Donovan Meanwhile: Kings of Sparta

by Bierley, B. L.

  “No car.” Real Matt leads us to an small room in the corner of the hangar, inside of which is a card table with a pitcher of water, some plastic cups, and three folding chairs. “I have to be back on my way to Tokyo before we’d even get out of airport traffic. I figured we could do this here.” He closes the door behind us.

  I could sense Fake Matt’s disappointment as we all sit down.

  “So, I understand we’ve got a problem,” Matt says, sounding like a businessman, which I sometimes forget that he is.

  “You could say that,” Fake Matt replies. “Chevko’s got ahold of the transfer device, and Donovan says he’s planning to use it for some nefarious purposes. Something to do with an invasion.”

  I put my hands on the table. “I’m sorry, are we really just going to pretend like this isn’t the weirdest meeting in the history of meetings? Matt...” I’m looking at Real Matt. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to help you get back to the Meanwhile.”

  “How do you even know about it?”

  Fake Matt interjects, saying, “We don’t have much time, Donovan. This can all be sorted out later. Chevko’s not going to sit around and wait for us all to...well, sit around.”

  “I’m the one who told this guy to come find you,” Real Matt says. “And from the sounds of it, it was just in time.”

  “How did—?” But I already know the answer. “My Facebook message?”

  He nods. “You were supposed to be in Meanwhile at that time, working with them on this Chevko mission. The fact that you messaged me, here, in this reality? That was a red flag. So I sent Matt.”

  “He calls me ‘Fake Matt,’” Fake Matt says with a sneer.

  Real Matt can’t stop himself from grinning. “That’s pretty funny.” Then he looks at me. “To keep things simple between us, he’s Matt. I go by Matthew.”

  “Noted,” I say without hiding my sarcasm.

  “Can we get back to the business at hand, please?”

  Matthew stands up and begins pacing the room. “Tell me about what Chevko told you, Donovan.”

  I pour another cup of water. “It sounds like he is planning to cross over to the Meanwhile and work together with that Chevko to...well, I don’t know. Take over the world, or something. They want to rule like the kings of Sparta, or something.”

  “Ha!” My brother leans onto the table. “A diarchy. That’s rich.”

  “Do you think they can pull it off?” Fake Matt asks.

  Matthew shakes his head. “I mean, two people is still only two people.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but they’re both Andrei Chevko.”

  “That’s a good point, brother,” Matthew says. “There’s more to this than just that element. What else did he say?”

  I shrug. “I mean, not much. Nothing that stands out, anyway. They had me in this, like, pit. He was telling me all about how they were trying to figure out how to cross over, and—“

  “A pit? What kind of pit?”

  “I don’t know. Like, a big hole! I have no idea where it was.”

  Matthew folds his arms. “Think, brother. This could be important. You must have seen something. Some detail.”

  “I was unconscious when they brought me there, man! I didn’t see anything. They had to haul me down there in, like, a big frontloader bucket.”

  “A frontloader?” Fake Matt asks. “What’s that?”

  “You know, like a...” I make an upside-down scooping motion with my arm. “Like a digging thing. On treads. You know.”

  Then it hits me! One detail that I saw that almost slipped my mind, and I wouldn’t have remembered if I weren’t thinking about that damned digger.

  “Patuxent!” I shout, and it elicits blank stares.

  I say it again, with less enthusiasm. “The loader said Patuxent on the side. Whatever that means.”

  The Matts look at each other and shrug. Then Matthew snaps his fingers.

  “Wait! Patuxent Research Refuge. I toured there for a few science project back in high school. That’s got to be it.”

  He sits back down at the table and throws something down in front of him, and suddenly a huge holographic map of the United States is projected above the table. He waves his fingers in front of the map and it zooms in several levels until it’s right over D.C.

  He points to one spot. “There it is. It’s a research facility, a national park, technically. But it’s close enough to home that they could’ve easily taken you there within a couple hours. Less, even.”

  Fake Matt and I stood and moved behind him to look over his shoulder. “But why would they be digging there? What good would that do them?”

  “Wellll,” Matthew says, “it may not be there that they’re really interested in.”

  He slides his finger across the map, and it changes into a different map of the same area.

  “Is that the Meanwhile? Cool.”

  “This way I can see how things line up. It’s handy in times like these.”

  He slides his finger again, back and forth, comparing the two maps. With a frown, he sits back in his chair. “I don’t see anything in the Meanwhile that corresponds to that area. It’s just empty land, like it is over here.”

  “Wait a minute,” Fake Matt says. He’s reading something on his smartphone screen.

  “You have data service over here?” I ask. “Does it work in the Meanwhile, too, or, is it like roaming charges or something? How does that work?”

  Fake Matt ignores me, which is probably for the best, and continues reading from his screen. “It says here that some of the land Patuxent sits on used to belong to the D.O.D. I dunno, does that help at all?”

  “The Department of Defense?” Matthew is chewing on the arm of his eyeglasses. “It’s possible that’s the same in the Meanwhile, as well, I suppose.” He puts his glasses back on and types something in to his wristwatch. The map responds as he types, and different markers pop up and disappear.

  “Ha!” he says at last, and zooms way in on the area we’ve been studying.

  There’s a little marker there with a nuclear symbol on it.

  “There’s a nuclear launch station there, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Fake Matt’s eyes get wide. “Oh, shit.”

  I run a hand through my hair. “They’re digging down on this side so they can transfer to the Meanwhile—inside a nuclear missile silo.”

  Matthew nods. “Seems like it.”

  “So what do we do?” I ask. “I still have no way to get over there and warn anybody or do anything about it.”

  I look at Fake Matt. “I mean, you do, right? You came here, after all. Can you make me back with you?”

  “Eh, it’s complicated,” he says with a sideways glance at his doppelgänger.

  “It’s fine,” Matthew says. “I mean, it’s kind of fine. They have the shoes, yes, but there is another way in. Technically.”

  “Well let’s have it, then,” says Fake Matt.

  Matthew instructs us to close the blinds on the windows that look out into the hangar, then he walks over to the door that leads out of the room.

  Removes his watch, and presses it against the door frame, and it stays in plays when he takes his hand away. A few flicks of his finger on the watch face, and a field of blue light covers the door momentarily before disappearing.

  Then he opens the door...and there’s nothing on the other side.

  I don’t mean it was an empty room.

  I mean nothing.

  Blackness.

  Blank space.

  A void.

  “Go on,” he say. But neither Fake Matt nor I are very ready to step into empty space. “It’s fine,” he insists. “Do it quick before someone notices.”

  I take the plunge and stepped through the door. My body is prepared to suddenly plummet into eternity, but instead it feels like stepping on solid ground. I walk in a ways, and I’m surrounded by the void, interrupted only by the rectangle of the doorway. On the other side of the
door I can still see the walls of the hangar office, and my brother(s).

  Fake Matt steps through after me, apparently encouraged by my not-vanishing. Finally Matthew steps in and pulls the door closed behind him.

  To my continued surprise, we are all able to see each other just fine despite the apparent lack of any light source.

  “What is this place?”

  “You’ve been to the Meanwhile. Well, this is the Nothing. It’s safe to talk here.”

  “Where is here, anyway?”

  “Nowhere. Don’t worry about it. Beside the point. I told you there’s another way to the Meanwhile, but it’s top secret.”

  “What is it this time?” Fake Matt quips. “A pair of boxers?”

  Matthew is unamused. “It’s not a thing. It’s a place. Er, well, it is a thing but it’s in a place. It’s a standalone portal, but you’re not going to like where it is. It’s heavily guarded.”

  “Let me guess, some kind of military installation?”

  “Nope,” he says with a grim head shake. “More guarded than that.”

  Fake Matt and I exchange an uncertain look. “Is it going to be possible for us to get in?”

  “It’ll be easier getting in than out, that’s for sure. It’s a maximum security prison in Arizona, just outside Phoenix.”

  Fake Matt rubs his forehead. “Wait, the portal to the Meanwhile is inside a prison? What the hell for?”

  “The portal was the first one ever created. The original gateway to the Meanwhile. The person who designed it sold it to the highest bidder in order to fund more research into smaller and better portals. Those shoes you’re after wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the price the prison warden paid.”

  “The warden himself paid for the portal? Why?”

  Matt shrugs. “Prison was overcrowded. What do you do with an overcrowded prison? Expand, obviously.”

  I laugh even though it’s not funny. “They’re putting prisoners in the Meanwhile to make more room.”

  Matt nods. “It’s a system that works, but the warden is very serious about keeping it a secret.”

  “So we have to get into the prison, find the super top secret portal, travel to the Meanwhile—“

  “And then break your way out of the other side. Yes.”

  If you think that sounds ridiculously impossible, welcome to the club.

  “Are you kidding me?” I say. “How are we supposed to do that?”

  Matt smiles. “Obviously I have ways of helping you. At least for some of it.”

  He opens up the door—I’m not sure how he found it in the dark—and we step back out into the office. When he opens the door again, it’s nothing but the hangar outside, back to normal.

  “Can I get one of those Nothing watches?” I ask.

  “If you survive this, come back and see me. You guys head to Arizona. The pilot knows where to go. I’ll make sure everything you need is waiting for you when you arrive.”

  We say our goodbyes, board the private plane, and we’re back in the air within an hour of landing. I order another shrimp linguini on the way since I didn’t finish the first one.

  Fake Matt looks at me at some point during the flight and just says, “Well, this will be interesting.”

  “Better than boring.”

  “It’s going to get crazy in there.”

  “I’ve seen crazy. I can handle it.”

  He grins and shakes his head. “There’s that Burke bullheadedness. You think you can handle a bike, though?”

  The plan that Matthew laid out for us involved both of us riding motorcycles. I wasn’t too thrilled about that part, but the plan was the plan, and I didn’t see any alternatives.

  “I’m sure I can’t ride like you can, but I guess I’ll have to do my best.”

  He spent the rest of the flight explaining to me how to ride a motorcycle effectively, which is kind of like someone explaining to you how to swim effectively. It’s not really going to mean much until you’re in the water.

  It was a short taxi ride from the Phoenix airport to the municipal airport just outside town, where we met the men who would be flying us to prison.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Carrasco and Vega. They’re cousins. Tough as nails, and you can tell that immediately from the way they carry themselves, their stoic demeanor, and the multiple face and neck tattoos they wear.

  “You guys ready to fly?” Carrasco asks us as we’re walking up to the cargo plane.

  “This thing seems awful big for such a small airport,” Fake Matt observes.

  Soyuz just lifts a pierced-eyebrow. “Not for what we pay to keep it here.”

  Vega, the quite one, with his gold teeth and spiderweb elbow tats, is the pilot. Carrasco hangs back in the cargo hold with us as the plane takes off and flies over Phoenix. Literally hangs, holding onto a fabric strap that hangs from the ceiling, swaying back and forth easily with the motion of the plane.

  We knew it would be a short flight, so after a few minutes it’s no surprise when Vega shouts something in Spanish from the cockpit, and Carrasco informs us, “Drop site is coming up. I suggest you guys get ready.”

  “As ready as we’re gonna be,” Fake Matt says.

  We wait.

  And wait.

  It feels like minutes go by, but it couldn’t have been more than thirty or forty-five seconds.

  I hear a roar and feel wind rushing up behind me as Vega lowers the cargo ramp.

  Carrasco holds up a hand and begins counting down from five. I glance at Fake Matt to my right. He looks nervous.

  That make me feel better for some reason.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Locks are released, inertia takes over, and in a flash we’re both falling through the air on the back of a couple of heavily-modified Kawasaki Ninja motorcycles. They’ve got reinforced bodies with bullet-proof plexiglass surrounding the rider, Popemobile-style; stronger engines; EMP-capabilities—the list goes on.

  This. This is the coolest I’ve ever felt in my life.

  Below us is the Fenton Maximum Security Prison. More specifically: the football field-sized courtyard in the middle of several buildings that surround it like a circle of wagons. Inmates are outside playing ball and lifting weights. They look up as we come barreling down out of the sky.

  I can see some people in uniforms running towards us while others are running inside.

  Yeah, that’s right, tiny people. This is insane.

  You’re seeing something insane.

  Get ready for more.

  When it seems like I’m about a thousand feet off the ground, I flip a switch in front of me and a huge parachute opens up above, connected to the chassis of the bike. My neck snaps forward as the bike’s descent rate is cut in half.

  I also hear Fake Matt’s chute open behind me.

  After a few seconds of slowed descent, we’re close enough to the ground that we can release the chutes.

  And we have to, because the guards below are already taking aim at us.

  The first shots whiz past my helmet and put holes in the chute, but luckily it had already done it’s job and was blowing away in the breeze.

  My bike hits the ground hard, but that’s why the shocks on these bikes were reinforced, along with every other part.

  After a jolt, I get my balance and tear through the courtyard towards Building E, my target, leaving a tire-wide divot in the dirt behind me.

  Matt’s bike hits the ground and he speeds off the other direction. His target is Building A, on the opposite side

  He was a marvel on that bike, although I was pretty proud of how I was handling it so far. How many people can get dropped from a plane at full speed and hit the ground running? At least one.

  Inmates dodged out of the way, and the guards were reluctant to get to close. I made sure to drive in unpredictable snaking waves to keep people on their toes, but all the while I kept Building E in my sights.

  The front end of th
e bike is two inch-thick magnesium alloy. Stronger than steel, and light as plastic, it adds incredible protection without sacrificing weight.

  As I near the door that leads inside, I duck as low to the fuel tank as possible, and ram right through the door, blowing it off the hinges. (Fortunately for us, the doors were meant to be locked from the inside, not the outside, since generally-speaking prisons are more worried about people getting out than in. As such, the door’s opened inward, which meant it was that much easier to batter down.)

  “I’m in,” I say into the microphone in my helmet.

  “Me too.” Timing-wise, this is working exactly as we planned.

  Fenton has around 150 guards on duty at all times to keep it’s roughly 2,000 inmates in line, so we had to make sure they were concentrated in a couple areas where we weren’t actually going to be, rather than scattered around the prison like normal.

  Driving a motorcycle inside is insane, let me tell you. You don’t realize how little room there is inside a building until you’re strapped to an engine going 60mph through the hallway.

  I weave back and forth, dodging tables bolted into the floor, and humans who are not. For now, most of the people in my way are guards and prison staff. The majority of the inmates are locked up.

  For now.

  At the end of the hall there’s a sharp turn. The building I’m in is old, probably built in the thirties or something, and it still retains most of the original architecture. Vaulted ceiling, iron bars and balconies. Narrow, thick-glass windows.

  But at the end of the building is a new addition. Somewhere along the way, someone decided it would be a good idea to connect all these different buildings, so they built modern, narrow hallways from one end of the building to another.

  In about fifteen seconds, I was going to transition from this spacious old building to that narrow, low-ceilinged hall, and it was going to be like shooting through a straw at top speed.

  I just hoped nobody was in there when I came barreling through.

  “I’m almost to the first hall,” I say.

  “Still on target. I’ll have the key shortly.”

  See, my job was to break into Building E, but what we were really after was in building C. That’s why we wanted all the prison’s resources focused on E, or at least as much as possible. Some of them were trying to stop Fake Matt over in Building A, but he had to go there because that’s where the warden’s office is, and that’s where the key to the basement is kept.