by Amy Hopkins
Penny gave him a dry look. “You’ve got coffee in your pocket again, don’t you?”
“Coffee?” Amelia looked from Penny to Cisco, face scrunched up in confusion. “How do you hide coffee in a pocket?”
Grinning sheepishly, Cisco pulled out a bag of chocolate-coated coffee beans. He dangled it over Boot’s head as he asked Penny if he could give some to the serpent.
“You’re not leaving me much choice, are you?” Penny sighed and gave him a nod.
Boots frolicked happily for a moment, then opened her jaws wide so he could drop one in.
“Girl, you better put a stop to that before you have kids.” Amelia shrugged off the look of horror Penny shot her way. She waved her hands, shooing them out. “Go! Go serenade each other against a backdrop of water nymphs or whatever it is you two do when you’re together these days.” Once she’d hustled them all out, she shut the door firmly behind them then yanked it back open. “If you love me, bring me home a coffee.”
This time when the door thudded shut, it stayed closed.
Cisco waited for Boots to climb onto his shoulders before setting off down the hall. “Did they make any progress last night?”
Amelia and Red had spent the previous night’s full moon sequestered in one of the safety rooms beneath the Academy. The sprawling labyrinth below had even escaped Cisco’s knowledge of the building but had been judged by the dean to be the perfect place to study Red’s changes.
Every month, Red, Dean March, Agent Crenel, and a squad of FBI researchers—and Trevor, who was in training to join them—had gathered in the dungeon-like rooms to watch and observe.
When Amelia had insisted on going with them, Penny had worried at first. Not for her safety, Red had already shown he was capable of coherent thought in wolf form by the second change—but for her relationship. Seeing her boyfriend sprout fur and claws had shaken Amelia the first couple of times, but now, several months later, she’d grown rather accepting of his condition.
“They made a new discovery last night,” Penny informed him. She knew Cisco wouldn’t have heard yet as Red normally spent the day after the full moon gorging on food in between naps.
“Oh?” Cisco pushed the Academy door open and they stepped into the morning sunlight together. “A cure?”
“No.” Penny held back a bubble of laughter. “Apparently, Amelia has some kind of connection with him in wolf form.”
“How so?” Cisco frowned.
“Every time she says the word ‘sit,’ his ass drops to the floor like a ton of bricks.” Penny let the giggles loose. “She said he was getting so furious, but she just kept telling him to do stuff. He’d be sniffing, scratching, anything. He’d just do it.”
Cisco chuckled at his friend’s plight. “Oh man, Crenel would have loved to have been there to see that!”
“He wasn’t?” Penny asked. Amelia had only mentioned that Trevor wasn’t there.
“He was called away to see his mom.” Cisco’s voice dropped to a soft note. “My mom said it sounded urgent.”
“Oh.” Penny’s heart sank. She hated the thought of Crenel having to deal with personal grief.
“Oh. Did Amelia mention if Trevor was there?” Cisco’s sudden change of topic was accompanied by a hint of concern in his voice. “I haven’t seen him around for days.”
“He wasn’t.” Penny resolved to hunt the missing genius down by nightfall. “But maybe Tony’s seen him? He might have gone into the cafe to check out that game again.”
When they arrived, the coffee shop was a little busier than usual. Violet had a line five people deep, and Tony was frantically pushing out lattes and cappuccinos, though he took the time to give Penny and Cisco a quick grin.
“The usual, guys?” he called. “On the house. You might have to wait a bit, though.”
“Sure.” Penny gave him a distracted wave, heading over to the arcade machine. The machine itself looked identical to the one taken away, right down to the glowing “Polybius” sign across the top. However, instead of the pixelated spaceship, the screen now showed imagery of a small ball hopping over obstacles toward a gaping doorway at the end of the platform.
“Damn,” Cisco cursed. “I like space shooters. I really suck at platformers.” He plucked a coin from his pocket and stepped forward but stopped when Penny grabbed his arm.
“Seriously?” she asked. “You know Trevor thinks these things are dangerous.”
Penny watched until the end of the demo game. She wanted to see if Trevor had been in and played it again. She watched as the bouncing ball jumped over a row of spikes, onto a moving platform over a wide chasm, then toward the ledge on the other side. The ball missed, plummeting into oblivion.
Blip, blip, beeeep. The simplistic tune of the eighties-style arcade game signaled the imaginary player’s demise and the screen flicked to darkness. A peppy tune struck up as the credits began to roll.
1. pennyits trevor … 92,012
2. ithinkifoundthem … 77,369
3. dontworry but … 72,568
3. ifimnotback in3wks … 62,751
4. send help … 62, 461
5. Maximillian Bucks … 50,000
6. Space Invader … 42,000
7. Win Ner … 40,000
8. Gr8 Gamer … 30,000
Penny’s stomach dropped. “Did you see that?” she whispered to Cisco.
“Yeah,” he managed, his voice hoarse. “That is the biggest cake I’ve ever seen!”
She turned to him in disbelief. “Cisco!”
He blinked at the urgency in her voice. “What? That’s what you were talking about, right?”
Penny had her phone out before he’d finished speaking. She pulled up Crenel’s name and pressed dial, then cursed as it bumped directly to voicemail. “Fuck!” She gave Cisco a very quick explanation of what she’d seen. “What a goddamn time for Crenel to be away!” She knew that whatever the agent was going through personally, Trevor’s safety would be his priority
“He said ‘don’t worry,’” Cisco pointed out. “Maybe we should just hang back a bit, let him handle it.”
“Cisco?” Penny waited for the penny to drop. It didn’t. “This is Trevor. Not Red, or Clive, or Jason. Trevor.”
“Oh. Right.” Cisco grabbed his own phone. “I’ll try Dean March,” he offered.
Call me. Super urgent emergency. Penny tapped send on the text message to Crenel, then clicked through to her camera. When the credits rolled again, she snapped a picture. “Let’s get back to the Academy,” she suggested when Cisco had rattled off a voice message to the dean. “He said someone was working with him. We need to find out who.”
Cisco didn’t falter. He ended one call and began another. “Mom? Yeah, look, we’ve got a bit of a situation. No, we need Agent Crenel, but he’s not answering, and neither is Dean—” he stopped to listen a moment. “Oh. Damn. No, we can handle it. Thanks, Mom. You too.”
Penny didn’t wait until his phone was away before asking what Madera had told him. “What did she say?”
Cisco grimaced. “Before they left, they asked not to be contacted. Guess we’re on our own.”
Penny sighed. “Then we’d better come up with a plan. We said we’d be here for Trevor if he needed us. Well, now he does.” She was headed out the door of the coffee shop when her phone rang. Despite her confidence just moments ago, she was relieved he had called back so fast. “Thank God.”
“Penny? What’s wrong?” The agent’s voice was terse and Penny was hit with guilt for interrupting him at such a sensitive time.
“Agent Crenel? I’m so sorry. Is your mother okay?” If he says no, maybe he can put me in touch with DeLouise, she decided. Though Trevor had said he was fine, she wasn’t about to risk the life of her friend, even if he’d be embarrassed if it turned out she’d called in the entire bureau as backup for nothing.
“Well, she’s close to the end. Just a few minutes to go, but that’s fine. We’ve planned a quick celebration for afterward, just tacos a
nd a few drinks. Nothing that can’t be interrupted.” Crenel covered the phone, but it didn’t quite muffle his voice. “Not now, damn it. I’m on a call. Yes, I know she’s close, but is it really the end of the world if I miss it?”
“Uh, should I call back in a few?” she asked, thrown by Crenel’s talk of celebrating his mother’s demise. The agent’s brisk demeanor in the face of apparent tragedy was unexpected, to say the least. “I mean, I’m really, really sorry about your mum, but—”
“Sorry?” Crenel barked. “What for?”
Geez, he really didn’t like his mum, did he? “Look,” Penny gave up, her urgency over Trevor overriding her concern for the agent’s apparently unaffected feelings. “I know this is a terrible time for it, but I just found a really cryptic message Trevor left behind. It sounds like he’s in danger, Crenel, and he needs our help.”
“I’ll leave right now.” He snapped something else, but this time covered the phone well enough that Penny couldn’t make it out. “Jessica and I are two and a half hours away. I’ll call you back as soon as we’re in the car.”
Rather than walk back to the Academy, Cisco called a cab, letting Penny grill the staff while he waited outside to flag it down.
“Three or four days?” Penny groaned. “You can’t be any more specific than that?”
Tony shook his head slowly, then froze. “Wait. Maybe I can. Violet, wasn’t he playing that game when those weirdos in suits came to swap the change box over?” He turned to Penny. “They come in on Wednesdays.”
Violet pursed her lips, thinking. Then her eyes lit up. “That’s right! He left just after them. He hadn’t even touched his quarter-shot-soy-caramel-frappucino.”
Tony stared at her. “You remember that god-awful chain of coffee combinations, but not what day it was?”
Violet shrugged, the dishcloth squeaking as she rubbed the inside of a glass. “I’m a barista, Tony. Not a walking calendar.”
Once Penny was sure they couldn’t offer any more information, she left to wait with Cisco. “Tony said he’ll email us the security footage from the last few days, but he and Violet are pretty sure he hasn’t been in since Wednesday.”
Crenel phoned back just as they pulled into the parking lot of the old building.
“Tell me everything you have,” Crenel barked, not bothering to say hello.
“All I know is that Trevor is missing,” Penny told him quickly. “The only lead we have is a badly-coded message left on the high scoreboard of an arcade game.”
“What? Dammit, I should have listened to the boy.” Crenel paused. Then, quieter, “If you say I told you so, Jessica, I swear to God…”
“Crenel?” Penny pulled the agent’s attention back to their conversation. “Look, the message said he had a lead. He told us not to worry for a couple of weeks, but that’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s Trevor.”
“I get your meaning, don’t worry.” Crenel hissed air through his teeth. “Fool boy. He should have kept you in the loop.”
“That’s our fault, too,” Penny protested. “He’s never worked a real case before, not in the field. We should have been checking in more frequently.”
“Didn’t he say something about outside help?” Crenel asked. “Let’s chase that person down. They might know what lead he was chasing.”
Penny’s heart fell. She had assumed the agent would know who Trevor had been working with. “About that,” she told him. “He left the message on the machine Wednesday, and he left just after the company came to swap over the box of cash. I think he was trying to follow them.”
“I should never have let him get involved in this,” Crenel grumbled. “Should have believed him when he said it was real.”
“I was the one who convinced you to let him do it,” Penny pointed out. “But really, do you think he would have dropped it if you’d said no?”
“Smartass.” The agent fell silent. “Look, you kids are killing us in the field, and you know Trevor better than anyone at the bureau. Will you take this on? You’ve got a better chance of finding him than anyone I have.”
“Of course,” Penny agreed quickly. “Officially, right? I don’t know what equipment we’ll need, but when we do, I don’t want to be held up with requisitions.”
“I’ll tell everyone involved that you have access to the lot, requests be damned.” Penny waited while he had another muffled conversation, probably with the dean. “You find him, Penny. Find him fast.”
Chapter Twelve
Penny spent the next hours frantically researching. When Crenel arrived back at the Academy, Penny briefed him on what she had learned, both about Trevor’s last movements and the case itself.
“Polybius was an urban legend from the eighties,” she began. “Basically, a game released by a non-existent company with dubious origins. Few people claimed to have seen or played it. All the accounts are second hand, but not long after people started talking about the game itself, a second rumor started.”
She slid a sheet of paper toward Agent Crenel and Dean March. “This is the timeline. Within weeks of the original rumors cropping up, gamers were claiming that Polybius was, in fact, released as a kind of mind control or social experiment by the US government. The purpose was unclear, but most stories agree it was a very cloak and dagger, area 51-styled operation designed to harvest information about those who played it.”
“I’ve made some calls,” Crenel told her. “I can assure you, this was never a government project. It just doesn’t exist.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Penny nodded at Boots, who had accompanied her to the meeting. “It’s real now.”
Crenel hissed a breath through his teeth. “Goddamn it. Gods and ghosts? Sure. They make sense to me. But all this technological myth is just bullshit.”
“I didn’t hear you say that about the million-dollar chain letter, dear,” Dean March cut in smoothly.
“That’s different!” Crenel snapped. “Chain letters have been around for centuries. Basic superstition. This? This is insane.”
“You mean you’re too old to understand it, and you wish it would go away and stop bothering you,” she replied, smiling.
Crenel grumbled something under his breath. “So, what do we know about the machines?”
It was Penny’s turn to curse. “Fuck-all. Sorry, Dean March.”
“Not a bother, dear. The circumstances warrant a relaxation of that particular rule.” She eyeballed her husband. “For some of us, anyway.”
Penny continued, “Tony said the machines at his café are serviced weekly. The goons come in, empty the money, and go. Every now and then, they remove the whole machine. When that happens, it appears again overnight.”
“Appears?” Crenel asked skeptically.
Penny nodded. “Literally. Tony checked his security footage. The corner it sits in is empty at a minute to midnight, and bam, there it is as soon as the date clicks over.”
“And he didn’t think to ask where it bloody came from?” Crenel ignored the dean’s tsk.
“He did get some information,” Penny continued. “Business name, postal address. I have a feeling it’ll turn out to be fake, though. If these really are spooks—the urban legend version of them, anyway—they wouldn’t exactly go giving out the address of their headquarters, would they?”
“They might have a front in case of inquiries,” Crenel mused. “If it’s manned, it may lead us to the organization itself. We can only hope.”
“Anyway, Red is helping me track down what little information we have.” Penny glanced at her notepad. “Cisco is canvassing the businesses around town to try and find the other machines. The next machine service at the café isn’t until Wednesday. I really hope we don’t have to wait until then to find anything concrete.”
“You’re sure he said he was okay?” Crenel asked.
Penny shrugged. “You saw his message yourself. But just because he said he’s fine, that doesn’t mean he is.”
Crenel opened his cigarettes and
plucked one out, only to scowl at his wife as she deftly removed it from his fingers. “Not in here, dear.”
“What’s with the ‘three weeks’?” Crenel asked, diverting his attention back to Penny.
All Penny could do was shrug. “Beats me.”
Crenel frowned. “I also saw a million dollars in that message. What if it was a ransom demand?”
Dean March rolled her eyes behind him. “Penny has already explained that was a placeholder entry. It was there before Trevor’s disappearance.”
“Right.” The agent seemed to take it as a personal affront that the situation was so far out of his area of expertise, and that a bunch of twenty-somethings were already so far ahead in understanding that he couldn’t seem to catch up. “Just keep me in the loop, okay? But if we do need a suitcase full of cash, be aware that’ll take some time—and some maneuvering—to procure.”
“Speaking of procurement, where is the machine now?” Penny had insisted on the arcade game being brought in for testing, and to keep it away from any other unlucky victims of whatever was going on.
Crenel looked at his phone. “GPS says they should arrive in fifteen. They’ll do their own tests on it in the Academy lab. They probably won’t let you near it until they’re done. Don’t wanna get a student blown up or anything.”
“Will you let me know as soon as I can access it?” Penny asked pensively. She’d have liked to be the first person to examine it, if only to reassure herself that Trevor’s odd message hadn’t been changed.
“I’ll make sure of it.” Dean March pressed a hand on Penny’s arm. “Don’t worry, Penny. We know he’s your friend. You will have full access to every facet of this investigation.”
“Oh, will she now?” Crenel asked, looking down at his wife.
“Will she not?” The dean’s voice held a note of daring.
Crenel snorted. “Of course she will, she’s running the damn thing. But that’s my call, not yours, woman.”
The dean simply cocked an eyebrow at her husband, but it was enough to deflate his belligerent posture.
“Thanks, Dean. Agent Crenel.” Penny turned to leave but paused before she reached the door. “Did your mother…pass?”
