Mayhem

by Jeffrey Salane

  “We should make our move now,” she said. Then she spoke into the commlink sleeve again. “Ben, we need a distraction in the main room. Three guys, you’ll see them right away.”

  As M, Jules, and Evel emerged from the Egyptian room, a group of security guards were questioning the black turtlenecks.

  “Yes, sir, I saw all three of these men using flash photography in the museum!” accused Ben irately.

  M smiled and gave him a wink as she walked into the center Reading Room. The walls were covered with books on shelves that circled up and up far overhead. Reading tables emanated from the middle of the room like rays from the sun, and nearly every seat was filled. Bright windows ran all around the curved walls and allowed a deluge of light into the room. There wasn’t a place where the sunlight didn’t reach. It was like being inside of a church, where an air of respect and appreciation merged with the sense that the world is bigger and grander than just the people in it. That and it was so quiet that M could hear the blood pumping in her own body … along with the occasional flap of turning pages.

  In the middle of the room, there was a small information desk. M walked up to it and said, “Excuse me, but I would like to see a book by Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer.”

  The woman at the desk smiled. “Yes, I assumed you meant Geoffrey Chaucer, miss. We don’t get many people in here asking about any other Chaucer, but I’m afraid you’d be better off visiting the British Library … or any bookstore in the world.”

  “No to the library … I’ve already tried them,” said M. “I’m looking for a very specific book.”

  “Specific how, miss?” the woman asked.

  “Ummm.” M paused. “Specific to the British Museum?”

  “Real smooth,” joked Jules. “Please excuse my friend. What’s she trying to get at is that we’re playing a scavenger hunt game for school and one of the clues was Chaucer at the British Museum, so naturally we came to the Reading Room first. We just need to take a quick pic and send it back to our teacher to get the next clue. Can you please help us?”

  “Oh, wow, that sounds brilliant,” the woman said, “but we don’t have any of Chaucer’s books here.”

  M’s face dropped. “Oh.”

  Then the woman typed something into the computer before nodding. “I thought I remembered this. We don’t have any books in the Reading Room, but it looks like we do have something in the Medieval Europe section. Room forty on the map.”

  “Excellent!” cheered Jules, a little too loudly. A wave of shushes rose from the readers. “Is it a famous book, then?”

  “No, afraid not,” said the woman. “Says here that it’s an astrolabe, whatever that is.”

  M, Jules, and Evel stared blankly back at the woman. Even surrounded by a collection of some twenty-five thousand books, there were no words for what the three of them were thinking. Like stepping on a land mine and hearing the click, they forced themselves to stand stone still, trying to stave off the explosion for as long as possible.

  “Oh dear, did I pronounce it wrong?” asked the woman. “You all look gobsmacked. As-tro-labe? Astro-la-be? A-stro-lab-eh?”

  “As-tro-labe,” corrected M. “You said it right the first time. In room forty? That’s outstanding. Thanks so much.”

  As the crew ran back down the aisle, M whispered orders. “We split up, each person going a different way, then we’ll all meet up at the target.”

  “Then what?” asked Jules.

  Stepping back out into the grand hallway, M turned to her friend. “We hope it’s still there. And if it is, then we do what we do best. Take it.”

  M’s path took her up a set of stairs closest to the gallery where the astrolabe was supposed to be found, but she didn’t head directly there. The museum had filled with patrons and now there was a steady flow of onlookers stopping and admiring the works. Foot traffic was great for the museum, but horrible for M’s bad guy radar. Any of these people could be with Lawless. A dad with a toddler on his shoulders, a mom quickly grabbing her child before he touched a precious statue — in any other world they would be sweet and frazzled parents. But here and now, M filed them under maybe. And the maybes were everywhere.

  Before she knew it, M found herself in the Greek and Roman gallery. Handmade water jugs, cups, and urns had stood the test of time and now waited out the rest of their existence safely behind glass. The detail in the design and painting on the pieces was truly amazing. To put this much effort into things designed to carry other things — water, wine, ashes — seemed truly foreign to M. Most of her cups at home had been plain old plastic or glass, while these each told a story. And most of them told a story with familiar elements: women, children, war, and hope, all artfully rendered into these everyday, common tools. M found she could relate.

  She turned a corner and saw a display of war helmets. These were actual pieces of protective armor worn by the Romans and Greeks of distant times, crafted as a mixture of delicate edges, ornate designs, and rugged practicality. They floated in the exhibit, staring back at M — only they couldn’t stare. They were empty on the inside. No one was wearing the helmets. They had all died. Maybe in battle and maybe after a long life, but they were gone now and all that remained were those helmets. She shifted her neck, wrists, and ankles, suddenly aware of the suit she was wearing underneath her own civilian clothes. Would her suit be in a museum one day, too? And if so, where would she be?

  On the other side of the room, there was a very different artifact. It was a small, creepy-looking, faceless doll. M never would have called it a doll herself, but that’s what the plaque said. It had been made of cloth stuffed with rags and papyrus. Its arms and legs dangled limply. Its tobacco-brown stains and moth-eaten holes gave it a sense of age, making it look more like a mummy than a plaything for a child. But it had belonged to a child and it had been loved. M imagined the girl or boy curling up with this doll at night after their parents had tucked them in to whatever Greek and Roman kids slept in.

  And now here was M. Somewhere between the doll and the battle helmets, and probably two rooms away from a lynchpin in John Doe’s scheme. She couldn’t help feeling like the Greeks and Romans had it easy compared to her.

  She pushed on, inching closer to the Chaucer exhibit, while still casually viewing the sights, though she began to think that once she’d seen one mosaic, she’d seen them all. Finally she moved into a room with a disturbingly familiar sound. Ticking. M’s first instinct was to look for a bomb, but the ticking was coming from every direction. Clocks. She had wandered into an entire display of rare and fanciful clocks from all around the world. The sound of each clock overlapped and M was transported back to Keyshawn’s vertical maze, the room with the cuckoo clocks. The memory was dizzying, but M kept herself steady. She didn’t have the luxury of taking a tumble through memory lane right now.

  “Got the time?” slithered a familiar voice.

  M turned. Leaning against the glass that held an oversize clock was Devon Zoso. Her hair was longer now, her severe bangs hanging just above her eyes. But her smile, that was just as sharp and cutting as M remembered.

  “There’s got to be a clock around here somewhere for you to check,” M said.

  The two enemies circled each other casually as the crowd of sightseers moved around them. “I know the time, Freeman,” said Devon. “Just want to make sure you know it, too.”

  “How kind of you,” said M. “So is this where you tell me my time’s up?”

  Devon looked slightly defeated. “Well, yeah, but you weren’t supposed to know my line. And it sounds so corny when you say it.”

  “And how would you have said it?” asked M.

  “I don’t know, more menacingly, I guess,” Devon mused. Then she added, “I finally got my own suit, by the way.”

  “Did you?” M smiled as they stepped close together and pretended to look at the fancy clocks. To the people around them, they would look less like mortal enemies and more like old friends running into each other at t
he supermarket. “Is it everything you wanted it to be?”

  “Not yet,” said Devon. Then she leaned over and whispered, “Because I wanted it to end you.”

  “You know how to make a person feel wanted, Devon,” said M. “So what brings you to the British Museum at this time of day? Isn’t there a Fulbright class on lying, cheating, and generally being an awful person in the name of justice?”

  “That class was pass/fail,” said Devon. “I passed. And now I’m spending a year abroad. Felt like getting out of the house and slipping into something more cultural. What about you? What have you been up to? It feels like years since we’ve talked.”

  M stopped next to a bizarre clock in the shape of a maritime ship made of bronze and gold. Black cannons stuck out of the sides of the ship, which appeared to be sailing into battle. Every hour, the cannons would pretend-blast at the threats around it. “Strange way to tell time.”

  “So is waiting for your shoulder to mend.” Devon smiled again. “Or for your hair to grow back. Time has a funny way of reminding you that it takes forever to pass … then, when you’re ready to have a good time, it races by you like a roller coaster.”

  “Are we having a good time?” M asked.

  “We’re going to,” promised Devon, “as soon as you tell me why you’re here. We know about your little Ronin buddy, Ben Downing. He was running that operation downstairs. Now you and your other cronies … who are they, now? No doubt your pesky partners in crime, Jules and Merlyn.”

  “Guilty as charged,” admitted M. Let her keep talking, she thought. If Devon doesn’t know that her brother is here with me, what else doesn’t she know? “But if I knew why I was here, would I be walking around aimlessly?”

  “Did Dr. Lawless put you up to this?” asked Devon. “Yeah, I know he’s back. I thought we’d be lucky and he’d be on the other side of that little black hole we started.”

  “You started,” corrected M. “If I was working for Lawless, would you take me in? Read me my rights?”

  “You don’t have any rights as far as I’m concerned,” snarled Devon.

  “Well, I’m not working for Lawless,” said M. “Especially because he’s working for John Doe and the Fulbrights.”

  “Very funny, but I’m not biting.” Devon followed M into room forty.

  The Chaucer astrolabe was somewhere in here. M’s heart beat in her chest. She was thankful that Devon wasn’t wearing her mask yet, because she would have known that something was off if she could get a reading of M’s vitals. “No lie, it’s true. Actually all of Lawless works for Doe. I don’t think most of them know it, any more than you knew it. Remind me, that’s, like, your job to know this kind of information, isn’t it?”

  “A rat on a sinking ship will say anything to save her own life,” rationalized Devon. “I was sent here by Doe himself to stop you, just like he sent me to hobble Lawless.”

  “Oh good, then maybe you know what to stop me from getting,” said M. “That would make my mission so much easier. This place is huge. It’d be great to narrow it down to one cursed object, or hidden secret code, or whatever it is.”

  “I should lay you out right here and now.” Devon’s voice was a tight, forced whisper filled with venom.

  “So Doe didn’t tell you what you’re protecting,” said M. “Sounds like he really trusts you to get the job done. Wait, no it doesn’t. It sounds like he wants you to stop me, so he can steal the whatever-it-is for himself.”

  Zoso’s fists clenched. M knew she had about a minute before Devon actually took a swing at her.

  “You’re on the wrong side of this, Devon,” insisted M. “As much as it pains me to tell you this, you’re being played. If you don’t believe me, ask the guy behind you.”

  Devon whipped around to face her brother, Evel. “What are you —?”

  But Evel stopped her with a big hug. “Sis!” he boomed, then mouthed to M: Behind me.

  And there it was, just over Evel’s shoulder: Chaucer’s astrolabe. It was smaller than M had imagined, probably five inches across and flat like a compass. She could easily slip it into her back pocket, no problem. And no one was paying attention to it. The crowd passed it by, instead drawn by a large knight’s suit of armor that held a mace aloft in the corner. Everyone seemed to be posing for selfies with it, blowing kisses or making fake screams. The moment was right … if it wasn’t for Devon and Evel’s family reunion.

  “Evel, you idiot. Are you with her now?” accused Devon.

  “I am and you should be, too,” Evel answered. “She’s saved me multiple times. And there’s an evil at work here that’s bigger than all of us. It’s, like, an ancient evil.”

  Devon sent chilling stares M’s way and shoved Evel aside with so much force that he crashed into the suit of armor. “You think you can use my brother to convince me to turn my back on Doe? Ha! You’re dumber than I gave you credit for!”

  So much for keeping quiet.

  M ducked in the nick of time, as the heavy gust of a magblast whooshed over her back, smashing the glass case that held the astrolabe. People began screaming and running in all directions at the commotion, swarming Devon and blocking her view. M used the opportunity to reach in and grab the object. She shoved it into the neck of her suit. The metal was shockingly cold against her skin.

  “She’s got it!” yelled one of the would-be sightseers. “It’s an astrolabe!”

  He was a thin man, one of the selfie-takers from earlier, and he was fast. He slipped through the crowd and threw a punch at M, but she was able to block it. Poor fighting technique, blends in, must be Lawless, thought M. She pummeled him with a magblast, but now the room had cleared and she was face-to-face with Devon. And Zoso had her dead to rights.

  Then a trio of Fulbrights rushed in and one of them spoke to Devon. “Stand down, cadet. We’ll take it from here.”

  “I’m no cadet, soldier,” Devon fired back. “Freeman’s mine to deal with. Pick up the other trash in the corner.”

  “Cadet,” the Fulbright replied, “we have orders to not engage if it risks damaging the astrolabe. If you attack her, we will take action against you. Now stand down.”

  “The astro-what?!” said Devon. She didn’t take her eyes off of M. “Soldier, did Doe tell you what Freeman was looking for?”

  But Devon never got her answer. Instead one of the men jumped her from behind while the other two wrestled with M. They were strong! They forced her down, but M struggled. She looked over and saw Devon was fighting to get free, too. And Evel was standing over them with the mace from the suit of armor held high. Next thing M heard was a muffled thud as the Fulbright was knocked clear off of Devon.

  Zoso leapt to her feet and sent a magblast that crashed into one of the Fulbrights holding M, sending him toppling into another exhibit. Then M magblasted the Fulbright who had been doing all the talking, thrusting him up against the ceiling. She held him there, too, while Devon and Evel came to her side. Evel helped M up, but Devon stared at the chump pressed above them.

  “He did tell you, huh?” said Devon. “Well, send him a message from Devon Zoso. No more Ms. Nice Gal.” Then she knocked M’s arm down and sent the Fulbright slamming to the ground.

  “There’s more Fulbrights like him here,” said Evel.

  “And there’s us, too.” A blast of wind caught M, Evel, and Devon in a hale of force that drove them right through the solid wall and out onto the white floor of the Great Court. M cushioned their fall with a magblast, but she couldn’t mask her shock when Ms. Watts and Cal stepped out from the rubble and looked down at them from the second-floor landing.

  “Give it to us now,” said Ms. Watts, who was holding Jules over the edge. “Or we’ll see if Ms. Byrd can really fly.”

  “Don’t!” screamed Evel. “Just stop — it’s not worth hurting anyone else.” Then he pulled out a second astrolabe from his jacket and held it above his head. “Here.”

  Using the magblast, Cal retrieved the astrolabe. It flew back to him
like a trained falcon. He looked at it and nodded to his mother.

  She sneered down at them and repeated Evel’s final word. “Here.” Then she tossed Jules from the second floor, but Devon caught her with a magblast, while M shot another blast at the Watts team. Cal blocked it easily.

  “You get what you deserve,” Cal yelled at M. “Remember that.”

  As Cal and his mother disappeared through the hole in the middle of the museum wall, another team of Fulbrights had taken control of the first floor. M, Jules, Evel, and Devon huddled together as the soldiers advanced. They were surrounded.

  “Is this how you planned it?” Devon asked M.

  “Not exactly,” admitted M. “But this is how my plans usually end up. I guess you take that side.” She motioned to the twenty men advancing from the left. “And I’ll take this side.”

  But then a dull, repetitive thud clapped from above them. M looked up and could see a lone helicopter through the glass ceiling. The glass ceiling. “Everybody, cover your heads!”

  M rocketed a magblast upward and a monumental smash sounded out, like a tidal wave crashing against a shore. The ceiling above them was obliterated into a billion shards of glass and rained down on the plain-clothed Fulbrights.

  She braced herself for the downpour of minuscule particles of glass, but she needn’t have worried. A cocoon had formed around the group of friends — a cocoon made of the programmable matter of Devon’s suit. M reached over and clapped Jules and Evel on the back to let them know it was okay now.

  Then she turned to Devon and said, “Now that’s what I call a plan! Feel like catching a helicopter ride?”

  Devon pulled on her mask and looked up at the copter that still hovered in the sky, unfazed by the destruction. “That’s not a Fulbright-issue vehicle.”

  “I have a suspicion who it is,” said M. “Now, use your suit and let’s get out of here before they make us pay for this damage.”