Crisis Zero (19 page)

I
STILL COULDN'T BELIEVE THIS WAS HAPPENING. DANIELLE AND I
were being led down a dark concrete corridor somewhere inside the base. In handcuffs. And the worst part was that Agent Nineteen and Agent Blue, along with Agent Smiley, were the ones escorting us to . . . well, wherever it was we were headed.

Prison? Some gray site in Europe similar to wherever Jake was in custody? A concrete cell deep within the base? Our own graves?

I couldn't really rule anything out. But it didn't matter.
The end result would be unchanged: I had failed. I had failed in the very first few steps of our complicated plan to take down the Agency and Mule Medlock all at once. In order for our plan to work, I needed to get Isadoris to trust me and tell me where the exchange was going down. And so, yeah, it was probably a little foolish to have believed I could get that guy to ever trust anyone beside himself.

“You don't have to do this,” I said suddenly. A last-ditch effort to save us all. “There's still time. Medlock is going to blow up the whole city!”

“Shut up,” Agent Smiley said, jabbing me in the back painfully with a finger. “Traitor.”

Danielle kept her head down, crying silently. The guilt was overwhelming. It was my fault she was here. It was my fault she'd gotten messed up in any of this in the first place.

And then suddenly an explosion dropped us all to our feet. Smoke filled the small hallway, and my ears were ringing from the deafening blast. I choked and coughed on the smoke, disoriented. Had Medlock just hit the button? Were we about to die? I had no clue what was going on.

But then someone was unlocking my handcuffs and pulling me to my feet.

“Run,” a gruff voice shouted in my ear.

A hand shoved me forward. I began running. I couldn't see through the smoke but just kept running. I held my hands out to my sides to keep from slamming into the walls. Then someone was next to me. They grabbed my shirt and helped guide me to the left and through a doorway of some kind.

The door swung closed. We were somewhere dark and I couldn't see anything. I was shuffled into another room with a metal floor. Then, suddenly bright lights popped on and I shielded my eyes with my hands. Once my vision adjusted to the light, I realized I was inside a small metal elevator.

Agent Nineteen, Agent Blue, and Danielle were also there.

“What's going on?” I asked. “And what happened to Smiley?”

“She'll be fine, just a little bump on the head,” Agent Nineteen said. “Take this elevator all the way to the top. There, you'll find a concrete tunnel with a ladder. You'll have to climb the rest of the way but it's not too far. Go home, both of you. Stay inside, stay with your families. Okay?”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Because what the director is asking of us isn't right,” he said.

“We believe you guys,” Agent Blue added. “He has no right to detain you both and send you away to a gray site.”

I looked around the elevator. It definitely wasn't the one we normally used. This one seemed way less high-tech, it was more like a freight elevator.

“But won't you get in trouble for helping us?” I asked. “I mean, can't they see us right now? Plus, what about Medlock seeing this . . . it might make him . . .”

“No, there are no cameras in here,” Agent Blue said. “It's an emergency protocol exit. The same one we're going to use to evacuate the base ourselves without Medlock knowing.”

“Don't worry about us and the Agency,” Agent Nineteen said. “We can handle ourselves with Isadoris, let us worry about that, it's not your problem anymore. He won't know we helped you escape.”

I nodded. And then realized that if they were letting us go, there was still an outside chance that Danielle, Dillon, and I could complete our mission after all.

“Where and when is the exchange taking place?” I asked.

“I can't tell you that,” Agent Nineteen said.

“You still don't trust me?” I asked.

“No, that's not it at all,” Agent Nineteen said. “It's that I think you want to know because you want to go there and try something stupid. Well, don't. It will only end up getting you killed.”

I sighed and looked away from his clear green eyes. Then I faced him again, determined to get what I needed at all costs.

“You turned your back on a partner once before,” I said. “I know that now. Don't do it again. Please, just tell me—I won't go anywhere near it, I promise. I just need to know to make sure that Medlock hasn't figured it out somehow himself. I can give him incorrect intel.”

My words visibly disturbed him. Agent Nineteen looked like he wanted to either break down and cry for an hour, backhand me for calling him out, or punish himself since the guilt clearly hadn't worn off yet.

“It's at old Augustine Church,” Agent Nineteen said. “Right before sunrise, just under four hours away.”

“Augustine Church?” I said.

“That's right,” Agent Blue said. “What better place to do a covert exchange than in Middle of Nowhere, North Dakota, in November?”

Augustine Church was an old, abandoned church ten
or fifteen miles west of town. It was a local historical landmark, being one of the oldest buildings in the state still standing. That said, nobody ever went out there, except for teenagers sometimes in the summer, who spent the night in the supposedly haunted building on a dare. It was the sort of place that would be the perfect dumping ground for bodies if Minnow, ND, ever had more than one murder per decade. Being out in the middle of nowhere meant it was essentially right in the middle of a mostly flat plain with very little to hide behind for miles. The truth was, that location might make it a lot harder to execute the last parts of my plan. But I couldn't worry about that now or it might give something away.

“Just stay out of the way,” Agent Nineteen said. “I better not see you anywhere near the place. Now go on, get home, both of you.”

He didn't wait for a reply as both he and Agent Blue stepped out of the elevator and then hit a button on the outside wall. The last thing I saw as the metal doors slowly slid closed, was Agent Nineteen reaching up toward his face to wipe the tears from his eyes.

T
HE CLIMB UP THE METAL LADDER INSIDE THE CONCRETE TUNNEL
felt extra long. Probably because I couldn't stop thinking about what it would feel like to be looking down the barrel of a gun held by Danielle. Which is essentially the equivalent of what had happened to Medlock all those years ago.

Danielle and I had said nothing on the relatively fast elevator ride to the underground sewer, or the climb the rest of the way up to a small street a few blocks from the
school. We jogged back toward the school where Danielle had parked her bike.

There was a cop car parked up the hill in the school parking lot. The lights were off, but we could see two uniformed officers standing next to it, outside in the cold. It almost looked as if they were keeping watch for something . . . or someone.

“Think they're looking for me?” I asked as Danielle unchained her bike from a nearby tree. I was technically a missing kid after all—my parents hadn't seen me since that afternoon and had no clue where I was.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “Come on, hop aboard.”

I climbed onto the pegs of her bike and she rode away from the school toward Burdick Avenue. We crossed it without waiting for the light, since there wasn't much traffic after midnight. We parked our bikes behind the water treatment plant, nestled away in the trees on the riverbank. Dillon was there, waiting for us.

“So?” he asked as he handed me a grocery bag full of his old winter clothes.

“We got what we needed,” I said as I put on his old winter coat and gloves.

“Good, let's go meet Medlock, then,” Dillon said, turning toward Danielle. “Mom is freaking out right now. I
keep texting her to calm down and that we're fine and will be home soon, but she's not having it. We're already grounded for three months.”

“Big deal,” Danielle said.

Dillon shrugged and then hopped on his bike.

“Follow me,” he said.

Danielle and I followed Dillon, me on the back pegs of her bike. We rode along the riverbank, in the trees, away from any roads. I was sure that Dillon was afraid of a possible tail. And I supposed that made sense. Medlock would have been worried about it.

We ended up in Oak Park, which was so dark at night that I could barely see Dillon anymore, even though he was just ten feet ahead of us. I heard his bike braking, the tires skidding on the gravel bike path. Danielle slowed down, too.

A blue light appeared in front of me from what I thought was Dillon's phone. As I dismounted and got closer, however, I realized it wasn't a phone at all but another type of device with a small screen. That's when I realized we weren't going to meet up with Medlock face-to-face at all, a hunch confirmed a moment later when Medlock's face appeared on the handheld.

“What did you find out?” he asked.

“Here,” Dillon handed me the small device.

I looked into Medlock's dark eyes. Even on the tiny screen they seemed to be too large and sharp to miss anything. It was uncanny how much they almost shined in spite of their dark color.

“Well?” he said impatiently. “Do I need to remind you about the button?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, no you don't need to remind me.
Yes
, I got what you wanted.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” he said. “I got a little worried when you disappeared from the camera feeds for such a long time.” He squinted suspiciously.

“Hmm . . . I didn't feel well so they took me to Isadoris's office to finish the interview.”

Medlock scoffed. “Figures that Isadoris's office is the only one without a camera. Giving himself the privacy that he affords nobody else.”

I didn't know how to answer that, or if he even expected an answer, so I just stayed quiet and looked into the small screen. Medlock stared back.

“Well, let's have it, then,” he snarled.

“Oh, right. It's, uh, the exchange, I mean, is at sunrise. That's all he said, he didn't say a specific time. And it's happening out near old Augustine Church.”

If that presented any problems for him, he didn't show it. In fact, he seemed relatively pleased, if the slight grin that appeared on his face was any indication.

“You're not lying to me?”

“If I am, then I just destroyed the base,” I said. “And maybe the school, and who knows what else?”

“See?” Medlock said. “You learn fast. This could have been so much better had you worked for me from the start.”

“So, what's your plan now?” I asked.

“Yeah, nice try,” he said. “Give me back to Dillon, please.”

I handed the device over. Dillon took it and gave me a momentary smile. Then he looked at the screen.

“Meet me at the gym,” I heard Medlock say. “Come alone.”

Dillon nodded and then disconnected the call and put the device back into his pocket.

“The gym?” Danielle asked.

“Code word,” Dillon said, and left it at that.

We all just stood there in the cold dark night and squinted to see each other for a few moments.

“Well, you'd better go meet Medlock, then,” I finally said. “I need to make a phone call and then get to work
on the hardest phase of this whole mission. Danielle?”

“I'm going to head home so our mom doesn't call the cops on us, too,” she said. “I'll retrieve those gadgets you got from Chum Bucket that I stashed for you.”

“What about the exchange?” I asked.

“I'll still be there,” she said. “I can sneak out of my house, too, you know.”

“Okay, so let's rendezvous in three hours,” I said. “Also, I'll need one of your cell phones since my dad smashed mine. So we can stay in touch.”

Danielle pulled out her phone and handed it to me. Then they both nodded at me, reconfirmed our rendezvous, and we all parted ways. Now it was time for the hardest part of my plan. In fact, I had no idea how I would accomplish what I needed to do next. Still, our plan was already in motion, and that meant I had to succeed or else dozens of innocent people would probably die.

There was no going back now.

T
RACKING DOWN A PAY PHONE HAD BEEN A LOT HARDER THAN
I'd expected. I'd never used one before. The only reason I knew they existed at all was old movies. But I still assumed there had to be one somewhere. Especially in a place like Minnow, ND, which always seemed to be at least a few years behind the rest of the country when it came to just about everything.

I eventually used Danielle's smartphone to find a pay phone. I couldn't actually use my smartphone for the call I needed to make because I knew that the Agency had
the ability to track cell phone calls fairly easily. And I wouldn't put it past them to be tracking her calls right at that moment, even though they were currently busy with their own plans.

The nearest pay phone still in service was at a Hardee's just a mile away. I walked there and made a phone call. I half expected nobody to answer; after all, it was nearly 2:00 a.m. But I eventually got through and spoke to the exact person I needed to.

But that wasn't the hard part of my mission that night. The really hard part came after that. I once again used a simple Google search to find an address. It was close to the Hardee's, which was good, though it didn't give me as much time as I'd have liked to have to figure what I was going to say when I got there.

I took a few deep breaths as I ascended the front steps; the cold air bit my lungs. Then I approached the door and rang the doorbell. It was now 2:30 a.m.

And there I was ringing my principal's doorbell.