“The headmaster has a big house,” Tina said. “I saw a workshop in the garage at his downstream twin’s house. I say start there.”
Brendan agreed. Charlotte had told them some things about her father’s work. It was kept separate from the rest of their household’s activities. The only assumption they had to work with was that the vault was at the house and not in another location.
“At least this will be easier than finding the gate at Nurse Dreyfus’s house.”
“Don’t start celebrating yet,” she said.
He saw no movement in front of the house and no signs that anyone was surveilling the place from any nearby cars. The house still had lights on.
“Is there an alarm?” Brendan asked.
“No doubt. But considering everything that’s happened, I don’t think Sperry came home to set it.”
“Unless he can do it remotely. He did invent a machine that can open gates between worlds.”
“Let’s hope he’s too loopy to remember good home safety practices.”
A side door next to the kitchen entrance led into the garage. Brendan could see a keypad through the glass just inside the door. He waited for a blink of a red light but saw nothing. He tried the door. It was locked. Before he could find a rock or something he could use to pop out a glass panel, Tina body slammed the door and smashed it open.
Now a neighbor’s dog was barking.
“You were going to make noise too,” she said. “No alarm bells. We’re safe.”
Brendan stepped into the garage. Exterior lights cast their illumination through the windows. He could see a large car and a workbench that ran the length of a wall. A pegboard was replete with hanging tools. Numerous cabinets were mounted above the workbench. The air was heavy with the aroma of soil and household chemicals. He took a large flashlight off the wall and shined it low to the ground. In front of the car were a sink and a smaller workspace with stacked flowerpots and a bag of fertilizer. He opened a cabinet above the sink and saw more gardening tools and supplies, all meticulously arranged.
“Not exactly the workshop I was expecting,” Tina said. “So there’s a vault here somewhere?” She checked underneath the length of the workbench and around the back of the car.
“Doing this without Charlotte is a mistake,” Brendan said. “Something’s missing. Remember the headmaster’s machine? It had a bunch of generators in the admin building basement. There’s nothing like that here.”
“How about the ring?”
“It acts like a key. Maybe it opens something here, but we don’t even know where to start looking.”
“This is already a long shot. How small of an area did the ring have to touch to be able to open the gate?”
“Pretty small.”
Lights played along the glass of the front garage door. A car was pulling up. Brendan went to the broken side door and tried to close it as much as possible, but even a casual observer would see it was busted. A car door slammed. He heard a soft female voice speaking. He peered through the side door and spied the woman from Sperry’s office whose shoulder he had dislocated. Her arm hung in a blue sling. A man was helping the headmaster along towards the front door. The three climbed the steps and entered the house.
“Anyone else in the car?” Tina asked.
“I don’t think so.” They crept out of the garage and looked out at the street. The car had no one inside. They went to the front door. It hadn’t been closed all the way. Brendan could see the woman follow the other two upstairs. The headmaster moved slowly, taking one step at a time.
“They must have doped him,” he whispered.
Tina nodded. “Give me some of the water.”
“There’s not that much left.”
He took it out. They both drank. Only a couple of short swallows remained.
“Maybe they’ll leave,” Brendan said. “Then we go in and talk to him.”
“How long does it take to put an old man to bed?”
Maybe it was thinking about Charlotte and where they had left her, or wanting to confirm Poser got home safe, but Brendan felt his own impatience grow. He went inside. Tina followed in quietly behind him and shut the door. They paused for a moment at the bottom of the stairs but could hear nothing. Brendan began to sneak up one step at a time. Upstairs he heard a door close and a phone vibrate. He and Tina quickly retreated into the sitting room just off the foyer and found a large grandfather clock to hide behind. It was a terrible hiding place, and if anyone entered the room they would be seen. The woman and man were coming downstairs when she answered her phone.
“He’s back home. I’m going to stay with him. Anything to report?”
She went into the kitchen. Brendan could hear little of what she said. Tina wanted to go listen, but he held her back. A stool squeaked.
“Sounds like she’s getting comfortable,” Tina whispered.
The man was still standing in the foyer. He was examining himself in a small mirror that hung by the door. He had his glasses off and was smoothing his thick eyebrows.
“We need to capture them without hurting them,” Brendan said softly.
Tina nodded. They moved forward into the lobby. The man looked up at them, startled. Tina blocked the door. Brendan pointed towards the kitchen and shoved the man along.
When the woman saw them she jumped up from her stool.
“Sit down,” Brendan said. He waited until they both sat. Tina relieved the woman of her phone.
“You’re here,” the woman said. “You need to surrender yourselves. This isn’t a game.”
“We know,” Brendan said. “We’re taking this very seriously. But it’s you people that need to stop getting in our way. We don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m not sure which one of you is in charge, but you need to get your people out of here before they get hurt.”
“Young man, I don’t understand how you’re able to do what you do, but I’m warning you that interfering with our investigation is going to bring the full force of the United States government on your head. Our task force is here to investigate the disaster. You have knowledge you could share with us. Sit down and talk to me.”
Brendan didn’t see what could have prompted it, but Tina relieved the man of his glasses and broke them. She then took off his large boxy watch and dropped it to the floor and stomped on it. The man raised his hands protectively.
“You’re sneaky with your gadgets,” Tina said. “Anything else on you I need to know about?”
He shook his head.
“What did you do to Mr. Appleton?” Brendan asked the woman.
“We didn’t do anything. He’s suffering from some sort of mental break. I can only pray it’s temporary. The anomalies we were tracking all center around the academy and his machine. Are you students there?”
Brendan knew another version of him didn’t exist here. He wasn’t sure about Tina. But the woman was trying to change the subject.
“Sperry said something about your people somehow turning on his machine. He took it apart. Tell me what happened.”
The woman adjusted herself on the stool. “His machine doesn’t work. The head of his security said that they were doing research involving interpenetrating dimensions. Alternate universes, if you will. But I don’t see how this kind of research could have anything to do with the trigger for the earthquake. It was a large infrasound wave like what might be detected from a nuclear blast. What does this have to do with you?”
“How long have you and your team been here?”
“We’ve been working nonstop since the disaster.”
“That’s it? Just since then?”
She studied him. “We’re trying to stop something like this from ever happening again.”
He felt certain she was holding something back. But he had no idea how to proceed. He didn’t want to give in to the impulse to hurt them for information. It would be too easy, and he doubted they would learn anything. Maybe they really were just scientists working for the government
and trying to wrap their heads around the anomalies.
“Perhaps all of this could have been prevented,” Brendan said. “I don’t know. I’ll be right back. I’m going to check on the headmaster.”
As he was turning to leave the kitchen, he heard the woman say, “He has the ring. The boy has the ring.”
She was staring at her lap. He closed in on her and saw she wore a large watch identical to the man’s on her wrist. Its screen was lit, the word seccom identifying whoever she was connected to. She screamed as he removed the watch. He had intended to be as gentle as possible, but she had tried to twist away.
“Send all units to my location,” she shouted.
Tina stepped around him and slugged her one across the jaw. The woman fell between the stools. Brendan got the watch off her and smashed it. The man had his hands up, a look of horror on his face.
“Want me to tie them up?” Tina asked. “Or search them for more devices we can destroy? We’re giving the electronics manufacturers of this world a run for their money.”
“Just watch them. I need a couple of minutes with the headmaster.”
***
Sperry Appleton had been put to bed. His giant bedroom was larger than any apartment Brendan had ever lived in. The headboard and footboard looked like they could have been part of an old ship, all done in ornately turned dark wood. The headmaster had been placed under his sheets in a nest of thick pillows. His eyes locked on Brendan.
“Where’s my girl?”
“She’s safe. But we don’t have a lot of time.” Brendan showed him the ring. “Your vault. We need to get inside and know what to do. We need to make sure your machine stays broken. How do we close the other gates? The ones outside?”
“There’s so much work unfinished. I was trying to understand it all. But Charlotte knows.”
“Focus. Is the vault hidden in the garage? Is it even here?”
The headmaster shook his head. “It was always work with me. Her mother raised her. The only way she could know me was by visiting me in my workshop. The vault was always one step away.”
Brendan thought he heard something downstairs. At any moment more security would show up, maybe with helicopters. He took the headmaster’s hand. “Your workshop. Tell me where it is. I’ll take Charlotte there.”
Something approaching an expression of clarity came over the old man. His thick white brows furrowed as recognition set in. Suddenly the headmaster grabbed his hand. “I remember what you did to me.”
Brendan paused, unsure of what to say. “We stopped you. I helped Charlotte do what needed to be done. Help me help her.”
Tina was calling his name. Brendan forced himself to wait as the headmaster pondered his words. “My workshop is in the basement below my office at the campus. Tread lightly.”
Brendan began to rise, but the headmaster maintained his grip.
“Tell Charlotte it was all for her,” he said. “She can finish my work.”
Brendan just nodded, and the headmaster let him go.
***
Once again they were running, this time out the back, and vaulting fences like they were obstacles at a playground. All the dogs in the neighborhood were barking.
They had left the two scientists in the kitchen. There was little point in confining them.
“Where to?” Tina asked.
“Back to school. The vault’s somewhere in the basement.”
Brendan accidentally stumbled into a backyard pond that reeked of algae. He went in up to his knees and had to climb out before hurrying to catch up.
“Are we going back for Charlotte?”
“It’ll take too long.”
Tina stopped. They were at an ivy-covered stone wall between homes. A light was on upstairs at the closest house.
“What’s wrong?” Brendan asked.
“I’m having second thoughts. I mean, what if it works and we find some magic switch that closes every gate between worlds. Can we just dump Charlotte here? Doesn’t she belong to our world now? It would be fair to at least give her a choice.”
“Who knows what the vault can do, assuming we can even find it. And we really don’t have time for a debate.”
A shadow appeared in the house, and the window opened. A young girl was looking outside in their direction.
“Do you still not trust her?” Tina asked.
“It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t. She belongs here and needs to be with her dad. We’re trying to stop another disaster, maybe even an invasion from an upstream Earth into ours. If we can accomplish all that, I don’t care whether or not Charlotte is happy with our decision.”
Brendan jumped to the top of the wall and paused. The girl had a phone out and was recording them. Tina leaped past him and they ran. Soon they were bounding into the main boulevard and heading towards the academy.
7. Tremor
Brendan tried to break in a ground-level half window that led to the basement. The window was heavy-duty safety glass, and he hurt his hand. A white spiral pattern marked the glass. The upstream water boost had its limits, and the glass here was thicker than in the front lobby.
Just because you can run as fast as the wind doesn’t mean you won’t be turned into jelly when you smash into a wall, Tina had once reasoned, back when having special abilities was a theoretical topic of speculation amongst the A.V. Club.
Tina got down on her butt and kicked the glass out with both feet. They climbed inside.
Brendan had been in the basement once before, when he had believed he was rescuing his father from the clutches of the headmaster. But it had been Myron Reece of Not-Earth he had freed, and the man was the headmaster’s partner. Brendan knew there were a multitude of locked rooms down here, as well as the generators that powered the gate machine on the fifth floor. But the basement was silent.
They had dropped into a large storeroom. The only door was locked. Brendan kicked it open with a crash. They emerged into a hallway near the generator room. The large machines were off.
“This was where we found out what the upstream Earth water could do for us,” Tina said. “Good times. We kicked ass.”
“You understand once we figure this all out that we give up our boost forever.”
Tina didn’t say anything.
They climbed a few stairs up to a long white hallway. He led them down to where security had held their prisoners. It was possible the headmaster had kidnapped others, including at least one security guard, but they hadn’t found any signs of anyone else the last time they had come here.
No one was inside the small breakroom or either of the makeshift cells. They began trying other doors. Most were locked and needed to be pulled open. One led to a small workshop that initially filled Brendan with hope. But all he saw was a vacuum cleaner in partial disarray and some hardware that looked like it belonged to the admin building’s interior doors. This was just a maintenance station.
Tina grabbed a long crowbar from a tool rack. “This’ll make it faster.”
They opened more doors.
A wave of tiredness began to lay heavy over Brendan. He wanted sleep, and he was hungry. Operating with the upstream water boost for so long was taking a toll on his body. Tina still appeared to be undaunted, going at full speed as she popped one door open and went on to the next. Each door made a horrendous squeal of bending metal. Brendan’s job was to turn on lights and look inside.
They were opening doors near the generator when Tina popped a door and paused.
“This might be it.”
Brendan turned on the lights.
Here was a workshop that stirred envy within Brendan. It had everything the electronics lab did, and so much more. The layout was haphazard, but it all had a certain logic to it, organized so that one man could work with so many resources and tools. Two workbenches were arranged next to each other with an open row between them. Tools of all sorts were attached to hanging racks, like a world-class kitchen for a mad scientist. Spare parts, mostly elect
ronics, were stacked around the workbenches in various piles and boxes. Fixed below the workbenches were numerous gauges and meters, like props out of old science fiction movies.
Most of the drawers to the workbenches were ajar. Brendan began opening them. He found trays of circuit components all jostled out of their containers as if someone had gone through them in a hurry. Brendan picked up a pair of pliers from the floor and placed them on a bench.
“He’s a bit of a slob,” Tina said.
“Yeah. But it looks like the place was searched.” Then Brendan froze.
In the back of the lab was a body.
The dead man was wearing a tan zippered jacket and slacks. The corpse didn’t look like school security or staff, but was dressed like one of the military scientists searching for them. His skin was pale, and his dull eyes were half-open.
Brendan crouched over the man. He didn’t want to touch him but got as close as he could. A red mark was on his neck, but there were no other signs of trauma. If he’d worn any kind of ID tag or lanyard, it was gone. The man lay in between two disturbed stacks of boxes. A blue-black splotch crept up from the side of his face that was against the floor. One of the man’s hands had dark dried blood on it. Brendan tried not to gag at the sewage smell.
“He might have been here for a while, maybe a couple of days.”
Tina nodded. She had a hand over her mouth and nose.
Brendan got up and stepped away from the body. Looking away helped with the queasiness. “I’d say whoever killed him took his ID and maybe searched the lab.”
“Do you think they were looking for the vault?”
“No way to know for sure. There aren’t that many who even know it exists.”
The Supervillain High Boxed Set: Books One - Three of the Supervillain High Series Page 49
