“This is a loyalty stone,” Miss Rose says. “Since my species cannot use electricity, chemistry is our technology. To join a clianthh, an individual submits to chemical branding via a crystalline stone excreted by the Seers.”
Marius makes a face and whispers, “Did she say excreted?”
“Shh.” I hush him.
“Any action deviating from the good of the clianthh results in immediate release of chemicals that flood our bodies. Even the thought of such an action or fear of failure triggers punishment from the loyalty stone. It should be impossible to betray one’s clianthh because the very intention incapacitates the betrayer.”
“Then how do you explain Dave and Steve getting into your clianthh?” I ask.
“I cannot.” She falls disturbingly silent. Her hand and the embedded stone disappear, and the staccato clicking of her talons suggests that she’s pacing in agitation. “Unless…”
When she doesn’t continue, I call out, “Please, Miss Rose. Keep talking. If you’re thinking this through, we want to follow along. We need to understand.”
“It is only a story I heard when I was a Youngling in the Breeder nests, long before I pledged loyalty to a clianthh. A bogeyman tale, you might call it on Earth. Something to frighten Younglings into compliance.” She pauses again, then proceeds with what seems like embarrassment. “It was said that aberrant individuals would implant a loyalty stone inside their bodies before submitting to a traditional, external branding. The secret stone held a greater sway over their behavior, but warring chemicals made them prone to insanity and violence, creating what humans would call a psychopath. Until now, I thought such a thing was as apocryphal as your Bigfoot, but I do not see any other way for such spies to exist.”
I swallow hard. “That’s who has m— Sam’s father? A couple of psychopaths?”
“Their infiltration of this clianthh cannot be recent.” Miss Rose doesn’t answer my question, but the shifting cross-sections of her body indicates that she is still pacing. “It is unthinkable that spies could arrive and strike immediately at the heart of my project—at a pivotal moment—while attempting to subvert two of my Agents.”
And possibly succeeding, in Ty’s case. What did he say on the phone to Marius? She doesn’t want me to involve Sam in my plans. So I won’t. He must have gotten the spies to snatch Sam’s dad instead, that rat!
Meanwhile, the chemical boost Miss Rose gave us is wearing off. My body feels like I’m wearing a suit of chain mail. Marius is sagging, while Sam has slid down onto his back. Miss Rose continues to pace, her words tumbling over each other like pebbles rolling downhill, becoming a landslide.
“If these intruders have been here for a long time, they may have interfered in prior experiments. They may be the reason our promising scientist Erastus was betrayed and executed before I could save him. His journal went missing after his death. I thought his wretched wife burned it, but if these spies were present then… and I missed it… I have failed in my duty…”
“J.D.,” whispers Sam. “She’s spiraling.”
He’s right. Miss Rose sounds like she’s on the verge of a panic attack. That stupid crystal in her hand is pushing chemicals through her body to punish her for thinking about failure.
“How do we find them now, Miss Rose?” I ask loudly, to refocus her. “They must be operating in the vicinity of our universe if they’re working with Ty, right? Could they be, um…” What term did Miss Rose use earlier? “Rival Technicians?”
“No.” That firm response slows the avalanche. She speaks as though careful thought is going into each word choice. “Individuals unbalanced by conflicting loyalty brands cannot function at the level of a Technician. They must be Drones. But that does not narrow the field. Drones outnumber Technicians ten to one. I could detect them in a screening, now that I know what to look for, but if they suspect I have discovered their plot to steal that computer program for another clianthh, it will drive them toward their backup plan—which I assume is obliterating our experiment past redemption.”
That brings us full circle—back to killing and smashing and planet-destroying.
But Miss Rose’s voice grows stronger as logic prevails over panic. “I suppose they pretended to be loyal, serving both clianthhs, which may have allowed them to survive decades of duplicitous behavior. Now they have taken drastic steps that compromise their loyalty in my clianthh. They will be suffering the consequences, and their desperation will only grow. Their hold on sanity will rely on how close they are to achieving their secret goals for Darkness and Storm.”
I sink back onto my elbows, my head barely held above the ground. “Does this help you find them, Miss Rose?”
“In a way, yes. I have a plan.” Miss Rose’s voice has returned to a purr, and her blue eyeball reappears as she leans over us. “Unfortunately, it requires using my favorite human as bait.”
29. JADIE
I can think of at least a hundred things I’d rather do than sneak into the house of my next-door nemesis in the middle of the night. But here I am.
Marius and Sam watch from below while I climb a tree outside the Rivers family home. “You can step from that branch to the roof of the porch,” Marius whispers. “But be careful!”
“Don’t fall!” Sam adds helpfully.
Now I have two protective brothers. They aren’t happy I’m doing this, but it has to be me. Miss Rose said so.
I can’t be placed in the house by the Transporter because that would alert Ty and any 4-space spies nearby that I’m working with Miss Rose. How else would I get the coordinates? It has to appear that I’m acting on my own. So I climb the tree.
Miss Rose’s plan is complicated, and if that were the only thing I had in my head right now, I’d feel lucky. But there’s everything else—the real explanation for course corrections, rival clans vying to colonize a fifth dimension, and, oh yeah, my birth family.
It might be selfish, considering the danger we’re in, but I wish Alia were here instead of on spring break with her family. She’d absorb this in a snap. The one time she convinced me to play Cosmic Knight, she made me study a chart describing the different types of players, the planets they came from, and their attributes. I thought it was too much stuff to memorize for a game, but climbing the tree outside the Rivers house now, I wish I had a chart to keep everything straight.
Then again, maybe not. It would be depressing to see how doomed we are when putting one foot in front of the other is the only thing I can do to try to save Sam’s dad—and maybe our whole world.
The gap between the tree and the porch roof isn’t large. I make the leap, even with a backpack throwing off my balance.
“Third window,” Marius whispers.
I wave my hand to shush him. I remember my instructions, and I hope Marius remembers his. Miss Rose won’t be able to rescue us if we get into trouble.
“I cannot be nearby,” she told us. “If the infiltrators know I am on their trail, they will take Dr. Lowell and run—or kill him outright.”
I didn’t like the look on Sam’s face when Miss Rose said that. My own fear for his dad—I shove that out of my mind. Someday soon, I’ll have to deal with my feelings about my birth parents. But for now I’ll work better if I keep thinking of them as Sam’s parents, not mine.
According to Marius, Ty keeps the window of the upstairs bathroom unlocked as a means of secret exit from his house. Or he did until he discovered how to call the Transporter. I hope no one has checked the lock since then.
Squeezing my fingers under the frame of the bathroom window, I give it a tentative shove, and it slides open easily. Ty must keep it slick and silent with WD-40.
I lower the backpack in, slide feetfirst through the opening, then shut the window behind me. If all goes as planned, I won’t be leaving this way.
The bathroom looks like the one in my house, except reversed. The door to the hallway is open. Wiping my slick hands on my jeans, I stick my head out.
This isn’t t
he first time I’ve been in someone’s house uninvited. My original visit to the Lowell apartment was one of many course corrections requiring me to trespass. But I’ve always tackled those missions believing the Seers calculated events so I wouldn’t get caught. Plus, there was always the Transporter to extract me if I got into trouble. Never have I entered a house via a window—a house owned by people I know—with no chance of rescue from the fourth dimension.
Swinging the backpack over my shoulder, I creep down the hall. There isn’t any light shining underneath Ty’s door, but that doesn’t mean he’s not awake, hunched over his laptop plotting world domination.
Taking a deep breath, I fix my ponytail and hopefully my resolve, then turn the knob with excruciating slowness to ease the door open a couple of inches. When my eyes adjust to the darkness, I make out Ty’s computer on his desk, along with the other item I need for this mission. Sam’s older, bulkier laptop sits on a dresser next to the bed, where Ty lies burrowed in a balled-up mess of sheets, snoring softly.
Crossing the room and unplugging Ty’s laptop takes mere seconds. If I wanted to steal it and escape, I could.
If only the plan were that simple.
In the months since I passed my training as an Agent, I’ve performed over a hundred missions, most of which consisted of one or two simple steps. Steal this bike and abandon it two blocks away. Take the last seat in this subway car and don’t give it up no matter who glares at you. Some Agents receive more complex assignments—like Dr. Rivers performing an emergency tracheotomy with the inner workings of a ballpoint pen. But there’s usually only one task to focus on.
For this mission, I have a list of tasks, backup tasks, and a few if-all-else-fails tasks. Miss Rose put the plan together and gave it a forty-percent chance of success. That doesn’t sound good, but it’s the best she could do. She promised to calculate other possibilities once the mission was underway.
Lacking any better ideas, I put Ty’s computer into my backpack, making sure that some of it is visible, sticking out the top.
Next comes the part where I have to act like an amateur, which pricks my pride. Telling myself, Do it for Sam and his dad, I “accidentally” stumble into the desk chair.
Ty startles awake, thrashing around in his tangled sheets before freeing himself and launching out of bed. Thankfully, he’s wearing a T-shirt and running shorts. I was afraid he might be in his underwear—and that’s something I do not want to see, even to save the world.
“Hello, Jadie,” he says, smoothing down his hair. “I was expecting you.”
“In your sleep?”
He smirks. “At some point. I suppose Miss Rose sent you? Are you out there, Rose? Listening in?”
“She’s not here,” I tell him truthfully. “But Marius told me what you’re up to, and I don’t like it. If this program stays unfinished, the Seers will finally leave the Lowells alone.” I shift my position to get closer to a certain glass jar. “Why are you doing this? What did Dave and Steve promise you?”
“Use of the Transporter. And a way to see in 4-space.” If it were me who’d been woken up from a sound sleep, I’d be slurring my words and rubbing my eyes. But the evil mastermind is surprisingly alert. His eyes zoom in on my backpack. “You’re wasting your time with my laptop. This is where I transferred Sam’s program.” He picks up a tablet from his bedside table.
Oh boy. That’s something we didn’t anticipate. I hope Marius is hearing this through the open connection on my phone, which is tucked into the front pocket of my backpack.
“All I need are the mathematical algorithms of a unified theory, which your father, Dr. Lowell, is working on, and then—” Ty holds the tablet in front of his face and scans the room with it. “We’ll be able to see 4-space the way they see it. Or as close as we’re going to get. So steal my laptop if you want, but there’s no point.”
The tablet is a surprise, but it doesn’t stop me from implementing the next part of the plan. Scowling at Ty like he’s outsmarted me, I remove a laptop from my backpack and plunk it down on the desk.
But not Ty’s laptop. Marius’s isn’t the same model as Ty’s, but they look enough alike that Ty probably won’t notice from across the room—and any spies watching from 4-space shouldn’t know enough about computers to tell the difference. Then I lower the backpack with Ty’s computer to the floor and nudge it under the desk with my foot for Marius to pick up later. Bait and switch complete!
Now I need to escalate the hostility in this interaction or Ty won’t be fooled by what I do next. “If Dr. Lowell is my father, you should be ashamed about helping your four-dimensional friends kidnap him. How do you think his son and wife are going to feel? They already had one member of their family disappear!”
Ty shrugs one shoulder. “It’ll be worth it when they’re reunited with their missing daughter. Your father seemed to think so.”
I’m not surprised Ty gave away my identity to Dr. Lowell. If everything goes as Miss Rose planned, I’ll be meeting him soon anyway. But I pretend to be shocked. “You told him about me? What if I didn’t want him to know?”
“C’mon, Jadie. You kept spying on the Lowells. Of course you wanted to meet them.”
“What about my parents?” I point in the direction of my house.
Ty shrugs again, with both shoulders this time. “Split custody?”
He obviously never gave it a thought, and that ticks me off. I don’t have to fake my hostility now. “You jerk!” I close my fingers around the glass jar with the preserved baby shark and hurl it at him, aiming to intercept the footboard of his bed along the way. I’m afraid it won’t break if it just hits Ty.
The post on the footboard shears the top off the jar like a glass bottle in a Western bar fight. Preservative fluid drenches Ty and the bed. The baby shark lands on his pillow.
“Ugh!” Ty flings his tablet onto the dresser, out of danger. “What is wrong with you?”
He shakes the liquid off his body, and I step back to avoid getting splattered. It’s important that only Ty stinks. If I mark myself, the spies could guess what I’m up to. But if it’s their own agent affected—and it looks like something that happened in a fit of temper—we’re hoping they won’t suspect it was planned.
“Ty?” Mrs. Rivers voice calls out from down the hall. “Are you okay?”
Here’s the last thing I’m counting on: Ty’s parents. “Your mom’s awake,” I say for Marius’s benefit, in case he can’t hear Mrs. Rivers over the phone connection. “I’m going to tell her and your dad everything!”
I enjoy the look on Ty’s face for about two seconds. Then a fleshy finger appears around his waist at the same time that something grabs me around the middle. Ty disappears, and I’m pulled out of the room—not with the kata movement the Transporter uses, but something different. Entering 4-space feels like a yank, while returning to Earth is more of a drop. That’s what’s happening now. I’m dropping and dropping and dropping—traveling ana.
“Can transportation work the other way?” Alia asked Miss Rose in that lesson months ago. “Ana out of this world and kata back?”
Miss Rose suggested we try it with the paper maze, and Ty demonstrated by stabbing his pencil point through the paper.
“Reversing the ana and kata directions during Transportation is possible, but not advisable. Your universe is delicate.”
The drop ends with a sucking, clinging resistance before I break out of my braneworld and hurtle forward into the colors and shapes of 4-space.
I am literally in the hands of a desperate infiltrator. But that’s part of the plan. Miss Rose hoped they would be keeping a close eye on Ty and intervene at the hint of any threat to him.
Ty is being carried away with me. That’s also what we wanted.
Being ripped the wrong way out of my universe? That wasn’t part of the plan.
I have no idea if Miss Rose can follow us this way.
30. SAM
The last thing Sam hears from Jadie over Marius�
��s phone is something about Ty’s parents. Then a woman’s voice cries out in alarm, followed by a man’s voice, thick with anger. They aren’t speaking close to the phone, and a roll of thunder drowns out most of their conversation.
“… you think he’s hurt?”
“… foul stink… make him pay for the cleaning…”
“Where…”
“… out the bathroom window, like usual.”
Marius sucks air through his teeth. “Aw, man, Dr. Rivers knows about the window.”
Lightning illuminates the sky, and thunder rumbles again as Marius drags Sam into the shrubbery to hide. Sam braces for the sharp pain that usually accompanies any abrupt movement of his leg, but it doesn’t come. Whatever Miss Rose did to his knee worked.
“Did the spies grab Jadie and Ty?” he asks Marius.
“Yes. And she left her phone behind so we can hear what’s going on. You gotta admit, our sister is an awesome Agent!”
Our sister. Sam has a sister again, and he shares her with this boy. Somehow, that’s even stranger than traveling through the fourth dimension and having his knee fixed by a monstrous being named Miss Rose.
He and Marius eavesdrop on the Rivers house, but thunder makes it difficult, and Ty’s parents don’t stay in the room with the phone. Instead, Dr. Rivers moves around the house, checking every door and window and locking his son out.
“Dang, he’s mean,” Marius whispers.
Sam shrugs. He has no sympathy for the kid who helped kidnap his father.
Eventually the light shuts off in Ty’s room, and a few seconds later, the parents’ room goes dark. Marius turns to Sam. “Now it’s time for me to do my part.”
Sam swallows a sickening sourness inside his mouth. “Are you sure Jadie’s okay?”
Marius looks him right in the eye and states what has to be a lie, because how can he really know? “Yes. She is. I’m off to get Ty’s laptop and his tablet. Don’t move from this spot.” Taking a piece of paper out of his pocket, he punches a button on his bracelet and disappears.
Jadie in Five Dimensions Page 13
