Agents of the Glass (35 page)

Thirty feet above them, Andy teetered on the rail of the catwalk, his eyes fixed on the rope hanging near the globe.

“Damn that kid!” said de Spere.

Andy coiled his legs and launched himself across the chasm as de Spere aimed and fired.

The bullet missed its target, ricocheting into the metal rafters, and Andy's arms and legs flailed wildly as he fought to maintain his grip on the rope. The coarse hemp scorched his hands as he slid down. When he finally came to a stop at a knot, he smelled his skin burning.

“Is he shooting at me?” he asked Mrs. Cardigan as he started to swing back and forth on the rope.

He got an answer in the form of a second shot, which missed him by inches, once again bouncing off the ceiling.

“Go, Andy!” cried his mom. “Hurry!”

“One more swing!” he shouted. He gripped Karina's guitar in his right hand and the rope with his left as he willed himself closer to the machine. Making his final approach, he pulled the Fender back behind his head and, with a war cry, swung it in a picture-perfect forehand that drained every last bit of energy from his exhausted body.

Below him, de Spere took careful aim. “Got you this time, kid.” He put his finger on the trigger and squeezed…as Penny did a little flying of her own, hitting him square in the chest with all four paws, catching him totally off guard and knocking him off his feet.

Andy expected, naturally, that the guitar would seriously damage the globe, which would have been a fine, dramatic-enough ending to the show. Instead, he got the Death Star scene from
Star Wars
. The globe
exploded
in a blue-green flash that blinded everyone on the stage for several seconds and sent Andy flying once more—only this time there was no rope to grab at the end of his flight.

He was prepared for the worst, and a lot went through his mind on that short, fast trip across the auditorium as he braced himself for the impact:
Maybe I can get out of this with a few broken bones. Man, this is going to hurt. I'm not ready to die. I haven't finished my model yet.

Instead of slamming into the floor at forty miles an hour, though, he found himself looking up into Billy Newcomb's eyes, the football player's massive biceps cradling him as if he were an egg.

“Hiya, Andy,” said Billy. “Sorry I'm late. Traffic was murder.”

For three long seconds, the auditorium was deathly silent, and the only light came from the emergency lights that kicked on when the explosion shut down the power to the entire building. Smoke alarms began to screech from every corner of the room, and the smell of an electrical fire hung in the air.

The first person to speak was Abbey: “Andy! Where's Andy?” She couldn't see Billy from where she was standing, and based on the magnitude of the explosion, she feared the worst.

“Over here, ma'am,” said Billy. “I've got him. He's okay. A little cut up, but he'll be fine.”

Actually, considering how little remained of Karina's guitar (nothing but a few inches of the neck and six dangling strings), Andy was in remarkably (
miraculously,
thought Silas) good shape.

Abbey ran to him, crying out for a towel when she saw his face. A shard of glass had struck him on the forehead, just to the left of the scar from the bank explosion, and blood was flowing from the cut at an alarming rate.

“Where's Dad?” he asked, delirious. “Tell him not to drink the soda.”

“It's okay, Andy,” said Abbey. “Your dad is fine. Everyone is safe.”

“Listen to me!” he insisted. “It's really important. Don't let him drink it!”

“Here, you can tell him yourself,” said Silas, making room for Howard to squeeze in next to his son.

“Dad! Whatever you do,
don't
drink the soda.”

Howard looked up at his wife quizzically. “What is he talking about? What happened here? One second, I'm watching beach balls and a giant ship sail around the room—I still don't know what to think about that—and the next, alarms are going off and I hear you screaming for Andy. And now he's telling me not to drink the soda.” He then noticed the group of strangers surrounding Andy—Silas, Fallon, Billy Newcomb, and even Mrs. Cardigan, who had climbed down from the catwalk. “Who
are
you people?”

“We have a lot to talk about,” said Abbey. “There are some things…It's a bit complicated to get into right now. For the moment, you should be proud of Andy—he just prevented a catastrophe.”

Howard looked around at the damage from the explosion. “That…was him
preventing
a catastrophe? Geez, what does it look like when one actually happens?”

Out in the seats of the auditorium, no one moved for a long time—two hundred and fifty catatonic kids, frozen in place. Finally, they began to stir, although they looked as if they were coming out of a long, deep sleep, murmuring and glancing this way and that, completely in the dark about what they had been through. When Karina's Fender struck the globe, the cycle of lights and colors and images was mere seconds from completion, and their brains were too preoccupied with the dismal details of the holograms to take notice of anything else.

“We really should get him to a hospital,” said Silas. “Have him checked out. He could have a concussion.” He felt the back of his head where the pipe had landed. “And I should probably join him,” he added, sinking slowly to the floor.

“It's just a good cut,” said Billy, gently setting Andy down into the chair that Karina carried to him. “The glass is still in there. I can just see the end of it.”

“Let me see,” said Abbey. Using her fingernails, she pulled out the shard of glass and held it out for Andy to see.

Andy smiled.

Karina looked horrified. “Why are you
smiling
? You could have been killed.”

Andy marveled at the crescent-shaped glass in his hand, immediately noting its resemblance to the piece taken from the same spot on his forehead after the bank explosion. He slipped the glass into his shirt pocket. “I'm starting a collection.”

“This had better be the
end
of your collecting,” said Abbey, pressing a clean Karina Jellyby concert T-shirt onto the wound.

Howard agreed: “Two pieces of glass pulled out of your head is
more
than enough.”

Andy suddenly sat bolt upright. “Penny!”

“She's here. She's fine,” said Fallon, so pale that she was almost unrecognizable. “The two of you saved the day. I still can't believe…” Her voice trailed off as she collapsed, her fall broken by Billy, who caught her a millisecond before her head hit the floor.

“She's been shot!” he said. He held up a hand, covered in her blood.

“What! Where?”

“Looks like it's her shoulder,” said Billy.

“I didn't even hear the shot,” said Abbey.

“Me neither,” said Silas. “Penny must have knocked de Spere's arm at the exact moment Andy was hitting the machine. She probably saved his life.”

Fallon opened her eyes briefly. “De Spere…Winter…”

“They're long gone,” said Mrs. Cardigan. She stepped gingerly over the broken glass that lay scattered all around and pointed at the floor. “Trapdoor.”

Silas pulled it open and peered down into the blackness. “Like rats. Which is fitting, I guess.”

“No point in going after them,” said Mrs. Cardigan. “Make sure nobody else needs help, and then we'd better get Andover and Fallon to the hospital to get stitched up. And you—let's get that bump looked at. Don't worry. I'll take care of the sticky details with police and doctors and so on.” With a quick wave, she opened the exit door at the back of the stage, holding it open for Billy Newcomb, who was carrying Fallon in his arms.

“What's this?” Abbey asked, reaching down for a small manila envelope with
Roger
printed on it in neat letters. “Who's Roger?”

Mrs. Cardigan's eyes widened in surprise. She turned to Silas. “I believe that is intended for you.”

Silas looked confused. “He called me Roger….How did you know…”

“Perhaps it's time you knew the whole story about yourself,” she said. “But not now. I must be going.”

Abbey handed the envelope to Silas, who turned it over in his hands several times before sliding his thumbnail under the flap and opening it. Inside was a yellowed photograph, no more than three inches square, cut from an unidentified newspaper. Two children, a boy and a girl, stood on the deck of a fishing boat, their faces a bit too thin, their ribs a little too prominent. The boy seemed to be daydreaming, gazing at something off in the distance. The girl, however, stared boldly into the camera lens, a somehow familiar smile revealing a gap between her front teeth. Silas shivered as he recognized her as the little girl from his dreams. All the air went out of his lungs as he realized that he knew the boy. He was staring at a picture of himself—the first photograph of him as a child he had ever seen.

The caption read:
On Sunday, these two children, approximately six years old, were found adrift on a makeshift raft in the North Atlantic, three hundred miles west of Scotland. Nothing else is known about them, as they have declined to speak.

“What is it?” Abbey asked. “You'd better sit back down. You look terrible.”

“It's nothing,” Silas said, shoving the clipping back into the envelope. “Let's get out of here before the police show up and start asking questions. Karina, do you have a story ready?”

“Looks to me like an amplifier blew up,” said Karina. “Speaking of police, look who's here. I completely forgot about him.”

“Is everything okay up here?” asked Detective Cunningham, climbing the steps to the stage, with Zhariah Davis beside him. Their eyes had a glazed-over look to them.

“What happened?” Zhariah asked. “Looks like something blew up.”

“Amplifier,” said Karina. “Only one minor casualty. A Wellbourne student who was helping out backstage took a piece of shrapnel to the forehead. He's going to be okay, though. Someone's bringing a car around, and they're going to take him to the hospital to get checked out.”