The Venator (The Mindbender series Book 2)

by C. S Luis

  “I didn’t actually lie,” he said, “I just didn’t tell him everything.”

  “Not telling him is the same thing,” I informed him.

  “Yeah, well, either I’m an idiot, or…” He shook his head and moved around to the other end of the desk.

  “You were supposed to tell him before anything else. Report to him the drop of name, the fact that I broke my phone and watch. But you didn’t?”

  He looked straight at me. “Hey, you told me you dropped the phone.”

  “I did,” I immediately said, “down a flight of stairs, like I said.”

  He twisted a lip and groaned. “Right,” he uttered, looking slightly worried. And not entirely convinced as he had before.

  “Well, I didn’t see the reason to make a big deal with not telling them your name. And so, no point in telling Dr. Nicholson. As for the watch and phone, I’ll take the fall for those.”

  I was surprised.

  “Joseph, I’m touched.” And I was.

  “Ha-ha, very funny.” He narrowed his eyes over at me immediately. “You owe me…big.” He exhaled.

  “I need a way to get closer to Michael. Maybe he can offer more about the school or anything unusual he’s run into besides those crazy weird lights going off and on.” He shook his head.

  “Maybe a technical malfunction? He said that school has a lot of those.” He glanced over at me waiting for my feedback. I felt uneasy.

  I was about to answer to that when a knock at the office door startled us. Joseph and I glanced back at one another. He motioned me to relax as he answered for whoever to enter.

  Michael opened the door and found me standing in the office with Joseph behind the desk. Joseph was pretending to be emptying a box. I was pretending to help him, lifting an empty box and setting it aside.

  “Hello again, John.”

  I waved.

  “Would you rather I call you John or Christian?” He’d asked that before. He must have forgotten.

  “Like I said, John is fine, Mr. McClellan.” I said turning to greet him. That was gonna cost me with Dr. Nicholson. Michael walked to the front of the desk, Joseph rose.

  “Please call me Michael, John,” he offered. He had a briefcase in his hand and seemed to be on his way out. Which made me wondered where Claudia was.

  “Oh, don’t get up, sir,” he said politely to Joseph. “Looks like you’re still trying to get settled in.”

  “Just a few things more actually we’re almost done,” Joseph said.

  “It’s a good thing you have help,” Michael said referring to me. I smiled, taking apart the boxes and putting them into a nice pile on the floor.

  “Well, yeah, just for today,” I said.

  “He’ll be back in class tomorrow. Believe me, Michael, he’d rather be in class than in here with me.” Joseph laughed a little.

  I nodded my head in agreement.

  “So, what can I do for you, Michael?”

  “Well, I was just wondering before I leave for the day...”

  “Wow, is it that time already?” Joseph said looking over at his watch and brushed a hand over his head. It was a little past three.

  “Just about. Anyway, I wanted to see if you and John,” he gazed in my direction, “would like to join us for dinner?”

  I darted an eye over at Joseph, but he seemed well composed, although it was the invitation he was looking for in order to get closer to Michael.

  “Us?” I asked, hoping he meant Claudia, not the other assistant principals. Like an adult get together. For that, I would opt to stay back and maybe do some reconnaissance work at the school. Maybe plant those devices I had to in the cafeteria.

  “Claudia and I,” Michael said. “You didn’t get to really meet her. The lights must have scared her away.”

  He was bad at lying, and it was obvious on his face. It was far too easy, and I could tell Joseph thought the same. Ordinary people were always easier to figure out and convince about certain things.

  “She’s also going through a lot, I can see. I would understand if she was not up to meeting a new group of people,” I said to Michael.

  He smiled. “She is, but I thought that maybe you can speak with her? You seem to be…understanding of what she’s going through, going through the same loss yourself. I hope that’s not too presumptuous?”

  Joseph stood beside me. “Of course not. John is good at talking to people. It’s getting him to shut up that’s the hard part.”

  Michael laughed, looking around the office. I swung my elbow into Joseph’s ribcage.

  “Well, she needs a friend more than anything. It would be nice if she could talk to someone who’s gone through the same loss,” Michael said, looking back over at the two of us.

  “I would be more than happy to, sir. What time do you want us to be there?” A smile spread across my face. The opportunity Joseph and I had been waiting for had just presented itself. I would see her again and this time there would be no escaping John Slater.

  13

  Contact

  After Michael left the office, I gathered the remaining devices. Above us, the warning bell rang while Joseph reached to open the drawer. All he had to do was say a word in German offnen, which meant open. All the commands were either in German or Japanese, Dr. Nicholson’s preferred languages.

  A metal spider crawled out of the hole onto his hand and back into the center of the watch on his wrist. He opened the drawer and grabbed the briefcase. Above, the final bell rang and a storm of screaming voices erupted into the halls of Milton High. After a minute or so, the rush diminished, and it was quiet again.

  I thought about Claudia Belle while I checked my things from the backpack and set the watch on my wrist for high resistance. I didn’t want to forget and be caught off guard again. Joseph packed the laptop into the briefcase.

  “I need to plant the remaining devices before we head out,” I said.

  He glanced over at me. “You want some company?”

  “I think I can handle a few devices, Joseph.”

  “That’s not the point. What should I do while you’re gone?”

  “I don’t know, principal stuff?”

  He crossed his arms and lean back on the chair. I walked towards the door, stopped half way and lowered my head.

  “Come on, then. Let’s get going,” I said. “If you get us stopped I’m not waiting on you, Joseph. I’m gonna pretend I don’t know you and keep moving.”

  “Not a chance, hot shot,” he said, grabbing his coat off the back of the seat. Just like me, Joseph hated desk jobs. Sure, his job involved a lot of paperwork, but that shit was boring. Before me he did a lot more desk work. He trained a lot on the field, but he was more like a personal assistant for a scientist of some sort.

  We exited through the main office. Mrs. Wallace was packing up her things and getting ready to leave.

  “Dr. Müller, is there anything else you need before I go?”

  I didn’t stop, Joseph had no choice. I didn’t give him a chance to say anything as I walked out and left him to talk to Mrs. Wallace. He would catch up.

  I grinned as I walked into the hall.

  I swung the backpack over my shoulder and started walking towards the cafeteria, the hall extended far ahead of me. The dial hands on my watch began to turn slightly in one direction. The patterns were not moving like a normal watch, but turning faster and faster, as if the thing had busted again, but it was just reading the energies around, sensing them out. Detecting, retrieving, the same way a hunter did.

  I stopped walking just a little pass the stairwell to my left. A tiny light on the watch panel began to blink and the hands of the watch stopped at the same indicator. Another part of the watch dissolved and beneath the first layer of the head was a reading indicator, different from the appearance of a normal watch head. If anyone was looking at it, it just appeared to be a fancy watch. The watch hands began to move again indicating the direction of the disturbance. Immediately, I leaped into the
stairwell as it began to move again.

  The indicators had gone off in the second floor of the school. I neared the upstairs floor, backpack over my shoulder. The watch was moving rapidly at the indication of some sort of energy.

  My first idea was that Claudia had set it off since she had damaged the watch the first time we had met. But if Michael was gone then so was she. But that couldn’t explain why the indicators set on the second floor were going off. Those were there to read alien life forms, not Mindbenders. I still wasn’t sure what category Claudia fell in, but the high frequency of energy coming from her still couldn’t set off the devices.

  I reached into the backpack and the cold metal of the Desert Eagle wrapped around my slender fingers. Did I really need it, though?

  I gripped it; the hard steel filled my full palm and I began lifting it from inside the backpack. I quickly placed it back. Maintaining secrecy is of the highest priority, Dr. Nicholson’s words echoed in my head. Of course, my first reaction was to ignore such things. What did it matter? But Dr. Nicholson’s voice mocked me from inside my head, ordering me to play the part; meaning at this point, no weapons were to be used, at least not here.

  I lowered the Desert Eagle back into its secure position within the backpack and reached for the only thing that could lead me to the alien’s location. I dropped the backpack on the ground and moved slowly.

  The watch hands were moving rapidly. I came out into the hall. Above, the circular devices were blinking slightly. No human or animal could have activated the devices. It didn’t work like that.

  There was some relief in me; the mission would end once I found what Dr. Nicholson was looking for. A powerful sensation tugged at me sending chills up my spine. I wasn’t ready to leave Miss Belle, yet. A force I hadn’t been aware I possessed surged to life whenever I was around her. It distracted and confused me, because it was also a part of me, a missing section of myself I couldn’t understand, but this other force was unlike Claudia’s energy. It didn’t want to connect; it was confused and angry. Very, very angry. It wanted vengeance.

  The hands on the watch stopped suddenly in one area on the head, but it seemed like something was tugging at it. Beneath the top layer of the watch, colors swirled- first, a pale yellow; then, a pale blue. These were indicators of an energy growing darker with each of my steps.

  I stood in the same area where I had planted the devices. The watch was now a dark shade of blue. I had never known this to be one of the watch’s purposes.

  I moved to my left, but the watch color seemed to fade slightly. I came back in the other direction and the head darkened. I moved towards the opposite direction and it began to fade again. If left or right wasn’t the way then, the hall facing me was the correct direction.

  I came back to stand at the entrance of the stairwell facing the hall before me. At once, a sensation raced up my arm. A web of hatred engulfed me, hitting me right in the center of the chest. The watch hands went wild, flipping and turning in every direction! The force was moving so fast it couldn’t keep up.

  I fell back against the wall. It sounded crazy, but now, as I stood here, the sensation crawled up my skin once again. The same dread, the same foreign element. Alien…

  It wasn’t the mere sensation, but the overall overwhelming feeling of a connection. It became clear that I knew whatever this alien creature was as I knew Claudia Belle.

  Regaining my composure, I reached toward the dial of the watch. My only defense was not the Desert Eagle tucked tightly away, but a compartment of the watch. I moved the dial on the watch rapidly like I was winding it up. Out came a metal spider like the one on Joseph’s watch, it crawled off my hand dropping onto the ground.

  “Erkennen,” I commanded, which was the German word for detect. A little muttering computerize voice spoke, moving about onto the floor, crawling like a spider would.

  It became defensive almost immediately as a figure dressed in a dark, leather, scaly uniform stepped into the hall to block its path. Startled by his presence, I took a step back. He tilted his head over at me. The spider moved upon him, crawling up his leg. The dark stranger swept it away, and as it fell to the floor near him, he dropped his boot on it, crushing it beneath his foot.

  However, my tiny spider was not done. Almost immediately, it regained its structure and began to grow until it was the size of a football. It leaped into the air toward the dark stranger, only it didn’t get within a step from him before the stranger seized it in the air. An electrical surge immobilized it and it dropped to the floor, shrinking back to its original size before it fell to pieces.

  “Shit…” I must have whispered before I looked up, a hand grabbed my throat and pushed me against the locker wall, lifting me inches off the ground.

  Two dark eyes pierced through my soul from the pale face of a young man. For a moment, I couldn’t move, paralyzed by the dark swirls in his eyes of purple hues and golden lights.

  “Project X!”

  “What are you?” his voice hissed. He was staring strangely at me, like I was something foreign to him.

  “Why do I sense a likeness…in you? You’re a strange little thing. Where is she? Where is Pet-tricia?”

  I blinked. Did he just call me a strange, little thing?

  Who was Patricia? And why did the name sound so awkward rolling off his tongue? Why did it sound more like he was saying Pet-tricia?

  “Who are you?” he demanded, dropping me to the ground. I fell hard on the floor, but immediately got up and activated the watch warning mechanism, only to realize I was alone.

  “Joseph, where are you?” I whispered into the dark hall.

  I stumbled forward with the watch, the dial moving rapidly, and held it tightly in my grip. The hallway grew darker, only the head of the watch seemed to light the hall in a red light. Ahead, the dimming sunlight caught the door window, creating a path in the hall.

  I hurried forward hearing sounds coming from the classroom ahead. I rushed forward. A hand grabbed a hold of me. I spun around, a fist drawn and ready to strike until I saw Joseph’s face. My fist nearly touched his nose.

  “Shit! What are you trying to do? Give me a heart attack?” I said.

  “You activated the warning mechanism,” he simply said.

  “It’s here!” I yelled.

  He went for the device on his watch. I moved to stop him as I grabbed at the door handle of the classroom and flung the door wide. I stood at the doorway staring at an empty classroom, except for a student and a teacher seated at the desk.

  The teacher slowly turned to look at me, narrowing his large round eyes, removing his glasses and dropping them on the center of his desk.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Joseph came from outside the hall. Why hadn’t he come out to see if something was happening? Hadn’t they heard Project X’s penetrating voice in the hall?

  I stood there taking in all that I was seeing. The teenage girl with floppy curls and square-framed glasses stared back at me. She was chewing a piece of gum while she wrote something in a notebook. She smirked and swung her feet underneath her like a young child.

  The watch’s color was a pale blue.

  “Dr. Müller, I presume?” The teacher said as he came forward offering Joseph his hand. They shook hands as I looked on in confusion.

  “Sorry to interrupt your class. Working late, Mr.…?”

  “Peterson,” he offered. “Yes.” He smirked, wrinkled a brow, and looked over his shoulder at the student who was scribbling in her notebook.

  “Detention, sir,” he explained, narrowing his eyes back over at us both. Giving me a far more pointed look as if he was sizing me up.

  “I see,” Joseph said looking over at the girl who seemed to be around Claudia Belle’s age. Now, why did she come into my thoughts so suddenly?

  “Forgive my interruption. My nephew thought he heard something…” Joseph moved back, ready to close the door.

  Mr. Peterson spoke again, stopping him. �
�Just us,” he said in reference to he and the girl in the class.

  “I see you are working late this evening as well, Dr. Müller. Anything I can help you with? Or are you just checking up on the rest of us?” It wasn’t so much what he said, as it was the way in which he said it that caught me off guard and fed my suspicious nature. I examined the man’s smiling eyes and thought I saw a crease of familiarity.

  “No, we were just walking around. Didn’t realize there were still any teachers left in the building,” Joseph offered, no insult intended.

  “Well, unlike the administrators, Dr. Müller, teachers are far more devoted. So, we do tend to stay past closing time.” He grinned. What was this guy’s problem? His attention switched to the student under his care.

  “I hope you are concentrating on finishing that assignment and not concentrating on eavesdropping, Ms. Watkins.”

  The girl gasped, rolled her eyes, and turned back to the notebook in front of her.

  “Well, if there’s nothing else, Dr. Müller, I have to be getting back to work,” he said before closing the door in our faces.

  Joseph looked surprised. He grabbed at the door knob. “That son-of—”

  I stopped him before he opened the door and gave the guy a piece of his mind.

  “He’s not worth it, Joseph…”

  He regained his composure and moved back from the door. I moved into the hall. I looked back when I didn’t catch Joseph following.

  “Joseph?”

  “Nobody, and I mean nobody slams the door in my face.” I could hear his continued fuming, even though he had no one to talk to but himself since I’d walked away.

  “Joseph,” I called again.

  “I’m coming,” he muttered, moving towards me as I walked into the stairwell and retrieved my backpack.

  “Did you see that?” he asked again.

  “Come on, Joseph. We have dinner, remember? I need to pick up something.”

  “Something?” he questioned slightly confused. He looked back over to the classroom before he followed me down the staircase.