I raised my eyebrows at her, and she recognized my sarcasm. Much to my surprise, she didn’t go ballistic. Instead, she walked around the table toward me, her face soft and understanding.
“Fine. Don’t worry about it. You’ve done all you could do.”
I grunted. We stood facing each other, with the glass wall to my right.
“I guess,” I said, “we did a pretty great job tonight. You know, at ruining everything.”
She gave me a crooked smile. “I hope that makes you feel better—you had an accomplice in your stupidity.”
I laughed. “Actually it does make me feel better. It means you have just as much going against you as I do, when it comes to that Best Young Entertainer of the Year award.”
We laughed again, and for an instant I felt like she wasn’t critical of me, or angry at me. During the few hours we’d spent together, I’d gotten to know her pretty well. I could see us being more than friends.
Embarrassed at the thought, and thinking of Sandra, I looked out into the command room. Lines of desks and computers dominated my vision. People sat at most of them, but the chair closest to me sat empty. The monitor displayed Google Maps.
Google Maps.
That reminded me.
I’d seen a Google Maps page back at Nick’s.
Chapter 49: The value of an online thesaurus
I always hate it when people have a sudden revelation. It usually means they’ve made something up because they want to be useful.
-Linford B. Maynerd
Back in the cabin, when Nick had turned his monitor to show me Marti in the security camera video feed, a web browser had filled the screen. He’d hurried to close a Google Maps page.
“What?” Marti said. “What is it?”
“I did see something.”
She grabbed my arms and pulled me close. “What? Where?”
“Back at Nick’s cabin. On his computer monitor, he had a map up. It was a place.”
She shook me and her voice rose in pitch. Apparently her abusive tendencies return when she gets excited. “What place?”
I wrested my arms free and stepped back. “I can’t think with you scrambling my brains like that.”
Agent Maynerd poked his head back in the door. “What’s going on in here?”
“I remembered something,” I said.
My parents pushed the door ajar and came in. Agent Maynerd stayed in the doorway, standing against the open door. He folded his arms and gave me a skeptical look.
“What did you remember?” Mom said.
“It was a map on Nick’s computer screen.”
“You expect us to believe this?” Agent Maynerd said. He raised his eyebrows. “Every time we talk with you, you’ve got something new. I don’t think I can trust anything you say.”
“Well great,” I said. “Mission accomplished!”
Dad gave Agent Maynerd a dark look, and spoke to me. “Why didn’t you think of the map before?”
“I only saw it for a moment.”
Agent Maynerd shook his head. “Okay, let’s have it. Tell us what you’ve suddenly remembered.”
I paused, unsure. “This would be easier if you weren’t looking at me like I had fire for hair.”
“Your time is expiring, Richie. Out with it.”
I struggled to recall exactly what I’d seen. “I can’t remember, exactly. It was a map of a place I’d never heard of.”
“What place?” Marti said. “The suspense is killing me!”
“Some ground, or something like that. It sounded like a testing ground. I’d never heard of it before.”
“Convenient,” Agent Maynerd said. “Where will you lead us astray, this time?”
I wanted to argue with him, but I’d deceived him too many times to defend myself with him.
But I didn’t need to.
Dad turned to him. “Agent Maynerd, I’d like it if you’d just shut that big ugly pie hole for a minute.”
Agent Maynerd stiffened. “You’re out of line. I’m your commanding agent.”
“And he’s my son. And he’s not in league with Nick Savage. Nick tricked him. He’s had secrets kept from him for too long.”
I tried hard not to let a grin spread across my face. Not something smug. Not something petulant or superior. But proud. Proud to have Dad for my dad. Proud that he loved me enough to trust me even when I didn’t deserve his trust.
“Now,” Dad said, “shut your yapping mouth before I plug it up with my fist.”
Agent Maynerd’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “Very well, let’s hear what he comes up with.”
Dad raised a fist threateningly.
“What do you remember?” Mom said to me. “Anything more?”
“No.” I looked between the four of them. My eyes strayed back to the map on the monitor outside the room. I tried to envision Nick’s screen. “It sounded military. Testing grounds, but it wasn’t ‘testing.’ And there was another word.”
“It was three words?” Marti said.
“Yes.” Why did I feel like I was playing charades? Why couldn’t I remember it? Why not?
Well, it was easy to know why I couldn’t remember it—I’d seen it for only an instant during a mildly stressful encounter, and a lot of crazy stuff had happened since. “Amway Testing Ground? Not it. What’s another word for testing?”
At that question, I got nothing but blank stares. You’d think I was a car driving at night, and they were a bunch of deer on the road.
I headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Agent Maynerd said, trying to grab me.
I slipped his grasp, darted around the glass door, and down several rows of desks and chairs, to the computer with the map up. They followed me as I sat in the chair next to another agent chattering away on a headset. He didn’t even look at me. I began to pull up a dictionary and thesaurus webpage.
“You’re not authorized to use that PC,” Agent Maynerd said.
Dad raised his fist again, smacking it into his open palm. “Shut. The. Pie hole.”
“I won’t forget this,” Agent Maynerd said to Dad.
I typed the word “testing” in the dictionary and hit the thesaurus button. As I began to scan the entries, Marti looked over my shoulder and read them aloud.
“Analyze, assay, assess, check, confirm, demonstrate, experiment, experimentalize.”
“Do any of these sound right?” Mom said.
I shook my head. Marti kept reading.
“Give a tryout, inquire, investigate, look into, make a trial run, match up, prove, prove out—”
I jumped up and pointed at the screen. “That’s it! Prove. Proving. ‘Proving Ground’ was the name of the place.”
Satisfaction filled me, but it practically disappeared as Agent Maynerd made a noise of annoyed disbelief.
“Ah, perfect,” he said. “Which proving ground? Aberdeen, Yuma, Dugway.”
I turned to him, my heart pounding. “That’s it. Dugway Proving Ground.”
“Oh, perfect,” Agent Maynerd said. “What a waste of time.”
“Why?” Mom asked.
Agent Maynerd shook his head and turned his lips up in disgust. “Dugway Proving Ground was used in World War II and in the Cold War to test out chemical weapons. They have no large-scale explosives there. Especially not nukes.”
“You’re sure?” Dad said.
“I’m certain. That’s not where Nick is going.”
“Are you sending any agents there?” Mom asked.
“I can’t send agents to useless places. We know he wants to detonate a nuke. There are no nukes at Dugway. I’m not sending anyone to Dugway.”
We stared at him in silence. I couldn’t argue. All I’d seen was a web page. Maybe Nick had been doing a little web browsing after attacking the Reservoir and before going to bed. Surely, SOaP had more intelligence on Nick’s plans than my gut feelings.
Nevertheless, my gut said Nick planned to do something at Dugway. I could
feel it, as if somehow Nick had communicated it into the very marrow of my bones. Or maybe my bones had just figured it out on their own. Had he said it at some point, and I just couldn’t remember? Whatever the case, I needed to get to Dugway Proving Grounds. Wherever it was.
“What if I go?” Dad said.
“Absolutely not,” Agent Maynerd said.
Anytime an adult says something as silly as ‘absolutely not’, that’s a clear signal to argue. They want it, or they wouldn’t have said something so ridiculous. It’s like throwing down a gauntlet.
“Then I’ll go,” I said
At the exact same time, Marti said, “I can go look.”
“No!” all three adults said at once.
“What harm can it do?” Marti said. “How can it possibly get any worse than it already is?”
“While that’s true,” Agent Maynerd said, “you’re on probation.” He turned and began to walk back toward the glass room. We followed him, and he looked back at me. “And you don’t have any idea what you’re even doing.”
“I’ll go unofficially,” Marti said. “If anyone asks, it’ll be of my own free will and choice, independent of SOaP.”
Agent Maynerd pulled the door open and motioned for us to go in. “You’re not going.”
“I need a chance to redeem myself,” I said, pausing in the doorway. “I understand that I’m a complete newbie and that I’ve totally screwed all of this up. And I want a chance to fix it. You can’t expect us to just sit here and watch things happen. That would be stupid.”
Agent Maynerd shoved me through the door. “Oh, yes I can. The two of you are going to be kept out of anything relating to SOaP for a very, very long time.”
Marti followed me in, along with my parents. She continued to argue with Agent Maynerd, but I fell silent. I could see he wouldn’t relent. Marti and I had just made too many mistakes. Of course, that meant that we would just have to go without permission.
The real question was, how could we get away from Agent Maynerd long enough to zip out? And had Marti been to Dugway and made a receiving door there?
Miraculously, all these and other questions were answered after several minutes, when Agent Maynerd left the room. He locked the door behind him, so the four of us sat at the glass table, facing each other.
I wanted to do something, but had no idea what that something might be.
“Well,” Dad said. He looked around the group. “I guess we’d better get going.”
Chapter 50: We take matters into our own hands
I mean, we couldn’t just sit idly by. Right?
-David Van Bender
Yeah, now I know where Richie gets it.
-Elizabeth Van Bender
“Oh, no you don’t,” Mom said. “No—you don’t.”
I looked at Dad in disbelief. He sat across the table from me, looking thoughtful. A quiet wariness had slunk into my head—not to be confused with the weariness in my body.
“What do you mean,” I said, “by, ‘We’d better get going?’”
He pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “If we’re going to stop Nick, we should go. I’ve got a receiving door set up in Salt Lake City—close to Dugway.”
“Are you insane?” Mom said. “First you declare your sovereignty at Intersoc, and now you want to defy direct orders from SOaP? Have you gone crazy?”
I wondered the same thing. It seemed contrary to his nature to do something like this—I would have thought Mom would rebel against a secret, magical government agency long before him. I felt as clueless as I had back in my house, when they’d argued over whether or not to tell me why they kept me locked away.
Plus, what if Nick was telling the truth? I couldn’t shake the feeling because he’d been so insistent about it—but there was no way in Hades I would say that. Nobody would understand. It would only get me locked up, again—which would really be a shame.
Dad said, “I think we should do what SOaP can’t do. Someone should go to Dugway. SOaP doesn’t have the manpower. So, clearly, we should go.”
Mom frowned. Did I think we should go? If we did, I could lose my emotion. SOaP or my parents could confiscate it, and I would never see it again. Nick had repeatedly promised that he would give some of the brink back to me. And besides, did the world really hang in the balance? Was Nick really that dangerous? He was a crackpot rock star. Would he really detonate a nuke to make some magical lip gloss?
But at the same time, I wanted to go and get my emotion back because if my parents let me go with them, it would represent considerable loosening of their position from the beginning of the night. It seemed like as good a path to freedom as I’d ever seen.
Yet, if Nick was going to nuke the emotion, did I want to actually try to stop him? Going to where there might be an atomic detonation didn’t seem like a recipe for a long and happy life.
On the other hand, I’d caused this mess. I certainly couldn’t use my own mortality as an excuse to not try and fix the mistakes I’d made.
I would just have to trust my parents, Marti, and everyone else regarding Nick. It seemed the best way.
We needed to go to Dugway. And despite the danger, I would have to go along.
Marti started to speak, but I jabbed her in the ribs with my elbow. My parents needed to talk this one out. Dad needed to convince Mom. No one else could do it.
“And,” Mom said, “what will you do once you reach Dugway Proving Ground? How will you find Nick?”
“Richie can sense the emotion.”
“If it’s not being shielded. And if it’s not, and if you can find Savage, how will you get the emotion?”
Dad shrugged. “I’m not exactly helpless, you know. Back in the day I was as good as anyone at dueling.”
“It’s been half a decade—or more. And you lost last time.”
“That’s why you’re coming. To help me out.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed, but by the time her chuckle stopped, Dad had won. The twinkle in her eyes told me she liked the idea. Something appealed to her.
“The last time we did that,” she said, “we failed massively.”
“We’ll have Marti, too.” He winked at Marti. “She’s as capable as any other SOaP agent.”
“That’s right,” Marti said, sitting up a little taller in her chair. “I owned the last Agent’s Challenge.”
I felt a little out of my league. They all had something to offer. I could only sense the emotion.
Mom frowned and shook her head. “This is crazy, you know. Either it will end up as nothing, or we’ll all get baked to a crisp when the nuke goes off.”
Dad smiled and touched her cheek. “At least we’ll all go out together.”
Chapter 51: Another world all around me
The only thing better than seeing how someone reacts to zipping is seeing how they react to the spirit world.
-Marti Walker
“How will we get there?” I asked.
Dad pressed his face against the glass door and looked from side to side, making sure Agent Maynerd wasn’t coming back.
“By zipping,” Marti said. “How else?”
“We can do that?” I said. “The security in this place sucks.”
Mom shrugged. “Zipping is hard to stop.”
In the corner, Dad made a zip-door with red brink. All four of us held hands, and Dad went in first, followed by Mom, me, and Marti.
We came out into the corner of a hotel room where a man sat on the bed in his underwear, with a laptop on his lap. He stared at us with wide eyes, fingers frozen above his keys.
Dad smiled and nodded politely. “Sorry to interrupt. We’ll leave you alone.” He headed for the door.
The man’s jaw dropped, and his eyebrows moved together. “What the hell?”
I smiled and waved as I followed my parents. I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Nice underwear.”
“We were never here,” Marti said. She waved her hands mysteriously. “Just
pretend we were never here. That way, no one will think you’re insane.”
The man nodded, a look of absolute disbelief on his face. Out in the hallway, Dad led us to a flight of stairs, and we ascended them. In just a few minutes, we stepped out onto the roof, into a soft rain.
The city lights spread out below us and around us, along the nearby mountain foothills. In one direction, a domed building stood at least as high as us, up on a mountainside. We followed Dad away from the door. Our feet crunched in the gravel that covered the roof. I wiped rain off my face.
“How will we get to Dugway Proving Ground?” I said.
“We’ll harness some wind sprites,” Dad said.
Mom must’ve seen my confusion, because she gave me a patient smile. “It’s very complicated. Someday you’ll learn.”
I shrugged, and tried not to seem annoyed. “I’m a big boy now. You know. I’ve zipped a bunch of times. Why not tell me about it, now?”
“I’m not sure if you’re ready for it,” Mom said.
“It’s a little scary,” Marti said.
I rolled my eyes. “It can’t possibly be any scarier than your music.” I played a steel air guitar, and made a whiny sound.
Dad motioned for us to get back. “Give me a little room.”
We withdrew several paces, and Dad took out a vial of red brink. He unscrewed it and lifted it to his face, dipped a forefinger in, then drew the shape of an eye in front of his face—just like Marti had done in her fake bedroom. He gave it a tail to his forehead, where he drew a spiral. Raindrops sizzled as they hit the brink and evaporated.
Marti took out her own brink—she seemed to have an endless supply tucked away in her purse—and also began to draw an eye in front of her.
“I want one of those,” I said. “I want to see what you’re all talking about.”
“You’re sure about that?” Mom said.
Was she kidding?
“Of course! What’s the problem? I’ve seen plenty—I can’t imagine what else there is that would damage my sensitive brain.”
Mom shrugged. “Of everything we planned on teaching you someday, this was the last one.”
Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1) Page 22
