by Kelly Oram
“You could have just got one after I came back.”
“And not have the proof to rub in your face that I knew you’d come? Where’s the fun in that?”
“I’m too comfortable to lift my head up right now, but just so you know, I’m rolling my eyes at your arrogance.”
“That was not arrogance.” I could hear the pout in Ryan’s tone. “It was faith in you, Jamie. Knowing you’d come back had nothing to do with me.”
“Unless, of course, you knew I’d come back because who in the world could possibly ever stay away from Ryan Miller forever?” I said dryly.
“Hey.” Ryan laughed. “You said it. Not me.”
We were quiet for a minute and then Ryan said, “What do you say we hit Vegas in the morning, find Elvis, and make it official?”
“What?” I asked, surprised again. “You want to do it now?”
“Why not?”
“Um, maybe because we’re only nineteen?”
“What does that matter? We’ve just run away together. We already know we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. Why not do it properly? I know your dad wouldn’t actually be there to kill me for living with you in sin, but even still, I hate the idea of disappointing either of your parents. They’d want us to do this right.”
It took me a minute to swallow back a lump in my throat before I could say anything. “Vegas works for me. I’m down with Elvis presiding, but if you really don’t want to disappoint my parents, we should wait until they’re there to witness for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t just come to snatch you, silly. I do have a plan. I figured I’d take you up on that deserted island offer you made me, and as long as we’re going, we may as well bring my parents along with us. I know they’d give up their lives to stay with me if given the option.”
“I’m sure they would, but how—”
“I left a letter with Mike when I picked you up that explains everything. I asked my parents to tell your mom and Gene everything, and then said I’d meet whoever wants to come in two days. I just hope my parents do what I asked and actually tell your parents. I’d hate for them not to know what happened to you.”
“Actually…” Ryan cringed, “my parents know.”
I sat up, shocked. “They do?”
Ryan sat up too and sighed. “It was kind of unavoidable. I’d been shot and you were gone. Your parents and I came up with a watery story about some creep in your dorm who kidnapped you. I tried to fight him off, but got shot. Then I tried to chase you down, but couldn’t, and so I went to your parents for help. Since Visticorp made such a scene at the school, when the cops put the two stories together, it made national news. People talked about us for days.
“My parents were a mess and I couldn’t just let them believe you’d been abducted like that, so I told them. I also knew I’d disappear eventually too, when you came back for me, so I prepared them for that. They were surprisingly supportive. Gene even set me up with a bank account.”
“You’re kidding.”
Ryan shrugged. “They know how much I love you, Jamie. They love you, too. When they found out you were Chelsea’s Angel—and I told them how it all started—they were so proud of you. They seemed just as sure that you’d come back for me as I was, and Gene insisted he help. Five million dollars may be a bit excessive, but then, that’s Gene for you. The only thing he asked for in return was that somehow, someday, we find a way to send them pictures of their grandkids.”
I blushed at the mention of grandkids, but I was speechless. And I was crying again. “How did I ever think I could live without you guys?”
“Now that is what I would like to know,” Ryan teased.
“So, do you think your parents will come with us?”
Ryan was quiet for a minute, and then slowly shook his head. “They have a good life, and they’ve already made peace with the thought of you and me leaving. I think they’ll stay.”
When it got quiet again, Ryan guessed my thoughts. “It’s okay, Jamie. At least I got to say good-bye, which was more than I’d hoped for. You are worth it. What we have is worth it. You know it is. I’m glad that we’ll be able to bring your parents, though. I’m sure they’ll be ready and waiting wherever you told them to go.”
I knew they would. I wasn’t worried about them at all, but my thoughts turned to the one person I knew who would be hurt the most by all of this. Ryan understood, and some of the light left his eyes. “She’s tough,” he said sadly. “She’ll get through it just like she did everything else.”
“How is she?”
Ryan sighed. “Hurt.”
I nodded, unable to stop the flow of tears once more. That saying about being able to cry until you’re all out of tears can’t be true, or I’d have managed to do it by now.
“You told her though, right?”
“Yeah. She showed up at the hospital the night you left. She’d heard the fake story before I could tell her the truth. I’d never seen her so freaked out. When I explained everything, she was so mad she didn’t talk to me for a week. But eventually she came back and we talked for hours. I told her everything. She said she understood why we never told her, and she realized that you’d been trying to find a way to tell her for weeks. She forgave us, but she hasn’t been the same with me since then. She distanced herself. I think it was the Mike thing she couldn’t deal with.”
Ryan took a long breath and had to steady his voice. “The first time I saw him, I wanted to beat him half to death for what he did, but I kept hearing your voice in my head begging me to listen. You were right, of course. He was sorry, and he needed his best friend.
“I forgave him and I don’t think Becky forgave me for that. I don’t think she can forgive either of us for it. She feels like we chose him over her. She’s barely spoken to me in three weeks. Honestly, I think she might be relieved when she learns that I’m gone. I hope so, anyway. Maybe she needs a fresh start, too—one without you and me and Mike and all the bad memories.”
I wiped my face and repeated Ryan’s original sentiment. “She’s tough. She’ll be okay. I just wish I could tell her how much I love her. I hate that the last time I saw her I’d just broken her heart.”
“She knows, Jamie. I promise she knows.”
“I know. I’m just going to miss her.”
“Me too.”
Ryan leaned back again and dragged me down next to him. Together we just stared up at the stars, each lost in our own thoughts, until Teddy interrupted the peace. The sound of my phone was so unexpected that Ryan and I both practically jumped out of our skin.
“What is that?”
I groaned, but didn’t bother to answer the call. “That is the Iron Man theme music. You aren’t the only guy I know with an inflated ego. Teddy thinks he’s Tony Stark.”
“Your phone has signal out here?”
“Satellite phone with GPS.” I smirked. “Who knew they were such a popular gift?”
Ryan’s voice was tight when he said, “A gift? What was the occasion?”
I kissed Ryan’s cheek. “Necessity. GPS coordinates are the only way I could find my way back to The Lair.”
“The Lair?”
“Teddy’s safe house. I call it The Lair because his ‘office’ looks like Dr. Evil’s hideout. Anyway, the place is in the middle of freaking nowhere. Like, there aren’t even any roads or trails that go to it. I wanted to be able to leave the house on my own and he wanted to be able to annoy me 24/7 no matter where in the country I was.”
My phone, which had gone to voicemail, started ringing again. “I prove my point.” I groaned again and dug the stupid thing out of my bag. “This had better be an emergency,” I snapped in lieu of a greeting. “And being out of toilet paper or Mountain Dew doesn’t count!”
“Jamie, I found them!”
I shot out of the sleeping bag so fast I knocked Ryan over. “What? How?”
“Your friend Carter. You seemed really worried, s
o I figured I’d look into it and I was able to access his computer files. It looks like he was searching for Visticorp, too. Instead of looking into the company and its employees like I did, he looked into its shareholders. About ten years ago, a man named James Donovan bought out the company after losing a leg in a car accident. He claimed he wanted to help Visticorp become the leading company in cell regeneration.”
“Yeah, I remember reading about that. The guy was trying to find a way to grow his leg back. So what?”
“So, one year after that, the same guy bought up a bunch of land south of Las Vegas. According to your friend’s research, that land is used as the major FM broadcasting transmitter for Las Vegas.”
“So?”
“So a billionaire philanthropist suddenly goes into broadcasting because he has a thing for pop music? The transmitter has to be a front. It’s so simple that I never even thought of looking for it! He’s using that land for something, and he’s using the energy and radio signals from the broadcasting transmitter to hide it. That’s where your secret lab is. My guess is underground. Actually in the mountain, below the transmitter.”
“He did it,” I said, managing to feel both honest affection and extreme annoyance for Carter. “That sneaky, lying, crafty little journalist!” I snorted. “The man has a gift for digging up people’s dirty laundry.”
“There’s more, Jamie.”
The graveness in Teddy’s tone startled me. “What?”
“It looks like your friend booked a flight to Las Vegas last week. He checked into a hotel that same day with reservations for only two nights and then never paid his bill. He also missed his return flight back to New York.”
I gasped. Carter was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the type to skip out on a hotel bill. “They got him,” I whispered.
“They got him,” Teddy repeated.
“Where?” I demanded.
“Jamie, I don’t know—”
“Where?”
Teddy sighed. “Southwest of Las Vegas, out Route 160 on Potosi Mountain.”
“Text me the coordinates.”
“Jamie, it’s probably not safe.”
“Just do it, Teddy! Now! And you can add Carter to the list of new identities we need. I’ll have him there in twenty minutes.”
“Jamie, wait.”
I hung up before Teddy could argue with me, and turned to Ryan’s anxious face. “Sorry, babe, I’ve got to go save Carter’s butt. Man the fire and I’ll be back in half an hour.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever it takes.”
Ryan didn’t look happy, but he was resigned. He’d seen the look in my eyes before and knew any argument would be pointless. He also liked Carter and was probably worried about him. “Be careful, Jamie.”
I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him good-bye. “I always am. Love you, fiancé.”
Ryan beamed at the title. “Love you, too, Sunshine. Hurry back.”
Not that I knew diddly-squat about broadcasting transmitters, but it seemed to me that the amount of energy I felt humming around me when I stood on the top of Potosi Mountain could have blasted radio waves to Alpha Centauri instead of just Las Vegas.
Anything with high voltage tends to become unstable around me if I’m not careful. Electronics fritz out randomly, power lines dance when I walk under them…Senior year, when our science class took a field trip to the nuclear power plant outside of Sacramento, I faked a nice case of the stomach flu, just to be safe.
Since my accident, my body has always responded to electricity, naturally feeding off of it when it’s around. It’s as if the energy calls to me. It’s as if it’s a part of me, or at least it’s attracted to me, and I can’t help but like the feeling of power I get from it. Sometimes it’s hard not to want to just suck it all in. This mountain was making me feel like a recovering alcoholic sitting at an open bar. There was definitely something big here.
Aside from the transmitters, all I saw were rocks and cactus for miles in every direction. “Man, I would kill for some X-ray vision right now,” I muttered to the air. “So, if I were a hidden entrance to a secret underground laboratory, where would I be?”
I closed my eyes and tried to use the powers I did have. As soon as my ears were focused, I pushed aside the crackling hum of the transmitters. I immediately heard what sounded like the whir of a giant fan. Maybe several fans.
I followed the sound down the backside of the mountain and found a small cave that was being used to hide some kind of ventilation system. There were three large holes in the ground covered with steel grates. Air blasted up through them. It was too dark to see down into them, but I could hear the blades of the fans pushing the air up toward me.
Off to the side of the air vents there was another tube, not much larger than the size of a person. It was also grated over, but it had a ladder disappearing into its depths. It obviously wasn’t the main entrance to Visticorp’s evil hideout—frankly, it looked a lot more like the beginning of a bad horror movie—but it was worth checking into.
“You so owe me, Carter,” I muttered as I ripped off the grate and descended into the darkness, praying there would not be any dead bodies or dragons or flesh-eating beetles at the bottom.
After only a few steps down the ladder, the tunnel reached pitch-black status. I flipped into Danger Mode. The glow of my eyes was hardly a flashlight, but it was enough to make my way down the ladder. Of course, the sickly green tint wasn’t really helping the creep factor.
Maybe a hundred feet down I came to the end of the line, which was a good thing because I was beginning to wonder if the tube didn’t just lead all the way to hell. The only thing at the bottom was an old door. When I heard no noise on the other side of it, I busted it open and found myself in a small utility room for the ventilation system. There were all sorts of equipment and gages. It didn’t look like the room was monitored often, but the equipment looked to be the latest and greatest and the room was as sterile as a hospital, so someone would come in here eventually.
Across the room there was another door, which I assumed would enter into the main building. As I crossed the room, I heard voices and slid up next to the door ready to zap whoever walked through it, but they kept walking. “…can’t believe the freak lived through that one,” one of them was saying.
“Pushing him is the only way to get results.”
“Yeah, but you can’t get results from a dead subject. If Donovan pushes this one any harder, he’ll end up like 7899.”
“Maybe this one should. The freak causes more trouble than he’s worth.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the first voice sounded awed as he said, “It’s sure something to watch, though.”
The voices faded and I quietly checked the door. It was locked, but a quick twist of the handle using superstrength and I was finally in the main facility.
The place looked like the most depressing parts of a hospital—pale crème-colored walls and white linoleum floors all dimly light by horrid fluorescent lights.
The door I’d just come out of was labeled Air Ventilation Unit 2. Committing my exit to memory, I headed in the direction I’d heard the voices go. I rounded the corner just in time to see two men in white scrubs drag a completely unconscious man up to a large door. One man took out a key card and the door slid open.
I had to follow. Sure, I needed to find Carter, but that hurt man was obviously a subject and those other two men were taking him back to whatever cage they kept him in between experiments. No way was I going to leave that man here. Or anyone else I might find on the other side of that door. Carter would have to wait a few more minutes.
I waited until the two guys dragged the unconscious man through the door, and the moment it started to slide shut I made a run for it. I had no idea what I would find on the other side of that door, but I didn’t have a choice. There was no way I’d be able to break down that big electronic door, and I didn’t have a key card.
> I grabbed both the men in scrubs and zapped them unconscious before the door was even all the way shut behind me. When they fell to the floor, a woman sitting behind a desk cried out. Bad move on her part, because she found herself getting an electrical nap next.
As the woman slumped back in her chair a scratchy voice said, “Who are you?”
I whirled around to see the subject guy trying to push one of the unconscious orderlies off of him. He was a tall black man whose accent suggested he was actually from Africa. He looked to be about forty, and despite his obvious exhaustion from whatever test he’d just been put through, he looked like he played for the 49ers.
“I’m someone like you,” I told him, swiping the plastic key card off the unconscious woman in front of me. I held it up with a big smile. “You think you’re up for a jailbreak?”
The man’s eyes widened, and then his face turned hard. He snatched the key card off the man that had opened the door and nodded his head behind me. “The others.”
Behind the reception desk was a short hallway with four rooms on either side of it. All of them had big, fancy holding-people-in doors and observation windows. I shuddered at the number plates on each door. I was pretty sure they weren’t room numbers.
I ran to the first door and slid the women’s key card over the scanner. The door slid silently open with a light woosh of air.
“Hello?” I called.
A little girl, maybe eight years old and pale as the moon, sat up on her bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “No more tests, please,” she begged, “I’m so tired.”
My heart lurched. “No more tests,” I promised the little girl, rushing over to her bedside. “I’m going to get you out of this place.”
The little girl’s eyes widened. “How?”
I gave her a devious smile. “I have my ways.”
“You’re a subject?” the little girl gasped.
“I’m a person,” I said sternly. “So are you. And we’re getting out of here.”
The little girl jumped out of her bed and clutched onto my hand without question. I didn’t want to know how bad things must have been for her if she was so willing to leave with a complete stranger.
