If I died, they were both doomed. I shook my head. “I—I dunno if that’s such a great idea…”

  On the horizon, a fleet of copters formed lines in the sky. The Feds fired another round. Mila narrowed her eyes. “You’d prefer to stay here?” A Dart clattered to the floor next to us, its pseudo-poison oozing from its syringe in thick droplets. I shook my head. “Then it’s down we go,” she said.

  “You don’t have a—er—jetpack? In your pants? Or pockets or something?”

  “No.” She winked. “Just a death wish.”

  “I guess that’s almost as good.”

  Across the warehouse, Phoenix held his fingers up and counted down from five.

  “Hold fire, men,” called the chancellor. His voice had a certain silky smoothness to it—characteristic of a used car salesman. He stepped toward the smashed Indigo case Mila and I hid behind. “I think I need a moment with my friends.” His leather shoes clacked against the tiled floor as vaccines cracked beneath his toes.

  Phoenix held up a one, then gave us the Lost Boys’ salute—the signal. We ran. I stumbled over Mila’s shoe, knocking the grappling gun she’d used earlier from her belt and to the ground. My legs burned beneath me as it clattered to the floor. We couldn’t turn back. Not now. We had to move. We had to run. The chancellor’s leather shoes clacked louder behind us.

  Phoenix bent his knees and threw himself over the edge, snapping his eyes shut as his face fell forward. Mila nodded slightly: we were to do the same. There was no time to be afraid. No time to listen to the screaming in my chest. I had my cheeseburger socks on, after all. I had the power to be brave. I bent my knees and pushed off the building’s ledge as the chancellor yelled behind us.

  For a split second, Mila and I were suspended in midair—flying. Just floating as the island of Oahu lay sprawled beneath us, its hospitals and clinics mere specks of sand. My stomach dropped in my chest. I was falling now, and, like Phoenix, I snapped my eyes shut.

  Then something clamped around my wrist. I watched as Mila continued falling, and a copter dropped from the clouds. Though its music had stopped, I recognized it as Bertha’s, on its way to save Phoenix and Mila.

  My shoulder was nearly yanked from its socket. The clamp around my wrist held me in the air as Mila fell below. I hung there, flat against the side of the Ministry’s marbled tower. The chancellor’s face grinned at me from far above; he held the grappling hook gun I’d knocked from Mila’s belt.

  I tried to slide the grapple from my wrist, but the chancellor merely laughed. “Pity about the Indigo, Bradbury,” he shouted over the thunder and rain. “And about your friend.” His lips twisted into a sick smile.

  “She’ll be fine,” I yelled, glancing at Mila as the clouds engulfed her. I wondered why I bothered saying anything to the chancellor. Maybe it was his twisted smile, and the swagger in his shoulders when he walked—his smugness evident even in his step. Dad would’ve called him a “real politician.”

  “I’m not talking about Vachowski,” yelled the chancellor. “I’m talking about Charlie.”

  So—he knew the truth about Charlie. And still he was parading her around as Mila. He knew the jury would execute an innocent girl, and he was willing to let it happen, just to prove a point. He was sick. I slammed my wrist against the tower. The cord attached to the grappling hook gun jerked in his hand.

  He smiled again, his lips twisting into a grin like the Cheshire cat’s. “We could help each other, you know.”

  “I sincerely doubt you’d help anyone in the world other than yourself.”

  He grabbed the cord and pulled it up toward the ledge, hand over hand. “I could grant you a pardon.”

  “Cut me down!” I yelled. “Or Dummy Dart me to hell. Really, whatever you have to do, just don’t pull me any closer. Your breath probably stinks like… fish tacos.”

  Admittedly, not my best insult, but I hoped the confidence I feigned in my voice and the insults I hurled would be enough to provoke him. Get him angry enough to just cut the cord.

  The insults rolled off his shoulders “The girl, too,” he said. “She doesn’t have to die.”

  I felt my pulse rise and the blood boil in my chest. “It’s your fault! You’re the one who wants her to die—you even know the truth!”

  “Come, now, Bradbury,” he said, shaking his head. “I think we both know it’s Mila Vachowski I want dead. I couldn’t care less about your friend Charlie. But, unfortunately, the public wants her head served up on a silver platter. And as chancellor, I’m forced to make that happen. Now, if I could serve the real Mila Vachowski’s head instead… well, that’d certainly make things easier for everyone. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I tightened my jaw, and told myself to think of Charlie. Of all the people she’d helped. The young girl on the Tube she’d probably saved. The way she snorted when she laughed, and the way the chopsticks in her hair made people stop and think. “You want Mila?” I said finally. “That’s all you’re after?”

  He grinned again, and the hairs stood on the back of my neck. “I want all of them, Kai. Every single Lost Boy. Phoenix. Mila. Dove. Bertha. All of them. All the enemies of the state. All the terrorists. The ones trying to bring the Federation down.”

  I felt a small amount of peace knowing he hadn’t learned about Sparky or Kindred. Both worked behind the scenes and didn’t go into the field. They were safe regardless of what happened today.

  I closed my eyes, felt my wrist burn from the grappling hook’s pressure, and took a deep breath. “You’d let Charlie go, then? And clear my name? Absolve me of the charges against me?”

  The chancellor nodded.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because,” he said slowly, “I’m tired of innocent people, soldiers, civilians getting killed trying to find five teenaged felons. I know you haven’t been doing this long, Bradbury. Otherwise we’d have had you on the record sooner. The Pacific Northwestern Tube was your first attack. Now, I don’t really believe you’re a bad man… just confused. And I’m willing to give you a second chance. Please, Bradbury, let me give you another chance.”

  “How could I get them to you?”

  The chancellor grinned. “I’m guessing the Lost Boys have a radio?”

  I nodded.

  “I trust that if you can hack into the Ministry of Health, you can hack into the Light House’s radio signal.”

  He had a point. I had no doubt Sparky could. I stared into the chancellor’s blue eyes—he’d been pulling me higher as we talked. His face was only five feet from mine now as he leaned out the hole in the warehouse’s wall.

  “And why should I trust you?”

  He laughed. “I could ask you the same thing about the Lost Boys: how can you trust them?” He pulled me all the way up now, and held his face inches from mine. “Come now, Bradbury. I’ve done my research. And though you haven’t been with the Lost Boys long, I’d have expected you to do the same. I know who you care about; I know the people you’re looking for. I’ve got Charlie, Bradbury—but who’s got your mother?”

  My throat tightened, and my heart burned in my chest. “Keep your eyes open, Bradbury. I’ll be expectin
g your call.”

  And with that, he cut the rope.

  The ground hurtled quickly toward me. What did the chancellor know about my mother? Why hadn’t he told me more? When would everything finally make sense? I was falling now, like the drops of rain around me. My clothes became damp as I raced through a cloud. In seconds, I’d splatter like an egg on the ground.

  A metal prong flew past, and a thin cord spread out across my body like saran wrap—the same type of net used by the Caravite copters to grab the Indigo. A helicopter roared as it turned in the air. Suddenly my stomach settled in my chest—I was no longer falling. I hung from the side of Bertha’s copter like a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon.

  Federal copters dropped down from above, hovering over Bertha’s blades. They had no guns, no bullets, not even any darts. But still, they hung above us. They weren’t trying to kill us. They were just trying to push us down.

  Bertha dropped her copter even lower in the sky. I couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the ground. The Feds continued to hover overhead.

  Below me, I saw two groups of men fighting against one another. The Feds, in their black and green uniforms, and the Caravites, dressed like ragtag gypsies in all sorts of attire. One group of Caravites stood farther from the rest, away from the outskirts of battle on the ground. The men in that group were tall, like the Federal guards, but lacked the standard black and green uniforms, their casual clothes instead confirming they were, indeed, Caravites. The Federal copters, looming over Bertha’s blades, were slowly forcing her in the direction of this lone group. I wondered why they didn’t just crash down on us now. I guessed they wanted us alive—wanted to learn more about the virus Phoenix and his team had created.

  In the center of the isolated group of Caravites, I saw a single woman. The men hustled her from side to side. Her hair was in matted patches. She smiled and cried at the same time as her lips perpetually babbled and her tongue pushed in and out of her teeth. Her bright blue eyes wandered aimlessly. She was a woman clearly on the brink of psychosis.