The Legacy Chronicles_Up in Smoke

by Pittacus Lore

  Nemo hung in the water for another few minutes, not sure if what had happened was real or her imagination. The ocean surrounded her, cradling her, and she felt strangely safe in the enormous expanse of darkness. She extended her senses, felt life around her and knew that she was home.

  Then everything came back: Ghost, a bomb, Dennings. Had she really told the sharks to kill him? Had that actually happened? Or had she imagined it all, and he was still up there, waiting for her? She pushed the thought away, at least for the moment. It was too horrible to think about. She focused on the more important thing: getting back to her friends and helping them.

  She swam. When she reached the surface, she saw that she had drifted away from the ship, and was going farther away at a rapid pace. She was in a current. She kicked, trying to swim back towards the ship, but she was being pulled away more quickly than she could swim. The ship was growing smaller.

  She started to panic, not only about being taken out to sea, but because every second she was away from the ship was potentially one second closer to the explosion Ghost had promised. And where was Ghost? Had she teleported out of there? Even if she was there, would she help?

  Nemo kicked harder, knowing that it was useless. She gave up in frustration, floating, feeling the ocean tug her farther and farther away from Sam, Nine and Six. She waited to hear an explosion, to see the ship erupt in flames. Her heart ached, and she felt useless and helpless.

  Call the sharks.

  The thought came to her like a voice cutting through the dark.

  Call the sharks.

  The idea terrified and thrilled her. Would they come again? And what would they do? The idea of being so close to them was both exciting and chilling, especially after what she had witnessed them do. What she had asked them to do.

  She closed her eyes and extended her thoughts. What should she say? Sharks were simple animals. They swam, fed and reproduced. Could they understand a call for help? She reduced her need to the most basic word she could think of.

  Come.

  Come.

  Come.

  She repeated the word silently, sending it out into the water.

  As before, she felt the presence before she saw it. She was learning how to connect with the creatures she summoned, to join with them and communicate the way they did. The shark that came to her was a large one, a female. It was old, scarred. Nemo didn’t know how she knew this, but she did. The shark had swum in several oceans, covered tens of thousands of miles in her lifetime, never sleeping, always moving. She thought about nothing but survival.

  The shark came up beside her. Her snout went under Nemo’s arm, and Nemo’s hand slid up the rough skin, her body inches from the crushing jaws that gave the animal its fearsome reputation. She imagined rows and rows of teeth, machinery designed for the ripping of meat and bone. Was this shark one of the three that had taken Dennings? Nemo tried not to think about it.

  The shark moved, and Nemo’s body was lifted, becoming horizontal as the shark sank beneath her. Nemo took hold of the massive dorsal fin, the solid V of cartilage that cut through the water. There were notches on it, like scratches in the trunk of a tree. Nemo gripped it with both hands as the shark sped up. Her body lay atop the great white’s, and she felt its muscles move like the pistons of a train, side to side, propelling them through the ocean. Water streamed around and over them as the shark stayed barely submerged, carrying Nemo back to the ship.

  When they got there, Nemo let go and slid off. The shark immediately dived, and Nemo felt its thoughts turn again to finding food. She thanked it for its help, knowing that the shark didn’t understand the concept. She knew, too, that should they encounter each other under other circumstances, the shark would not remember her as a friend. It would not remember her at all.

  She had, without even thinking about it, directed the shark to take her to where Nine had attached their gear to a line. The line was still there, and Nemo hung on to it as she contemplated her next step. She had gotten back to the ship, but she was still not on it. And there was nothing in the gear that would help her.

  She briefly wondered if there was any animal around that could somehow lift her onto the ship. But there wasn’t. Finally, she did the only thing she could think of. She shouted.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Man overboard!”

  She had no idea who might be around to hear her. She hoped it was somebody friendly and not one of the few people loyal to Dennings who hadn’t been captured. But she would take what she could get.

  “Help!” she shouted again. “Anybody!”

  To her immense relief, a light appeared above her. “Is someone down there?” a boy’s voice called.

  “Yes!” Nemo yelled back.

  The light disappeared, and Nemo felt herself start to freak out. But not long after, it returned. Then something fell into the water. Nemo reached for it and saw that it was a rope ladder. She started to climb.

  She reached the top, exhausted and barely able to hang on. Hands grabbed her and pulled her over the railing, and she rolled onto the deck.

  “How did you fall overboard?” asked Seamus, looking down at her.

  “I didn’t fall,” Nemo said. “I jumped. It’s a long story. Right now, we need to get to Sam and the others. The ship is going to explode.”

  Seamus wasted no time in pulling her to her feet. The two of them ran to the operating room, where Sam, Six and Nine were discussing what to do with the information they’d gotten from Cutter.

  “What happened to you?” Nine asked when he saw Nemo.

  “There’s a bomb,” Nemo said. “There might be a bomb. Ghost said there is.”

  “A bomb?” said Sam.

  Six looked at Cutter, who was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. “Do you know about a bomb?”

  “There’s a self-destruct mechanism built into the ship,” he said. “Bray is paranoid about someone getting their hands on anything he owns.”

  “Where is it?” asked Nine.

  “Engine room three,” said Cutter.

  “Take us there. Now,” Nine ordered.

  A few minutes later, they were standing at a small control panel, looking at a digital clock readout that was counting down.

  “Less than five minutes,” Six said. “That’s not good.”

  “There’s no way to evacuate this ship in that amount of time,” said Sam. “Even if we had somewhere to evacuate them to.”

  “What about jumping overboard?” Nemo asked.

  “We couldn’t get far enough away,” said Six.

  “So, that’s it?” Nemo said. “We’re all going to die?”

  “Not if we can disarm it,” Nine said. “Anyone have a screwdriver?”

  Svetlana stepped forward and handed him one. “What?” she said when Nine looked at her quizzically. “I thought I might need to stab someone.”

  Nine removed the screws securing the cover of the control panel. Inside, three red wires ran from the display and out of the box.

  “I don’t suppose we can just cut them,” Nine said.

  “You could,” Cutter said.

  Six, who was peering at the wires, produced a knife and inserted the tip beneath the wires, lifting them up.

  “Except that would set off the bombs,” Cutter said quickly.

  Six pulled the knife away. “Bombs?” she said. “As in more than one?”

  “There are explosives attached to the hull in two hundred different places,” Cutter explained. “Only one wire actually controls the detonation device. If you cut that one, it deactivates. If you cut either of the other two, the sequence begins immediately.”

  “Which one do I cut?”

  “I don’t know,” Cutter said.

  “Don’t play games with me,” said Six. “Which one?”

  “I don’t know,” Cutter repeated. “Bray told me about the bomb, but not how to defuse it. It’s his way of messing with people’s heads, reminding us that he’s in charge.”

&nb
sp; Six put down the knife. “Any other ideas?” she asked as the timer counted down to four minutes.

  “I have one,” Sam said.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “But you’re—” Nine began.

  “I know,” said Sam abruptly. “I know. But sometimes Legacies emerge in stressful situations, right? Maybe something like that could happen to bring back mine.”

  “Go on, Sam,” Six said. “Try.”

  Nemo watched as Sam put his hands on the countdown clock. His face screwed up as he concentrated.

  “Anything?” Nine said.

  Six shushed him.

  Nemo watched the numbers on the clock spinning backwards. Three minutes.

  Sam groaned. He pulled his hands away, balling them into fists. “Damn it,” he muttered.

  “Try again,” Six urged.

  Sam took a deep breath and put his hands back on the clock. A look of surprise flashed over his face. “I got something!” he said.

  Nobody said anything. Nemo looked at the others. They were all watching the clock. Two minutes and twenty seconds remained.

  “It’s coming in bits and pieces,” Sam said. His voice was steady. “I’m getting a little more.”

  Two minutes. Nemo felt her heart racing.

  Sam’s eyes were closed, and his face was suddenly relaxed.

  “Sam?” Six said.

  Sam didn’t respond. But his lips were moving. “Almost. What? No. No!”

  The clock suddenly jumped to thirty seconds remaining.

  “You told it to hurry up?” Nine said.

  Sam grimaced as if his head hurt. The numbers whizzed by. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten.

  Nemo shut her eyes and waited for the sound of her death.

  It didn’t come.

  She opened her eyes. The clock had stopped at three seconds. She waited for it to finish counting down, but it didn’t change.

  “You did it?” she said.

  “No,” Sam said, sounding disappointed. “She did.”

  Beside him, Svetlana was standing holding the knife that Six had set down. One of the wires in the box had been cut.

  “We had a one-in-three chance. Someone had to try,” she said. “It was going to kaboom either way. Now can we please get off this stupid ship?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SIX

  POINT REYES, CA

  “WONDERLAND?” SIX SAID.

  “It’s the name of a mansion,” McKenna replied. “It was built in nineteen twenty-two by Harlin Pearsall, a famous silent film actor.”

  It was twenty-four hours after the events on the ship. Six, Sam and McKenna were in Nine’s office. Nine was seeing to the processing and settling-in of fourteen of the kids rescued from Bray’s floating prison and brought back to California. Parents needed to be notified. Statements taken.

  An additional twelve kids—the ones who had sided with Dennings—were in lockdown. They were a bigger problem. Most wouldn’t reveal their real names. A few had been identified through the DNA registry set up for those with Legacies, but the majority were kids who had slipped through the cracks and had never reported to the authorities in the first place. Figuring out who they were would take some time. Deciding what to do with them would take even longer.

  That was Nine and Lexa’s problem. Bray was Six and Sam’s. Cutter had given them the name: Wonderland. In return, they had agreed not to introduce him to the sharks that had taken care of Dennings. Instead, he was sitting in a cell three doors down from Drac’s, worrying about what they would do to him. And that’s how they wanted it for now.

  “And it’s in Argentina?” said Sam.

  McKenna nodded.

  “Why?” Six asked.

  “Partly because of Prohibition,” McKenna explained. “It was illegal to make or sell alcohol in the United States at that time. That didn’t stop people from doing it, of course, especially in Hollywood. But Pearsall had a reputation as a clean-cut fellow. His nickname was America’s Son, because he always played good guys. In reality, he liked to party hard. He also had ties to organized crime. He built Wonderland as a place where he and his friends could go and live it up away from the prying eyes of the gossip magazines and the government. You could do that back then, before the internet made a private life impossible.”

  “But why Argentina?” said Six. “Why not Mexico, or someplace closer?”

  “The distance was part of the appeal,” McKenna said. “Also, South America was considered exotic. And it was cheap. He built Wonderland for well under a million dollars.”

  “And Cutter says this is where Bray is hiding out?” said Sam. “It seems kind of, I don’t know, ostentatious for someone trying to keep a low profile.”

  “Wonderland changed hands in nineteen thirty,” McKenna continued. “Pearsall likely owed the wrong people a great deal of money and gave it to them to save his neck. Whatever the reason, it was subsequently owned by a man named Thiago Godoy, better known by the nickname the Butcher of Tucumán due to his habit of cutting up his enemies and feeding them to his dogs.”

  “Charming,” said Six.

  “Indeed,” said McKenna. “He had a number of other bad habits, including being a big fan of Adolf Hitler. Following the war, Wonderland became a refuge for high-ranking Nazi officers escaping prosecution. There are also reports that a number of the scientists involved in the experiments conducted by the Nazis found their way there and continued their work.”

  “Kind of like Drac,” Sam remarked, shaking his head. “Monsters.”

  McKenna looked serious. “Well, that’s where it gets interesting,” he said. “Or, more accurately, disturbing.”

  “You’re not going to tell us that Nazi scientists are running around down there, are you?” Six said.

  “Not precisely,” McKenna answered. “If any of them are still alive, they would be in their nineties now.” He paused. “However, they had students, followers they trained to continue their work in creating what they considered the perfect humans. Advances in genetic research have only encouraged them further. And something like the development of Legacies would naturally be of enormous interest to them.”

  “Drac,” Sam said. “You think Drac is continuing their work.”

  “I did some more digging on our doctor friend,” McKenna said. “His birth name is Milo Cerszik, which we already knew. Turns out his great-grandfather was one Blago Grgić. Grgić was a member of the Ustaše, a Croatian ultranationalist organization patterned after and aligned with the Nazis. He was also a doctor, and very interested in the Nazis’ studies of eugenics. Drac himself is a direct result of his great-grandfather’s work, which attempted to breed a superior human. The man used his own daughter as a breeding subject.”

  “Looks like that experiment failed,” said Six. “And how interesting that he didn’t bother to mention any of this before. I should have broken more fingers.”

  “We think this goes much deeper than what Drac has told us,” McKenna said.

  “We?” said Sam.

  “I think it goes deeper,” said McKenna. “I think Drac is continuing his great-grandfather’s work. And I don’t believe his story about getting the Mog black ooze from another scientist. I think Bray has some kind of connection to the Mogs, has had it for a long time. Just like Drac is descended from Grgić, I think Bray has connections stretching back to Godoy. They’re just the most recent faces of an evil that’s been around for decades. Only now they have more technology, more resources, more power than ever before.”

  “Let’s question Drac again,” Six suggested.

  “He’s being questioned,” McKenna said.

  Six and Sam exchanged a glance. “By who?” Six asked.

  “He’s been transferred to another facility,” said McKenna. “They’re handling it there.”

  “When did this happen?” Sam said. “Does Nine know?”

  “Yesterday,” McKenna replied. “And this is not an HGA matter, so Nine is not in charge of the situation.”


  “Then who is?” said Six. “You?”

  “Yes,” McKenna said.

  “So, where is Drac, exactly?” Sam asked.

  “At a secure facility. One where he can be properly interrogated.” McKenna looked meaningfully at Six.

  “Hey, it got us the information we needed,” Six said. “And as I recall, you told me to break whatever I had to.”

  “I’m confused here,” Sam said. “Earlier, you said we. Now you’re talking about a different facility and someone interrogating Drac. I thought we were our own thing.”

  “We are,” said McKenna. “In as much as we act independently. But given the potential scope of what Drac and Bray were doing—are perhaps still doing—there are larger concerns. I felt it best to call in additional resources.”

  “Which brings us back to who those resources are,” Six pressed. “If it’s not us, and it’s not anyone connected with the HGA, then who is it? The government? Because if you recall, I’m really not down with working for the feds.”

  “I understand your concerns,” McKenna said. “For now, I’m asking you to trust that I’m doing what’s best for the situation.”

  “Trust isn’t really something I’m great at,” Six reminded him.

  McKenna nodded. “You’ve made that clear on more than one occasion,” he said. “But I’ll ask you again to please accept that I’m doing what’s best.”

  “Best for who?” said Sam.

  “For all of us,” McKenna said.

  Six looked over at Sam. He seemed on the verge of saying something. She could sense that he had questions, just like she did. But there was something else, too, something more. She knew him well enough to recognize the expression on his face. He was worried. So when he didn’t say anything, it made her more hesitant to believe McKenna.

  “What’s next?” was all he said.

  McKenna seemed to let out a breath he had been holding. “I think our best course of action is for you to go to Argentina,” he said.

  “Just us?” said Six. “What about Nine? Or Lexa? Or, well, any backup at all?”

  “This particular mission has only one objective,” McKenna said. “Terminate Bray. And I think you two can handle that with or without all your Legacies.”