EQUILIBRIUM - BK 2 Portal Chronicles

by Imogen Rose

  “Who do you think is behind all this?” Harry asked.

  I felt sorry for him. He must be so totally confused. At least Kellan and I knew some of the background. Poor Harry was totally in the dark, I didn’t have the energy to explain it all to him.

  “Your parents have called in the police and the FBI. They’re investigating it.” Kevin replied. “It’s got to be someone with connection to Ames, someone who was able to recode the portal.”

  “But, why? What do they want?” I asked. Why take us? They had control of the portal.”

  “Well, there was no way we were going to let them keep control. I can hack into their code, I just haven’t had the time to do so. You guys are the leverage they need to be allowed to keep control.”

  “They? Who?” Kellan mused.

  “I really don’t know,” Kevin replied resignedly.

  We were exhausted by it all. I wondered if this journey would ever end. When it did end, would they try to kill us? I rested my head on Kellan’s shoulders listening to the hum of the engine. We drove and drove, for hours. None of us had watches, so we couldn’t tell for how long, but it seemed like the whole night. In addition to being famished and dehydrated, I desperately needed to use the toilet. I tried to doze, but was too stressed. No one slept, we all just sat in silence, waiting. Hours and hours went by with just a couple of short stops for gas I guessed.

  Suddenly, the van came to a sharp halt and the comforting hum of the engine stopped dead. I could hear a lot of shouting outside and car doors slamming. The van door opened and we were blinded by the sun, our eyes had grown so used to the dark. I felt sick to my stomach with anxiety, but anger was building up inside me. Who dared to do this! I could feel Kellan’s arm around me, almost holding me back as I moved toward the light. I flinched at the feeling of pins and needles from my overly-rested legs.

  “Come on out and get into the house,” a voice commanded.

  “No,” I started, but a hand went over my mouth, Kellan’s.

  “Shrimp, shush. Don’t!” he whispered right into my ear. “We’ll get them when they least suspect it. No point in angering them right now. We don’t even know how many there are.”

  “No talking!” the voice boomed.

  Kellan was right. No point doing anything until we knew exactly what we were dealing with. I followed the others down the dirt path into a wooden cottage.

  “Where are the other two?” another voice demanded.

  We were inside the cottage now. There were three of them inside with us. I was sure that I had seen at least another one outside.

  “You,” said one of them nudging Kevin so he almost fell backward. “Where are the other two, the small kid and the boy?”

  “I don’t know,” Kevin said, feeling sure that he was in for a beating.

  “You don’t know?” the big guy–who’d taken us from my house–snarled.

  “No…,” Kevin replied, knowing what was coming.

  The man’s fist was in Kevin’s stomach before he’d finished his sentence. I flew at the man and got him sharply in the belly before Kellan grabbed me. The other dark-haired smaller man got hold of the big guy and held him back.

  “Dan, don’t! We were told not to hurt anyone,” he hissed.

  “Yes, but two are missing! Did they make a run for it? We’re in so much trouble,” Dan retorted. “Search the grounds.”

  He barked his instructions into his cell, to relay the information to the man outside, no doubt. The man, Dan, then got a call and I tried to listen in. I couldn’t hear a thing, but when the call was over, Dan turned to us and smiled.

  I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He just stood there and sneered at us. The other two men in the room just stood looking at us, hardly blinking. I tried to memorize their looks, just so I would be able to properly describe them. The one who had stopped Dan from beating Kevin up was smaller than Dan, maybe five-eleven. He had brown eyes and dark brown, spiked greasy-looking hair. There was nothing particularly memorable about his features, he was middle-aged, maybe even old–very plain and uninteresting. The guy next to him was younger, much shorter, about five-five. He had brown hair as well, but a cropped army-style. I couldn’t make out his eye color from where I was standing, but they looked light. Dan, the big guy, was just a big ogre, scary-looking with crazy, shifty, bluish eyes. No hair on his head, but plenty popping out underneath his arms–gross–the tank was not a good look for him. He was probably trying to show off his enormous biceps.

  I heard a car drive up and stop right outside the front door. Dan sprang into action. He leapt outside and the two men in the room positioned themselves– one each behind Harry and Kellan–standing close enough to grab us. Then Dan returned with Dr. Sen.

  “I just knew it!” I spat at him.

  “Shut up, Arizona, if you know what’s best for you,” he said, his mouth turned in a smirk.

  I could feel Kellan squeezing my hand, trying to shut me up, no doubt.

  “Why have you brought us here?” Harry asked.

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Raj responded curtly. “That’s between your parents and me. I haven’t brought you here to harm you in any way, though. Consider yourselves as my guests until I get my little issue sorted out with your parents. Who are you?” he asked, looking directly at Kevin.

  “I’m Kevin Sanderson,” Kevin replied carefully, trying to place the small, non-descript man in front of him.

  “And you are connected to these kids, how?” Raj pouted.

  “I’m a family friend. A friend of Arizona’s dad,” Kevin lied, deciding that it was best that he kept the Ames connection to himself.

  Phew! I breathed a sigh of relief, happy that Dr. Sanderson hadn’t divulged any more. My relief was short lived.

  “Dan, search him,” Raj demanded. He wasn’t just going to take this man’s word for it. He could be a cop!

  Now I was petrified again, my stomach in knots. I watched Dr. Sanderson raise his arms and Dan pat him down roughly. Dan extracted Kevin’s wallet from his pocket and handed it to Dr. Sen. That’s it–trouble.

  Raj went through the wallet carefully. It contained just the usual stuff–credit cards, cash, and a driver’s license. It was a California license.

  “You from California?”

  “Yes,” Kevin said, desperately trying to think up a likely story. He was blanking.

  “How do you know the Darley family?” Raj asked.

  “Darley?” Kevin asked, buying time.

  “Stevens?” Raj was getting very annoyed now. It was clear to him that this man was somehow connected to Olivia. But how? He had never heard Erica mention him.

  I could see that Kevin was desperate; sweat drops were forming above his brows. I spoke up. “Kevin’s my dad’s friend. He lives in California.” I could feel Harry’s puzzlement.

  “Nonsense,” said Raj. “I’m going to ask you again. How do you know Arizona’s family?”

  “He’s the idiot who is supposed to be in charge of the portal at this end,” said a new voice–a female voice.

  I turned to the door where the voice was coming from. A woman had just come in to the room. She was auburn-haired, short-blunt bob, five-eightish, very plain, probably in her forties.

  Raj Sen smiled at the new arrival. “Ah, Sophie. Glad you made it. So, who exactly is he?”

  “Dr. Kevin Sanderson,” she replied. “He’s in charge of the portal at this end. Or he’s supposed to be,” she added with a smirk.

  I didn’t like her at all.

  “And what are you doing here with the kids, Dr. Sanderson?” Raj continued.

  “Arizona contacted me at Ames. So I came up to see if I could help her,” Kevin replied looking unhappy.

  “Well, you can’t!” Raj retorted. This was another unexpected complication, but not a serious one. The more serious complication was the two kids who had gone missing. “Who was the boy who went missing with Ella?” he asked, looking around for an answer. “W
e need to find them for their own safety,” he added.

  For their own safety, I silently snorted to myself. I don’t think so. I was so relieved that Ella was out of harm’s way. I had every confidence that David would bring her back home safely.

  “That was my son, he came up with me,” Kevin replied, hoping that would suffice as an explanation.

  “Your son?” Raj said skeptically. “Where did he run off to?”

  “Hopefully to the nearest police station,” Kevin said, hoping to alarm Raj.

  “Hmmmm, well there’s nothing around here for miles and he’s got Ella with him. Dan, ask the others to keep looking for them. However, we should head to the next location, just in case the boy and Ella made it and the cops have been alerted.”

  “Okay,” Dan said, wondering where the next location was. Even this location had not been planned! It was just an empty cottage in the middle of nowhere. “Get back in the van,” he barked.

  I was so tired and I needed to use the restroom. I looked over to the woman, Sophie, and asked, “Can we all use the restroom before we go, and maybe get something to drink and food?”

  She looked over to Raj and nodded, “Yes, one at a time and hurry up.”

  We finished what we had to do and scrambled back into the van with a water bottle each, and were back on the road. I climbed back into Kellan’s arms and rested my head on his chest. It felt so good to be close to him again.

  “You okay, Shrimp?” he whispered into my ear.

  “I’m just happy to be with you. I hated being away from you, not knowing if you were dead or alive. It was an awful feeling,” I whispered back. “It’s so good to just lie here on you.”

  “I hated being away from you as well. I’m so grateful to David for bringing me to see you. This must be so hard for him. He loves you, you know,” he added.

  “I know,” I replied. “He’s such a nice guy.”

  “What are we going to do?” Harry asked. “We have to have a plan.”

  “You’re right.” Kevin replied. “I think they just mean to keep us until they can get what they want–total control of the portal. Once they have that, they’ll return us. Perhaps we should wait it out?”

  “And let that insane man take control of the portal? No, that’s not an option. We have to stop him,” I replied angrily. “What’s he expecting Mom to do anyway? Get him a job at Ames?”

  “I wonder,” murmured Kellan. “I bet he wants the blueprints.”

  “The blueprints? Of the portal? Why?” I asked perplexed.

  “So he can sell them,” Kevin replied. “He could make a lot of money.”

  “Well, we can’t let him do that, can we? We need to stop him,” I said emphatically.

  “How do you suggest we do that?” Kevin asked.

  “I don’t know. I need to think. We all need to think!” I drank some more of the water that Sophie had given us. It tasted a bit funny, like it was flavored. I was starting to feel very heavy-headed; I could barely keep my eyelids open. I heard heavy snoring sounds coming from Kevin.

  “Kellan, did your water taste funny?” He didn’t reply, his was breathing very deeply–he was asleep. Not just asleep, asleep-asleep. We’d been drugged, again, I thought to myself as my mind blanked.

  ~

  Raj Sen sighed. He wondered why there were always complications. Why, just once, could things not just go his way? He watched the van in front of him, the van with the kids. Well, it was supposed to be only kids. However, he seemed to have added an adult. Not good. Not good at all, he agitated to himself. He glanced over at the man beside him, the driver. His name was Dan. Sophie’s brother-in-law. He was a large man, almost twice Raj’s size. He didn’t say much, but seemed to obey orders without questions. Not that surprising, he was paying him enough.

  Raj could feel Sophie’s eyes glaring him down from the back. She was very unhappy with the turn of events and totally unable to hide her displeasure. This was supposed to have been much simpler. Driving about, holding kids captive in the back of a van had not been part of the plan.

  No, the plan had been simple. Arizona was merely a test to see if the portal worked and to teach Olivia a lesson–Raj Sen could not be messed with. Sophie’s mission had simply been to bring Arizona through and return her home to her father, her real father–nothing wrong with that. In fact, he was convinced that he was doing the right thing for Arizona. Not that he really cared. Then Sophie was to simply come back through the portal and collect her share of money from the blueprint sale. Raj had borrowed Ella and Harry for leverage to get the portal blueprints. The plan had been to keep them overnight while Olivia and Larry got the message in Kellan’s ring, gave him the blueprints and then he would have returned them. The plan had been so simple. What on earth had gone wrong? He had opted for a ring, a tight one at that, so they definitely would get the message. No chance of it flying off like a bit of paper might have. However, neither Olivia nor Larry had contacted him and the next thing he knew, FBI was swarming Mountain View. What went wrong? Had they not found Kellan? Had they not worked out that the message was in the ring? It was fairly obvious. In response to the FBI circus, Raj had been forced to hurriedly transport the two sleeping children from the basement of Grayson’s weekend cottage to Ames. When the FBI arrived at Ames, he had been trapped, with nowhere to go. So, he had brought them through the portal. It had been a haphazard, hurried decision. Sophie had unhappily driven the kids up to Princeton and dumped them at the Steven’s house while they worked out what they were going to do next. They still hadn’t worked it out, but had decided it was better to keep the children with them until they worked out a way to get the blueprints. Dumping them at Princeton had been stupid–they could have run away. They were lucky that they were still there when they had gone back for them.

  They had lost Ella–that was bad. Without her, Olivia would never hand over the blueprints. What a mess! Raj could see his prosperous future vanish. However, on the bright side, Olivia didn’t yet know, so Ella could still be used as leverage. And they did still have Harry and Arizona.

  “Sophie, what do you know about Dr. Sanderson?” Raj asked.

  “Just what I learned when I hacked into his computer. He was put in charge of controlling the portal at this end. He’s been doing that for some time, eight years, I think. He actually works full time on a completely different project at Ames. The portal seems to be an extracurricular, but related activity. It’s not on the Ames main project list,” Sophie responded. “Raj, we are going to let them all go, aren’t we? This was never part of the plan. We should have been done with this by now.”

  “How long are you going to need the rest of the guys for?” Dan asked. He wasn’t entirely comfortable having them around. But they needed them for as long they were driving about with the kids and Kevin.

  Raj closed his eyes. With all the confusion he had not had time to postulate another plan. The target remained the same. He needed the blueprints. They had nowhere to go. At least the kids would be out by now, he had put a hefty dose of long-term sedative in their drinks. They would be able to drive uninterrupted for a long time.

  Olivia knew that Agent Adams wouldn’t be pleased when she was told that Kellan’s ring had already been taken off. It probably would have been better to wait and let the FBI experts remove the ring from his finger. However, they didn’t have the time or patience to wait. David and Kellan both wanted to head over to take care of Arizona. So, Olivia had asked the nurse for lubricant and pried the ring off Kellan’s finger herself, leaving his swollen finger red and raw. She looked down at the ring glistening in the palm of her hand and wondered if it was indeed some kind of message. She had given it a thorough exam, as had Rupert and Larry. There was no obvious message, no inscription. It had to be a chip of some sort. That’s if it even was a message.

  “Dr. Darley, is that the ring?” Claire Adams asked, as she walked into the hospital room and observed Olivia studying it carefully.

  Olivia nodded, hold
ing it out for the agent.

  “I thought that our team was going to extract it?” Claire remarked.

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that. Kellan wanted to leave, so I did it myself. I used lubricant, so I’m fairly sure I didn’t damage it in any way. There is no inscription. Microchip?”

  Claire nodded. The ring looked undamaged. “I’ll have the lab take a look right away and let you know if we find anything. Where did Kellan go? Is he feeling better?”

  Olivia nodded. “Yes, much better.”

  Claire’s phone rang, saving Olivia from the where question. Claire breathed a sigh of relief. Simla Sen and Justin Weeks had been found. They’d been taken down to the local station. “I’ll be there in ten,” Claire said and hung up. She looked over at Olivia, Rupert and Larry and nodded. “I’m going to have this analyzed right away and will give you a call as soon as I know anything.”

  ~

  Claire drove over to the station as fast as she could. Erica Sen and Grayson Weeks had been notified and were meeting her there. There still were no signs of Simla’s father, Raj Sen. The kids had apparently been picked up by Shiver Lake, as they seemed to call it around here.

  She recognized detectives Mason and Pinsky waiting for her outside the station entrance. “So, what do we have?” she asked them with a friendly smile.

  Sally relaxed. She was still slightly on edge in front of the FBI agents, but Agent Adams was smiling. She got right to the point, though. “We found the kids, Justin Weeks and Simla Sen, messing about on Justin’s bike by the lake. We’ve separated them and now their respective parents are waiting with them. Who do you want to start with?”

  “Justin Weeks,” Claire replied. “It was his hockey stick that had been described in the place where Arizona and Kellan had been kept.”

  Claire studied the boy across the table from her. He was very handsome, just like his father who was sitting next to him. There was one big difference, though. The son did not exude the same serene, calming aura that his father did. The boy was in fact the opposite. He sat staring at Claire with a defiant, unhelpful glare, his lips turned into a sour line. Claire was not fond of teenagers at the best of times; this was going to be particularly trying.