by Lisa McMann
Charlie looked at each one. “They’ve all got screens,” she said, “just like my bracelet.”
“And they all have the logo,” noted Mac. “I can see it better on these—it’s actually the letters T and G. But this device’s TG is inside a triangle, not a pentagon like Charlie’s.”
“Mine’s in between two lines,” said Maria.
They heard a click and turned to Kelly. Her bracelet was on her wrist.
Charlie gasped. “No!” she said, lunging at her. “Don’t put it on!”
Kelly reared back. “What the—? Calm down, Charlotte.” She held her arm out of reach. “Or do you think you’re the only one who gets to wear one?”
“No,” said Maria in a worried voice. “It’s because you might not be able to get it off.”
Kelly’s sneer faded. “Oh.” She lowered her arm and let Maria undo the clasp.
“It comes off,” said Maria with a sigh of relief. She held it up, and Kelly took it back.
“Lucky break,” said Charlie, narrowing her eyes at Kelly. “You don’t have a clue what you’re doing, so just stop messing with everything before you hurt yourself.” She was running out of patience. What she really wanted to do was take the bracelet away from Kelly, but Charlie thought the better of it when she pictured how that fight would go down. Maybe she could get it from her later.
Kelly sulked. “I’m getting a clue,” she said defiantly. But she held the device obediently in one hand and didn’t put it back on.
Crisis averted, Mac squinted at Kelly’s bracelet. “Huh. Your logo is in a square. I wonder what it means.”
“Maybe the people who made them like shapes,” Kelly said with a hint of sarcasm.
Charlie shook her head in annoyance and turned back to the safe. “Do you think there would be some kind of owner’s manual to help us figure out what these things do?”
“If there is, I bet they’d keep it in the safe with the devices,” said Mac. “And maybe we’ll find the deactivation code for yours.”
“Not a bad idea,” Charlie said. “Though I don’t think I want to take the thing off at this point.” She pointed her thumb at the soldiers. “Or ever. But let’s see what we can find.”
She pulled a second, larger box out of the safe, forgetting all about her previous concern with leaving fingerprints, and began to rifle through a bunch of files. Most of the folders had strange words she didn’t understand written on them, but then she saw something familiar: Project Chimera.
Charlie’s eyes widened. She snatched it up and started paging through the documents inside, but before she could find anything useful, one of the beefy soldiers groaned and stirred.
The kids froze, and then Mac, Maria, and Kelly silently turned to Charlie, eyes wide.
Charlie’s breath hitched. Somehow she had become the leader. She leaned to one side, peering at the soldiers. Kelly hadn’t done a very good job of tying up the slow guy. It looked like he could slip out of the ropes without a problem. “We need to get out of here,” Charlie whispered. “Before these losers wake up or the van comes back.”
The others nodded.
“Mac, take a quick look through those files to see if there’s anything useful.”
“Got it,” said Mac, rummaging through the rest of the second box.
Charlie turned to Maria. “Why don’t you and Kelly go outside and keep a lookout?”
Maria nodded.
Charlie shoved the Project Chimera file into Maria’s hand. “Take this and keep it hidden. I bet it’s got information about all the bracelets.”
“Good, because I’m keeping mine,” said Maria.
“Me too,” said Kelly.
Charlie looked alarmed. “But then they’ll come after you, too.”
“They’ve already been in my house, Charlie!” exclaimed Maria. “They know who we are, so we need to protect ourselves.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” muttered Charlie, pressing her temples and trying to think. “Okay, fine, take them—just go now and make sure nobody’s coming.”
Maria and Kelly took their bracelets and the file and ran to the exit as Charlie turned and knelt next to Mac and the safe. Mac had pulled everything out of the second box—mostly documents. “Find anything helpful?” she asked.
Mac yanked a sealed envelope out of the box of files and squinted at it. “This has the TG bracelet logo on the label,” he whispered, holding it out to Charlie. “See?”
Charlie looked. And then she gasped at the words next to it. Talos Global. “TG,” she said softly. “Talos Global.” Her heart thudded, and her mind whirled. She yanked the envelope from Mac’s hand and stared at it, not comprehending. Did these terrible people have something to do with her dad’s old job?
She glanced at the guards. Prowl was stirring now too.
“We should go,” said Mac, sounding worried.
“You go. I’ll be there in a sec.” Frantic, Charlie worked at the strip of packing tape that secured the envelope, trying to tear it open.
The first thug groaned. Mac hesitated, not wanting to leave Charlie alone. He rose and anxiously looked all around. “Come on, Chuck—we don’t have time for this! Take it and we can open it later.”
“Hang on,” said Charlie impatiently, finally ripping the thing open. She pulled out a stack of papers.
Frustrated, Mac darted across the width of the warehouse to the groaning soldier and tried to tighten the ropes around his wrists before he woke up.
Charlie scanned the cover page, her eyes immediately drawn to a list of five people who were cc’d on the contents. All the names were unfamiliar . . . except for the last one. Dr. Charles Wilde. “What the . . . ,” Charlie breathed. She felt sick.
“Charlie!” Mac shouted. “Behind you!”
Charlie looked up, but it was too late. Prowl’s arm stretched and bent around her throat, and his claws sank into her shoulder. She gasped and dropped the envelope as he lifted her in the air. The papers scattered.
Mac froze, watching Charlie in horror. But he had more things to worry about—the soldier whose ropes he was working on came to, and after a moment of confusion, he lunged for the boy. Mac shrieked and scrambled backward across the cement floor while the soldier tried to untangle himself.
With a look of sheer terror on his face, Mac pulled the bracelet from his pocket and held it in his shaking hand. With no other choice, he cringed and slapped it on his wrist and secured it, then began punching buttons like crazy.
Back by the safe, Charlie found herself dangling just above the floor and cursed under her breath for not listening to Mac. She swallowed hard and tried to stay calm as her wrist grew warm.
“That’s a nice bracelet,” Prowl purred in Charlie’s ear.
Charlie froze. “Thank you,” she said, hoping desperately that the right ability had turned on. Then she slammed her heels into Prowl’s knees and her elbow into his gut, wrenched free from his grasp, and turned to face him as he came toward her again. Finally remembering a move she’d learned at the Y, she grasped his outstretched arm with one hand, then yanked him close while smashing her other fist in his throat.
He struggled and choked.
She let go and spun around with her arm extended, and backhanded him with all her strength. The bracelet slammed hard into his jaw, and he skittered sideways across the floor. Charlie bent over, trying to catch her breath.
“Something’s happening over here,” Mac shakily called out from his spot near the two beefy soldiers. His voice pitched upward. “Something weird!” Next to him, the guy who had been tied up was peeling off the ropes like they were sweatbands and tossing them aside.
Charlie glanced at Mac and stopped short. From Mac’s bracelet, a line of shiny silver liquid emerged. As it sped up his arm and down the other, it spread and wrapped around him, then washed over the rest of his body.
“What’s going on?” cried Mac as the silver liquid crawled up the back of his neck and came around his head to form a helmet.
“Whoa,” said Charlie under her breath. But before she could answer him, Prowl pounced, knocking her flat. She rolled to her stomach and scrambled to her feet, arms raised to fight. He pounced again, and this time wrapped his limbs around her, his claws sinking in. She screamed in pain and tried to push him off. “Let go of me, you goon!” she cried. But he was stuck fast. She staggered blindly toward Mac, unable to see where she was going with Prowl’s body smashed against her face. Wrenching her neck forward with all her strength, she dug her forehead into Prowl’s chest to push him away, then slipped her hands to his chest and pushed farther until she caught a glimpse of the other male soldier, who was on his feet now and heading toward Mac. “Oh no, you don’t,” she said, and stumbled across the warehouse toward him. Gaining speed, she smashed Prowl into him, sending all three of them sprawling.
Prowl’s claws tore loose from Charlie’s skin. “Ahhh!” cried Charlie, coming to a rest on her side. She curled up into a ball and squeezed her eyes shut. The pain came in sickening waves.
“I’m coming to help!” screeched Mac, trying to run toward her. “I think so, anyway!” The shiny silver armor that had encased his body had immediately hardened like a metal shell, but it moved awkwardly with him.
The beefy man got up and lunged for Mac. Mac yelped in fear, swinging his arms, and connected with the side of the guy’s head. The impact threw Mac off balance, and he flopped onto his back as the soldier went flying into the wall. Mac struggled in the suit like a turtle that had been flipped onto its shell. He began rocking from side to side, trying to get up.
When the woman came to and got up, she lumbered over to Mac. Mac bent his legs and kicked at her, sending her into the wall as well and landing next to the man. He struggled again to get up, and this time managed to roll to his stomach and catch a glimpse of Charlie, still on the ground.
Charlie opened her eyes as Prowl gingerly got to his feet. She pushed past the pain and got up, ran forward, and plowed into him. His back arched, and he sunk his claws into her shoulders.
“Stop doing that!” Charlie yelled. She ripped one of Prowl’s clawed hands out of her, and then the other, and held him out, then shook him until his body flopped about like a rag doll. Even so, Prowl lashed out with his claws every chance he got.
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Charlie saw a robot—or maybe it was a knight in streamlined, modern-looking armor. He clunked over to Charlie’s side and punched Prowl in the chest with a metal fist.
Prowl sailed across the warehouse floor and didn’t move.
“Holy frijoles!” shouted Mac, sounding muffled. “Did you see that?”
Charlie stared at the robot knight, and then she narrowed her eyes and reached out to rap on his metallic arm. “Are you okay in there?”
Mac pawed at his face and lifted up a mirrored visor. His dark-brown eyes blinked. “I, uh . . . yeah. But did you see what I did?”
“I did,” said Charlie, wincing with pain. “That was extremely excellent.” She took a step back and looked at him up and down. “You have got to get a look at yourself though.”
“Yeah . . . pretty weird, I’ll bet. What if I stay like this?”
“Well,” Charlie said, moving gingerly, “we’ll deal with you in a minute. First let’s make sure these soldiers are down for the count. And then let’s get out of here.” She released a breath and ran to Prowl to check him over while Mac took the other two.
“How do you like my bracelet now, you big loser?” Charlie asked the unconscious Prowl. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked at the soldier’s face mask. Part of the fabric was ripped. “What is that?” she whispered, focusing in on the tear. She bent down. Poking out from it was a tuft of . . . fur.
She looked closer, certain she must be mistaken. And then impulsively she reached for the base of the mask and pulled it off the soldier’s head. She gasped.
Prowl had a human-shaped face and head, but instead of skin and hair, he was covered in black and gold spotted fur. A handful of long whiskers shot out from either side of his mouth. And his ears weren’t rounded at the top like a human’s—they came to a point, with long tufts of black fur shooting out. He was not just a man. He was . . . a leopard man.
Charlie stifled a scream, threw the mask to the ground, and ran back to Mac, traumatized and trying desperately to unsee Prowl’s animal face. “Come on, let’s go!” she cried, grabbing Mac’s arm and pulling him toward the door. But at the last second, despite the horror, she remembered the Talos Global envelope and the papers scattered all around. “Keep going,” she said to Mac, and dashed toward the safe.
“I can’t actually run very fast in this thing,” Mac said, making a clanging noise every time his arms brushed against his torso. “At least not until I figure out how to do it.”
“Just hurry! I’m right behind you.” Charlie knelt down by the safe and crawled under the computer table, quickly gathering the scattered papers and shoving them into the envelope, all the while telling herself that the leopard man wasn’t real. It had to be her imagination. Or maybe she was in shock. Or something.
She wasn’t about to look again to make sure. When she’d retrieved all the papers, she got up and tore after Mac.
As the two of them exited the building, they neglected to notice the computer screen that showed Charlie’s face, which flashed the words Identity Verified.
CHAPTER 42
A Growing Danger
Charlie needed time to process what she’d seen . . . or what she thought she’d seen. After all, it hadn’t been very light in the warehouse. Maybe the shadows made the soldier’s face only look like it had fur on it.
Instead of telling Mac about the leopard man, she shuddered and pushed it out of her thoughts, and instead she turned the attention to her friend. “A suit of armor?” said Charlie as they ran outside. “It’s not even actually that—it’s more like metal skin.”
Mac’s bracelet was fully accessible, since the silver liquid had flowed under the band and stayed tight against his body. He began pressing buttons. “Skin of armor,” he muttered, clunking along over the uneven ground. “That’s how it feels.” He tripped over a rusty old horseshoe and nearly fell into a cluster of jumping cholla cacti.
“Yikes!” he said as he stopped himself just in time. And then he started laughing when he realized this was the one time in his life when he would have been protected from the nasty things. “Hey,” he said, “this armor’s going to come in handy in more ways than one.”
Charlie spotted Kelly and Maria. The sight of them gave Charlie a massive sense of relief—at least they looked normal. She pointed them out to Mac and headed their way. “This way, Clunky.”
Mac followed, still pressing buttons on his device. Suddenly the metallic skin of armor shimmered, turned to liquid, and poured itself swiftly into Mac’s device. In a matter of seconds it was gone.
“Wow!” Charlie and Mac said together.
“I have no idea how that happened,” Mac said as he ran next to Charlie.
“It’ll be interesting to figure it out,” Charlie said, gripping the envelope, “but we’ve got other stuff to worry about at the moment.” They reached Maria and Kelly.
“What was up with that shiny suit, Mac?” exclaimed Maria, handing the file to Charlie. “Did you use your bracelet?”
“Yeah,” said Mac. “Crazy, isn’t it? But I knocked a couple of soldiers out.”
“Sweet!” said Maria. “Your bracelet acts completely differently from Charlie’s.”
Kelly glanced at her bracelet warily, then slipped it into her pocket.
Charlie nodded, then pointed the way out, anxious to get away. “Let’s go. Fast.”
“Hang on,” said Mac, pulling out his inhaler and muttering, “you people and your running.” He used it, then took a few breaths. “Okay, that’s going to have to do,” he said.
“My house, right?” asked Maria anxiously. “I want to make sure everything’s okay there.” They started moving
.
“Definitely,” said Charlie.
“That was all really scary,” said Maria. “Are you two all right?”
“I will be,” said Charlie. She turned her focus to her body, which hurt almost everywhere, but she knew it was just a matter of time before she’d feel better. She checked her bracelet and saw the healing starfish was lit up. That was great, but that didn’t get rid of the blood and rips in her shirt from all the claws she’d encountered. She untied her sweatshirt and put it back on as they ran. Then she glanced at Mac, worried about how he was holding up now that they were out of danger. She couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like to get abducted. “Yeah, Mac,” she said when he didn’t reply to Maria. “How are you doing?”
“I’m . . . okay,” Mac said, but the realization of everything that had happened was beginning to hit him. “Should we call the police?” he asked uncertainly. He looked at Charlie.
“I wanted to,” piped up Kelly, “but Charlie wouldn’t let me.”
Charlie dropped her gaze. She knew if they did that, word would get out about her abilities. “Maybe we should,” she said in a quiet voice.
“I don’t think so,” argued Maria. “Charlie would be exposed. If those thugs are after the bracelet, just think of all the others who would want to get their greedy hands on it if they knew about it. Some people would love to turn you into their experiment.” She looked plaintively at Mac. “Unless you really want to. I mean, you’re the one they kidnapped.”
Mac contemplated while trying to keep up with the three athletes, and they all kept an eye out for the white van or anyone trying to follow them from the warehouse. After a few minutes Mac spoke up. “If they are soldiers, wouldn’t the police believe them over a bunch of kids? I don’t think we should call them. At least not yet.”
Charlie looked at him. “Are you sure?”
Mac nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Not even about your stolen iPad and phone? Won’t your parents be mad?”
Mac began wheezing a little as they picked up the pace, and he spoke in short bursts, taking time to breathe in between. “I’ve almost . . . got enough saved up . . . for a new tablet. Was going to buy one anyway. A couple more . . . jailbreaks . . . and I’ll be there. I’ll get a new phone . . . for my birthday next month. Will have to go without until then.” He paused. “Glad I backed up to the cloud yesterday.”
