Which is why I was quite surprised to suddenly find myself coming to, strapped by my wrists to a metal chair in the middle of an empty warehouse.
STRANGERS
CALVIN
“HE’S AWAKE.”
“I CAN SEE that.”
The first voice was behind me. It was female, reedy, and vaguely amused. But I wasn’t focused on that voice or who owned it. The moment my eyes snapped open back on True Earth, they were focused on the man in front of me—the second voice. The reason being that it’s kind of hard to take your eyes off of a guy who looks to be seven foot tall and weigh four hundred pounds with zero percent body fat. I’m talking huge. His forearms rested across each other on the back of the chair he was straddling, and each one looked longer than my entire leg. His fists were the size of small pumpkins. Or maybe regular pumpkins. Or even award-winning ones. Point is, they were massive. He was dressed in a black trench coat worn over a suit that was as dark as his skin. His eyes were cold and calculating as they watched me come fully awake.
“Oh, great,” I said. “I guess you’re not just some random crazy person.”
“Would you prefer that I was?” asked the man in front of me. He didn’t crack a smile.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I guess I could deal with a random crazy easier than the Association.”
He nodded. “So you know about the Association. Interesting. I wondered if they’d tell you on the other side.”
“They just did,” I said. “After we saw you guys trying to find us with your bogus sleeping disorder medical program. Stupid of you to put Terrence in the news like that. We wouldn’t have had any idea you were behind it if you hadn’t done that.”
The man, still expressionless, looked over my shoulder. I guessed he was looking at the woman. As if on cue, she spoke up. I still couldn’t see her.
“You’re right, it was a dumb move,” the voice said. “But Terrence wanted to instill some fear in you. Let you know he was coming. Put pressure on you both here, and in Midrealm.”
“Well, he’s dumb,” I said. “And you can tell him I said that.”
The voice behind me laughed. “Classic. But that would be a bad idea.”
The man in front of me spoke up again. “We know who you think we are. And you’re not entirely wrong. But you’re not entirely right, either.”
I blinked. “What, you’re not from the Association?”
“Not any more,” he said. Then he stood and approached my chair. I’d been trying to keep my cool, but as he stepped within a couple feet of me, I gulped. Then he pulled out a pair of pliers from an inside pocket of his trench coat.
I braced myself. I knew they’d torture me. But knowing it didn’t exactly make me feel better about it. I was pretty sure I could hold out until I fell asleep or passed out from the pain. So there was nothing to do but sit here and wait for whatever this guy was going to do to me.
But instead of going for my teeth or fingernails, the man moved behind me and knelt. In a second I heard a quick snip-snip, and my wrists came free. I looked down to see two black plastic zip-ties lying in pieces on the floor.
I was frozen in confusion for a moment. Then, slowly, I stood from the chair, massaging the pain out of my wrists. I looked around carefully. The warehouse we were in was empty, and about two hundred feet square. First, I looked behind me. Sitting at a desk was a girl who looked to be in her late twenties, early thirties; she was the one who’d spoken earlier. She had dyed-black hair and a ring in one ear. She looked more like a punk rocker than a shadowy agent. On the desk in front of her was a computer monitor, connected by haphazard cables to the box under the desk.
I turned to scan the rest of the warehouse. Four huge loading doors were set into the wall at one end of the warehouse, and on the opposite side a single man-sized metal door provided the only other means of escape. I eyed it carefully, but it was on the other side of both the huge guy and the woman at the desk.
The man noticed. “It’s locked,” he said. “Cutting your straps is more of a symbolic gesture. You’re not going anywhere until we’ve talked.”
My eyes narrowed. “What is this?”
The huge guy walked back to the chair he’d been in and straddled it once more. He gestured with a hand the size of a frying pan toward the other chair. When nothing else happened for a moment, I sat cautiously—but not before I turned the chair to the side so I could keep an eye on the girl at the desk at the same time.
“Let’s start with introductions,” said the huge guy. “I’m Briggs. My colleague at the desk is Anna.”
“Sup,” said Anna, giving a little two-fingered salute. She kicked her chair back and propped her feet on the desk, looking amazingly like Blade as she did so.
“Sup? People in the Association really say sup?” I asked. “Nobody says sup.”
“I’m a child of the nineties,” said Anna with a shrug. “Old habits die hard.”
“You’re a Realm Keeper,” said Briggs. There was no question mark in his tone, but he waited for me to answer.
“You already know that,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes, but it’ll be easier for this conversation if we all just lay everything on the table. And you think we’re from the Association. Not a bad guess, considering that was the case less than a week ago.”
“So what? You got kicked out?”
“We left,” said Anna. “As soon as I found you and the others.”
“How did you do that, by the way?” I asked. “I tried really hard to make sure I didn’t leave any traces online. I didn’t leave anything up.” I still didn’t know what was going on here, and I had to stall for time. Plus, I had to dig for information. If I could figure out where I was, maybe I could figure out a way to knock myself out and tell the others where to find me.
“Listen kid, you may know computers, but you’re sloppy,” said Anna matter-of-factly. “You don’t know how to do a proper IP scrub or eliminate web history caches. Googling how to eliminate your online presence doesn’t cut it. That’s what you did, isn’t it?”
“No,” I lied.
“You’re lying,” she sighed. “I’ve got your Google search history pulled up right here.” She spun the monitor around to show me.
“Okay, fine, so you found me,” I said. “But if you’re not in the Association, why bother?”
“We left as soon as we found you and the others, like she said,” said Briggs. “We knew we had to get to you before the Association did.”
Realization began to dawn on me. “Oh my gosh,” I said in awe. “You guys went rogue?”
Anna smiled. “Told you he’d get it,” she said with a smile at Briggs.
“The day that Terrence assassinated the former Realm Keepers, there was a bit of a coup within the Association,” said Briggs. From the tone of his voice, I got the feeling that “a bit of a coup” didn’t really cover it. “As we later found out, Terrence hadn’t planned to kill them for some time yet, but they had a protocol in place. When they all died simultaneously around the globe, command stepped in and declared that Terrence was now the only Keeper we would be protecting in the future. Anyone who didn’t toe that line was disposed of.”
“You mean they killed them?” I asked in a small voice. “How many?”
“A lot,” Briggs said simply. “By the time they were done, everyone who was left was either on board or too scared to argue. That’s when I enlisted Anna.”
“Enlisted? I had the same idea,” Anna said, annoyed. “But yeah, Briggs reached out to me. I was the Association’s top techie. I made sure the organization was always clean online, and I found loopholes in a variety of sites that trafficked money that enabled them to keep their operations funded.”
“Loopholes?” I asked. “You’re a hacker?”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure. If you want to use that word.”
“Once Anna found you, I arranged our exit,” Briggs said, picking up the story. “We arrived in Rho
de Island two days ago, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to pick you up.”
I stared at him. I wasn’t totally drinking their Kool-Aid, but a lot of their story rang true. If they really were from the Association, why all this masquerade? Why not just kill me? That was Terrence’s plan, after all. Unless they only had me, and were still looking to find the others.
“So why me?” I asked. “Why did you pick me up?”
Anna looked at Briggs before responding. “Like I said, you were the first one I found. But once we tracked down the others, I did some quick profiles. You seemed like the easiest one to convince.”
I decided to ignore that. “So you found the others?”
“Your cousin, Sarah Preston,” said Briggs. “Your classmates, Winston Frederickson, Contessa Hernandez, Miles Grave and Ester Penbrooke. We know who they are.”
I blinked. “Whoah, Raven’s real name is Ester? Did not know that.”
Anna snickered.
Briggs nodded. “So you see, we know who all of you are. We know where to find you. But we pulled you in first, alone, because we wanted to be able to have a conversation like this without all of you becoming agitated. We figured—or I should say, Anna figured—you’d be the best point of entry.”
I looked at Anna. “Okay, so what about that? Why was I the best one?”
“You’re a nerd,” Anna said with a shrug. “You’re familiar with counter-culture. That’s us. That’s the Association. You’re the one who can think logically about a situation like this because you’ve seen it a million times before. Now you know that we know who all of you are. If we were still working for that idiot Terrence, you’d all be dead right now. Not just you, all six of you. Surely you can see that.”
I pursed my lips. I could see her point. But there was a lot of stuff that still didn’t make sense.
“So what’s the point, then?” I asked. “Now you’ve got me. Now what?”
“Now you’ll go back to the others,” said Briggs. “You’ll tell them who we are and what we’re here to do. We’ll arrange some sort of meeting, put faces to names. Then we need to devise an exit strategy for the six of you. You’re all way too exposed, and we need to figure out a way to get you secure.”
“Whoah, you mean, like, drop our lives?” I asked. “I can tell you right now, that’s not happening.”
“It has to,” Anna said simply. “Clearly Terrence screwed up on the Medicorp thing. He’s always had an ego that was bigger than his brain. But he’s got other ways to track you down. I was the best, but there’s other people like me. Once I tracked the six of you down, I scrubbed every mention of you from existence. But it’s harder to prove a negative than a positive. It’s much harder to say with certainty that there’s no mention of you online than it is to say with certainty that there is.”
“I get that,” I said. “But I’m telling you, the others are not going to budge on this. There’s no way they’re just dropping everything they’re doing and going away to some safe house in Uganda.”
“We don’t have safe houses in Uganda,” said Briggs. I looked at him, smirking. His face was deadpan.
“Ignore him,” said Anna. “I haven’t been able to figure out yet if he’s joking when he does that or he’s serious. But that’s why we need to meet with the others. We need your help to convince them that they’ve got to disappear. None of you are safe until that happens.”
I spread my hands helplessly. “I’ll see what I can do. But Sarah’s not going to like this. She’s the one in charge.”
Anna smirked at Briggs. “Told you. Again.”
“Her response to this situation would have been problematic,” Briggs said in reply. He eyed me, and for a second I saw a flicker of surprise. “Frankly I’m astounded that you’re taking this so…amicably.”
I shrugged. “Anna’s right. I get it. If you were on the wrong team, I’d already be dead. It’s simple.”
“Nothing is simple,” said Briggs, and his tone turned solemn. “And if you carry that sort of attitude around, you’re likely to get yourself and the others killed—not to mention us. Your life no longer has room for trust.”
“It’s not trust, man,” I said with a shrug. “Just logic.”
“Told you,” said Anna again, leaning further back in her chair.
Briggs ignored her. “All right. Here’s the plan for the next few hours. Sun’s up soon. Are any of the others awake?”
“Sarah, Blade and Miles are all here,” I said.
Briggs cocked his head. “Blade?”
“Winston,” said Anna by way of clarification. “A nickname.”
Briggs arched an eyebrow. “Blade?”
I shrugged. “He’s the tough guy at school. I don’t know, you can ask him.”
Briggs gave an imperceptible shake of his head. “Fine. I’m going to give you a secure cell. I took Sarah’s number from your phone. You’re going to call her and let her know to meet back up with you in Midrealm. There, you’ll explain to the others what’s happened by the time you need to sleep. I’ll take you to school in the morning.”
I gave a sudden shout of laughter at the sight of this gigantic, muscle-bound dude in a trench coat telling me he’d give me a ride to school like some sort of demented bus driver. “Okay, Nick Fury.”
“Yes! I knew he’d call you that!” shouted Anna triumphantly.
Briggs’ gaze never left my face. “I don’t have an eye patch,” he said. I couldn’t tell if it was a joke.
“Oh, one thing,” said Anna. “It’s very important that you don’t mention Briggs or I at all when you’re on the phone or online or anything. The Association has got to be positively scouring the world for us right now, because they probably know we’ve found you. The only truly secure communication you can have is in Midrealm.”
Briggs stood from the chair and reached into another inner pocket of the trench coat. When his hand came back out, it was holding my phone. The phone looked like a toy in Briggs’ gigantic, meaty fist.
“Thanks,” I said as he handed it to me. I dialed Sarah’s number and put the phone to my ear.
“Remember,” said Anna. “Don’t tell her where you are, and don’t say anything about us until you’re on the other side.”
“I don’t know where I am,” I whispered.
The phone didn’t even get to finish its second ring before Sarah clicked on. Her voice sounded panicked. I realized I must have shown up as “Number not available,” and she was probably panicking. “Hello?”
“Hi, Sarah. It’s me.”
“Calvin! Where are you? Are you all right?”
“I’m totally fine, Sarah,” I said soothingly. “I’m safe.”
“How? Where are you? Give me a location and we can be there in minutes.”
“Actually, I don’t know where I am,” I said. “But that’s not important. I’ve got a whole bunch to tell you and the others. But I want to do it in…on the other side. You know, ‘over there.’”
“You mean in—”
“Don’t say it!” I said quickly. “Remember?”
“Calvin, what’s going on?” Sarah said, sounding even more agitated. “I need something to go on here.”
“Listen, I just don’t want to say too much over the phone, you know?” I said, exasperated. “Trust me. I’m fine, and I’m going to explain everything to you guys. Just go home and get to sleep so we can talk.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then, “Fine. I’ll see you there in ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” I said with relief.
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
I eyed Briggs and Anna. “I’m, like, ninety percent positive.” Anna smirked.
“Okay then,” Sarah said. “We’ll get home and get to bed. See you soon.”
I hung up the phone and held it back out to Briggs.
“Keep it,” he said. “We’re good now.”
“Does that mean you’ll unlock the door?” I asked.
�
��It was never locked,” he said. “I told you that because I wanted you to stay put while we had our chat.”
“Weren’t you worried I’d make a break for it and outrun you?”
He looked down at me from what looked like a higher level of the atmosphere. He didn’t move, but I swear I could feel his biceps flex.
“No,” he said.
Nervous again, I looked at Anna instead. “So, now what?” I asked. “Do you, like, have a bed for me to sleep in or whatever?”
“Unfortunately no,” said Anna. “We’re staying in a hotel in a distinctly seedy area of town. We can’t bring you there. Seedy or not, two adults bringing a teenager there in the middle of the night would be frowned upon. If we were seen, we’d risk the cops showing up. That would put you in the system.”
“We’ve got etorphine to knock you out,” said Briggs. “But nothing but the chair for you to rest on. I could strap you to it again so you don’t fall over.” Again, it was hard to tell if he was joking.
“Um, no, that’s fine,” I said. “I’ll just…sit here.”
“Suit yourself.”
Anna stood from behind the desk, holding a small metallic suitcase that she brought over to me. She knelt beside me and opened it up to reveal a hypodermic and a small vial of clear liquid. The hypodermic went into the bottle and filled with the clear liquid. I gulped.
“Don’t like needles?” asked Anna.
“Not so much,” I admitted.
“Well, thankfully this one’s pretty thin,” she said. “You’ll barely even feel it.”
“Hey, I have a question before I go, though,” I said, looking up at Briggs.
“Shoot,” he said.
“You guys are going to a lot of trouble,” I said, looking between him and Anna. “Why didn’t you just walk away when the Realm Keepers died? Surely if you could escape to find me, you could escape and just disappear.”
Anna looked at Briggs carefully. “Well, I don’t know about the big guy there,” she said. “But I still don’t like the idea of a bunch of dark soldiers bursting through from another dimension and overrunning Earth. And if I understand the situation on the other side, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 12
