Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (66 page)

He nodded. “All the names of the kids known to have been exposed to the lux spiral are in our database. If someone high up in the Guard entrusts them with a medallion, it guarantees they’ll be able to find sanctuary in any of the Guard facilities.”

“Did you want your grandfather to give me the medallion?”

“No, that wasn’t my intent.” It almost looked like he was blinking back tears. “He was so confused…”

“You invented the Deleo to help your grandfather,” Nadia said. A statement, not a question. Her head tilted in sympathy.

“Yes, but I was too late.”

A loud squeal came over the loudspeaker above the door. “Sixty minutes and counting. In sixty minutes, the facility will be sealed.”

“Every ten minutes we’re going to hear a message like this,” David said. “It’s crunch time. Anything we can’t finish packing up will be left behind. Luckily all of my data has been transferred already. The rest of this,” he waved around the room, “is personal. Not essential, but I still want it.” He shut down the computer. “So why don’t you tell me your story?” He raised his eyebrows. “The abbreviated version, since we’re pressed for time.”

I couldn’t get past what he’d told us about going back to Edgewood. “So you walked around Edgewood and no one said, ‘Hey, you look a lot like that David Hofstetter guy who died awhile back?’ No one? Not one person?”

He shook his head. “Nope. This was years after my so-called death, of course. My parents didn’t live there anymore, most of my friends had moved away. And I looked different. Glasses, a beard, a baseball cap. I was taller. My voice got deeper. And everyone thought I was dead. If anyone asked, I was prepared to say I was David Hofstetter’s cousin. But no one asked. I did get a few odd looks though.”

“Did you ever see Carly?” I asked.

He smiled and this time it wasn’t a smirk. “She’s the reason I kept going back.”

Nadia

The minute David Hofstetter said Carly was the reason he kept coming back to Edgewood I felt it. I was standing right next to the man and I sensed crazy love pulses coming right off him. The pulses felt weirdly fresh and new, especially odd because the guy was in his thirties and he and Carly hadn’t been together since they were teenagers. I was just about to ask him if he’d ever gotten married when a loud alarm sounded and a red light over the doorway flashed on and off. David Hofstetter’s expression told us something serious had happened.

“What is that?” Russ asked over the noise of the alarm.

“Security breach,” David said. “We’re supposed to hold our positions. The place is in lockdown.”

The alarm continued in a steady pattern, three blasts and then three counts of silence. During the silent moments, a woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “We are at Level Five. Carry out Level Five protocol.”

“What’s that?” I asked. Normally my voice was small, but my fear managed to amp up the volume.

“Just what I said, we need to stay right here,” David Hofstetter said, gathering up a box and setting it on the counter closest to the door. He turned back to reassure us. “We’re perfectly safe. It may even be a drill.”

“So this has happened before?” Russ asked. The alarm grated on my already raw nerves. Enough already. We got it.

Before David could answer the floor beneath our feet shook. The glass-fronted cabinets rattled, and the desk and chair vibrated and shimmied across the floor. I clutched at Russ, who put his arm around me. “What’s going on?” I yelled.

David said, “Earthquake.” He held up a hand. “Peru is known for earthquakes. Don’t worry; we get tremors all the time. They usually only last—”

The lights and alarm went off and suddenly we were in a world of moving darkness. A fun house of terror for someone like me who hates closed-in places and isn’t crazy about the dark either. A second later, Russ’s handful of light illuminated the whole shaking room. My terror was exacerbated by the thought that we were underground and could be buried under tons of rock and stone. Bile rose up in my throat and my heart raced. My parents will never know what happened to me, I thought.

Seeing the panic on David’s face made it worse. A few seconds ago he’d been the one assuring us that this was routine, but his expression now said otherwise. “We need to go,” he said, grabbing the box he’d just put on the counter.

“I thought we were in lockdown. Level Five,” I said.

“Now!” David opened the door and gestured for us to go through.

The floor pitched like a boat at sea. I took Russ’s free hand and we went into the hallway, David leading the way, talking as he went. “The emergency generator will have the power on in another minute, but we don’t have time to wait.”

“Where are we going?” Russ asked. Other people were in the hallway now too; further down I heard worried voices and saw the flicker of flashlights.

“We have an earthquake-proof room built right in the facility,” David said.

“This way.” A man’s voice yelled in the darkness. I felt him brush past me, his beam of light swaying as he ran.

“What if it’s not an earthquake?” I yelled. The place was rumbling now. Ceiling tiles dropped all around us. Hanging pictures banged against the wall, shattering the glass. Dust swirled around us, making me cough.

We were rounding a turn from one corridor to the next, when we experienced a boom. The impact tore me away from Russ; the noise was deafening. It was the cracking of a sheet of ice the size of a football field; it had the impact of a bomb exploding and the terror of the earth collapsing. Russ’s light went out and the flashlight beams ahead of us dimmed behind the flying debris. My ears ached and rang. I had the sense that the hallway ahead of us didn’t exist anymore, that it had become clogged with rubble and dust.

I staggered to stay upright, clutching at the wall. I pulled my t-shirt over my mouth like they tell you to do to screen out smoke in fires, but it didn’t help. I coughed and choked and couldn’t get a good lungful of air. I leaned against the vibrating wall and found myself sliding down to what used to be the floor. Please, I prayed, I don’t want to die. I thought about all the things I hadn’t done yet, and everything I still wanted to do. It would be so unfair to have my life be over now.

And then Russ’ light came on, a baseball sized globe of sparks levitating off his palm. My eyes adjusted to the light. I saw his outstretched hand and took it. “Come on,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “This way.” And we were off in the opposite direction, David Hofstetter, still clutching his box, behind us.

I wanted to ask where we were going, but I could barely breathe, much less get the words out. The space we were passing through didn’t look like a hallway anymore. We stepped over mounds of rubble, parts of the structure that had shaken loose, some chunks large enough to kill a person if they’d been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Russ’s light showed the dust motes swirling in the air, as thick as a swarm of mosquitoes on a humid summer day.

My head felt clogged, but at least my hearing seemed to be returning. “Where are you going?” David yelled from behind us.

“The loading dock,” Russ shot back.

“No,” David shouted. “I have a better idea.” He guided us from behind with his hand on Russ’s back.

We pushed forward, fueled by fear and adrenaline. When we were close enough to see the loading dock entrance, David stopped in front of a side door, one of those we’d tried and found locked on our way in. He said something to Russ, who pulled out his wallet and gave him the medallion. David slid the medallion into a slot next to the door, and the knob turned and we were through.

The other side of the door led to another corridor, but it was a considerable improvement. The hallway still rumbled, but the shaking wasn’t as severe, and there were no signs of damage. It was quieter too. For the first time since we left David’s lab, I actually felt like we might make it out alive. “Where are we going?” Russ asked, looking ahead. The hallway, absent other doors and artwork on the walls, stretched endlessly before us.

“This leads to the village,” David said. “We have a confidentiality agreement with the people there. They know about our location and help us in various ways. Moving supplies, that kind of thing.”

“You trust them to keep your secret?” Russ said.

“People keep their word here,” David said, walking ahead of us. Without any obstacles we were able to quicken our pace. “And there are significant financial incentives for them to keep hushed too. One of the buildings on the edge of the village belongs to us and this hallway ends there.”

Russ

The corridor ended with a concrete stairwell leading up to yet another locked doorway. David borrowed my medallion again and trotted up the stairs to run it through the slot. “You don’t have one of your own?” I asked.

David grinned and held the medallion in the air between two fingers. “I actually had two of my own, if you must know. This one, which I gave to my grandfather and another one, which is sitting in a desk drawer back at the lab.” He must have been reading my mind because he said, “If I knew we were going to be attacked, I would have kept it in my wallet.”

“I didn’t think it was an earthquake,” Nadia said, her voice low.

He opened the door and stuck his head in to look around, reaching for a light switch just inside the doorway. When the lights went on, and David was satisfied it was safe, he gestured for us to come forward. We stepped into what looked like a large barn containing one thing—a large helicopter. The structure was metal, and too small for the helicopter. The underside of the roof nearly touched the blades. I whistled and said, “Wow, this is amazing.”

Nadia and I circled the thing to get a good look. I’d never ridden in a helicopter, but the ones I’d seen at air shows and on TV looked smaller than this one, and not nearly as impressive. Gun-metal gray, it gleamed like it was new and looked large enough to hold at least a dozen people. The front window was expansive and spotless. I put up a hand to touch it, giving it its first smudge, then wiped it away with my sleeve.

David walked over to an electrical box on the far wall and flipped some switches. The ground beneath us, I noticed, was stable, no more trembling or rumbling, but off in the distance it sounded like a war movie. “This is our ride, kids,” David said, opening the door to the helicopter.

“But how are we going to get it out of this shed?” Nadia wondered, voicing my thoughts exactly.

David held out a hand to help her into the chopper. “Let me worry about that.” We got into the back and fastened our seat belts while he climbed into the pilot’s seat, put on a headset, and checked instruments on the dashboard. When light flooded the room, Nadia and I looked up to see each side of the roof rise upward, like a movable bridge. “Whoa,” she said, her eyes getting wide. “I didn’t see that coming.”

When the roof panels were completely vertical, David started up the engine and the blades whirred above us. I have no idea what the decibel level was, but I can tell you that it was incredibly loud. It sounded like the engine was below our feet, and with the blades overhead, the noise enveloped us. I looked around to see if there were ear plugs or headphones for the passengers, but didn’t see anything.

The chopper rose shakily off the ground and wobbled back and forth. I found myself holding my breath as we lifted up through the opening, hoping we wouldn’t hit the sides on the way out. Nadia squeezed my hand, so she was feeling it too. When we were completely out of the building, we hovered over it for a second, watching as the roof panels lowered back into place. It looked exactly like the rest of the buildings in the village—slightly rusty corrugated metal roof, wood exterior with peeling paint. Nothing from the outside said this house had a military helicopter stored inside. We lingered above the village, attracting the attention of the Peruvian people standing in the street. David saluted, and they waved back, some with open-mouthed wonder, others with concerned expressions. A baby strapped onto his mother’s back had his mouth open in what I assumed was an ear-shattering wail.

We rose higher and now we had a good view of the ruins and Professor Neverman’s car, still by the side of the road. The Humvee was parked on the other side of the ruins and I strained to see if it was occupied, but I couldn’t see anything from this angle. Nadia too was searching and I knew we both were wondering what had happened to all the people who had worked with David. I hoped they were able to make it to the safe room David had mentioned.

An explosion below rocked me out of my thoughts. All of my senses were assaulted. A fireball the size of an apartment building burst out on the ground next to the ruins, accompanied by a roar louder than anything I’d ever heard. Dirt and debris exploded outward from the site of the blast. Looking at the fireball was like looking at the sun. David fought to keep the helicopter steady, while Nadia covered her ears as if she were in pain.

No one could have survived something like that.

Nadia

My heart sank as I thought about the woman working the paper shredder who gave us directions to Room 138 and the blond girl with the cat eye glasses pushing the cart out to the loading dock. They thought it was their last day at this location. They had no clue this would be their last day on earth. I wondered if they had boyfriends, husbands, kids. They certainly had parents, friends, and relatives. I’d covered my ears to block out the noise, but it was also to block out the horror of thinking people were either burning to death or buried alive.

And it could have been us. It so easily could have been us.

The helicopter shook and David veered away from the ruins, rolling us almost on our side. I couldn’t help but look out the window, even though I felt a little queasy. It was then that I spotted a bus—
our
bus—stopped on the highway leading up to the ruins. Standing in front of it were people. I counted. One. Two. Three of them. I jabbed Russ in the arm and when I got his attention, I frantically pointed down below. I screamed to be heard over the noise. “It’s our bus!”