‘What is this place?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea,’ Chad answered. ‘It’s a factory, but I don’t know what they’re making.’
I pointed to another doorway to our left. It seemed to open out onto another room. We crossed to this—and stopped in amazement.
‘Are they…’ he started.
‘I don’t know what they are.’
Thousands of cylindrical tubes large enough to hold bodies sat like bottles of wines on racks. Beyond this chamber was a doorway that led out onto another similar room.
What is this place?
Chad began. ‘I don’t think it’s—Look out!’
I threw up my barrier just in the nick of time.
Ka-boom!
The orange power blast was so intense that we were thrown back to the floor. A robot swooped low over the ceiling, letting out another barrage of weaponry.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
I fired back, slowing it down but not stopping it.
‘Come on!’ I yelled to Chad.
He created a fireboard and flew off as I made one of my flying rafts. The robot continued shooting at us as we escaped through the first doorway into the next room. Swinging about, Chad created a wall of ice, blocking the entrance—until the robot came crashing through.
This time Chad sent a burst of flames at the robot. It seemed to have no effect, retaliating with another series of blasts.
This thing never tires.
‘Come on, Chad!’ I yelled. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
Building up a mini cyclone, I flung it at the robot, and we fled, weaving back through the building back to the city square. We were almost back at Liber8tor when more blasts hit the ground around us. Three more robots had appeared in the sky. We blocked their attacks as we dived into Liber8tor.
‘Ferdy!’ I yelled. ‘Get us out of here!’
The ship was hit by a series of blasts as we took off and flew away from the city. Taking the pilot’s seat, I took control of the ship as we weaved around buildings. The robots continued shooting.
‘We need to do some serious damage to those things,’ Chad said.
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘You remember my supernova power?’
I shook my head. ‘Too risky,’ I said. It was something Chad had been practicing lately, but we could end up melting both ourselves and them.
‘Take over,’ I told him. ‘And slow down a little.’
‘What?’
‘Just do it!’
Stumbling through to the rear door, I opened it and peered out. Three robots were in pursuit. I focused, built up a mighty cyclone blast, and held on until the last moment to unleash it. As the strangers drew near, I let loose with the wind and sent them flying. I alternated with another blast, this time knocking them out of the sky. The robots dropped like stones. Tiny puffs of dust rose up as they hit the ground.
Returning to Chad, I slid into the seat as he brought the ship back under control.
‘Great job,’ he said.
‘Thanks. At least we know where the robot in our world came from.’
‘But what is this place? And what’s it got to do with us?’
‘Those are good questions,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got an even better one—how will we get out?’
Which was when the blast hit the back of the ship.
Chapter Sixteen
‘We’ve got to go after them,’ Brodie said.
Ebony shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Ferdy said not to follow.’
‘But—’
They were standing outside the hive in the grassy plain. Only a few minutes had passed since Chad, Axel, and Ferdy had disappeared inside.
Dan turned to Brodie. ‘It would be a huge mistake to follow them,’ he said. ‘Especially if Ferdy said not to. He wouldn’t have said that if it weren’t dangerous.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Brodie said. She hated abandoning Axel and Chad. ‘But we can’t just stand here.’
‘We sort of have to,’ Dan said. ‘At least for a while.’
‘Why?’
He pointed at the hive. ‘Our ride just flew away to places unknown,’ he said. ‘And it’s a long walk from Kansas to The Bronx.’
‘Good point.’
‘Let’s wait for a while,’ Ebony said. ‘Until they come back.’
They spent the next few hours sitting around waiting for Axel, Chad, and Ferdy to return. Brodie found herself sitting listlessly on a rock as the sun first rose high overhead and then started toward the horizon. By the time four o’clock arrived, she was beginning to get worried.
‘I think we need to do something,’ she said.
‘Like what?’ Ebony asked.
‘We’re not in this thing alone. The Agency can help us.’
‘I agree,’ Dan said. ‘Let’s get some advice.’
Dan put a call through, and they immediately agreed to send a Flex fighter for them. It was barely half an hour later when the fighter arrived, and the rear door opened.
‘Mister Brown,’ Brodie said. ‘I didn’t know you ever left the office.’
He smiled. ‘I don’t much these days. Desk jobs do that to you.’ He glanced past her. ‘Where’s this invisible hive you contacted us about?’
They showed him the object in the clearing. ‘That is strange,’ he said. ‘I’ll get The Agency to send a science team. We’ll ask Ferdy too.’
Brodie frowned. ‘Ferdy entered the hive along with Chad and Axel,’ she said.
‘You forget,’ Mister Brown said. ‘Ferdy’s a computer program. He can be in more than one place at a time.’
Brodie’s wristcom came to life.
‘Hello friend Brodie,’ Ferdy said.
‘Ferdy!’ Brodie said. She’d completely forgotten that his program operated across several computers simultaneously. ‘Do you know where the others are?’
‘Ferdy does not. The hive appears to contain immense gravity. It’s possible that entering such an object may make it difficult to escape.’
‘So you can’t contact Liber8tor?’
‘Unfortunately not.’
Another hour passed before more ships arrived from The Agency. Soon it was close to sundown, and dozens of scientists were probing the hive’s exterior. The military had also turned up. Brodie waited impatiently with the others.
‘I don’t think they’re making any headway,’ she said, after a while.
‘They don’t seem to be,’ Dan agreed. ‘Maybe we can help some other way.’
‘How?’
He held up the remains of the book as well as the two reader cards. ‘I think we should work on these,’ he said. ‘They might tell us something.’
Brodie and the others headed back to one of the Flex fighters. Dan inserted the readers into the onboard computer system.
‘Ferdy,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Ferdy can hear you, Dan.’
‘What do you make of these readers?’
Thirty seconds passed before Ferdy spoke again. ‘The readers are working in unison with each other,’ Ferdy said. ‘And Jane Austen was born on the sixteenth of December, 1775.’
‘Thanks,’ Dan said, peering at the display and frowning. ‘Hmm.’
Brodie and Ebony exchanged glances.
‘Dan,’ Brodie said. ‘What does Hmm mean?’
‘I think the readers are trying to establish contact with another system,’ Dan said.
Ferdy spoke up. ‘Dan may be right,’ he said. ‘It seems a signal is being transmitted to another source.’
Brodie frowned.
Wait a minute. That might mean—
‘Could there be a third reader?’ she said. ‘Even a third book?’
‘That is a possibility, friend Brodie.’
‘Can we track the signal?’
‘That is possible.’
‘Track it, Ferdy,’ Ebony said. ‘Let’s see where it leads.’
Brodie felt guilty about leaving Axel and Chad, b
ut there seemed to be little they could do here. Cracking the book’s code might help gain access to the hive and break them out.
Taking off to pursue the signal, Brodie felt a pang in her chest as she peered back at the hive and thought about Axel.
I do love you, she thought. I just hope you’re okay.
The Flex fighter flew across the country.
‘Ferdy,’ Dan said. ‘Where’s the signal’s taking us?’
‘It’s impossible to determine. Only that our destination is somewhere on the East Coast.’
The fighter continued. Reaching the coast, it angled south. Dan contacted Mister Brown, who told him they’d made no progress in understanding the hive’s purpose.
‘We’ll let you know when we find something,’ he promised.
Ebony peered out the fighter’s window. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘This is looking kind of familiar.’
A few of their missions had taken them up and down the coast. ‘We’ve been this way before,’ Brodie agreed.
Finally, the Flex fighter began to slow down.
‘Ferdy?’ Dan said. ‘Are we almost there?’
‘Yes, friend Dan,’ Ferdy said. ‘We are now less than a mile to the location of the third reader.’
Ebony peered out the window. ‘Looks like I was right.’
Brodie followed her gaze. ‘Looks like it.’
A military installation lay below, but most of it was below ground. They knew this place well.
‘This is it,’ Brodie said. ‘It’s where we were first trained.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘I never thought we’d come back,’ Brodie said.
They landed at the front gate. Fortunately, their security credentials, and a call to Mister Brown from the security guards at the front gate, was enough to allow them back into the facility. Now they were standing in The Cavern where scientists were working on equipment in a dozen different projects.
Wow, Brodie thought. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
A woman by the name of Agent Kent came to see them. She was a short, stocky woman with brown hair and thick-lensed glasses.
‘I don’t believe we’ve ever met,’ she said. ‘I’ll need to know the reason for your visit today.’
Brodie explained about the reader devices and that they believed one was located somewhere in the facility.
‘You can search for it,’ Kent said. ‘But don’t enter any secure areas—and don’t blow anything up.’ She paused. ‘Or attack anything. Even aliens.’
Brodie nodded. The last time they were here, they’d been engaged in a life and death battle with the Bakari alien known as Twelve. In the end, he’d gone insane and tried to kill them. To defeat him, they’d melted a tank and dropped its molten metal remains on him, transforming him into a statue.
She shivered. They were lucky to have survived.
‘Where was Doctor Richard’s office?’ Ebony asked. ‘The reader’s probably there.’
Kent directed them to a level three floors below. Strolling through the area known as The Cavern, Brodie peered about and remembered the last time they were here. A lot has changed since then. They’d left The Agency, been on the run, and eventually returned to the organization. It still looked like scientists were working on a myriad of projects.
It’s strange, she thought. The Alpha Project obviously wasn’t a regular part of The Agency.
Whatever it was had operated in strict secrecy under the direction of the alien known as Twelve.
Kent wished them luck and saw them off as they descended to an abandoned part of the facility. The elevator opened onto a corridor filled with what appeared to be equally empty offices.
‘No one’s using this level,’ Ebony said, screwing up her nose. ‘There’s a bad smell too.’
‘A dead rat, I think,’ Dan said.
The names of the previous inhabitants were on the doors. They trailed down the corridor until they finally reached one with the name Doctor Richards on the door.
Dan tried the door. ‘It’s locked.’
Brodie gripped the handle and broke it off. ‘Not anymore.’
The room beyond was empty except for a desk.
‘The reader must be somewhere in here,’ Ebony said.
They searched the desk, taking out the drawers, and even looking under them. There was no sign of the device, so they started pulling the desk to pieces. It wasn’t long before they were surrounded by broken timber.
Still, there was no sign of the reader.
‘Okay,’ Brodie said, glancing about. ‘Now we’ve got to get super serious.’
Ebony raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean pulling the desk apart wasn’t serious enough?’
Brodie pointed to the plasterboard on the walls. Within seconds, they were ripping this off the walls, leaving only the timber studs behind. Dan examined these closely as they started clearing the scrap from the room. Soon a huge pile lay in the hallway outside.
‘Any luck?’ Brodie asked Dan.
‘There’s nothing in all this rubble,’ he said. ‘Maybe Ferdy got it wrong.’
Ebony pointed up. ‘What about the ceiling?’
They turned their attention to the ceiling, and it soon was demolished and reduced to junk in the hallway. Then they moved onto the carpet, ripping it up and dragging it from the room.
‘This is terrible,’ Dan said, staring at what had once been someone’s office.
‘Don’t feel too bad about it,’ Ebony said. ‘They obviously weren’t using this area. The problem is that we’ve run out of places to search.’
They stared despondently about the interior. Brodie frowned. ‘We’ve literally ripped this whole place apart,’ she said. ‘And—nothing!’
‘And made a mess,’ Dan added. ‘We’d better pick it up.’
They carried everything they’d demolished back into the room and lay it in a pile in the middle.
‘We’ve missed something,’ Ebony said. ‘But I don’t know what.’
They decided to go to The Agency cafeteria to have something to eat. There they could work out where they went wrong. Brodie tried closing the door, but it wouldn’t shut.
‘Shame about the lock,’ Ebony said, smirking.
Brodie stared at the door. ‘Wait a minute.’
Within seconds, she had the door off its hinges and was pulling it to pieces. The door was a hollow timber make, and this time they had more success.
‘Well,’ Dan said. ‘What do you know about that?’
The hollow interior contained not another reader but another book. Flipping it open revealed blank pages.
‘This is better than I expected,’ Brodie said.
‘That’s good,’ Ebony agreed. ‘But there doesn’t seem to be another reader.’
‘Ferdy,’ Dan said into his wristcom. ‘We’ve got another book but can’t find the reader. Can you be more exact about where it is?’
‘Ferdy can.’
‘Uh, okay. How close are we?’
‘You are in the wrong part of the facility.’
Brodie and the others exchanged glances.
‘Huh?’ Brodie said.
Dan groaned. ‘I thought you said it was in Doctor Richard’s office.’
‘Ferdy did not say that.’
Ebony sighed. ‘Actually,’ she said. ‘He’s right. We just assumed it.’
‘So where is the reader from here?’ Dan asked.
‘It appears to be six floors below your location in an underground vault known as Dante.’
Brodie frowned. ‘Dante?’ she said. ‘Wasn’t there a poet named Dante?’
‘The writer Dante wrote a poem in the fourteenth century about journeying through the nine levels of Hell.’
‘So I’m guessing that Dante is super-secret,’ Ebony said.
‘And super secure,’ Dan added.
‘Your assumption would be correct,’ Ferdy confirmed.
Ebony rubbed her chin. ‘Agent Kent said not to go into any secure ar
eas,’ she said.
Brodie lowered her voice. ‘Look,’ she said, glancing about for cameras. ‘It was The Agency who got us into this mess in the first place. We might work for them, but they haven’t always been on our side.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’ Ebony said.
‘We need to check out that area. Getting that reader might explain everything. It might even help us to get Axel, Chad and Ferdy…uh, the other Ferdy back.’
‘I don’t know,’ Ebony said. She was always a bit nervous about being caught doing the wrong thing. ‘Maybe we should ask.’
Dan rolled his eyes. ‘Ask?’ he hissed. ‘I’m with Brodie on this. If we ask, they’ll say no, and then they’ll know what we’re up to. Let’s just risk it.’
Ebony reluctantly agreed.
‘Ferdy?’ Brodie said. ‘How do we get into Dante?’
‘It is a maximum-security area,’ Ferdy said. ‘Ferdy can only see one way to access it, but that would require a person of small stature to do it.’
Both Brodie and Ebony turned to Dan.
He glared at them. ‘I’ve told you a thousand times,’ he said. ‘I’m not a garden gnome!’
Chapter Eighteen
‘Why has it always got to be me?’ Dan asked.
He, Brodie, and Ebony were in a maintenance closet two levels below Doctor Richard’s office. It had taken fifteen minutes of evading security officers to find precisely the right spot. Once in the closet, Dan had used his powers to remove the screws from the air vent. Now he stared forlornly into the tight space.
‘Because you’re the smallest,’ Brodie said.
‘I’m not that small—and I’m bigger than I used to be!’
Ebony sized him up. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘You’ve grown. We need to find a way to keep you small—just in case.’
Dan’s mouth fell open. ‘Keep me small?’ he said. ‘What are you going to do? Shrink me?’
‘We’re not shrinking anyone,’ Brodie assured him. ‘We don’t even know how.’ She paused. ‘Do we, Ferdy? We can’t shrink people—can we?’
‘No,’ Ferdy said over the wristcom. ‘We don’t currently have the technology to shrink a person, but if you would like Ferdy to begin working on such a method—’
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