Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1)

by S. James Nelson

  Her confession surprised me. I started to respond, but a blaring alarm filled the room, and I nearly pooped my pants.

  Chapter 17: A not-so-simple choice

  I didn’t normally press the boundaries of my SOaP privileges. But the prospect of being alone with Richie has always pushed me to do stupid things.

  -Marti Walker

  It wasn’t like any other alarm I’d ever heard. Not a blaring horn or bell that repeats over and over. Not a smoke detector at home, with alien beeping that seems unnecessarily loud until you stop to think that someday that alarm might have to wake you up.

  No, this alarm was not like any of those.

  It was a woman’s calm voice, coming from the speakers in the ceiling.

  “Your attention, please, the Reservoir is in danger. Complete world annihilation may be imminent. Please remain calm.”

  I jumped up and stepped to the window. Outside, people began to run in every direction. Others pounded away on their keyboards. They shouted and gestured at each other, faces intense. The six screens on the wall switched to camera views of a dark mountain area with forest and lake. The water glowed a soft yellow, as if lights shone deep below the surface.

  In one of the monitors, a bright shape formed in the darkness—someone smearing red brink in the air, almost in the shape of a box, but somewhat distorted.

  A collective cry of despair rose from the workers in the room, and almost everyone turned to the monitors. In the same display, more distorted squares of brink appeared along the water’s edge.

  The alarm continued to blare. “... complete world annihilation may be imminent... .”

  “Uh,” I said, “what does she mean by ‘complete world annihilation?’”

  Marti stood next to me, a ghost of her face reflected in the glass. She looked pensive. “We have to get your emotion back.”

  “And,” I said, “what does she mean by ‘imminent’? Imminent as in ‘next year,’ or imminent as in ‘about twenty seconds?’”

  “This is going to be a good chance,” Marti said.

  She had her purse over a shoulder, and shoved her phone into it. She stepped around me and pulled the door open. The murmuring of the crowd and the alarm grew louder. She grabbed my arm and yanked me after her, so we stood at the side of a row of computers. She started to drag me toward the back of the room.

  “Come on!”

  I stopped, and my arm slipped out of her grasp. “Wait!”

  She stopped, turned, and leaned in close. “Now is our chance.” She nodded at the monitor. “Nick will be there at the Reservoir, leading the other Sunbeams. We have a chance to get that emotion of yours back. And to get the Tangle Rope from Savage—that’s my current assignment. Do you want to take advantage of that chance?”

  I didn’t know what to think. “We’re doing this in secret?”

  She shrugged. “Yes, and no. I am a SOaP agent. I have some leeway. But our window of opportunity will disappear quickly. We need to go now if we’re going to do it.”

  My heartbeat hastened. My head did some fancy math very quickly, and figured out that I was in danger.

  Until that point, I hadn’t felt much peril. Not through the whole night. Not when I met Nick. Not when he cast a spell—well, maybe for a moment then, but not that much. I hadn’t felt in danger when I’d met Marti, even despite the bodily harm she rendered. I hadn’t even felt my life was threatened in the helicopter or here in SOaP.

  But I could die that night if I went with Marti.

  “Exactly how dangerous is it?”

  “We could get killed.” She said it like she talked about getting in a car accident—sure it could happen, but the odds were slim.

  Nevertheless, it felt real in a way that couldn’t feel real for a lot of people. Ever since I’d laid in my hospital bed, looking up at the ceiling, listening to the beep of equipment, a monkey’s-butt-hair’s width away from death, I’d realized that I would die some day, and the things I did could bring that death closer or take it further away.

  But at the same time, I’d vowed to never just sit and let life pass me by. I would take opportunities and live—do things that added flavor and wonder and joy to life. I would take risks in the face of mortality. Because, you know, cancer could kill me in two days.

  Deep thoughts for a ten-year-old. But cancer does that to you.

  So, I couldn’t stay back because of some low odds of death. It would be like refusing to get in a car because you could get in an accident.

  “Are we telling Agent Maynerd about this?” I said.

  She gave another uncertain shrug. “Technically I should, but there’s not time.”

  “We’re breaking rules?”

  “Well, kind of. Maybe. Sort of.” Another shrug. “Yes, we are—but not really.”

  I shifted my feet and bit my lip, looked at Marti for a second.

  Who knew how decisions like this got made, or what factors made the biggest difference? It all happened so fast. A million thoughts went through my head, computing and crunching numbers I couldn’t even understand, and in the end my brain spit out a decision.

  I nodded. “Shouldn’t we at least tell someone that we’re going?”

  “Are you kidding? We’re going to get back the emotion and the Tangle Rope, and people will love us for it. They’ll think we’re amazing.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

  Little did I know that I’d agreed on something that would shortly lead to some very intense pain—even before we got out of SOaP.

  Chapter 18: It hurts more than expected

  When it’s time to act, the time for talking is done. I mean, unless you feel like talking.

  -Marti Walker

  “What’s going on?” I said. “What’s the emergency?”

  “The Reservoir is under attack,” Marti said.

  She ran down a plain hallway and I followed. We’d left the command room only a few seconds before. Numbered doorways lined the hall. Our footfalls echoed around us. The hallway smelled fruity. Or maybe that was still Marti.

  “What’s the Reservoir?”

  “A massive store of brink.”

  We stopped at a door. She opened it, grabbed my hand, and yanked me inside.

  Right into a girl’s bedroom.

  She went straight to the dresser on one side of the room as I rubbed my shoulder. I hadn’t exactly expected to find a canopied bed with a pink bedspread in a government facility. Not to mention the huge beanbag sack in front of a flat panel TV and Xbox, a bookshelf with all of the classic Harry Potter and Twilight novels on them, and a cute little desk with a purple laptop sitting on top.

  Pictures covered every inch of the wall—some of them framed. Most of those featured Marti with her parents. In several of them she stood next to a horse—which made sense. Before turning to country music, she rode in rodeos.

  Aside from the framed pictures, other images covered the wall—most pictures of boys, all of them quite handsome. Musicians. Artists. Actors. They looked like they’d been cut out of magazines.

  Some of them—in fact, most of them—were of me.

  In some, my hair had colorful spikes—like Nick’s. In others I had a black ponytail, or a Mohawk of spikes. The styles went on and on. A shaved stripe down the middle with everything else sticking up. Bed head. Deluxe bed head. Tahitian monsoon. European bed head. If you could name it—or even if you couldn’t—I’d probably done it with my hair.

  For one photo shoot, I’d actually shaved my head. But it reminded me too much of how the chemo had made me feel so weary and beaten, so close to death. Afterward, I’d vowed to never shave my head, again.

  “What is this place?” I said.

  “It’s a replica of my room back at home,” she said. She stood in front of the dresser, a vial of purple brink in her hand.

  “Really?” A grin slid across my face. “You have pictures of me up in your room?”

  Marti’s eyes shot to the pictures and widened. She
turned fully to me, put her hands on her hips, and raised her eyebrows.

  “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to meet you?”

  “Uh... “

  “Since the first time I saw your video on YouTube. I think I was viewer nine hundred seventy-six thousand and twenty-two. Then I probably watched it again another ninety times.”

  Mom, Kurt, and Sandra had harassed me about me having adoring fans. Whenever I posed for pictures, Mom and Sandra teased me that girls would hang them in their lockers and bedrooms. That hadn’t really meant much to me. But now it did.

  Marti Walker thought I was hot.

  She turned around, grabbed her purse off the desk, and pulled her phone out.

  “I’ve got everything of yours on my phone. All your music, album art, lyrics. All of it.”

  She took a step toward me, as if in a challenge. I took one back.

  “I don’t even like rock music,” she said. “But I’ve bought every single one of your albums, and I like your music, even if it is rock. I camped outside for a week to get tickets to your concert. I’ve bought lunch boxes with your face on it. Posters. Shirts. Pens. Notebooks.”

  “Uh... thanks? That is—thanks.”

  “That’s just the start. I’ve also bought—”

  “I think I get it.”

  “Do you get it?” She raised her eyebrows. “Do you really?”

  My jaw moved, but no sound came out.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said.

  After looking at me for another moment, she turned back to the desk, then whirled back around, placing her hands on her hips.

  “Tell me, Richie. What do you think of my music?”

  “I’ve bought all of your music,” I said. “Every last bit of it. And I hate country.”

  “You hate my music?” She seemed ready to punch me in the face.

  “No, no. I like yours.” I really did—it wasn’t just the clear and present danger of bodily harm that made me say it. “I’ve bought all your music and listened to it tons.”

  “What about your friends?”

  I started. Did she know Kurt and Sandra? Or know about them? Maybe she was just asking generally.

  “Uh, Sandra likes your music. Kurt—” I stopped short. He always said Marti was just a pretty girl without any talent. In fact, he mocked her music incessantly, and the closer we got to the award show in two days, the worse it got. I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell her that, though. “Kurt likes your music, too. So does my mom. She says it’s a lot of fun.”

  Apparently satisfied, she turned back around. “We need to hurry.”

  After pouring brink into her hand, she drew an oval like the one she’d drawn back in my dressing room, with a squiggly line down the center. The brink sparkled and tinkled. It smelled like cinnamon rolls. From her purse, she withdrew the Hello Kitty lighter.

  “Why,” I said, “do you have a replica of your room in a SOaP office? Seems a little strange—only a little, mind you.”

  “To create an illusion,” she said. She lifted the lighter, but didn’t ignite it. “I’m going to talk with someone at Intersoc. I need them to think I’m at my house. As far as anyone at Intersoc is concerned, I am not a SOaP agent. Understand?”

  “So, is Intersoc bad?”

  She made an indecisive face. “No, not really. But most of the people there think that SOaP knows nothing about them. They like to think they operate outside the law.”

  She flicked the lighter and a flame leaped up. She moved it to the very bottom of the oval of brink. With a burst of heat and noise, the fire spread around the blue oval and up the squiggly line. The smell of cinnamon rolls turned burnt.

  A sheet of humming white light appeared in the oval, covering the burning squiggly line. A woman’s face replaced the white light.

  She had a thick neck and dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. A pulsing line of red extended down her cheek, under her chin, and back up around her other cheek. Others lines zagged on her temples, neck, and cheeks, and ran down her nose. They undulated as she smiled and talked with Marti, exchanging greetings.

  Marti seemed to change. She suddenly seemed nice. Almost friendly. Weird.

  The woman, named Beulah, nodded at me. “Is that Richie Van Bender?”

  Marti nodded. I smiled and waved, trying to act nonchalant. Really, I felt clueless, and wished things would slow down long enough for me to get some freaking answers. Marti had given me some, but not nearly enough.

  Beulah frowned. “I didn’t think he did brink.”

  “He learned about it tonight,” Marti said. “I figured it was time to initiate him.”

  Beulah shrugged. “Whatever. The Council will need to give him clearance.”

  “That’s fine. Is it clear? Can we zip in?”

  Beulah leaned to one side, looking at something we couldn’t see. The image followed her face. “Yeah, it’s good. I’ll make sure no one else zips in until you get here.”

  She waved at Marti, and the imaged faded. The flames sputtered and died, and the resulting black ash floated down to the dresser and floor.

  I grunted. “Did you just use brink to make a video call? They have that on phones now, you know.”

  That seemed to remind her of something and as she put her Hello Kitty lighter back in her green purse, she withdrew her phone and started to type on it. I thought of the month I’d had my iPad. I’d been impressed with how often Marti updated her status or checked in.

  “You’re so smart,” she added. “But cell phones don’t always work where we’re going.”

  Her tone made me feel pretty dumb. To ease the sting, I looked back at the pictures of me on the wall. That made me feel all right, again.

  Marti Walker had pictures of me up in her room. Nice.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “To Intersoc.”

  “Yes, but where is that?”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “In the Caribbean.”

  “The Caribbean?” It seemed unlikely that we could get to the Caribbean any time soon. About as likely as my dad getting across the country in just a few hours.

  “There’s a small, remote island owned by Intersoc. Everyone is on Intersoc’s payroll, so no one asks questions about what goes on there.”

  “So, when do I get to do some magic? I mean, from what I gather, we’re going into a dangerous place. Don’t I need some way to protect myself?”

  She began to draw a straight vertical line, starting higher than her head, and extending down to the floor.

  “I can’t teach you, yet,” she said.

  Her hand reached the floor and moved horizontally to one side, about three feet, then back up, vertically as she drew a teleportation door like Nick had used earlier.

  “We’ll get you a diffuser, though,” she said. “That’ll help protect you.”

  “Sounds lovely. What will it do for me?”

  “The diffuser will disrupt any magic anyone tries to cast within a dozen feet of you.”

  She finished the door’s rectangle. At its top left corner, she drew a line out from the shape, toward us. It stuck out like a spike, not quite at a right angle to the plane of the door. She closed her hand, moved it to the top right corner, then drew a similar spike. It angled down just a little.

  She stood back and scraped the last of her brink back into the bottle. She put the vial into her pocket, and got out her Hello Kitty lighter.

  “The diffuser,” she said, “originally comes from a diffusion blanket spell, which prevents anyone under it from using brink. Pretty handy if you can pull it off and stay over the blanket.”

  I eyed the teleportation door she’d drawn. “Can I light that?” I figured it didn’t hurt to ask.

  She looked back at me and raised her eyebrows.

  “Later?” I said.

  She grunted, struck the lighter, and touched the flame to the top left spike. Moving fast around the shape, she ignited the end of each of the other spikes. In a moment, the e
ntire doorframe burned. A sheet of white light appeared in the doorway, humming.

  She grabbed my hand, looked at me with a solemn expression, and said, “Here we go. Get ready for a little pain.”

  I started to object, but she pulled me forward into the doorframe, and agony assailed me.

  Chapter 19: EPIC guard

  It’s fun to help someone zip for the first time. Their reactions are always priceless.

  -Marti Walker

  Most people don’t know what it’s like to teleport. They might think it’s cool. They might even think they’d like to try it someday. Just to say they’ve teleported. Like they’re a super ninja, or something.

  Well, to those people, let me say that teleporting is not in the least bit fun. It’s nowhere near as good as a roller coaster. It’s not even remotely close to being as fun as getting punched in the nose. For the boys, it might be about as fun as getting kicked in the crotch. Maybe even less fun.

  As soon as you step into the door, it feels like the magic disassembles you cell by cell, pokes a needle into each cell, then slams you back together as hard as possible.

  And the next thing you know, you’re standing in a different place—this time in a small, empty room, inside a blue circle painted on a white floor—and the pain is gone. It lasts about half a second, if that. But it sure leaves an impression.

  Marti pulled me away from where we teleported to, out of the blue painted circle, toward a glass door.

  “You don’t want to stand there,” she said. “Someone might zip into you, and that would kill you in a very messy way.”

  I glared at her. My body tingled from the injury she’d done it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was going to be so agonizing?”

  “I told you,” she said, almost looking injured. She flashed me a wicked smile. “Quit whining.”

  She pushed the door open, and I followed her out. In the next room, Beulah sat on a tall stool, surrounded by a circle of more than a dozen fluted pillars, each about waist high. On each pillar sat a bronze bowl not much larger than cupped hands, with a small fire burning in it, each a different hue. Red, white, green, blue, orange, yellow, and many others.