“How did you get up there?” he called out, playing along. There was still no movement from the guards. They seemed uninterested. Good, he thought.
“There’s another staircase behind the kitchen,” Nova replied. “But watch your step—it seems like it’s in pretty rough shape.” Her voice was somewhat distant.
Brady walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. Everything was wrong. The walls were covered in red and green plaid wallpaper that peeled up at the corners, revealing the crumbling sheetrock beneath it. An old sunflower still life hung at an angle, clashing with its surroundings. The cabinets also sloped downward, causing the doors, barely attached to their hinges, to swing open. They were empty inside except for the occasional plate or bowl, which had slid into dusty piles of broken china in the corners.
The sight made Brady long for his own home, for something normal. He would give anything to be back in his own kitchen, eating dinner with his mom and Felix, slurping noodles or gorging on four-cheese pizza. But all that was literally a world away, and a fresh wave of hopelessness washed over him.
He scanned the room once more and noticed a door barely ajar that he hadn’t seen the last time. He opened it to find an unlit staircase with dark-stained wood steps and a rail guiding the way to the top.
The old stairs groaned under his weight. The wooden treads were nailed at a steep incline, making each step up dangerous and difficult. He used the rail to help keep from slipping, but it ripped out of the wall when he put his weight on it. A plume of dust rose up in the cramped corridor where the screws had torn out of the drywall. Brady was forced to crawl the rest of the way up. He was exhausted, coughing, and out of breath by the time he reached the landing.
Picking himself off the floor, he saw Nova standing in the hall with her back to him. She was looking around the rooms on either side of her. Covered in dust, he walked over to her.
“You found a way out? Where is it?” he asked excitedly.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him into a room off to one side. The room was shaped like a hexagon, covered with oak bookcases that ran from floor to ceiling. The shelves were overflowing with dusty books and manuscripts.
“No, I didn’t find a way out. Sorry to get your hopes up. But I heard something,” she whispered as she closed the door behind them. “I don’t think we’re alone here.”
“Of course we’re not. Those clowns Batch and Redo are still watching us downstairs.”
“No, there’s someone else—or something else—up here with us.”
“Are you sure? Who?”
“I don’t know. I heard a sound coming from one of the rooms while I was looking around earlier. I’ve spent the last few minutes trying to figure out where it came from.”
Nova turned and looked around the room. Her jaw hung open as she stared in disbelief. She looked as though she had seen a ghost.
“What is it?” Brady asked.
“Books!” she said as she moved over to a shelf and studied the titles.
“Books? You’re this excited about just books?”
“Just books? Are you crazy?” Nova pulled a novel from one of the shelves and blew the dust off the cover before flipping through the pages. “There are only a few of these remaining. I’ve heard stories, but I’ve never actually seen one—in this world, of course.” She traced the words on the page with her index finger as she spoke. “Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if these are all that’s left. Amazing…”
“Well, it sure is something,” Brady replied, his hope evaporating as quickly as it had come. The dust from the book floated up in the air, causing rays of light to slice the room into geometric patterns.
He grabbed the book from her and closed it with a thud. “Back to that noise you heard earlier,” he said. “It probably wasn’t coming from in here. I don’t see anything.”
“Right,” she said with a sigh. “Sorry I got a bit distracted. This world is—or at least was—my home for a long time. This room is a surprise.”
“No problem. I’ve just never seen anyone get so excited over a book.”
“Well, it’s not every day you find this type of thing—but obviously we have more important things to worry about right now. Come on, let’s keep looking. If everything else fails, maybe we can just knock over the guards and run for it.”
“You’re not serious, right?”
“I’m joking.” Nova laughed and opened the door that led back into the hallway.
Just as Brady stepped out of the room, they heard a noise just a few doors down.
He froze. “What was that?”
“See? I told you. It sounded like it came from down the hall. Let’s go look.”
“Are you crazy? Who knows what’s in there!”
“Nothing’s going to hurt us here. We’re too important to them—at least that’s what I’m counting on. Come on.”
She turned around and tiptoed down the hall. Brady followed close behind.
After making sure they weren’t being watched, they snuck into the room where they thought the noise had come from. It was a bedroom, and the first thing Brady noticed about it was the lack of windows. Instead, the lavender walls were smothered with picture frames, and inside the frames were photos of contrived happiness. Forced smiles everywhere. They were the kind of generic photos Brady had seen in inexpensive convenience store frames. Some still had price tags dangling from the bottoms.
An antique four-poster bed lay in the center of the room. It lacked a mattress and box springs, rendering it a useless wooden skeleton that did nothing more than take up space.
They paused for a second and listened. Nothing.
“I’m sure it was coming from here,” Nova said.
“It’s an old house. You know how they can make strange noises. Maybe it was just a rusty pipe?”
“Wait a minute,” Nova said. She raised a finger to her lips and pointed to a large brick fireplace built into the wall near the footboard of the bed. Fake plastic logs were scattered about in front of the hearth.
Brady listened. The noise was back. There was a scratching sound coming from somewhere beneath the floor. He watched in surprise as a false brick panel in the chimney slid back to reveal a passage.
“We need to hide,” Brady whispered, and he quickly made his way over to the bed and wedged himself between the headboard and the wall. He ducked down as Nova came in through the other end. They peered out from opposite sides.
A few seconds later, a curious head popped up from the hole and scanned the room. It was an Artifex head, only much smaller than the heads of the bots they had encountered earlier. Its blank face was also missing the eerie carvings they had seen on the other mannequins.
A child, Brady thought.
Small fingers appeared and slowly spread out across the floor, and the child began to pull itself out of the hole. Brady watched in fascination as the pint-sized creature made its way into the room and slid the panel back over the passageway. As Brady studied the small bot, his head crept further away from the bed until he was no longer hidden. Nova grabbed his shirt to pull him back, but it was too late. He slipped and fell on the floor with a thud.
The startled Artifex let out a shrill yelp, but then squealed with laughter when it noticed Brady lying on the floor. Brady looked up angrily in time to see the child dart behind an oversized clay pot in the corner of the room, home to a gargantuan plastic tree.
“It’s okay, we won’t hurt you,” Nova said calmly, stepping out from behind the bed. No use hiding now, she thought. Worried that Batch and Redo would overhear them and their unexpected visitor, she walked over and closed the door to the room.
Brady picked himself up and sat on the floor, waiting for the Artifex to move.
After a few seconds, the small head rose up from behind the pot, this time more slowly than before. It stared at Brady and Nova with inquisitive green eyes.
“Do you speak? I know you know how to laugh,” Brady said.
The c
reature jerked back quickly, seeking cover under the dusty plastic leaves and cobwebs that stretched between them.
“I don’t think it likes you,” Nova said with a smile. “Let me try.” In a soft voice, she said, “My name is Nova. What is your name?”
The curious head leaned out and replied, “Ajax, but you can call me AJ.” The child’s synthetic voice was of a higher pitch than those of the other Artifex. His head vanished back behind the pot.
“Ajax?” Nova said and then quickly corrected herself. “I mean AJ. Nice to meet you. This is my friend Brady. He won’t hurt you either, I promise. Right, Brady?” She shot him a stern look and nudged him with her elbow. He almost fell over again.
“You can come out if you want, AJ,” Nova said.
Toe by toe, the Artifex crept cautiously away from the pot.
“You are… humans?” the bot inquired, his body now fully exposed. He appeared to be no more than a few feet tall.
“We are,” Nova said. “Both of us.”
AJ took a second to process this before words flew out of his mouth. “I found out Father had visitors—but I wasn’t allowed to see you—so I snuck in—and here I am!”
“Your father? Your house? You live here?” Brady asked.
“Sudo is my father. This is my house—I live here,” AJ answered quickly.
“Sort of like Pinocchio?” Brady asked. The bot just stared unknowingly back at him.
Nova jumped in to head off any questions. “AJ, we don’t want to be here. The guards won’t let us leave.”
“Batch and Redo? I don’t like them. They’re bad news,” AJ responded. “They never let me do anything.”
“Listen AJ, our friends need our help, and bad things will happen unless we get to them soon. We need to get out of here.”
“You have quite the problem,” AJ said, looking back toward his hole in the chimney. “But I have a solution.” His voice dropped to a computerized whisper. “I know a way out.”
He shuffled over to the fireplace and slid back the panel. “This path leads to the outside, but remember—if I help you, you help me. Promise?”
Nova narrowed her eyes and didn’t say anything. Brady, on the other hand, nodded in agreement without thinking first. “You don’t need to ask twice!”
With AJ leading the way, Brady and Nova climbed down the hole in the fireplace floor. Since Nova was the last to enter, she slid the panel back into place from below.
They climbed down a ladder inside the false brick chimney and made their way down through the interior of the house, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to alert the guards. Brady felt slightly claustrophobic in such a tight space, but continued on gamely, driven by the twin hopes of rescuing his brother and getting out of the house in one piece. The descent continued for minutes, and Brady was sure they were far underground.
After a while, the shaft narrowed out and they began to crawl sideways through a dark, narrow tunnel. The ground rose slowly and Brady realized they were crawling back up.
When they finally surfaced, the scenery above had changed. Instead of blue skies, the lights were now projecting storm clouds and rain across the top of the cavern. The ceiling lit up in bright flashes of simulated lightning as the scratchy, recorded sound of thunder and rain echoed through the cavern. They were on a dark, deserted street.
They had escaped.
Brady stopped to brush the dirt off himself. He hadn’t showered in a while and was starting to feel filthy. Despite the illusion of rain, he remained bone dry. His stomach growled loudly and he wondered when he had eaten last. Given Felix’s appetite, Brady knew his brother would have to be even hungrier, wherever he was.
“Where did that tunnel come from?” Nova asked. “It would take someone years to dig out something like that.”
“I dug it,” AJ responded, dancing around proudly. “My father doesn’t even know about it. I got sick of staying inside all the time. I’m never allowed out, you know.”
“Your dad, he does seem a bit… strict. And, uh, kind of evil,” Brady added.
AJ stopped dancing immediately and stared back, annoyed.
Something on Nova’s watch grabbed her attention. “The transponder!” she said, jumping up and down, unable to contain her excitement. “Look! I found them! They’re not moving anymore.”
Brady’s face lit up. “Seriously? Where are they?” He almost ripped the watch off Nova’s wrist as he turned it to get a better view.
“Only about fifty miles away from here.”
“Only fifty miles?” Brady asked, his mouth tightening into a straight line. “We have a big problem. Those crazy robots sawed your rotorcraft into pieces. There’s no way we can travel fifty miles. It would take us days if we walked.”
“The Brady boy is always complaining,” AJ observed.
Brady scowled.
“Brady’s right though, AJ—we don’t have days. We’ll have to find another way,” Nova replied.
AJ looked up at her.
“I have a way.”
Chapter 17: Thorn’s Tumult
AJ LED THEM to a storage garage on the other side of the town. They kept to dark alleys as much as possible to keep from being spotted. Brady figured they didn’t have much time until the guards realized they had gone missing.
The door to the garage was locked. AJ held up his wrist. A key jingled on a bracelet that hung around his arm.
“This belongs to my dad,” the bot said, swinging his arm in circles so that the key orbited around his wrist. “And he doesn’t even know it’s missing.”
Brady couldn’t believe it—he was actually starting to feel sorry for the bot’s father.
“You want to see what’s inside?”
“Do we want to see what’s inside? Of course we do!” Brady snapped. He couldn’t help it. This kid was really starting to get under his skin.
“Get a grip, Brady,” Nova whispered.
AJ slid the key into the lock. “Behold!” he said, lifting the door up as if it were light as a feather. The aluminum door rattled open to reveal a wasteland of man-made junk that spilled out in a landslide. There was an assortment of old coffee makers, trinkets, tools, toys, and other unusable garbage that had no use whatsoever. It was hard to believe there was anything that would help them save Felix and Achilles in here—or anything useful to anyone.
Nova and Brady exchanged confused glances.
“We don’t have time for this!” Brady said. “What are we doing here, anyway?”
“Nova and I will go to save your friends. You can stay here—with my father,” AJ teased.
“Sorry,” Brady said. “But seriously, I don’t see anything useful in there.”
“Look harder,” AJ responded, waving his hand toward the open garage. “Right there…” he pointed to a corner in the room. “Just a few steps more. You’ll see it!”
As Brady took a step forward, AJ stuck his foot out, causing him to trip. Nova tried to suppress her laughter.
“What’s wrong with you?” Brady asked, picking himself up off the ground.
AJ just stared back. “I know who Pinocchio is.”
“We need to get moving,” Nova said. “AJ—what are we doing here, seriously?”
“You’ll see.” AJ rapidly tossed large appliances out of the garage. In lightning speed he had cleared a path through the junk.
“Okay. Have a look now,” the bot said, pointing toward his unearthed treasure.
Standing there amidst the clutter were two exquisite-looking dirt bikes. The chassis were painted hornet yellow and black. The metal of the fork was polished to perfection, and the nubby tires looked ready to chew through the ground.
Brady ran his hand over the machines, his mouth agape. “No way! Where—where did you get these?”
The lights on top of AJ’s head lit up. “I found them in an old human junkyard and fixed them. Do you like them?”
“Like them? Are you kidding? These are incredible!”
He looked
over the bikes. “Where’s the exhaust?”
“There’s no gas—it’s all electric. I modified the engine myself,” AJ said proudly. “And they’re very fast, too!”
“I don’t doubt it,” Brady said, continuing to inspect the vehicle.
“You’ll let us use these?” Nova asked.
“Sure—if…”
“If what?” Brady probed.
“If I can come with you.”
Nova shook her head. “Uh-uh. No way. It’s too dangerous. There are already too many people in trouble because of me.”
“Have fun here, then,” AJ replied. He motioned as if he was going pull down the door and walk away.
“Wait!” Brady interjected.
“I will stay out of the way. I promise. You won’t even know I’m there.” AJ was spinning cartwheels across the floor. “Plus I can show you how to get there. You need me to show you around.”
“He has a point, Nova,” Brady said.
“He’s just a kid. No offense, AJ.”
AJ’s tone grew somber, and for a second the childishness was gone. “That is not my fault. It is how I was built—to be young like you, forever. My father has locked me in this child’s body from which I cannot escape.”
“Jeez, sorry, AJ,” Brady said. “Maybe he should come with us after all, Nova.”
“There is one problem though,” the bot added.
“What’s that?” Brady asked.
“The platform on the cliff is the only way out of here. We’ll never get these bikes out without getting caught.”
“Then we’ll need some kind of a distraction,” Brady replied.
They thought in silence for a few moments before Nova spoke up.
“I have an idea. Here’s how we’re going to get out of here…”
10100110
They widened the path through the junk and rolled the bikes into the alleyway behind the building. AJ shoveled the mountain of debris that had collected outside back into the garage, then pulled the door down with a crash.
The Quantum Door Page 13
