by Sechin Tower
Nikki called after me. I didn’t turn, but I stopped to show I was listening.
“I meant what I said,” she told me. “I only want to keep you from getting hurt. You know that, right?”
I nodded again just to make her happy and then left her there. When I walked past the sterile room, I saw that Victor was concentrating so hard that he didn’t even look up to see me. Then I looked over at the medical storage refrigerator, open and unguarded.
I didn’t want to take anything that might be missed, and I knew I better be quick if I didn’t want to get caught. Victor had his back to me as he worked, so I opened the refrigerator and found a rack of syringes containing the tranquilizer Victor had used on the chupacabra. I grabbed a syringe and stuffed it into my pocket.
“Do you want to kill someone, or just put them to sleep?”
I was so startled that I almost knocked the rest of the syringes off the rack. Turning, I found Victor looking directly at me from behind the sterile-room window. He had spoken through an electronic speaker in the doorway.
“Um, I was… I was just going to put it back,” I stammered.
“No, keep it,” he said. “But just use half a vial to put someone to sleep. More would be… bad.”
“Um… thanks,” I said. I just looked into those blue eyes for a while before I asked: “You know what I’m going to do, don’t you?”
He nodded, and I think he gave me a sad smile under his surgical mask.
“Are you going to tell me what your research is?” I asked.
“Not unless you let me come with you,” he said. “I’ll go, Soap—I’ll go with you right now if you ask.”
“And if I say no?” I already had one guy upstairs who was insisting that he come and that was bad enough. Right then, I didn’t want anyone looking after me or standing in my way. This was my mad plan, and mine alone: I wasn’t about to drag anyone else I cared about down with me.
“I respect your procedural methodologies,” he said. In other words: he trusted me to do what was right. “I think they underestimate you, Soap,” he added. “I think you underestimate yourself, too. But I knew, from the moment we first met and you suggested using synchrotrons that you would work out here just fine.”
We looked at each other, and then I walked over to the window and spread my hand flat against it. He spread his hand out as though it were touching mine. His glove had some purple goo on it, so I was kind of glad for the glass between the two of us, but I also wished our hands really were touching. It was kind of a weird moment.
Then I left without saying another word. My heart was racing during the entire elevator ride back up, but I didn’t have time to figure out why.
“There you are,” Brett said as I thundered down the stairs.
I reached up to put my hands on his cheeks, drawing him into a kiss right there in the dimly lit lab. He didn’t react at first, so I could tell I caught him by surprise, but after a few seconds his hands slid around my back to pull me in close. It was my first kiss ever. I probably wasn’t any good at it, but it felt amazing. His lips were hot against mine, and they felt as smooth as silk. It was so good, I didn’t even care about the germs.
I kissed him because I wanted to thank him for his concern, but in a weird way I also hoped it would derail our relationship. He was starting to feel like the older brother I never had, and kissing him would probably mess that up forever. I knew I would probably regret it, but it wouldn’t be the biggest mistake I made that night.
I also kissed him because I wanted to keep him from seeing me uncap the syringe.
“Ow,” he jumped when the needle pierced his jeans. Then his eyes went unfocused and he kind of wobbled his way down to the ground. I put the cap back on the syringe—still with half the tranquilizer inside—and tucked it into the pocket of my hoodie.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hunkering down over him and giving him a short, soft kiss on the lips. It was kind of like the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale in reverse, with the princess knocking prince charming out cold.
I knew Brett would wake up in an hour or two. I was hoping he would forget the details and just assume he’d had too much to drink—from the smell of the beer still on his shirt, that’s what anyone else would assume.
“I think I like you, Brett,” I whispered in his ear. “But I’m just not sure right now. Still, there is something I need from you.” I reached my hand into his pocket and pulled out the keys to his yellow Camaro.
Right then, I didn’t need a boyfriend or a brother. I needed wheels.
September 16th
(The Day Before Doomsday)
Chapter 29 ~ Dean
Dean dropped his duffel bag on the bed at the Topsy residence, and then dropped himself into the arm chair next to it. He felt like he had been kicked in the teeth. He had let Angela run off with the egg and as far as Dean knew, Angela was working for the Professor, and was handing it over to her boss at that very moment.
Realizing that the only food in the residence was the three-day-old pizzas in the fridge, Dean headed out for a grocery run. Someone knocked just as he reached the door. He was astonished to see that it was Angela.
“I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see you again,” Dean said. “That was a mighty fancy jet pack you had there.”
“Technically, it’s a flight pack,” she said as she strolled into the room. “It doesn’t use jets, just electrogravitic repulsion powered by superconducting coils.”
“Whatever,” Dean folded his arms. “Did you bring the egg?”
“You didn’t think I would run off with your prize, did you?” she shoved the egg into his hands and favored him with her mischievous smirk. “Besides, I haven’t been able to figure out what that little rock is supposed to do.”
“What do you mean, ‘supposed to do?’” Dean turned the wrinkly black stone over in his hands. “It’s a rock. It isn’t supposed to ‘do’ anything except sit there.”
He moved to the kitchen window and held it up to the early morning sunlight, but there was no change in its appearance.
“You don’t know how it works, either, do you?” Angela said with disappointment.
“Maybe there’s something inside it,” Dean plopped it down on the cutting board. He pulled a chef’s knife down from the magnetic rack above the counter, stabilized the egg with his left hand and raised the knife high in preparation for a heavy strike.
“No!” Angela lunged for Dean’s wrist. Her fingers seized his, but her right hand slipped and the sharp blade split the skin of her palm. Dark red blood oozed out, and she reflexively jerked her hand in close to her body, unintentionally spattering a few drops onto her black leather jacket.
Dean cradled her hand in his and guided it under the faucet. Angela flinched slightly when the water hit the open cut, but she didn’t make a noise.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Dean said when enough of the blood had been washed clear to see the wound. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but you might want to see a doctor.”
“I’m not worried about it. I’ve had far worse,” she said, watching the red streaks swirl around the stainless steel drain.
Dean opened the pantry cupboard by the refrigerator and drew out a day-glow orange satchel, unzipped it, and readied a packet of gauze and a roll of athletic tape.
“You keep your first aid kit in the kitchen?” she said as he laid the gauze across her palm.
“Most household accidents happen in this room,” he said. “The bathroom is second, but if you trip on the tub and break your hip, a bandage probably isn’t going to help, so the first aid kit is the first thing I put in a kitchen.”
He wound the tape around her palm, expertly criss-crossing it so that it held the gauze firmly against the wound. Then he raised her hand up to the level of his chest and massaged the end of the tape down.
“How does that feel?” he asked. “Not too tight?”
“It feels wonderful,” Angela stepped in closer, so that their hand
s were only an inch away from her heart.
Dean stopped working on the bandage and looked into her flashing brown eyes. He thought he should release her hand now, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “About cutting you, I mean. I didn’t expect you to grab for the knife.”
“I took my chances,” she said. Then she leaned forward to bring her lips next to his ear. “You have to take chances if you want to play with fire. But the risks are worth it, though, don’t you think?”
Softly, smoothly, she pressed into him, her firm, athletic legs sliding along his muscular thigh while her left hand found its way up to his broad shoulders. She drew him down towards her, and he felt the electric vibration of her hand on his back as acutely as if she were touching his bare skin. He wanted so badly to have someone help him find his way out of the dark cavern that had entrapped him these last two weeks, and now, in a moment of weakness, he allowed his hands to drop away to her sides so that she could bring the full length of her body against his.
Then something jabbed him in the sternum. It felt like an iron finger prodding him awake. Angela felt it, too, because she backed off, rubbing the spot where her chest had touched his.
“Ow,” she said. “What was that?”
Dean reached inside the neckline of his shirt and drew forth the chain containing the two engagement rings, the symbol of his commitment to McKenzie.
“So that’s what came between us,” Angela held the rings at the end of the chain and inspected them briefly. “Gold’s a fantastic conductor of electricity, you know.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” Dean said, slipping the chain back under his shirt. The mood was broken, and Dean found himself relieved to be released from Angela’s spell.
A knock on the door startled both of them. Dean looked through the peephole to see Victor wearing a somber silk tie and, of course, his white lab coat.
“What do you want,” Dean growled when he swung the door open.
Victor had midnight-black circles under his eyes, as though he’d spent the last week cramming for finals. When he stepped in and saw Angela, he froze like a rabbit in headlights.
“Vickey!” Angela said. “Long time no see. Still locked away in your mad pursuit of scientific impossibilities?”
“You two know each other?” Dean asked, looking back and forth between Victor and Angela.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Victor said. “She was the physics student here before your cousin joined us.”
“Your cousin goes here?” Angela clasped her hands beside her cheek like a child treasuring the idea of ice-cream for dinner. “That’s so cute! What’s a little nepotism among family members?”
“Sophia’s better qualified to be here than I am,” Dean said. “I’ll be the first to admit that.”
“She’s actually why I came to see you,” Victor said. “I need to talk to you about Soap—I mean Sophia.”
“I don’t want to hear it from you,” Dean growled.
Angela cleared her throat noisily as she scooped the egg up off the table.
“Excuse me, you two,” she said, tossing the wrinkly black rock up and down in her bandaged hand. “I’d like to remind you that we have a pressing matter here. Are you boys ready to take a shower with me?”
Dean looked back at Angela in astonishment and tried to say something, but the sputtering sounds that came out of his mouth did not count as words.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” Angela wagged her finger at Victor. “Oh, Vickey. You kept the underground lab a secret from your own Dean of Students?”
Chapter 30 ~ Soap
It ended up taking me all night to get to Happy Fun Land. You would think it’d be easy to find an amusement park that featured a two-hundred foot extreme ride sticking up out of the pancake-flat countryside, but I had no map, and I started off heading the exact opposite direction. There were no road signs advertising the park, not many street lights to illuminate the roads, and in rural Minnesota there are no all-night internet cafés where I could use Google Earth to find where I was going. Even the people I asked were fuzzy on the directions, which I thought was weird, but I guessed the park never was all that popular. I didn’t want to drive too fast or backtrack too much, because getting pulled over by the police would not end well for an unlicensed teenager in a canary-yellow Camaro that was registered to someone else.
Oh, and I think I trashed the transmission of Brett’s car. Of course I had studied the mechanical components of automobile engines, but apparently there’s a gap between diagramming blueprints for a clutch and being able to use a real one without making the whole car shake violently and causing horrible grinding noises whenever I shift gears. Sorry, Brett.
As the sky over the western hills was just beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn, I allowed the Camaro to rattle to a stop in the rear parking lot of Happy Fun Land. I unloaded Rusty and we proceeded to the chain link fence that encircled our target. I had all my hand tools in my pockets and my backpack, but Rusty handed me the big bolt cutter I had given him for just this occasion. In under five minutes, I cut a hole just big enough for a girl and her robot to get inside.
The original plan was to walk along between the chain link fence and Happy Fun Land’s own outer wall until we came around to the front gate and then slip into the park from there. It turned out that I didn’t even have to walk that far, because we came to a maintenance door only about thirty feet from where I had cut our way in. It was locked, but it had an electronic key pad built into the doorknob.
“Rusty,” I said, pointing to the lock. “Blast this”
Rusty’s flat head swiveled around as he got a visual recognition of my finger. Then his scorpion tail wiggled as though he were a happy dog. Fortunately, happy dogs don’t emit focused electromagnetic pulses when they get excited. This was the first time I had tested Rusty’s new antimatter-fueled capabilities, and it was a bit stronger than I had anticipated. The green LEDs on the keypad blazed to life, then flashed and sparked. Orange flames crawled out of the pad and I smelled burning plastic. I had only meant to give it enough juice to trigger its circuits, but instead I blew it up. I started to wriggle out of my backpack, intending to smother the fire with my hoodie, but then I checked myself and eased my arm back into my sleeve. What was I worried about? I came to rain burning vengeance upon the heads of those who angered me, and a little fire at the doorway seemed like a good way to kick off the festivities.
I watched the flames for a minute as they blackened and cooked the handle and the surrounding wooden frame. Then I kicked open the door and swept through as if I owned the place. For a second, I wished I had been wearing a lab coat because it would’ve been a perfect moment to have it fluttering out behind me. Then I remembered that a white coat would just get stained and messy, not to mention get in the way of my pockets. Sometimes drama just has to take a back-seat to easy pocket access.
The door opened into a tiny alley that ran between a ring-toss booth and a bb-gun range. This was only the outskirts of a maze of deserted concession stands and empty rides, mostly the kind that swing people around in cars shaped like airplanes or Viking longboats. I could see why the park went out of business, because people were not going to come from miles around just to ride along a track in a plastic car that looked vaguely like a rocket ship. The place was also really messy, with discarded nacho trays and empty soda cups lining the booths and collecting in the corners of the lanes, and that didn’t make the place look any more inviting.
The sidewalks were completely disgusting and grimy, and I only got about fifty feet closer to the center of the park when I felt my foot stick to something. When I pulled my shoe off the sidewalk to see what it was, a ropy green tendril ran from the bottom of my sole to a nasty lump on the ground. Chewing gum. I hate chewing gum. Even under the best of circumstances, it’s a sponge for your mouth-germs. To touch someone else’s gum, even if it was just with the bottom of my shoe, made
me want to vomit. Not only that, gum never comes off cleanly, and no matter how much you try, your shoe will still make a gooey, clicking sound whenever you take a step. Nasty. I had to dig through my pockets to find a screwdriver I didn’t particularly like just so I could scrape the gum off my sole.
I found a trash can and disposed of the screwdriver—as far as I was concerned, it was contaminated. I considered throwing out my shoe, too, but that would mean walking around the park in my socks, and a gum-stained sock would be even worse than a gum-stained shoe.
I began to consider how long it would take gum on the sidewalk to dry out, and that thought made me pause. Even with all the rain we’d been having, it would probably only stay sticky for a day or two. If that gum had been waiting for me on the sidewalk for only a day or two, it meant other people had been in the park recently—really recently. As in: maybe they were still here!
I looked at the mess around me and suddenly saw a new story behind the greasy, mustard-splattered wrappers scudding across the pavement in the breeze. This mess almost certainly meant that the bikers were nearby. Considering that I had come looking for them, I probably should have been a little more prepared for that realization, but it still broke my confidence. All the swagger I had felt when I entered the park was gone. I was burgling a secluded park full of biker thugs. I suddenly felt less like the angel of vengeance and more like a big, juicy fly buzzing straight for a spider’s web.
This would be my last chance to turn back. I could still run back to Bugswallow and enjoy the last five days of campus life before I had to vacate my dorm. Or I could press on, maybe commit an act of petty sabotage on a few motorcycles, and probably get myself seriously messed-up in the process.
I looked over at Rusty, as if he could give me some advice. He looked back at me with those big, innocent, laser range-finding eyes. Weirdly, I started to feel like I owed it to him to carry through. I know it’s stupid to read that kind of emotion into a collection of steel and wires, but it gave me what I needed to keep myself from chickening out.
