Donovan Meanwhile: Kings of Sparta

by Bierley, B. L.

  At least, usually.

  I make it though the tunnel without a problem, shooting up and out the other side into Building D, and I’m immediately being hounded by gunfire.

  Not a lot, thankfully. The guards are cautious about where they shoot, not wanting to risk hitting any innocent bystanders—including the prisoners.

  “Almost to hall 2,” I say nervously. “How’s it coming?”

  “Damn! It’s not here.”

  “Not there? Are you sure?”

  I dart past a guard who takes a swing at the bike with a billy club.

  The blowback probably breaks his arm as I speed by.

  “Yeah, I’m sure!”

  “What are we gonna do, Fakey? I’m almost to the entry point.”

  “I’m on my way to back you up, brother,” he says. “They Warden himself must have the key.”

  And then I see the man in question standing directly in front of me, a tall man with a square torso, as long as it is wide. He’s got thick, grey eyebrows and an angry jowl.

  He looks at me with grim determination, and he’s standing right in front of the doorway I need to get to.

  He holds up the key and shows it to me, like waving a bone in front of a dog.

  “Lookin’ for this?”

  He tucks the key into his shirt pocket, and then produces a incredibly big assault rifle from behind his back. As far as I know, it’s probably loaded with armor-piercing rounds.

  “Hey, Matt,” I say. “I’m punching it.”

  “Go for it, I’m ready.”

  I smack a button on the right handlebar of the Ninja, and a wave of electromagnetic energy expands from the bike in a sphere. It’s invisible, but the effect sure isn’t.

  The EMP knocks out power in the prison, and all the cell doors suddenly unlock in one, echoing chunk that permeates the entire building—and every other building, in turn. The range of the EMP is more than enough to encompass the whole prison.

  The warning I gave Matt is so he could also press a button on his bike, which would temporarily shield his systems from the EMP effects. Handy little doohickey, right?

  The Warden looks around him in a somewhat disconcerted fashion as dozens of prisoners come storming out of their cells, suddenly finding themselves freed. Had he been a bit of a nicer warden, maybe his charges wouldn’t be quite so eager to get their hands on him.

  Alas.

  Most of the prisoners actually head for one of the exits, wrestling with guards that come pouring in from everywhere. I can only imagine that the other buildings were experiencing a similar level of pandemonium.

  In the fray, while the Warden is distracted, I charge forward on my bike, make a swiping turn, and knock him off his feet.

  The gun flies out of his grip and slides across the floor.

  Several of the inmates dive for it at the same time. I can’t get to it quick enough to stop them, being enclosed in my bike-cocoon.

  The prisoner that gets to it first stands up and waves it around him to clear some space. I look at him tensely, and he at me. Then he just nods respectfully, and disappears back into the fray.

  “What the hell did you do!?” The Warden is up on one knee, replacing his uniform cap on his head.

  I hear another engine echoing down the hall, and Fake Matt comes jetting through the crowd of orange jumpsuits on his bike. As I said, he’s better at this than I am, so I’m not surprised when he jumps off the bike while it was still moving and kicks Ellison in the face, and when the warden is laying on his back, reaches down and pulled the keys from his pocket.

  He tosses them to me.

  “Do it and do it fast! This party won’t last long!”

  I gun the throttle and do a U-Turn, leaving a streak of black rubber on the floor, then head for the unmarked door in the wall of Building C, the one that the key goes to.

  I’m open the door and hop back on my bike, and Fake Matt takes the lead.

  Now, listen, driving down stairs on a 400lb motorcycle isn’t the most difficult thing in the world, I would imagine. But it’s certainly is the most difficult thing I’ve personally ever done, and if you’ve been keeping score that’s saying quite a lot.

  But with Matt’s guidance I just watch and learned, leaning back as we descend three flights of stairs to the basement.

  The key comes in handy again as I have to unlock a set of double doors at the bottom of the stairwell, which leads into a large octagonal-shaped room.

  In the center of the room is a metal archway jutting out from the floor, filled with a shimmering blue light. If there had been guards posted here, they were probably upstairs now trying to deal with an insurrection the likes of which the prison had never faced. The sound is muffled down here, almost nonexistent. Just the hum of the electric power driving the Meanwhile portal. (According to the schematics, the room is lined with lead, like an X-Ray room, which was meant to protect the portal from any kind of electrical interference. Like, say, an EMP?Lucky us.)

  “Guess this is our door,” I say to Matt

  “Your door. I’m not going.”

  I face him. “What are you talking about?”

  “When you get to the other side you’re going to have to fight your way out, but you’re EMP is used up. I’m going to find the electrical breaker here that’s powering whatever facility is on the other side of that portal and shut it off. It’ll buy you some time.”

  “But if you’re with me I might not need that extra time. We’re a team, Matt. Brothers.”

  He looks at me with sad eyes. “I was never going with you, Donovan. This is the way it has to be, trust me.” He flips down his visor and nods. “Good luck.”

  The sound of the motor is a cacophony as he guns his engine and heads back up the stairwell.

  I don’t have time to stop and ponder his choice, as strange and unexpected as it was. There’s more at stake here, and if I don’t keep going I won’t get the time to think about it ever again.

  I think about Hanson, and hope he’s still alive.

  Flipping down my visor, I point the bike at the blue field of light and twist the throttle.

  As I pierce through the blue light, I feel a surge of electricity course through my body. It’s not painful, just intensely uncomfortable for a split second.

  The engine on my bike dies—should have activated my own EMP shield, I guess. I coast through to the other side and stop.

  The room in the Meanwhile is filled with guards, each armed with assault rifles, all of them pointing straight at me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I flip up my visor again and look around.

  “Dismount, please,” shouts someone in the back of the room.

  The room looks identical to the one I just left, but whereas the walls in the previous room were a dull grey, the walls here are deep red. I think it’s to prevent confusion amongst the guards who undoubtedly spend a lot of time going back and forth. There’s a big, white P2 painted on the wall in plain sight. Prison 2, in case the paint scheme didn’t trigger anything.

  I lift up the plexiglass covering and step off the bike I’m asked, because when you’re faced with a dozen guns pointed right at you and you don’t have a working motorcycle or any idea what to do, you kind of go with whatever is happening.

  “Who are you?” the voice asks. “What are you here for?”

  The man speaking steps through the gathered guards and out into the light where I could see him.

  It’s the Warden’s doppelgänger. His uniform is jet black instead of standard-issue, and he has an eye patch over his left eye. I can’t help but wonder if that was prescription or just so he and the main Warden could tell themselves apart.

  “Are you breaking someone out? Or do you just want to cause chaos in my prison?”

  “Neither, actually,” I say. “Just passing through.”

  He eyes me suspiciously. “Well I’m afraid you’re going to end up staying longer than you anticipated, mister...”

  Thank you
for asking.

  “Burke. Donovan Burke.”

  “Mr. Burke, whoever you are. You’ll be joining my little camp over here, you and your disruptive partner who is being captured over on the other side as we speak. I should warn you, though, I’m not as friendly a host as my doppelgänger.” He flicks his fingers in the air, signaling the two guards closest to me to holster their guns and grab me.

  But before they get me in cuffs, the lights in the room shut off, and an alarm starts sounding somewhere outside. Everyone is bathed in the blue glow from the portal, the only source of light left.

  The power outage!

  Good job, Fake Matt!

  “Go find out what’s going gone!” the Warden barks at two of the guards near him. They hustle out the pair of black double doors—and immediately come running back in.

  “We’re under attack, My Lord!”

  He spins his cold, fierce gaze back on me. “Kill him!”

  The two guards who are holding me jump out of the way as the others take ready aim at my body. But I’m free, though, and I jump on my bike and knock it to the ground, pulling the canopy closed at the same time. The hail of bullets pelts off of my little cocoon, and a couple of the shooters fall to the ground, victims of a wild ricochet.

  And at that moment, an loud explosion blasts open the double doors and throws everyone to the ground. Before the debris has even finished falling I hear people shouting, entering the room, popping off staccato gunshots. They’re wearing attack armor head to toe.

  One of them approaches me and lifts her helmet so I can see her face.

  Bellamy!

  I immediately recognize the others as members of MeanWatch, too. Mastodon! Dweeble.

  I’m being rescued by Meanies.

  But no sign of Hanson. I tried to remain optimistic and assume that he was still alive, trapped in Chevko’s penthouse lair.

  Bellamy helps me up as I climb out of the bike.

  “You okay?”

  “Better now.”

  She clocks the bike at my feet. “Nice ride.”

  “It’s single use, unfortunately.”

  With everyone dispatched, including Warden 2, I follow the team up the stairwell. Although the basement portion of this prison was identical to he one on the other side, above ground it’s just an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a run-down industrial zone. It makes sense if you want to keep your secret extra-large prison a secret.

  We step over dead and dying bodies on our way out the building—the guards that the Meanies had to tend to on their way in to rescue me.

  Outside, there’s a helicopter waiting for us.

  I find myself eager to sit down and catch my breath once we board. The whole ordeal was way more stressful than I realized, but now that the adrenaline is leaving my system I start noticing all the aches and pains and bruises I had accumulated along the way.

  “You’re lucky it’s just bruises you got,” Dweeble says when I tell him. “On my first mission, I nearly lost my head and my partner actually did. Quite nasty.”

  I try to lighten the mood. “My first mission was a dinner party.”

  He lets out a short laugh. “You know, your brother is the one who saved me from ending up like my partner.” He smiles, but Bellamy pushes him out of the way to get to me.

  “You’ve got some explaining to do,” she says coldly.

  Back at HQ a few hours later, after a shower and a hot cup of coffee, I face more of her questions.

  “You bailed on us in the middle of an assignment, and now Hanson’s been captured, and don’t think I don’t know about you losing the shoes that Yuni gave you. What the hell happened, Burke?”

  “I didn’t want to but I had no choice. The SUV guy was gonna to kill me.”

  “Who is ‘the SUV guy?’”

  “Mario. One of Chevko’s henchmen. He knocked me out of the sky and I had to jump back to the real world to save my own life.”

  Tez pointed at me sternly. “Hey, this is the real world. Yours is the fake.”

  “Tez, not now. Please.”

  “But it wasn’t a complete loss,” I plead. “I actually found out some stuff. Good intel!”

  “Like what?” Bellamy’s arms are folded across her chest and she tips her head to the side skeptically.

  “Like the fact that Chevko is planning an invasion, working alongside his double from my world. They’re planning to break into a nuclear launch facility. But I don’t know when.”

  Her arms drop to her side. “Ok, fine. You’ve redeemed yourself.”

  “I wonder what it has to do with the Mole,” Tez says, obviously intending the comment for Bellamy.

  “Maybe nothing?”

  “Unlikely. If Chevko’s really planning something large-scale he’s not going to risk spreading himself thin with unimportant side-schemes.”

  Bellamy taps her foot in thought. “Maybe he’s just trying to get some relevant information to help ensure the invasion is a success.”

  Frustrated with being left out of the conversation, I wave my hand over my head. “Hey, hello. What are you guys talking about?”

  Tez looks at me. “The ruler that Andrei Chevko gave your father at his party? Turns out it was something nefarious, something called a Mole. It’s an information-gathering device. It absorbs data being sent through the air around it.

  I shrug. “What, like cell phone signals? Radio broadcasts?”

  “Brainwaves,” Hanson say. For a split second I want to laugh at how ridiculous that sounds, then I remember where I am and how I got here.

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Yeah. Your father had the object in his office for the last two days. It recorded hours of data straight from his brain. His every thought.”

  “Well, not his every thought,” Bellamy says. “The Mole can only collect data that matches certain, quantifiable criteria. Basically names, dates, places, things like that. If he’s thinking about how much he loves his golf, for instance, it’s going to know he’s thinking about golf but not how he feels about it.”

  “How did you find out it was one of these Mole things?”

  “The device typically will broadcast its findings over the Airnet on a secure channel, but of course the White House is rigged with every manner of debugging, encrypting, scrambling technology we know of. No unauthorized broadcasts can be emitted. So instead, Chevko had someone working inside the White House who would sneak the item out a couple of times a day so it could transmit from a safe distance.”

  “Someone inside? Who?”

  I got the answer to my question five minute s later, as Bellamy pushes open the door to the interrogation room and I see Valencia handcuffed to the table, tired, makeup smeared, clothes wrinkled.

  She looks surprised to see me, as I’m sure she is.

  “Mr. Burke. What are you doing here?”

  I can’t believe it. The woman who made my leftovers, who cleaned our clothes and, I don’t know, probably walked the dog or something (I honestly didn’t have much interaction with her).

  She could’ve easily poisoned me had she known I was working for MeanWatch that night she brought me tuna noodle casserole.

  “The only problem is,” Bellamy says, pulling the door closed again, “is she obviously won’t tell us what the Mole recorded.”

  “You can just look at it yourself? Didn’t you take it from her?”

  Tez is shaking her her. “We caught her after she had already sent the transmission, unfortunately. The data gets wiped at that point.”

  I think I see a solution.

  “Why not just use the Mole on her, then? She’s gotta be thinking about it.”

  Again, more head-shaking. “We are, but it’s a slow process, absorbing, recording, analyzing. We just don’t have time.”

  I punch a fist into my hand. “So make her tell us somehow! Torture her! I don’t care, we’ve got to save Hanson!”

  Blank stares.

  “I mean, him and everyone else. We’ve got to stop C
hevko!”

  Ten glares at me. “I can’t believe you’re condoning torture, Mr. Burke. You know your dad would never approve of such—“

  “No,” Bellamy says. “He’s right.”

  The look on Tez’s face in that moment...

  “I mean, not completely right. But he’s on the right track. Not all torture is literal.”

  She walks around the corner and returns with a little passport booklet. “I have an idea.”

  Bellamy goes inside with Valencia, and Tez and I watch from the adjoining room through the two-way mirror.

  “Hello, again, Miss Delacruz.” She sits down across from Valencia, holding the passport against the tabletop with two fingers. “I’ll ask you for what is unfortunately the last time to tell me what it was that Chevko was so interested in obtaining from President Burke.”

  Valencia smacks her lips. “Or what? You’ll tear up my passport? Please.”

  “Actually,” Bellamy says, flipping open the booklet and looking at it. “I was thinking we’d call immigration services and have you deported.”

  “I’m here legally. Give me a break.” Valencia will barely look at Bellamy.

  “You don’t think that’s easy enough for my team to fudge? A few key strokes and your documentation goes away. You’ll be deported on the next boat out of here.”

  This gets Valencia’s attention, but she still doesn’t seem convinced. She shakes her hair over her shoulder and glares derisively down at the passport. “Fine. Deport me back to Mexico. I’ll live like a queen off of what Chevko has paid me already. Do it. I beg you, in fact.”

  Bellamy clicks her tongue. “Oh, no, no, Miss Delacruz. There’s some kind of mistake, I think. Your passport doesn’t say you’re from Mexico at all, I’m afraid.” She uses one finger to spin the booklet around and slide it closer to Valencia. “It says you’re from Ecuador.”

  Valencia’s eyes get wide and I swear it’s like fire is going to shoot out of them. “No! No! You can’t do that to me! Not Ecuador!” She goes crazy, tugging at her chains trying to jump up from the table. She spits and screams at Bellamy and indicates, several times, an impossible activity Bellamy should do with herself.