Phoenix

by Jeff Stone

He opened the first door to our right, and I saw a small space that reminded me of a hotel room. It contained a bed, a dresser, a nightstand with an alarm clock, a floor lamp, and a flat-screen television hanging on one wall. There was also a window and another door.

  Dr. V pointed to the door. “There is a private bathroom in there. It’s not much, but it’s better than the barracks-style sleeping quarters and community bathrooms many teams have. And every rider gets his own room. Team members are allowed to stay here, or they may rent their own houses outside the ranch, which is what I do. My house is fifteen miles away, near Austin. I may build a home here at the ranch at some point, but for now I believe I will enjoy being able to take a break from team life every night. This is where you will sleep, Phoenix.”

  “What about Ryan?” I asked.

  Dr. V closed the door and then opened the door to our left. The room beyond was a mirror image of my room, except instead of a dresser, there was a desk topped with a computer. There were piles of cycling clothes everywhere.

  “Please excuse the mess,” Dr. V said, pointing to the desk. “Ryan wanted that instead of a dresser. He also demanded his own high-speed Internet connection because the facility’s Wi-Fi wasn’t fast enough for him. He is such an Internet junkie.”

  Dr. V closed the door and turned to Hú Dié. “Pick a room.”

  Hú Dié walked all the way down the corridor and grabbed the knob of the door at the very end. She tried turning the handle, but it didn’t budge.

  “Locked,” Dr. V said. “That is my private office. No one goes in there except me.”

  “Sorry,” Hú Dié said.

  “No problem. Pick any other room.”

  I walked over to her as she tried another door. It opened into a carbon-copy room of mine.

  “I’ll take this one,” she said. “It’s farthest from the boys.”

  “Perfect,” Dr. V said. “I will get you a key so you can lock up your room. I’ll get the one for your door, too, Phoenix.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Any questions?” Dr. V asked.

  “Not right now,” I replied.

  “Me neither,” Hú Dié said.

  “Sounds like it’s time for a late lunch, then,” Dr. V said. “Get your things and put them in your rooms. Meet me in the dining area in ten minutes. I need to let Murphy know about Hú Dié joining him; then I’ll whip us up some sandwiches. What do you plan to do while your cousin heads to Austin, Phoenix? Would you like to go as well?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. I think I’ll pass on the field trip. I’m really tired. Maybe I’ll take a nap.”

  “I suggest you only take a short one, then. Otherwise, you’ll be up all night. As for me, I plan to head home after the bikes arrive. I usually go to bed early and wake at five a.m.”

  “What about Ryan?” Hú Dié asked.

  “Ryan will be staying here, as he has been,” Dr. V said. “I’ll make sure he’s returned and settled down before I leave, so don’t worry. If you should have trouble with him or anything else, let Murphy know. If he’s not in the facility working, he’ll be in his camper or somewhere on the grounds nearby. There is a telephone in the kitchen. I’ll leave his cell phone number next to it. Get your things. I’m hungry.” He pushed through the double doors and went to find Murphy.

  I looked at Hú Dié. “What do you think?” I whispered.

  “I think you’re crazy for not going to the bike shop,” she replied.

  I shook my head and pointed to the locked office door. “I’m talking about that.”

  “No problem. I can get us in there anytime. It won’t do us any good, though. We can’t get out of this building without the door alarm going off and alerting Murphy.”

  “Wait—how?”

  “Ever heard of a bump key?”

  “No.”

  “It’s sort of like a master key. Once Dr. V gives me the key to my room, I can modify it to open any lock that is the same model made by the same manufacturer, as long as the lock isn’t bump-proof. The locks on these doors aren’t bump-proof and they’re all the same model. I checked.”

  I was going to ask Hú Dié how she knew about these things, but then I thought better of it.

  “How long will it take you to make it?” I asked.

  “About twenty minutes,” she replied. “I could do it tonight, if you want, after I have the key to my room.”

  “Heck, yeah. Let’s do it.”

  “What do you plan to do if we find the dragon bone in there?”

  “Grab it and get out of here. Duh.”

  “Get out how?”

  “Bicycles,” I said. “I’ll ride the bike I just raced, and you can ride Ryan’s. His frame is a little big for you, but you can manage.”

  “What about Murphy?”

  “He’ll be asleep.”

  “But he’ll wake up when we open the door and the alarm goes off. Haven’t you been listening?”

  “Can you disarm it?”

  “I don’t think so.…”

  “Then we’ll ride really fast. I’ve seen you on a bike. You can hammer.”

  “I’m not sure this is such a good idea.”

  I thought for a moment. “What about the bay door in the workshop? That one might not have an alarm. Can you open its locks?”

  “No. I already checked. You told me to keep an eye out, remember?”

  “What about that motorcycle outside? That would make for a fast getaway after the exit door alarm sounds. Can you ride it?”

  “Probably, but we don’t have the starter key, and it’s not like I can hot-wire it. Even if we found a key stashed in Dr. V’s office, firing it up and figuring out how the gears are configured will take time. I’ve never ridden one like that. There is also the gate to consider. Bicycles would be better than the motorcycle because we could climb the gate and pull them over with us. However, Murphy could still catch up to us on the road if he came after us. I don’t know about this.”

  “We’ll go cross-country, then. Even if Murphy wakes up, he’ll never catch us.”

  “In the dark? There are rattlesnakes and scorpions and coyotes out there. Murphy also has a horse. Take a nap, Phoenix. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “Are you with me or not?” I asked. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  Hú Dié glared at me as if testing my resolve.

  I glared back, my green eyes unyielding.

  But then common sense got the better of me. Hú Dié was right. We needed a solid escape plan. “How about if we just sneak into his office and poke around? If we find the dragon bone and a good plan comes to mind, we’ll leave. If not, we’ll wait.”

  She sighed. “Fine. Count me in.”

  “Good,” I said. “What time should we do it?”

  “I don’t know. How about two a.m.?”

  “All right. We should get going.”

  Hú Dié grabbed her things from the shop, and I banged the mud off my hiking boots and put them back on before getting my stuff from the SUV. I unpacked, washed up, and then went to the dining area, where I ate a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches with Dr. V, Hú Dié, and Murphy. Ryan didn’t join us. He was still off in the hills somewhere.

  The bike frames arrived as we were finishing our meal, and Hú Dié oohed and aahed over them until Murphy told her they had to leave. Dr. V said he was going to take one of the SUVs off-road into the hills to find Ryan because he, too, wanted to leave. He gave Hú Dié and me our room keys, and I went and took a long, cool shower.

  I was toweling off when Dr. V knocked on my door and said he had found Ryan sulking in his room. Dr. V said he was leaving and would return in the morning.

  I waited a couple of minutes, then peered between the slats of my window’s mini blinds. I soon saw Dr. V get into one of the black SUVs and head up the dusty road toward the gate.

  I set the alarm clock to 1:50 a.m. and climbed into bed, falling asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. I never heard Hú Dié and Murphy
return.

  I woke to a dark room with an unfamiliar alarm blaring. I sat up and remembered where I was—the Team Vanderhausen training facility. I began to panic, thinking the door alarm was sounding and that Hú Dié was making off with the dragon bone without me, but then I saw a clock that read 1:50 a.m., and I came to my senses. It was just the alarm clock sounding.

  I fumbled around in the dark until I managed to turn off the alarm. I didn’t turn on the light. I found one of the windows and raised the blinds. Flood lamps illuminated the building’s perimeter and the carport well enough to see that Dr. V was still gone, and Murphy’s camper was dark. The coast was clear.

  I closed the blinds and flipped on the light, then quickly dressed and grabbed my key. As an afterthought, I shoved my wallet and passport into one of my cargo pockets. I crept across the corridor to Ryan’s room and placed my ear against the door. I could hear him snoring like a freight train. It sounded as if he was in the middle of a deep dragon bone sleep. Grandfather often snored like that. So far, so good.

  I walked down the corridor and knocked softly on Hú Dié’s door, but no one answered.

  I knocked harder. Still no answer.

  I headed for the workshop. I passed through the dining area, the training area, and the other long corridor, entering the workshop to find Hú Dié hunched over the workbench, filing a key that was clamped in a vice.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Hú Dié nearly jumped through the roof.

  “Don’t scare me like that!” she barked. She was a haggard mess. She had dark, puffy circles beneath her eyes, and her eyelids drooped with fatigue. She’d changed out of her sundress and sandals and was now wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt that read MELLOW JOHNNY’S. That was the name of Lance Armstrong’s bike shop.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Just tired. The jet lag has caught up with me.”

  I looked around the workshop and saw that bike components had been arranged into neat piles on the floor, one set of components for each new frame. There were hundreds of parts in each pile, from nuts to bolts to cables. Sorting all of that out had to have taken hours.

  “You haven’t slept at all?” I asked.

  “Not since the airplanes.”

  “Were you too excited from your trip to the bike shop? Or are you worried about what we’re gonna do?”

  “Both, I guess. There’s no way I could sleep, knowing what is about to happen. Sorting all this stuff helped to occupy my mind and my time.”

  “You still want to do it?”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she said. “Let’s get it over with. The key is finished.” She unclamped the key and held it up to a work light. I saw that all the peaks of the key’s teeth had been filed to a uniform height. Hú Dié grabbed a rubber mallet and headed for the door I had just come through.

  “What’s the mallet for?” I asked.

  “It’s a bump key, remember?” she said. “I need something to bump it with.”

  As we left the workshop, I told her about Ryan’s snoring and reminded her that dragon bone makes people sleep deeply.

  “Let’s hope he stays that way,” she said.

  “He will,” I said. “I still can’t believe he’s taking it.”

  Hú Dié said nothing.

  “So, how was your trip to the bike shop?” I asked.

  The question seemed to perk her up. “It was great,” she said. “I was expecting more of a souvenir shop than an actual bike shop, but I was wrong. They have all kinds of bikes for sale, plus a great service area right in the middle of everything. The bike mechanics are like rock stars.”

  “Rock stars?”

  “Yes. Everyone can see everything the mechanics are doing. The service area has glass display cabinets around it with stools on the outside, and they have a great coffee and smoothie bar next to the service area. People can grab something to drink, then sit down and watch the mechanics in action.”

  “Cool. Is there anything else?”

  “In the basement they have an indoor training area, plus a bunch of bikes on display that Armstrong rode in different races over the years. It’s like a museum of technological cycling advancements.”

  “Maybe I should check it out.”

  “You should. They sell gear for many different types of riding, including mountain biking. In fact, I bought you something.” We reached her room, and she opened the unlocked door. She unplugged a long black object from an outlet near the doorway and handed it to me.

  I turned it over in my hands. It was a small, rechargeable headlamp that could be mounted to a helmet with a strap. “You bought this for me?” I asked. “For our escape?”

  She nodded. “We can use it while we’re poking around, too.”

  “Thank you! Where’s yours?”

  Hú Dié looked away. “I could only afford to buy one.”

  “Oh,” I said, embarrassed. I held the headlamp out to her. “Why don’t you keep it, then?”

  Her face darkened. “It’s a gift. For you. From me.”

  I felt myself begin to blush. “I’m sorry. I am such an idiot. Thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied, still not looking at me. “Can we please do this?”

  I slipped the charger into one of my oversized pockets and palmed the headlamp. “Okay.”

  Hú Dié reached down and picked up a threadbare hydration backpack from the floor. She must have brought it in one of her suitcases. “This pack isn’t in as good condition as the one we left at Cangzhen Temple,” she said, “but it’s better than nothing. I took the bladder out to make room for the dragon bone, in case we find it and decide to escape tonight.”

  “Good thinking.”

  She closed the door to her room, and we walked to Dr. V’s office door. Hú Dié slipped the bump key partway into the doorknob lock and gripped the doorknob with one hand while pinching the key between her thumb and index finger of the same hand. She twisted the knob and key slightly, then tapped the key with the mallet that she held in her other hand.

  I caught my breath as I heard metal pins within the lock jingle, and the key slipped a few millimeters deeper into the lock. I watched as Hú Dié kept the tension on the doorknob and key and tapped again. The pins within the lock jingled a second time, and the key slipped even farther into the lock. She repeated the process one more time, and the key went all the way in. Hú Dié turned the key and the knob simultaneously, and the door opened.

  “Unbelievable,” I said. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “You need to hang out in Kaifeng more,” Hú Dié replied. She stepped away from the door. “After you.”

  I flipped on the headlamp and walked through the doorway. My breath caught in my throat again. This was not at all what I was expecting.

  Hú Dié walked in behind me. “Oh, my goodness,” she said.

  We were standing in a laboratory. I flashed the bright light around the room. It was about thirty feet square and filled with machines. Tiny lights blinked and computer panels glowed. There was enough light from the instrument panels that we probably didn’t even need the flashlight. Some of the freestanding equipment, like IV drips and oxygen tanks, I recognized from my visits to the nursing home. Other things, however, looked like gadgets from a spaceship flight deck.

  A steel counter ran along two of the walls, containing a wide array of microscopes, petri dishes, and other items. Above one counter was a pair of windows covered with blinds. On the floor in one corner was what appeared to be a small kiln. Next to the kiln was a shelved cabinet containing fossilized bones.

  “Look,” I said, pointing to the bones. “It looks like Dr. V is trying to make his own dragon bone.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Hú Dié said. “Check this out. I think I found his office.”

  I turned to her in the eerie machine glow. She was staring at one of the walls, which contained a bank of mirrored windows and a door.

>   I headed for the office door, skirting a tall row of machines set in the center of the room, when I noticed a strange light atop one of the devices. I looked up and saw three skylights ten feet overhead. Mechanical blinds prevented any light from entering the room through two of the skylights, but the blinds over the third were partially open. Moonlight trickled in. I could even make out a few stars.

  I pointed up. “We’ll have a clear night if we decide to make a break for it.”

  Hú Dié didn’t reply.

  I glanced over and saw that she was now standing beside a stainless-steel table, next to one of the banks of machines. I turned my flashlight in that direction and headed toward her, and my jaw dropped.

  There was a clipboard on the table like the one my uncle used at the nursing home. On the clipboard was a medical chart. Across the top of the chart was a name: Ryan Vanderhausen.

  “No way!” I said, grabbing the chart and looking it over. “Dr. V is running experiments on his own nephew! And look … Ryan is taking way too much dragon bone compared with what my grandfather uses. It looks like he’s been using it for … six months? How can this be?”

  “I have no idea,” Hú Dié said. “Let’s just do what we came here to do.” She went to one of the counters.

  I shook my head and walked over to Dr. V’s office door. There was a keypad next to it. I tried the door, but it was locked. I was about to ask Hú Dié to come over and determine whether she could break in here, too, when a small light turned on across the room. Hú Dié called out, “Found it!”

  I looked over and saw that she had switched on a short fluorescent fixture mounted to the bottom of a wall cabinet. Beneath the cabinet was a counter with two dragon-shaped vessels. One was Grandfather’s. The other had to be PawPaw’s.

  “Good work!” I said.

  Hú Dié nodded. She reached into her pack and removed a large fabric bag.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “A silk drawstring bag,” she replied in an odd tone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Those containers won’t fit in my pack. I need to carry the dragon bone somehow.”

  “You want to take the dragon bone and escape right now?”