Scan

by Walter Jury

  The sharp crack of gunfire breaks the silence. Christina screams again.

  “Sporting goods!” I shout, breaking into a run. Race and I aren’t done, but we won’t be on equal footing until I figure out what exactly my dad was working on—and make sure the people I care about are safe.

  As I sprint, I hear Christina’s footsteps running up the long, wide aisle toward the area under the bike rack. I step into the aisle just as Lamb collars her. She yelps as he jerks her back and presses his gun to her head. “You little bitch,” he hisses into her ear, spittle flying.

  Then his eyes meet mine. “I think we can both agree I tried to be nice,” he says, panting. He takes a few steps forward.

  I put my hands up, showing him I’m unarmed. Then I take a step back.

  “No more games, Tate.” He takes another step forward.

  “No more games,” I agree.

  “I want the device. Hand it over and I won’t blow her brains all over the bike helmets.” His finger’s on the trigger. There’s a vein standing out on his forehead. And I see why he’s so mad.

  He’s freaking covered in contact cement. I don’t know how she did it, but he’s got it smeared on his pants. On his chest. On his face. Crusty and drying. He must be suffocating from the stench.

  Christina looks down at her feet, and then up at me. She nods, just slightly. I hope that means she doesn’t have any on the bottoms of her shoes—and that he does.

  I take another step back.

  Lamb takes a lurching step forward, shoving Christina along in front of him. Her shoes make soft, tacky noises as she steps in the dried contact cement, but she keeps moving forward. But when Lamb tries to raise his feet to take another step, they don’t move, even though the rest of him does. His body pitches forward because his shoes have bonded to the floor, and he instinctively tries to use his gun hand to catch himself while Christina fights to stay upright.

  But it’s covered in dried contact cement, so as soon as his hand—and his gun—hit the dried contact cement on the floor, both are instantly bonded, hopelessly stuck to the tile. He tries to pull his feet from his shoes, but then his knee touches the floor and gets stuck, too. He roars with frustration as he loses his grip on Christina, whose gloved hands are glued to the floor. As soon as he lets her go, she wrenches herself up, leaving the gloves behind, and stumbles toward me. I catch her arm and drag her off of the sticky patch of tile. I hold her there for a second, staring at her beautiful face, making sure she’s alive, here, real.

  “I’m all right,” she says, breathing hard. “I’d hug you, but I’m afraid I’d never come unstuck.” She’s got contact cement smeared on the chest and skirt of her dress. “You said there were four of them. I got Race, and there’s another one down in home goods. Did you get the fourth?”

  She nods, a little smile on her face. “Wait until you see him.”

  “You’re amazing,” I say, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

  Lamb is glued to the floor. The other two agents are out of commission. Race is unconscious for the moment. “Come on.” I nod at the exit. “I need to—”

  Lamb is using his one unglued hand to lift his cell phone to his ear.

  Goddamn, it’s like I’m right back on that tournament mat with Cow-Eyes, too arrogant to see what’s about to happen.

  My hand shoots out and grabs a bat from a nearby bin. I slam it down on the metal joint holding the overhead bike rack in place. With all the strength I can summon, I bring the bat down again and again, until the joint groans and snaps.

  A few dozen bikes crash down on Mr. Lamb. His elbow buckles and his face hits the tile. The scream that comes from his mouth sends a shiver straight through me. It’s filled with both rage and terror, because now half his face is stuck to the floor.

  “Race told me not to kill you,” he says. “But I will. I swear I will.”

  Through the pile of bikes, I can see one of his eyes, and it’s filled with hatred and the promise of revenge. I stare back at him, refusing to look away.

  Until Christina takes my hand. Hers is cold, but her grip is strong. It’s enough to bring me back. “I think we need to get out of here,” she says.

  “Definitely.”

  With my arm around her shoulders, we walk briskly out of the store, right past the fourth agent, who’s sitting on the floor with his head in his hands. I shove Christina behind me and prepare to fight, but then I realize—his hands are actually glued to his face. He’s making these desperate snuffling noises and trying to pull his fingers away, and is so occupied with his struggle that he doesn’t even acknowledge us as we walk by.

  Christina takes a two-minute detour to swipe a pair of sweats and a shirt from the girls’ clothing section, and she changes quickly while I listen for more sirens and watch for Race to reappear. As we walk out of the store, the sun is rising over the parking lot, an orange ball on the horizon. I pull my dad’s phone out of my pocket and call my mom’s number. “Please pick up,” I whisper.

  “Tate,” she says when she answers, her voice tired. “I wouldn’t let them operate until I heard from you.”

  I bow my head and squeeze my eyes shut. “How are you?”

  “I’ll survive. Did you get the scanner to George?”

  “Yeah. And . . .” I look back at the store as I hear the muffled explosion . . . probably the rest of the peroxyacetone I synthesized. “I may have destroyed the Walmart, Mom. We did some serious damage.”

  “I’ll take care of it, whatever it is.”

  “Okay. Will I see you soon? We have some things to talk about.”

  She laughs. It sounds like two corn husks rubbing together. “Can you make it to the hospital? I’ll see you when I’m out of surgery.” She hangs up.

  Christina gets up on her tiptoes and kisses my cheek. I turn and press my forehead to hers, then open the passenger door for her. I drive slowly out of the parking lot, wondering what the Walmart employees are going to think when they arrive to open the store.

  I turn onto the access road between the stores.

  George’s car is a few dozen yards away, its front end crumpled against a tree.

  “Oh, God,” Christina gasps.

  I pull up behind the car and jump out, running to the driver’s side. The whole rear of the car is perforated with the deep holes of large-caliber bullets. I fling open the driver’s-side door.

  George is slumped over the steering wheel. I press my fingers to his neck.

  No pulse.

  Trying to swallow down the huge lump in my throat, I walk around the back of the car again and open the passenger door. George’s arm is extended onto the passenger seat, like he’s reaching for something. His blood-flecked skin reminds me of the moment it flashed orange under the scanner’s light. I wanted to ask him about it. He promised he would explain. And now that won’t happen. I can salvage only one thing now: the technology he died for, that my father died for, that so many have fought for.

  I lean over and look under the seat, in the backseat, under George’s legs in the front seat. In the trunk. In the glove compartment. And then I stand up and look back at Christina as the world crashes down around my ears.

  “The scanner is gone.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my co-author, Walter Jury, the team at Penguin, and especially my wonderful editor, Stacey Barney, for pushing this story exactly where it needed to go. I’m grateful to the team at New Leaf Literary for supporting me throughout this project, most notably Joanna Volpe and my agent, Kathleen Ortiz, for being there and managing everything, including me. I’m forever indebted to my family and friends, who have listened to me and inspired me. Thank you to Sonia Dos Santos for her input on the nuances of Brazilian Portuguese profanity in a sporting context, and to Cathryn and Shizhou Yang for the Chinese sarcasm. And finally, I’d like to thank Dr. Edward Mottel
for his expertise in explosive chemical reactions and his suggestions for how to realistically create mayhem. Any chemistry-related mistakes (and the one deliberate inaccuracy) in this book are my fault and mine alone.

  —S. E. Fine