Mayhem

by Jeffrey Salane

  Evel made for the van to use the computer but stopped short. “What’s the message?”

  “That we’re at war.”

  As Evel ran to make the call, Keyshawn coughed and raised his arm to get M’s attention. “It’s … not … right.”

  M kneeled down next to him. “What’s not right?”

  “Any of it,” he answered slowly. Keyshawn struggled to speak and his voice was little more than a whisper. M leaned close to listen. “John Doe is devious and cold-blooded in his schemes. He’s toying with us. If he wanted you gone, then you’d be gone.”

  The words were made of steel and pierced M’s confidence like a knife.

  Keyshawn continued. “Which means we do have something he wants. The answer? Did Zara retrieve the answer from the safe house?”

  “Yes,” M said. “But what is it?”

  Keyshawn’s head flopped forward and then he pulled it back up, smacking against the tree trunk. He sucked in air through his teeth as if he were in serious pain. “Do you remember the Chaucer book you found in my lab?”

  “How could I forget that clunker?” M’s laugh made Keyshawn grin. The giant book had been about Chaucer’s obsession with a tool called an astrolabe.

  “You need to find the … Chaucer …”

  “The what?” asked M.

  “It’s part of his plan,” whispered Keyshawn. “Part of the answer. The poison is the cure.”

  M shook her head and steadied Keyshawn’s shaking hands with her own. “I’m sorry, but you’re not making sense. Tell me again, what am I looking for?”

  “The moon wasn’t always the moon. The earth wasn’t always the earth. Time is man-made, but we don’t understand it. Time changes, time passes, time waits for no one. And then your time is up.” Keyshawn was rambling now, incoherent sentences spilling out of his mouth. His eyes unfocused and stared beyond M into the shadows behind her. This was more than Rex’s knockout punch. Something else was happening to Keyshawn. And it was shutting him down.

  M checked his pulse again, and his heart was racing. “Jules! Get Zara and Foley. Keyshawn’s not doing well. I think it’s bad.”

  Jules bolted into the woods before M could even finish.

  “Stay with me, Keyshawn.” M tried to hold his focus. “Tell me more about this Chaucer.”

  “Stars, course, can’t, tell, Chaucer, pen, entire.” Spittle was foaming around the corners of Keyshawn’s lips as his body went into shock. His arms jerked and spasmed while his legs twitched in soft kicks like dying bugs that don’t know they are dead yet.

  “No, no, no,” comforted M. “You don’t get to leave me twice, Keyshawn. Just wait, Zara will be here and she’ll know what to do.”

  Evel ran over to M’s side with a bottle of water. “Is he okay? I mean, he doesn’t look good.”

  “Chaucer,” Keyshawn muttered.

  “He’s good,” lied M. She didn’t need Evel to break down, too. “He’s going to be okay. Did you get ahold of Sercy?”

  “Yeah, the message was heard loud and clear,” said Evel. “It should be in every encrypted in-box by tonight. A call to arms by M Freeman — that’s going to cause a stir.”

  “Don’t want to cause a stir,” said M. “I want to stop one from happening.”

  Evel opened the bottle and poured a drip of water into the cap. Then he held it up to Keyshawn’s parched lips for the old man to take a sip. “So I guess this is the calm before the storm?”

  “There’s nothing calm about this,” said M. “This is just the open sea and we’re adrift. Like the ocean between the waves. Hopefully we’re building a seaworthy ship.”

  Suddenly the sound of underbrush being kicked and trampled erupted around them. They looked up in alarm only to find Jules, breathless, scurrying out of the forest and tripping along the way.

  “No … no sign of those two,” she wheezed as she bent over and placed her hands on her knees.

  Then, quietly, a set of red lights lit up the world around them and cast Keyshawn in a plastic glow. M turned in time to see the van’s brake lights blink and hear the vehicle roar to life. She leapt up and ran over to the driver’s-side door, where the shadowy outline of Zara stared back at her with Foley in the passenger seat. M grabbed the door handle and tugged, but it was locked.

  “Don’t, Zara!” she pleaded. “Don’t do this, we need you. I need you.”

  The window rolled down a crack as Zara glanced at her, separated by a sheet of bulletproof glass. “Sorry, Freeman, this is where we part ways. I trusted Madame V, and she told me to trust you. Now she’s gone and you lied to me. That’s not what team leaders do. So I’m pulling rank.”

  “When was I the leader?” begged M. “Please get out of the car. We need to talk about this.”

  “Talk is cheap,” taunted Foley. “See you at the end of the world.”

  The rear tires of the van skidded on the dirt and peeled out, sending clouds of dust through the campground. Evel and Jules covered their faces, but they still practically hacked up their lungs. M fell to the side of the path and watched as her hopes drifted into the distance, a set of taillights growing smaller and smaller and smaller until they were gone. She’d lost almost everything. In fact, she could just barely catch her own breath.

  “At least they left your suit,” said Jules.

  M stopped in the middle of picking up the essentials that Zara and Foley had left for them and shot a glance at Jules. “I’d hardly call two bottles of water, a compass, and my suit a silver lining. We’re still stranded in the middle of nowhere and we’ve lost the two most important members of our team.”

  The clouds rolled back in as the choir of the night buzzed, clicked, and rustled to life again. M flipped open the compass, looked at it, then flipped it shut and handed it to Jules. “You’re the guidance counselor. Which way can we head that doesn’t lead to our doom?”

  “I don’t think Zara and Foley were the most important,” Evel said quietly.

  “Excuse me?” M put her fist up to her chin in a mock-deep-thought pose. “Hmmm, let me see, Zara almost certainly knows more about the plan that’s unfolding than we do, and she might just know how to contact my mom. And Foley is a heavily trained Lawless student who survived a close encounter with John Doe. How could they not be important?”

  “Because they’re not you,” said Evel more forcefully. “And they’re not Jules and they’re not Keyshawn and they’re not me. We’re the only ones that are important now because we’re the only ones here. I’ve spent my entire life being told that I wasn’t important, that I wasn’t living up to expectations. Well, look at me now. I just ordered a call to arms to take down the craziest people in the world. Jules stayed by your side even though you called her a completely average kid … which you’re not, by the way,” he added, turning to her.

  Jules smiled and her teeth almost beamed in the night. “He’s right, M. Listen, you said it yourself. Your mother will be found when she wants to be found. And the only side Foley wants to fight for seems to be whatever side Zara’s on. He wasn’t prepared to play nice with the Ronin, and we need the Ronin on our side.”

  “I handled things wrong, didn’t I?” M asked.

  “It’s not the first time you’ve messed things up,” teased Jules. “Probably won’t be the last, either. But that’s why I stick around. Don’t want to miss what happens next.”

  “Plus, if Lawless is looking for a group of kids in a van, they’ll never find us now.” Evel smiled. “I’d say things are looking up.”

  “Isn’t it cute when he tries to be optimistic?” snickered Jules.

  M stared them down as the two friends exchanged glances and tried to hold back their laughter. “You are both very odd people with a poor grasp of what makes a positive situation. But I’m glad you’re here with me. Now, if only they’d left us a phone, we’d be in business.”

  “We could always night gaze,” suggested Evel. “I hear it does wonders to clear the head. Isn’t that comet supposed to be vis
ible to the naked eye this week? The reports say it’s going to pass pretty close, like right between Earth and the —”

  “Your suit!” Jules interrupted. She pointed to Keyshawn, who still lay against the tree, drooping like a toy animal with the stuffing knocked out of it. “There’s a link through the suit Keyshawn built. Use it! Call Sercy and let her know we need a lift.”

  “Duh,” said M. “Jules, you’re a genius!”

  She unrolled the suit and put it on. The back opening clasped together as M pulled the mask down. Again the suit’s familiar fabric tugged and settled into place all over her like an extra layer of muscles molding to the outside of her skin. The sensation was still so strange that M wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to it. It was comforting, supportive, and imprisoning all at once. As the power surged through the wires, M realized that she had no idea how to use the suit to call anybody. Merlyn had always been a fawning fan of Keyshawn’s suit and would talk for hours about the interface and how user-friendly it was. It practically knows what you want it to do before you realize you’ve asked it to. As Merlyn’s voice echoed in her memory, M tapped the side of her mask, hoping to spark an obvious answer. But she wasn’t connected to an operator. Instead a video began playing through the mask’s goggles.

  M watched as lights whipped by overhead, seen through a murky shade, like a glass window. Then the audio kicked in and M could suddenly hear deep, frantic gasps. The effect was startling. A hand reached into the frame and pressed against the window. It was her hand, wrapped in coiled wires that glowed red.

  The suit! It had recorded her time trapped in the escape pod on that fateful night. M listened and watched as the old M was stripped of her memories. Then with a sudden jolt the escape pod stopped moving, and it nearly made her lose her balance as she watched. The recorded breathing steadied and M found herself matching the audio of her own breaths now. It calmed her.

  “What’s going on, M?” asked Jules. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, there’s a video,” she explained, “playing through the mask. It looks like a video of the night I escaped from Doe. Only now I’m watching everything that happened after I blacked out.”

  Through her mask M watched the recorded shadows of tree branches wave above her like witches conjuring up a spell. The sound of her breathing had relaxed, and it was the only sound … until there was a click, and a crack of light in the shape of a door appeared. The hatch was opening. An arm reached in and pulled up M’s limp body. The view tipped and tumbled, and the forest ground came into view, along with a set of feet in dress shoes.

  “Well, you weren’t supposed to be alone,” a man’s hushed voice said. “And what’s this?” M could hear the stranger searching through the pod. “A yearbook? Tsk, tsk. Your father was supposed to have destroyed this little piece of evidence.”

  The voice, she’d heard it before. It was the same hurried voice from the video the Fulbrights had showed her. The one of her father in the photo booth, leaving her a message while a voice warned him that people were on their way.

  This man had been a trusted accomplice of her father’s. But who was he?

  There was a sound of pages being turned, and then a gentle ripping. He was the one who’d removed the missing page. The tearing sounded slow and unearthly in the recording, like the sky itself was being slit apart and something more sinister would be revealed. “I’ll keep this safe. They find this on you, young M, and they’ll kill you on the spot. But then your father never was one for thinking about the consequences his actions would have on the rest of us.”

  The stranger finally rolled M over and stared directly into the camera. It was Professor Bandit. “Oh, the things we do for our dear deceased friends.” His colorful eyes swelled like alien storm clouds, gazing back at M as if he were right there in front of her, standing next to Jules and Evel in the same upstate New York night. “Can’t have this tech falling into the wrong hands. I’ll leave the suit here for you, in the pod. Bandit’s honor. And when you find it, heaven help the poor fools who get in your way.” Then the feed ended and the mask went black.

  M struggled to see anything more, but the video was over. Slowly, the dark night of the present returned, washed out and blurry at first, but then forming into solid shapes. Jules and Evel were huddled around Keyshawn. Beyond them there was something else moving in the forest. She tried to track it, but the mask kept the intruder fuzzy, like walking fog.

  “Your mask won’t work on me,” the intruder said. “Take it off. We don’t have time for games.”

  M ripped back the mask as the real Professor Bandit stepped forward. Jules and Evel scattered away in a panic. Bandit bent over Keyshawn and gave his shoulder a small pat of approval. “He kept you alive this far; that bodes well.”

  “What do you want?” Jules demanded from a safe distance. “Come to cash in on the bounty?”

  “Like I need blood money, Ms. Byrd.” Bandit smoothed his suit and refused to look in her direction. “I’ve saved you once already. A repeat performance comes at a hefty price for all involved. Much more than what Lawless would pay me for your hides.”

  “He’s here to help,” said M.

  “But he was at your house with John Doe,” said Jules, confused. “He locked me in that casket. He’s a traitor! Little more than a pallbearer at old Jules’s funeral.”

  “No,” M disagreed. “He was punching us in the face, just like I punched Merlyn. He did it to save our lives.”

  “Technically that was to save everyone-on-Earth’s lives,” Bandit corrected. “But Ms. Byrd gets points for having a good memory. We weren’t sure exactly what Doe’s experiment would do.”

  “Where’s Doe now?” demanded M.

  “You’re in no position to dictate any orders to me, Ms. Freeman.” Bandit’s eyes flared red, but his stance remained relaxed. “If I knew where he was, of course I’d tell you. But I rather had my hands full after your shenanigans that night.”

  “Doe sent you out to find me,” said M, “but you were working for someone else.”

  “Ah, you want to hear me admit it, do you?” Bandit nodded. “Your father made me promise, years ago, to watch over you if our paths should cross. And the safest thing for both of us would have been to have you expelled from Lawless, but that didn’t take. Now we find ourselves in the deep, dark forest.”

  He motioned to the group. “Remember. You are the fugitives.” Then he motioned to himself. “I am still the big baddie.”

  “Don’t believe him, M,” said Jules. “He’s got a trick up his sleeve.”

  “I’m sure he does, but he’s telling the truth about my father,” said M. “I saw it with my own eyes. My suit has a camera … somewhere. It taped the night everything went wrong, and I just watched the footage of Bandit stashing my suit. What did you do after that?”

  “Set you on your merry way, of course. If I had found you, well, I wouldn’t be here chasing you now.” Bandit’s logic was dizzying, but M had spent a year with him as a teacher. His language was his best defense. Words that spiraled until the conversation didn’t even know what it was about.

  “You ripped a page out of the Lawless yearbook,” M noted. “Why?”

  “I can’t have the Lawless School learn the truth about John Doe, can I?” Bandit’s smirk shone even in the darkness. “The truth was never part of the deal. Just the living, keeping you alive.”

  “Then are you here to save us?” asked Evel.

  “Evel Zoso, how surprising. Does your sweet little sister know that you’re hanging around with the wrong crowd?” Bandit rubbed his pointer fingers together in a tsk-tsk-tsk motion before bringing them both up to his lips. “Shhhhhhhhh. Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Quit scaring the rookie, Bandit, and get to the point,” said M. “We’re burning precious moonlight.”

  Blllleeerrrp. Bandit, any sign of the targets?

  Bandit was wearing a communicator on his wrist. He brought his finger up to his lips, motioning for ever
yone to keep quiet. Then he spoke into his communicator. “No van here. Moving to the next location.”

  He looked back up at the kids, who were frozen with fear. “What? There isn’t a van here … I didn’t technically lie to those fools.”

  “But you were sent out here to hunt us, weren’t you?” said Jules.

  “You didn’t think I was here out of the kindness of my heart?” Bandit laughed. “You should have guessed by now that I have no heart, only obligations.”

  “Just help us already, please,” said M.

  Bandit pulled out a phone and tossed it to Jules.

  “What’s this for?” she asked.

  “That, my dear ex-students — and you, Evel — is called a phone,” Bandit said with a heavy dose of sarcasm before getting serious again. “It’s untraceable. Use it wisely.” Then he turned and walked into the woods.

  “That’s it?” M pressed. “That’s your best knight-in-shining-armor effort?”

  Bandit stopped and turned his head slightly over his shoulder, giving the others a view of his sharp facial features silhouetted in shadow. “Don’t be confused by any help I’ve provided you. I am not on your side, Ms. Freeman.”

  “Then whose side are you on?” asked Jules.

  “I’m on my own side, of course,” he said. “If that is all, I still have a black van to find. Remember, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Maybe there’s another museum in your future?” With that, he walked out of sight.

  “What was he talking about?” asked Jules. “A museum?”

  “I have no idea,” admitted M. “Bandit’s a wild card.”

  Jules handed Evel the phone. “I guess you should call your friend, then.”

  Evel turned it on and dialed Sercy’s number but was met with empty air when he put the phone to his ear. He tried a second time, but the phone still didn’t work. “No good. This thing must be a dud. Your not-friend is playing with us.”

  M’s first instinct was to run and track down Bandit. How dare he play with them like this? For all they knew, he could have handed them a bomb and they’d just activated it themselves! The muscles in her arms and legs burned, ready to leap forward, but Jules stopped her.