He kissed Cassie on the cheek. “You’re a genius. You’re a freakin’ genius.”
He started to run to the front door, and Cassie yelled, “Where are you going? It’s after midnight!”
Matthew opened the door and then turned and said, “Cassie, you’re the best, and thank you for everything, but I know where the charm is, and I need to go see the only person that can help me get it.”
A giant smile lit up Matthew’s face as he rushed down the front porch steps to his waiting car. Cassie watched him from the front door as he sped off into the night. She couldn’t get much sleep as she pondered what Matthew had told her. While she still struggled with the fact that she had had a part in the future enslavement of the human race, she was also happy that she had helped Matthew. She would help him again on Saturday morning.
Matthew was breaking most of the posted speed limits as he came barreling into a parking lot across from an apartment building that housed the only person that could help him get the charm.
He ran up to the door and pounded on it, knock after knock, until he heard someone stirring in the background. Finally it swung open, and there stood Cameron Landrum. “What the hell are you doing? I was actually asleep.”
Matthew rushed past him into the apartment. “Well, it’s time to get up. You have to help me save someone’s life.”
Chapter 17
HIT THE ROAD
“So, you’re telling me that the weird arrow stone my great-great-grandfather had contains some kind of mineral that can save your little brother’s life? I didn’t even know he was sick.”
Matthew replied, “I know, he looks so healthy, but he has this underlying disease. The mineral in that stone can cure him.”
“How did you find out about this?” Cameron asked.
Matthew had thought up this whole story about Steven just a few minutes before he’d arrived at Cameron’s apartment. In the rush to find the charm, the whole backstory for why he needed it hadn’t been discussed in the mission briefings. In a pinch, the idea that Cameron’s great-great-grandfather’s stone could save the life of a young boy seemed like the way to go.
“The stone you described at the house earlier is just like the stone that a doctor in Houston described to my mom and dad when they had Steven there for an appointment. I know it sounds nuts, but it’s been used before to save people with the same condition.”
“What is this condition called?”
Grasping, Matthew thought quickly to himself and then said, “It’s called hathmetitus syndrome. It only affects, like, one in ten million people, and it’s fatal. My brother has only a few good years left before it starts to really affect him. After that, he’ll die.” Matthew did his best to sell the concern for his little brother, but he wasn’t the best liar.
Cameron started to look on his phone to see what hathmetitus syndrome was all about, but Matthew interrupted him. “Look, this syndrome has been kept under wraps for years by the medical community and governments around the world.”
Cameron blinked and put his phone down. “Why? What’s so special about it?”
Matthew just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “It’s kept out of the mainstream because of the origin of the illness. It’s unknown.”
Cameron’s face was a combination of confused and amused as he asked, “What do you mean it’s unknown? Is it some kind of bacterial or viral thing?”
Matthew replied, “I mean they don’t know if it’s of this world or not—and you can’t tell anyone about it.”
Cameron laughed. “You’re telling me that your little brother has some sort of alien disease that can only be cured by the old stone my great-great-grandfather found back in the 1800s?”
Once Matthew heard the reasoning out loud, it did sound a little farfetched, but he was in too deep to turn back now. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I can’t be sure the stone is the same as the one described by the doctor, but you said yourself that your great-great-grandfather could never figure out what it was made of.”
Cameron took a seat in the living room. “Well, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s close. Does Amanda know about this?”
Matthew nodded. “She’s actually the one that put two and two together. She asked me to talk to you.”
Cameron found it hard to believe that an old stone could be the key to some miracle cure for an alien disease, but he also had no reason not to trust Matthew. He had always seemed like a straight shooter, and he wouldn’t want anything happening to Amanda’s little brother.
“Look, I would love to help you, but I have no idea where that stone is. Like we said at dinner, I’ve never even seen it.”
Matthew’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “I know where it is. At least, I think I know where it is.”
Cameron was shocked at that and wanted to know what Matthew had come up with. “Do tell! I’m on pins and needles here.”
“Did your great-great-grandfather have anything to do with the statue of the cardinal and the scepter that the campus uses for the big quad celebrations?”
Cameron’s look changed from confused to curious. “Yeah, he was the chancellor here at the time, and I know he helped with the design of both of them.”
Matthew was relieved to have Cassie’s information confirmed. “Is it possible he put half the stone into the statue of the cardinal and the other half into the scepter? Maybe he designed the pieces into them somehow.”
Cameron thought for a minute, pacing around the room. Then he entered the kitchen and grabbed a bag of potato chips. “I don’t know. No one has ever mentioned anything like that in my family before. Why do you think he put it in the statue and the scepter?”
Matthew thought back to a few days earlier when he had held the scepter up to the statue in the quad and had passed out from a feeling he had never experienced before. He couldn’t be sure, but perhaps the charms had interacted with his own Hathmec, and that was what had made him sick. Perhaps the piece of the charm in the scepter and the piece in the statue had reacted with each other and caused a reaction in Matthew.
“I just have a hunch. If I’m right, it could save my brother’s life, and if I’m wrong, we’ve only wasted a little time. Will you help me?”
Cameron didn’t want to be the one that rained on Matthew’s parade. “Tell you what. First thing in the morning, we’ll head over to the SAP house and take a look at the scepter. They’ll have it there until the ball game is over on Saturday.”
“Why wait? Let’s go over there now.”
Cameron replied, “Dude, it’s, like, two o’clock in the morning.”
Matthew replied, “So what? We’re both awake, and you know the Thursday night beer bash at the house won’t be over for another couple of hours. This is really important. I need to know if I’m right on this.”
Resigned, Cameron rubbed his eyes and headed back to his room. “Let me change clothes and get some shoes on.”
Matthew was giddy with excitement. He just knew he was right, and getting a good look at the scepter would prove it.
Cameron wasn’t the type to stay up all night, but he wanted to help his friend. He said, “If we find out the scepter has the stone, you’ll owe me again. If it wasn’t for Steven, I’d be heading back to bed.”
The two boys jumped into Matthew’s car and headed to the SAP house, which was just a few miles down the road. The roads were empty at that time of the morning, but as they drove up, it was clear that the party wasn’t done at the frat house.
Matthew looked around. “Do these guys ever just go to bed like regular people, or is there always a party going on?”
Cameron replied, “Monday and Tuesday nights are usually pretty quiet, but when it’s football season, the end of the week is party prep time.”
The boys approached the front door and were greeted by a large, familiar presence as if he had been waiting for them all night.
“Hey, I remember you. Your sister got a lucky pun
ch on me the other night. I told my friends that I should take it out on your ass.”
“Is this the guy Amanda flattened the other night?” Cameron asked.
Matthew replied, “Yeah, this is him. Why don’t you go on in and get the scepter, and I’ll have an adult conversation with our friend here.”
“Are you sure? This guy outweighs you by, like, fifty pounds. I can get some help.”
Matthew cracked his knuckles. “I’m sure. Go on in and see what you can find.”
The large student had a furled eyebrow, and all of his friends started gathering around for the beating about to take place. Matthew wanted to calm the situation, but he could tell from the stench of cheap liquor that the large young man was drunk and was unlikely to listen to reason. He took a different approach.
“I tell you what, Bigfoot. If I can put you on your butt without ever throwing a punch, would you and the goon patrol here let me into the house?”
“You’re gonna put me on my ass without ever throwing a punch?”
Matthew nodded. “In fact, I’ll let you take a free shot, right to my face. What do you say?”
Matthew reached down to his left wrist and tapped a button on his watch. He waited for Bigfoot’s response. It came in the form of a right fist hurtling toward his nose. A quick reaction with Matthew’s left hand, and that one punch was reflected back into Bigfoot’s own face.
The crowd was stunned as he lay spread out on the lawn of the frat house while Matthew stood there none the worse for wear. “Would anyone else like to give it a try?” he asked.
Bigfoot’s friends moved away from the path to the front door, and Matthew walked in unopposed. Matthew wasn’t a big proponent of violence in any form, but in this case, it had kind of felt good. He asked one the frat brothers if they knew where Cameron had gone, and they pointed him to the house’s trophy room.
Matthew entered a decked-out, room-sized reliquary of all the trophies and awards the house had won over the years. Some of them dated back to the early 1900s. There was Cameron in the corner looking over the scepter. Matthew hadn’t been close to the scepter since he had held it at the quad rally, but he was confident the scepter alone wouldn’t cause a relapse of the sickness that had overtaken him that day—but he also wasn’t positive of anything. The last thing he needed was to pass out again.
He approached Cameron stealthily until he was just behind his left shoulder. “Are you having any luck?”
Startled, Cameron flinched. He’d been concentrating on the outside lining of the scepter. He ran his hand along the edge and held it close to his eyes. So far he had seen nothing that looked like the piece of the charm Matthew was hunting.
“I don’t see anything that looks like the stone. Here, you take a look and see what you can see.” Cameron passed the scepter to Matthew, and he gripped it tightly in his hand. There were no feelings of dizziness or sickness.
Matthew studied every crevice in the design. Not only did he run his hands along the sides and bottom of the scepter, he also traced each point with his eye. He looked for any difference, any indentation—anything that would point to the charm he so wanted to find. After ten minutes, Cameron said, “Dude, I don’t think anything is there. It was a good thought, but I think you were wrong.”
Now Matthew started to doubt himself. Maybe Cameron was right. Maybe this was just a waste of time, and the issues Matthew had with the statue and scepter were just a coincidence. He placed the scepter back on the stand Cameron had pulled it from and said, “I guess I was wrong.”
The boys turned to see the SAP president staring at them.
“What are you guys doing?” he asked.
Matthew started to just walk away, but Cameron explained to the president that they were looking at the scepter. “We think that my great-great-grandfather placed a special stone somewhere on it, but we weren’t able to find anything.”
The president asked, “Did you look at the whole scepter?”
Matthew replied, “We looked at everything on the scepter that’s lying on that stand. What else is there to look at?”
The president walked to a table and opened a drawer. He pulled out a small piece of metal edging and said, “We had a little problem with the scepter when we brought it back to the house on Monday night. This little sliver of metal must have been damaged at some point, because we can’t seem to get it back on. It’s like it’s been magnetized.” He took the small piece of metal about the size of a gum wrapper and placed it against a window. “Now, watch this.” Amazingly, the piece stuck to the window as if it were vacuumed to it.
“I’m not sure what happened, but we put it in a drawer to keep from losing it. We were gonna take it up to one of the labs after Saturday’s game to see what the deal was.”
Matthew ran to the window and pulled the piece into his hand. He scanned it —and there it was. One-half of the trans-x charm was positioned on the side of the metal shard. “I was right.”
Cameron took another look at the scepter and discovered a small clear spot where the piece had fallen off. He looked at Matthew and the president and said, “You’re right, I can see where it was on the shaft of the scepter. We have what we need.”
The president of the SAP house asked what they were going to do with the piece, and Cameron promised they would get it to campus officials after they were done with it. “We just need to do some checking on this stone, and then we’ll bring it back. Thank you so much for your help.”
The president replied, “Not a problem, Cam. You keep hooking us up with the best new tech, and I’ll help you whenever you need it.”
The boys rushed past the stragglers at the house party and made their way back to the car. Matthew couldn’t believe what he had in his hand. It was half of the trans-x charm! A sharp point at each end of the dark charm signified its place on the Hathmec. It couldn’t be placed on the pendant until the other half was found.
Matthew was pumped. “All right, let’s head on over to the cardinal statue and find the other half!”
Cameron put his hand on the dashboard of the car and said, “We can’t go over there now. Are you nuts?”
Matthew sat in the driver’s seat and looked at Cameron. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that it’s just a little past two in the morning, it’s too dark to see what we’re doing, and the statue is a lot bigger than the scepter. I doubt we’ll be able to just take a quick look and find it.”
With the car still in park, Matthew asked, “What do you suggest?”
Cameron grinned. “I just had an idea. I remember my dad talking about the statue when I was a kid. He always talked about the plans and that they might be worth some money someday.”
He had Matthew’s attention. “If my great-great-grandfather designed the statue, I’m sure he designed everything into it.”
Matthew replied, “Well, that’s great and all, but without the physical designs, it won’t do us much good.”
“I do have the designs—or at least my dad had them. They’re at my mom’s house in the attic. All of my dad’s old stuff is up there.”
Matthew’s excitement couldn’t be contained. He busted out a “Yes!” as he practically danced in his seat. “So, we head on over to your mom’s house and find the plans, and we find out where the last half of the charm—I mean, the stone is.”
“Cool your jets there, buddy,” Cameron said. “We can’t go barging into my mom’s house at three in the morning. We’ll scare the crap out of her. Why don’t you just stay the rest of the morning at the apartment, and we’ll head over to Mom’s house after class.”
“Can’t we go before class?”
Cameron explained that he had a test at eight o’clock that he couldn’t miss. “I need to get a little rest, and I can’t miss that test. We’ll go right after it’s over, I promise.”
Matthew agreed, and the boys drove back to Cameron’s apartment. Matthew kept the trans-x charm fragment in his pocket. Cameron went straig
ht to bed when they arrived, but Matthew stayed up most of the night. Between the excitement of the charm in one pocket and the letter he had written to Amanda in the other, he just couldn’t sleep.
Cameron was back up at 7:00 a.m. and saw Matthew heading out the door. “Well, I guess four hours of sleep is better that none. Where are you going?”
Matthew told Cameron he was going to run home but that he would meet him at his mom’s house later. “I need to let Amanda know what’s going on. I’m sure she’ll want to help.”
Cameron’s face fell at that. “Are you sure you want to involve her in this? I’m sure we can take care of it.”
Matthew saw Cameron’s expression change. “What’s going on with you two? You were acting weird around each other last night, and now you look disappointed that I even mentioned her name.”
Cameron backed off. “There’s nothing wrong. It’s fine if you want to bring her along. Go on—I’ll catch up with you later.” Matthew agreed and wished Cameron luck on his test.
Matthew felt rejuvenated about the mission for the first time in a long time. He was going to take Cassie’s advice and give Amanda the benefit of the doubt when it came to keeping secrets. He wasn’t quite as forgiving with Addie and Bryan, though. He wasn’t looking forward to dealing with them when he got back to the house. He decided to keep the discovery of the charm to himself for now.
He pulled into the driveway a little before eight o’clock on that clear and crisp Friday morning. Hoping to avoid Addie, he let himself in at the side door, but he wasn’t successful.
“Look who decided to come back. Where have you been?” Addie sat at the small kitchen table along with Steven. He was devouring a bowl of cereal, oblivious to the issues of the night before.
Matthew kept his hands in his jacket pockets. One held half of the trans-x charm and the other held the letter for Amanda. “I’ve just been out thinking about some things. Do you know if Amanda’s up yet?”
Last Chance Volume 2 - The Legend of the Hathmec: Planting the Seed Page 25
