B003J5UJ4U EBOK (11 page)

I filled a backpack with some clothes, my toothbrush, and a couple paperbacks. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be away. I slipped my MP3 player into my pants pocket. I didn’t take my good one, but I had a cheap shuffle-play one that was pretty rugged. My parents usually kept cash in the bedroom.
It was weird how I felt a twinge of guilt when I opened Mom’s jewelry box and lifted out the top compartment. I found about seven hundred dollars in the bottom, which I jammed in my pocket.

I didn’t bother with the cereal since I knew I could get a good breakfast in Philly.

When I peeked out the front window to get a better look at whoever was parked there, I saw the car had a different guy in it. This guy was definitely bigger than the guy I’d spotted last night. He barely fit behind the wheel. So Bowdler had more manpower. Which meant more bad news for me.

A yellow bus rolled past the house. Even through the closed window, I could hear the kids singing a song. Lucky them. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. On their way to a camp or something.

I slipped out the back and cut through a neighbor’s yard. When I got near the train station, my paranoia started to kick into high gear. Last night, the car had just pulled up across from my house when I was half a block away. Maybe other people had been sent to look for me, too, and they’d just missed me at the station. That might mean there was someone there now, waiting for me to get off a train. The boarding platforms were up a flight of stairs. I bought a ticket from a vending machine at the bottom of the steps, then moved up just high enough so I could check across the tracks where the trains from Philly stopped.

I spotted a guy in a dark-blue suit, with buzz-cut hair, sitting on a bench, staring down the tracks toward Philly. Maybe he was waiting for the train. Or maybe he was waiting for me.
As the approaching train blasted its whistle, he glanced at something he held cupped in his right hand. My picture? I moved back down the steps and waited. The train from Philly arrived. When it left, I checked again. The guy was still sitting there.

At least there wasn’t anybody on my side of the tracks. Nobody was looking for me to sneak back into Philly. They were all trying to catch me sneaking away. I kept out of sight and waited until my train pulled up, then dashed onto it and rode back to 30th St. Station.

It was late morning when I reached Philly. There were more men in suits watching the departures. I hunkered down and stayed in the middle of the crowd leaving the station. After I crossed the street, I ducked into the first alley I came to, made sure nobody was watching, and floated my backpack up to a rooftop so I wouldn’t have to carry it with me all day. I kept one paperback, because I had a feeling I’d need to kill some time.

I backtracked until I found the block where the lab was. I watched the lab’s door from the corner for a while before going to the coffee shop across the street. I grabbed a seat near the window and ordered breakfast. Pancakes and hot chocolate. My brain runs well on sugar.

While I waited for my food, I thought about how I’d eaten so many meals alone in the cafeteria at Edgeview, an outcast among a whole school of outcasts, until Martin had become my friend. He’d probably never understand how much he’d done for me. I hoped I could do something for him some day.

I stared out the window. Still no activity at the house. I
knew I’d gotten there too late to see them come in. But I figured they might go out at lunchtime. I ordered a bowl of chili so I’d have an excuse to stay in the coffee shop, then lingered over it while I read my book. The lunchtime crowd started to filter in. I ordered a burger.

Around twelve-thirty, the waitress gave me one of those
order-something-or-get-moving
looks. I knew that if I ordered more food, I’d end up so bloated I wouldn’t be able to walk. I guess I knew two other things. With me on the run, there was probably no reason for those lab guys to be there. So, assuming Bowdler was out looking for me, the building was empty. The other thing I knew was that I didn’t want to go back inside the place where I’d been kept prisoner and treated like a lab rat.

But I had to go. Fear, bad memories, whatever complex mess of emotions was holding me back, it didn’t matter. I had to go. It was like going to the doctor for a shot. You fear it. You go. You do it. It’s done.

elsewhere …

THURSDAY MORNING, FEELING
so hungry that the hunger didn’t even seem real anymore, Martin only had to walk for two hours before he reached the outskirts of Sayerton. After another hour of wandering, he found the right street.

A yellow bus rolled past, filled with singing kids. “You guys don’t know how lucky you are,” Martin muttered as he headed up the street. When he reached the house, he paused on the porch, is
this too weird?
How would Trash’s parents feel about him showing up? Would it bring back painful memories?

He pressed the bell. Nobody answered. Martin waited, rang the bell again, waited some more, then sighed and walked back to the sidewalk. He figured he had two choices—go see Cheater, or crawl back home.

“Cheater,” he said out loud. That was the better choice. Martin figured he’d traveled close to twenty miles already. So Cheater probably only lived ten or fifteen miles away. Even if he didn’t catch a ride, he could make it in three or four hours. Or five. Or ten. Because walking was what he
did. That was his new life. He walked. And he thirsted. And he hungered. And he walked some more. Life on the road definitely stunk.

“Hold on there.”

Martin spun around as someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was a guy in a dark blue suit wearing sunglasses and an unreadable expression. His blue necktie was speckled with yellow dots. Across the street, the driver’s door of a parked car hung open. “Are you a friend of the family?” the guy asked.

Martin skittered away a step. The guy’s greatest shame was that he had failed the written exam for a promotion to division chief three times. Eventually, he’d quit to go into business for himself. Martin didn’t care about that, and he certainly wasn’t going to use the knowledge to spit out an insult, because the guy’s greatest pride spooked him. The guy was proud that he’d carried out seventeen successful assassinations in his career, along with countless kidnappings, acts of sabotage, and a whole slew of violent activities. He was proud that he’d do anything for the right price, and do it well. Recently, he even helped fake the death of a teenage boy.

“You’re kind of skittish,” the guy said.

“I’ve been having a rough day,” Martin said. He couldn’t help staring at the guy’s tie. Close up, the yellow dots on it turned out to be tiny smiley faces.

“So, like I said, are you a friend of the family?”

Am I a friend of the family?

A dozen
lies shot through Martin’s head. He figured he could pretend he’d gone to the wrong house. But if the guy
spotted the lie, Martin knew he’d end up in trouble. Or at the bottom of a river with his neck snapped, his arms broken, and fifty pounds of iron chain wrapped around his body. The truth seemed harmless.

He nodded. “Sort of. I don’t know the parents, but I went to school with their son, Eddie. He’s dead.”

“So why are you here?”

So you can kill me and still not get promoted.

“I ran away from home.” As he heard his own words, Martin was hit by the reality of his situation for the first time.

The guy stared at him for a moment, then reached inside his jacket. Martin tensed, wondering whether there was any chance he could get away. He relaxed when he saw the guy wasn’t pulling out a gun or a knife.

“You look hungry.” The guy took a twenty out of his wallet. “I ran off when I was thirteen. Probably a mistake, but I survived.”

Martin took the money. “Thanks.” It was strange feeling grateful to someone who had killed seventeen people. He turned to walk off.

“Kid,” the guy called.

“Yeah?”

“Be careful. There are a lot of dangerous folks out there.”
Yeah, there sure are,
Martin thought.
I hope I don’t meet any more of them for a while.

desperate steps

AS I WAS
paying my check at the coffee house, I reached out with my mind and pressed the doorbell at the lab. Nobody answered the ring. I stood on the sidewalk for several more minutes, trying to think of a good reason not to go back into that place. Fear was the best reason I came up with, but I knew it wasn’t good enough.

Finally, I crossed the street, walked up the steps, and opened the lock. At first, the doorknob wouldn’t turn. I realized my palm was sweaty. I wiped my hand on my pants, then opened the door.

It was definitely creepy going back inside. I closed the door behind me, then listened carefully for any sounds. Except for the ticking of a clock from the room to my left, and faint traffic noises from outside, there was nothing.

I went downstairs first. I didn’t visit the room where I’d been kept. I had no desire to see that again. But I went into the supply room at the back of the hall and found the cabinet with the drugs. There were jars filled with all sorts of pills and small vials of various colored liquids.

I noticed three bottles of clear liquid on the top shelf. One
was open and half empty. I removed the lid, touched the tip of my finger to the liquid, then touched my finger to my tongue. There was no taste, which by itself didn’t tell me anything. But I opened one of the sealed bottles and carefully tasted that, again with my finger tip. This time, I instinctively spat out as the familiar, bitter flavor spread across my tongue. The two liquids were definitely different, though the labels were the same, with some long chemical name I couldn’t even guess how to pronounce. If this was the stuff Bowdler had been giving me, someone had replaced my medicine with water. I had no idea why.

I headed for the office on the first floor. The file cabinets were locked. No problem. I unlocked them with my mind, slid open the top drawer, and scanned the tabs on the hanging folders. It was mostly electronics catalogues, old magazine articles, and other useless stuff.

Near the back was a fat folder with my name on it. I pulled it out and put it on the desk. Then I looked through the rest of the drawers, making sure there weren’t files with my friends’ names on them. I didn’t see any, which I took as a good sign. Maybe Bowdler didn’t know about the guys. Not yet. But if he dug into my past, there was a risk he’d figure out I wasn’t the only one with a hidden talent.

I still had no idea who’d kidnapped me. There weren’t any memos or letters or anything like that. The next room looked like some kind of electronics lab. There were a couple empty take-out cartons and a coffee cup on the work table, along with a jumble of scattered parts. Small pieces of wire littered the floor. All the other rooms I’d seen were neat and
clean. I had the feeling someone had been working here all night assembling something.

I found a cardboard box that contained several small devices with lots of buttons on them. Each of the devices had a label attached with a rubber band. I read a couple of them, hoping I could find something useful, but they didn’t mean anything to me. A handwritten note on top read:
Douglas, here are the prototypes of our current projects. I thought you might enjoy an advance look. Maybe you can work them into our next round of contracts. Feel free to be inventive.
It was signed with scrawled initials I couldn’t make out.

None of the other rooms had anything interesting. I sat down to read my file. The stack of handwritten sheets didn’t tell me much. It was mostly filled with the results of experiments. It looked like Bowdler had run hundreds of different tests. He’d drugged me pretty heavily at first, then adjusted the dosage until I was in a state where I’d do what he asked but not try to escape.

There were a bunch of references to people I’d never heard of. Stuff like:
subject shows much greater range than that attributed to Kalnikov
or
unlike accounts of Sherenova, subject is not hyper-susceptible to distractions.

The last entry read,
The disrupter functions perfectly. We can proceed immediately with the miniaturized version.