by Chris Miller
With a running start I fixed my gaze on Desi and put everything I had into making the jump. Surprisingly, I crossed the ten-foot gap with ease and landed on the other side. Desi reached for my hand once more and together we continued across the rooftops. Glancing back over my shoulder, I watched as Vogler neared the gap. He made no effort to jump. In fact it almost looked like he had run straight across the gap as if it didn’t exist at all. Watcher or not, whatever he was, I was beginning to be frightened.
We came to a second gap, but this time Desi slowed to a stop and stepped up on the ledge.
“See you below,” she said, dropping over the side of the building. She planned the fall perfectly, landing in a pile of trash bags in the dumpster below. She climbed out of the dumpster and waved up at me, encouraging me to do the same.
“I’m going to regret this,” I muttered to myself as I stepped up for the dive. I tossed my backpack down first and took one last look over my shoulder at Vogler who was closing in quickly.
“Don’t do it!” he shouted as I fell back.
The fall was quick and the landing was less painful than I expected. One of the bags had split open after Desi’s jump and bits of popcorn packing material puffed into the air. She had clearly planned our escape to the last detail. Desi was already waiting with a gift by the time I retrieved my backpack and crawled out.
“Here, put this on,” she said, tossing a white cycling helmet at me like one might toss a basketball to a friend. I caught it despite the fact that I wasn’t prepared. From out of the shadows Desi wheeled over a sleek white motorcycle. I had never seen anything like it. The wheels had no spokes, just open space where a tire hub should have been. The word Ghost was written in glowing neon lights that continued down the sides. Desi mounted the bike and fired up the engine, which sounded less like a bike and more like a small jet engine.
Thweeee.
“This is yours?” I gawked.
“It belongs to my uncle. Get on, and hold on…tight,” she shouted over the whirring hum. I cinched the straps of my backpack on my shoulders and straddled the back of the bike, wrapping my arms around Desi’s waist. Before we could drive off, something large landed beside us. Vogler.
He too had made the jump, only he hadn’t bothered landing in the dumpster as we had done. The fall should have killed the man, but he rose to his full stature, seemingly unaffected by it. For the first time, I saw something glisten in his hands, a silver pistol, which I assumed was loaded. Things were getting tense.
Desi didn’t wait; she pulled the throttle and the Ghost lurched forward like a shot out of a cannon. Looking back, I spotted Vogler’s mirrored gaze watching us race away. I couldn’t be sure but I thought I saw him vanish before we rounded the corner onto the main road. Just a trick of the eye, I told myself. People don’t vanish. But deep down, I couldn’t shake the feeling that was growing in me. Vogler was no ordinary person.
Hooooooooooooonk!
The angry sounds of traffic pulled my attention once more. A disgruntled driver shouted something out his window as Desi flew past him, and for good reason. Her driving could only be described as impulsive. She rarely slowed, often running through red lights, aggressively passing between lanes and even drove on the wrong side of the road now and then. I held on for dear life.
“Can we slow down?” I begged.
“No,” Desi answered. “You aren’t safe in Destiny…not anymore.”
“Not safe? It’s your driving that’s not safe,” I said, as we rounded a corner far too quickly. “Where are we going anyway?”
“To see my uncle. He’s kind of an authority on the Watchers. Wrote a book on it, actually.”
“Let me guess, Myth or Mystery, right?”
Desi nodded.
“The letter from the library was a setup, wasn’t it?”
“You just figured that out?” she said jokingly. “It was the only way I could get you a message without Vogler knowing. He’s been listening to your phone calls and monitoring your e-mail. I knew you never went to the library so I figured it would be the easiest way to get your attention.”
“How?” I asked.
“How what?”
“How do you know that I never go to the library? In fact, how do you know so much about me when I know absolutely nothing about you?” The question had been nagging at the corners of my mind ever since the library. It wasn’t much fun being the only one left in the dark. Having lost some of my memory was difficult enough, stuff like this just added to my confusion.
“I told you, my uncle has been studying the Watchers’ moves for years. They’ve had their eye on you, so he did his research. He sent me to find you.”
“But I still don’t understand why they’re watching me.”
“I’ll let him explain. We’re almost there. Hang on, this is going to get bumpy,” she said.
Almost like an afterthought, she cut across three lanes of traffic and slipped down into the train yard. I couldn’t decide if she truly was this bad a driver or if she just liked watching me squirm—probably a bit of both.
A series of warning signs flew past that read: No Trespassing, Authorized Personnel Only, Stay Off the Tracks. Not that Desi noticed. Before I could argue the point, we were driving up on the train tracks, headed straight for the gaping mouth of a black tunnel.
“Are you sure this is safe?”
“Safe? There’s no fun in safe.” She said this as if it were supposed to be funny, or witty or something. When it’s your life on the line, the humor gets lost.
The neon lights of the bike lit the tunnel wall with a ghostly ring of blue. Sounds of trains rattling on the rails nearby echoed off the walls of the tunnel. The tunnels kept splitting into multiple lines, making it difficult to tell which way we were heading. I tried to keep count in case we got lost and needed to turn back. So far we had a right, a left, two rights and a center track where the track split in three.
More than once we were barely missed by speeding trains that were far too close for my comfort. I could feel the vibration in my chest, like an electronic body massage chair stuck on high speed. The sooner this ride was over, the better.
Desi’s final turn was down a shortened tunnel ending in a solid rock wall. The track wasn’t finished, but she didn’t seem to care.
“It’s a dead end!” I shouted, just in case she wasn’t paying attention.
“I know. Just hold on,” she commanded, increasing her speed as we approached the end of the line.
“Are you crazy?” I shouted. “We’ll be killed!”
“No, we won’t. Trust me,” she replied still speeding up.
I didn’t trust her at all, but I also was out of options. Falling off the bike would only kill me quicker, and maybe in a more painful way. I had to take a chance that she knew what she was doing. At the last possible moment, Desi flipped a switch near her thumb and the entire tunnel around us vanished in a ring of blue.
Next thing I knew, we were driving down a similar tunnel, except the train tracks had been replaced by smooth asphalt and there were lights overhead.
“What just happened?” I gasped, patting my chest and counting all my body parts. “We should be dead. You don’t just drive into a rock wall at 80 miles an hour and live to tell about it.”
“It’s called ghosting. We skipped through space to avoid the wall,” she pointed her thumb over her shoulder and I looked back at where we had just come from. Sure enough the backside of the rock wall was safely behind us.
“You can do that?” I asked, both a little concerned and impressed at the same time.
“We just did. Think of it like skipping rocks across the surface of a pond…only between dimensions. My uncle’s idea.”
I couldn’t quite grasp the concept but it sounded cool.
“Is your uncle a genius or something?” I asked, thinking of Stretch a
nd how much he’d love to figure out this kind of thing.
“Something like that. Welcome to the Underground, Hunter,” Desi said as we slowed to the end of the tunnel. We entered a brightly lit room roughly the size of a football field, only round. High overhead, the entire ceiling was backlit—a single canopy of light. It gave the impression of daylight even though we were well underground. At the base of a rock feature, water fell into a small pond. Tropical plants of all sizes grew from the walls, giving the space an atrium look.
Dozens of vehicles lined the circumference of the room, parked in perfect order. Desi circled to the right and found a parking space beside another Ghost, this one black. The kickstand automatically dropped and we dismounted. Desi took our helmets and placed them on a nearby shelf.
“Whoa, what happened there?” I asked, pointing to the back half of a third Ghost bike sticking out of the wall in front of us. It was embedded at an awkward angle, a good foot above the ground.
“Ghosting accident,” she said nonchalantly. “Someone bumped the switch when they were getting on their Ghost. Luckily, they hadn’t sat down yet or they’d have gone with it….”
“You mean we could have been permanently stuck in that rock wall back there?”
“No, we cleared the jump by ten feet at least.”
Just then, a mousy little man, wearing a blue jumpsuit, scurried across the room to where we stood. He spoke with nervous excitement and carried a formerly red handkerchief that was now almost grey with grime. A name patch on his coveralls said “Tweez,” which was either his nickname or a bad joke, since his black eyebrows were a single, scruffy line.
“Desi, thank goodness she’s back! Please, please, tell me. How did her first solo go? Is she all in one piece? Is she safe? Is she sound?” the man asked.
At first I found his speech curious, talking about Desi in the third person. When he walked straight past us and began examining the bike, I realized it wasn’t Desi he was talking about. It was the bike.
Desi answered, “Uh…good, you know, steering is a little tight but…uh…other than that….”
“Tight? Tight? How can she be tight, I just calibrated this morning. Unless…hmmmm…” the man pursed his lips and let his thoughts run away with him. He pulled a wrench from his back pocket and was partially disassembling the machine before our very eyes. For the time being, he forgot we were even there.
“Come on,” Desi said with a mischievous grin. “I’ll show you around.”
We passed eight vehicles on the way to the next corridor. All of them were very expensive: a Rolls Royce, a black Porsche Carrara, two BMWs, and a handful of concept cars that I didn’t recognize off-hand. Not to mention the two Ghost bikes we had just left behind, and the one in the wall too.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a car collector,” I smiled.
“Oh no, not me. These are my uncles,” she clarified; then added, “but don’t tell Tweez. He thinks they’re his.”
The first door we came to was flanked by a pair of guards, a man and a woman. They were both wearing white uniforms and black sunglasses.
“He’s with me,” Desi said nonchalantly as we approached the door. They nodded as we passed between them.
Desi explained that her uncle was an inventor who loved experimenting in new technology. He had developed the concept for the Ghost based on extensive study of snarks, who could also pass through walls. She said this as we passed a room full of the caged creatures. The room was mostly dark, but dozens of glowing blue eyes stared back through the glass, assuring us that they were still there and likely up to no good. I couldn’t help but think of Boojum and smile. Despite all the trouble he caused, I couldn’t dismiss the fact that he could be a lot of fun too.
The tour continued; the underground hideout turned out to be an underground compound of some kind. Each room had its own purpose. A handful of people scurried about in an attempt to keep up with the daily chores. None of them made eye contact. It was one of the most amazing hideouts I could have imagined.
One thing was missing however; there were no doors to the outside world. Being underground it made perfect sense, but it also gave me an uneasy feeling. It meant there was no exit…no way out.
Chapter 10
The Eye of Ends
Desi left me in a fascinating room while she went in search of her uncle. I sank into one of two leather chairs that were placed in front of a giant oak desk and let my eyes wander the room. It was a comfortable space with the kind of warm lighting that could soothe you to sleep if there wasn’t so much to look at. Overhead, the dome-shaped ceiling was like an indoor observatory. Painted midnight blue, it sparkled with fiber-optic starlight. In the center of the dome a mechanical solar system orbited the soft glow of an orb-shaped light meant to be the sun.
A room-length bookshelf loaded with hundreds of books lined the back wall. Antique maps and charts framed the remaining walls. I recognized a few DaVinci sketches as well—after all he was one of Dad’s favorite inventors. I especially liked DaVinci’s knack for writing things in reverse. An unfinished chess game was set up on a table between my chair and the one across from me. From the looks of things, white was winning.
At the center of the room, directly under the sun, sat a large ornate oak desk. The surface was clean and organized—a place for everything. Even the one loose pen left on the desk was positioned in a perfectly straight line. The room looked like it had been prepared for a museum—with one exception. A second desk, more of a drafting table actually, sat in the back corner of the room. I hadn’t noticed it until now because it was partially blocked by a potted palm tree. This desk held a sloppy pile of sketches, pencils, brushes and crumpled up papers.
Only a few of the charcoal sketches could be seen from this distance but they were really quite good. The first was a picture of an eagle soaring over a sparkling white city at night. The second sketch was a bit more surreal, featuring a manta ray floating through the sky. But it was the third and final sketch that made me pause. It was unlike the others, a still-life picture of a grandfather clock. In the picture the hands on the clock face were approaching the eleventh hour, but there was something different about the clock. Instead of numbers on its face, it had symbols.
Could it be Aviad’s clock? I wondered.
In a rush, I hurried over for a closer look. Sure enough the clock in the picture looked almost identical to the one Aviad kept in his bookshop. Only there was something different. The symbols didn’t look at all familiar to me. They were similar in design, but certainly not the same as the ones I had seen before on the clock and on the back of my Author’s Writ. I took note of it and glanced over the other drawings once more.
On second glance I noticed I had misinterpreted the other two drawings. The first was not of an eagle at all; it was a Thunderbird with the shadowy silhouette of a man riding on its back. And even though I had never seen the manta ray creatures before, the second drawing had a few floating shards of land in the distant clouds. This could only mean one thing: whoever had drawn these pictures had been to Solandria.
“Solandria,” I whispered aloud. In many ways the place seemed like a far-away dream. It was odd to know that I had been there only a few days ago and yet had no memory to show for it. What Trista had told me about my visit sounded so amazing, but none of it felt real. I sighed, suddenly realizing how Stretch must have felt. He probably wanted to believe what I was saying, but without memories to match my own it was impossible.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” a short, smartly dressed man asked. He had entered the room so quietly I wasn’t even aware he was there. Embarrassed, I backed away from the desk.
“I’m sorry, I…I didn’t mean to pry…” I began to say.
“Not at all, dear boy,” said the man, a pipe clinched tightly between his teeth. He appeared to be nearing sixty, and spoke with the formal accent one only gets from living o
verseas. He was a rugged, good-looking man for his age, with a spirit of adventure in his tanned face. His long white hair was neatly combed back, his beard short, trimmed and peppered with patches of dark grey. Desi slipped in behind the man, who I assumed was her uncle.
Removing the pipe from his lips, he said, “It is an honor to cross paths at last, Hunter. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this day.”
“It’s a pleasure, Mr.…uh….” Halfway through my greeting, I realized I couldn’t remember his name. I had seen it on the book cover at the library, but already it had slipped my mind.
“Oh, never mind the mister part. Simon’s the name, simply Simon.” We shook hands in a warm greeting.
“Anyway, I’m sorry for all the excitement,” Simon confessed. “Desi’s driving didn’t alarm you, I hope?”
“No, she’s…a great driver,” I replied, casting a sideways glance in her direction. Desi smirked and mouthed the word “liar” as she leaned against the doorframe.
“Are these yours?” I asked, pointing to the charcoal drawings beside me.
“Oh heavens no. I haven’t an ounce of artistic blood in me—not for lack of trying mind you. I’m more of a collector, you might say. I find art to be an illuminating expression of one’s soul.” He manuevered toward the desk and started shuffling through the pictures to find others lower in the pile. “Actually, I’m glad you’ve noticed them; they are part of the reason I’ve been looking for you.”
“The pictures?”
“Yes, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Nasty habit of mine, do forgive me.” He cleared his throat and waved a hand at Desi to shut the door behind us. Whatever he was about to say next was meant for the three of us alone. Desi did as she was told, then slumped into one of the chairs beside me.
The man raised his pipe and took a few lingering puffs in silence. The smell of the smoke was like the fragrance of the juniper tree in our neighbor’s front yard.
