Nova walked up to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” she said softly. Her wet hair clung to the sides of her face.
He brushed her hand away, but she persisted.
“We’ll get Felix back,” she tried to reassure him.
“You don’t know that.”
“I give you my word that I’ll do everything I can. Achilles won’t let anything happen to him. He’ll give his life to protect your brother after what he did today. Felix was incredibly brave. You should be proud of him!”
Brady tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress the sudden jealousy he felt. It mixed with the hundreds of other emotions that buzzed through his chaotic mind.
And then he snapped.
“Proud of him? I told him not to do it. That was the stupidest thing he’s ever done! I saw them take him away, Nova! You and I are safe here while those monsters are carrying him off to who knows where. This is all your fault!”
Brady’s voice swelled with anger, and he lashed out with the harshest words he could conjure.
“I can’t believe we helped you steal! You’re a thief!”
Brady turned away and stared angrily down at the ground, immediately regretting his choice of words. He didn’t truly believe what he was saying, yet here he was, insulting the only person who could help him. He wouldn’t blame her if she walked away right now and left him standing here, helpless.
“You’re right, Brady. I am a thief; and this is my fault,” Nova said slowly.
“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I made a terrible mistake, and I’m sorry. I never wanted you to get involved in the first place. In fact, I tried my best to scare you and your brother away. But then I miscalculated and got caught. Everything that happened tonight is because of me…”
Nova paused and took a deep breath.
“The truth is, you saved me—and I owe you. Achilles owes you. I hope you both can… forgive me.”
Brady ran his hand through his short wet hair and thought about the Collectors that had swarmed Achilles and Felix like a colony of ants organizing around a morsel of discarded food.
“Right now I just want to figure out how to get my brother back home, if he’s even still—” He stopped himself.
“I know he’s alive, Brady. Look, believe it or not, Achilles is like a brother to me. I will do everything I can to get them both back safely. I know they’re okay. They have to be.”
Brady grimaced. “But it’s just you and me, Nova. There were hundreds—maybe thousands—of them down there! You saw those things—we don’t stand a chance! What were those creatures anyway, those things you called Collectors?”
Nova hesitated, appearing to consider his question for a minute.
“It’s complicated,” she finally replied.
“Tell me anyway.”
“Okay then. This is going to sound pretty strange, but… In the world I come from, there’s a different kind of punishment for those who do wrong. A punishment far worse than you can imagine. The Collectors… are a type of prison.”
“A prison?”
“A mental prison,” she explained. “The Collectors start out as nothing more than containers—empty shells that are then filled with the minds of the banished.”
“The banished? You mean criminals?”
“That’s right, criminals—or anyone else who dares to disagree with…” Her eyes narrowed. “Certain rules.”
“But how can you fill a shell with a mind?”
“Not minds like yours and mine. Digital minds: the minds of the machines. Their neural nets—sorry, their brains—are forced into the Collector bodies, where new programming overrides their own thoughts with… other directives.”
“Directives?” Brady was struggling to keep up, but also afraid to admit it.
“Rules. Rules that strip away personality. Rules that force them to wander aimlessly beneath the earth like packs of rats roaming sewer tunnels. They have no other choice. This is their punishment.”
“Beneath the earth? What for?”
“They collect spent mechanical waste, garbage, anything that can be recycled into new Collector bodies, new zombies that can then harvest more and more salvage. They spend their time underground because their programming prevents them from ever seeing the light of day again.”
“That sounds awful.”
“That’s the point. They were designed to be awful. Fortunately for us, they’re not the brightest creatures: again, by design. When a mind is transferred into a new Collector body, their neural patterns, their thoughts, are severely limited by the host’s logic circuits. Just imagine your brain thinking in slow motion, like running through water. I imagine that’s sort of what it’s like to be one of them.”
Brady turned to face Nova. “If Felix is still… you know… what will they do to him?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but it’ll take them awhile to figure out who, or what, he is. Believe it or not, they’ve never seen a human before today. To them, he’s like an alien. Just like they are to you.”
“Never seen a human? Why not?”
“Because where I come from… there are none.”
Brady couldn’t hide the shocked look on his face.
“And there haven’t been any for a long time now,” Nova continued. “At least, not until recently. That’s why it’s important that we get to him first. They can’t be allowed to figure out what’s happened.”
Brady looked at her, his face revealing a worry greater than he could handle. He wanted to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.
Nova could feel the fear emanating from him. “But don’t worry—we’ll get him before they have a chance to figure it out.”
“Felix must be scared out of his mind. I’m still shaking from what happened earlier, and I’m safe here!”
“As bad as it sounds, your brother was unconscious when we left, so he probably won’t remember much about this anyway. That is, if we can get to him fast enough. As long as Achilles is alive, he will protect Felix. You saw what he did back there to the Collector that tried to attack us, right? Achilles is not someone to mess with, and he holds a terrible grudge.”
Brady managed a smile, but it quickly faded when he imagined a pack of Collectors dragging Achilles and his brother away. He shuddered at the thought.
“Where will they take them?” he asked.
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“Great! Then how in the world are we supposed to find them?”
“There may be a way. Achilles is equipped with a transponder. If he’s able to turn it on, it will send out a signal and we’ll be able to see it.”
“Okay, so then we just open another door and go back and get him, right?” Brady asked anxiously.
“Unfortunately, we can’t travel back the way we came—they’ll be expecting us there. We’ll have to try something else. But we’re wasting time just standing here—we need to get going.”
“Where to?” Brady glanced around at the trees towering around him. There was nothing but miles of forest in every direction.
Nova gestured toward the woods. “We have a hangar near the back of the property, almost a mile away from here. There’s an aircraft inside that can take us where we need to go—at least, most of the way.”
“An aircraft? You’ve got to be kidding. You know how to fly a plane?”
“It’s more like a helicopter, except it has four blades instead of one. You know, sort of like that toy you and your brother sent over here to spy on us. Only this one is the real thing.”
Brady turned away before Nova could see him blush. He heard her laugh under her breath.
“Anyway, the copter is pretty easy to fly. Its autopilot software does most of the work. You just tell it where to go, and it does the rest. And speaking of flying…”
Nova pushed a few buttons on her watch. Within seconds, her request was answered. Brady heard a deep rhythmic thumping coming from
far off in the sky—the flapping of great wings. The sound grew nearer.
Overhead, Brady saw the dark form of an eagle circling in the night air.
Nova waved, and the bird let out an ear-splitting screech. Twin rays of white light poured forth from its eyes and lit up the soggy ground below. They could see the way forward.
“I still sometimes have trouble finding my way in these woods,” Nova said. “My friend here will get us to the hangar though. Come on, we need to move quickly.”
With the eagle guiding the way, Brady and Nova chased after the light. They fought through tangles of branches and shrubs before reaching a path where the thick underbrush had been cut back. Their pace quickened, mud splashing everywhere as they hurried across the puddle-ridden ground.
The flight of the enormous bird was steady, always keeping the light shining a few feet ahead of them. Nova was moving so fast that Brady struggled to keep up. Unfamiliar with the terrain, his strides were uneven, and he often had to catch himself from tripping and landing face-first on the ground.
He was beginning to think they’d never get there when at last the bird touched down on a knotted bough. It swung its twin beams of light through a clearing of weeds and grass onto a looming structure just ahead.
It was at least two stories tall and just as wide. Steep lines met to form a gabled roof, and the old oak siding was a tarnished mix of faded red with gray where years of weather had stripped the paint away. Some of the boards had rotted, come loose, or were missing altogether.
Brady quickly realized he was looking at a run-down barn, not the “hangar” Nova had mentioned earlier. Any hope he had of finding Felix drained away, and he wondered how anything useful could be inside.
“We’re here,” Nova called back as she raced toward the entrance. When she reached the front doors, she stopped, looked up to the sky, and waved. The guiding light blinked out, and the bird lifted off the branch and flew into the night. The eagle said goodbye with a final shriek and was gone.
“Cool bird. Is it your pet?” Brady called out breathlessly as he arrived at the foot of the barn. He cradled his side where a cramp was forming.
“It’s a she, and her name is Nyx,” Nova said. “She lives in the forest and thinks for herself, just like Achilles does.”
“Sorry. I thought you were controlling her with your watch. My mistake.”
“No one controls her,” Nova said, annoyed. “I was just asking for her help and telling her where we needed to go.”
“Okay, got it.” Brady stayed a few feet away to keep Nova from seeing his face turn red. If he hadn’t been so worried about Felix, he would have crammed his foot down his throat.
To cover his embarrassment, he walked over to a spot on the side of the barn where a piece of siding had slid down and was dangling by a rusty nail. Squatting down, he peered through the gap.
He saw nothing inside the barn other than a floor of dirt, rocks, and scattered hay. The place was empty.
Nova had promised a hangar, but for some reason they were wasting time at this rotting barn.
“Hey, Nova,” Brady said, still peering through the gap, “why are—”
He stopped when he noticed something wrong. Streaks of moonlight lit the floor, shining down from cracks in the ceiling. But tonight, the sky was covered by storm clouds. Brady looked up, then back into the barn. Without the moon, the inside of the barn should have been pitch black.
As Brady bent forward to get a closer look, he suddenly lost his balance. He reached out his hand and caught himself before he hit the ground. He shook his head, embarrassed by his own clumsiness.
Then he saw that his fingers weren’t resting on the side of the barn; they were resting on the empty void left by the detached piece of siding. His fingers pressed against thin air.
Brady pushed harder against the invisible support, and the view through the gap distorted into a rainbow of colors that rippled from his fingertips. When he stopped, the colors dissolved away and the view of the floor returned, unaltered.
“Nova? What is this place?”
“I’ll explain later,” came Nova’s voice. “Would you mind giving me a hand with the door?”
Brady picked himself up and walked over to the doors, where Nova was busy unhinging a rusty latch.
“Grab the handle,” she instructed. Together they pulled on the latch.
After a minute of heavy straining, the latch jerked backward and the iron shrieked. The old wooden doors groaned as Nova and Brady pulled them apart. Nova propped them open with heavy stones that lay nearby.
Brady stared into the empty barn.
“There’s nothing in here,” he said.
“Nothing that you can see yet…” Nova raised her hand up and pressed it against the air as if she was pantomiming the presence of a pane of glass. A small access panel materialized from the nothingness.
“Our security system,” she explained. “Hold on a second.”
Nova placed her thumb on the surface of the panel. After a moment, the image of the empty barn vaporized into thin air, leaving two giant metal doors, which slid slowly apart.
Bright light poured out of the barn, forcing Brady to turn away from its intensity. When he finally looked back, Nova was already inside.
Brady stared in amazement at the sleek interior of the building, his mind trying to reconcile the high-tech interior before him with the empty barn he had seen earlier. He walked in and looked around, his brain soaking up the technical marvels like a sponge.
The floor and the walls were made of sleek aluminum with an intricate lattice of trusses and girders providing support. Rows of LEDs lined the cathedral ceiling and bathed the room in white light.
“Did you build all of this?” Brady asked.
“Well, the barn was already here when we moved in. We made a few changes. Like it?”
“Like it? It’s incredible!” Brady replied.
Standing near the middle of the room was an aircraft unlike anything Brady had seen: a masterpiece of precision-crafted metal and glass. Four long arms protruded from the corners of the hull, and an individual blade was attached to each mast. The craft’s spotless exterior was painted a glossy white, and Brady could see his distorted reflection staring back at him. Situated just above the nose was a wide tinted windshield that extended up and over the roof, allowing the passengers an unobstructed view in almost every direction. As Brady looked on in wonder, his one regret was that Felix was not here to see it with him.
He turned away from the aircraft and surveyed the rest of the room. The walls were peppered with screens that showed surveillance footage from various areas on the property. One screen in particular caught Brady’s attention—a view from the camera posted high atop the fence that ran along the perimeter of his yard. He was used to seeing the fence from his back yard; now he realized that he was looking back at his yard from the other side.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed a second screen with an image that was moving quickly. It was a view from high above and appeared to be moving fast. Small rainbow-colored forms slid across the screen as he watched.
Nova noticed where Brady was looking and answered his question before he could ask it. “You’re seeing the world through Nyx’s eyes. Pretty neat, huh? She can show us what she’s seeing—but only when she wants to, of course. Her eyes have thermal cameras that allow her to see at night. The colors you’re seeing represent heat coming from the forest.”
It was hard for Brady to tell what was what. The ebb and flow of the thermal images was hypnotic and reminded him of his mom’s old lava lamp.
Finally he managed to tear his attention away from the screen. “Where did this all come from? I looked through a crack in the wall outside, and I didn’t see any of this.”
“Oh, that? That’s just an illusion. The inside walls are covered with double-sided high-resolution screens. You can’t see anything from the outside. On purpose.”
“No way! Anyone could tell that this pl
ace isn’t real,” Brady fibbed.
“It fooled you, didn’t it?” Nova shot back.
“I guess so,” he acknowledged. “But why go through so much trouble?”
“Security. We aren’t exactly safe here—especially given who my father—” Nova stopped suddenly. She realized she had said too much.
Brady nodded and let the matter drop. Clearly there was something there that she didn’t want to talk about.
Nova stepped over to a tall pile of crates in the corner of the barn. They were the exact same crates he had seen twice before: first being carried on Achilles’ back, and then in the storeroom on the other side of the portal.
“Can you come give me a hand with these?” Nova called out.
Brady walked over and they lifted the crate together. He tried not to buckle under the weight and wondered just how strong Achilles must be in order to carry an entire stack of these like it was nothing. He could barely handle half of one without falling over.
“What is this thing?” he asked, his voice straining under the pressure.
Nova let go with one hand and opened the rear hatch of the craft. Brady grunted as he struggled to take up the slack. Together they carefully slid the steel box into the back of the vehicle.
“It’s an Evercell,” Nova said.
“Ever-what?”
“Evercell. It’s a type of battery,” Nova replied, tying the crate down with some cables. She cinched a knot tightly and patted the top of the box.
“All done. Just one more thing and then we can get out of here.”
She whistled loudly. A few seconds later, something sped in through the doors and buzzed around the hangar. Brady recognized the sound at once.
The hummingbird.
He thought back to the creature’s alarm blaring at full pitch and the dizzying array of flashing lights. His head hurt just thinking about it.
“Oh no. Not this thing again.” Brady shook his head and backed away from the vehicle. “That. Bird. Is. Totally. Insane.”
The creature began to circle around his head. He took another step back and tripped over a stray crate.
The Quantum Door Page 8
