Hunt for Jade Dragon (17 page)

He turned to me. “She ain't goin' nowhere with you.”

“Yes, she is,” I said.

He swaggered up to me, his face contracting into a sneer. “I say no she ain't.”

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” Nichelle said to him.

“Who's gonna stop me?”

“He will,” she said matter-of-factly.

He smiled, his eyes still locked on mine. “Him? Little dude?”

“Idiot,” Nichelle said. “You have no idea who you're dealing with.”

He looked at her. “What, little man knows kung fu?” He turned back to me with a cocky smile. “You know kung fu?” He pulled out a gun. “Never bring kung fu to a gunfight.”

I looked at his gun, then said, “Want to see something cool?”

His eyes narrowed. “I wanna see you gone, dog.”

“No, really, you'll like this.” I held my hands in front of me and formed an electric ball about the size of a grapefruit.

He stared at it in disbelief; then looked at me. “What the . . .”

“Catch,” I said, pushing the ball at him. It blew up on contact, shocking him so hard he actually left his feet. He landed unconscious and flat on his back on the pavement. The other man looked at me and turned to run but Zeus blasted him, knocking him down as well. He was still conscious but whimpering in pain.

Nichelle shook her head. “I told you, idiots,” she said. “Don't wait up for me.”

Zeus stepped over the man I'd shocked and lifted his gun. “He won't be needing this anymore.”

“What are you going to do with that?” Tessa asked.

“Throw it away,” he said.

“Let's go,” I said. I turned to Nichelle. “You come with me.”

Ian got in the front seat next to the driver while Taylor, Nichelle, and I climbed into the back. “Back to the airport,” I said to the driver.

“We're flying somewhere?” Nichelle asked.

“Taiwan,” I said.

“Where's Taiwan?”

“By China.”

“For the record,” she said, “I'm not a fan of Chinese food.”

“That's too bad,” I replied. “You're going to be eating a lot of it.”

E
ven though we had hurried back to the airport, we still ended up sitting around for several hours before the pilots returned. Waiting wasn't awful since the private jet terminal was pretty nice. Not that I was any kind of expert on airports. Before I'd gotten involved with the voice, I'd never even flown on a plane, but Zeus and Tessa said this place was a lot better than regular airport terminals. It reminded me of an expensive mall. Tessa and McKenna even got massages.

Since no one had ended up eating much at the taco stand, we ate dinner at an expensive steak house—everyone except for Nichelle, who ate alone at an Italian restaurant at the opposite end of the terminal. After we ate we walked back out to the gate to wait. Ostin read his book while Jack found some cards and he, Taylor, Tessa, Ian, and I played Texas Hold'em. It was a pretty bizarre game since Ian could see through the cards and with Tessa so close Taylor could read
our minds without touching us, so she always knew if someone had a good hand or was bluffing.

Nichelle sat away from the rest of us. I didn't really blame her. Everyone was treating her like she had a virus. Most of them wouldn't even look at her. I know they all had their reasons for hating her—so did I—but still something inside of me pitied her. She had been with the Elgen longer than any of us, and their world was all she knew. If Hatch had raised me I probably would have turned out like her as well.

I eventually gave up playing cards (since, no surprise, I was losing) and walked over to Nichelle. She was sitting on the ground with her back to the wall sketching something in a notebook she had bought at one of the terminal stores.

“Hey,” I said.

She glanced up at me, then went back to drawing. “Hey.”

“Mind if I sit here?”

She shook her head without looking up.

I sat down on the linoleum floor next to her. “What are you drawing?”

“Nothing.” She took a few more strokes with her pencil, then held the notebook up so I could see. Her drawing was bizarre—a skeleton with lightning bolts coming out of its eyes and rosebushes growing inside its rib cage. Truthfully, she wasn't bad. She would probably make a good tattoo artist. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Cool,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, going back to drawing.

“So what have you been up to since we left you?” I asked.

“Surviving.”

“Us too,” I said. “Hatch was holding my mother in Peru.”

“Yeah. I knew that.” We were both silent a moment. Then she said, “Did you save her?”

“Yes. But we had to take down an entire Starxource plant to do it.”

She looked up. “You destroyed the Peruvian Starxource plant?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

She looked happy to hear this. “That was Hatch's favorite. I bet he's crazy with rage.”

“I doubt I'll be on his Christmas list this year.”

“If Hatch
did
Christmas.” She suddenly seemed a little calmer. “That electric bubble thing you do is new.”

“Lightning balls,” I said. “That's what Ostin calls them. I just figured out how to make them.”

“You've gotten more electric since I last saw you.”

“I know,” I said. “I keep getting more electric.”

“You're the only one of us that does that. What does it mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“So now that I'm here, who is it that you're paying me to help rescue?”

“The Elgen kidnapped a little Chinese girl named Jade Dragon.”

“Is she electric?”

“No. Just very smart. She figured out how to fix the MEI.”

“That's big,” Nichelle said. “Where are they keeping her?”

“I can't tell you yet.”

“But Hatch and his stuck-up Glows are going to be there?”

“Yes.”

“Who told you all this?”

“I can't tell you that either.”

“So many secrets,” she said, shaking her head. She went back to drawing.

* * * 

As soon as the pilots returned we boarded the plane and took off. Our first flight was to Tokyo and took about eleven hours. Even though we landed just to refuel, we were on the ground for nearly four hours.

Taylor slept almost the whole way. In fact, almost everyone slept the whole way, except for me and Ostin. He was still memorizing
The Art of War
.

I was too anxious to sleep. The same thoughts kept running through my mind.
What if we fail to save Jade Dragon? What would an electric world be like? What if the Elgen capture us again? What
have we gotten ourselves into?
Several times I reached into my pocket and brought out Gervaso's medal. For
valor
and
bravery
. I felt like a hypocrite even holding the medal. I didn't feel brave at all.

Our flight from Japan to Taiwan took about three and a half hours. As we prepared to land, I realized that my internal clock was all messed up—it felt like night but the sun was just rising.

“This isn't Kaohsiung,” Ostin said.

“How do you know?”

“We came in from the east over the ocean. Kaohsiung's on the west side of the island. And Kaohsiung is a big city with millions of people. This airport is too small.”

“Then where are we?”

Ostin scratched his neck. “That's what I want to know.”

Taylor woke. “Where are we?”

“Not Idaho,” I said.

“Didn't think so,” she said sleepily, closing her eyes again.

* * * 

After the plane had landed and come to a complete stop, one of the pilots emerged from the cockpit. “Welcome to Taiwan,” he said. “This is where we say good-bye. You can pick up your bags at the bottom of the stairway. One of our associates will be meeting you on the tarmac. Good luck, Electroclan.” He opened the door and we all got up and walked to the front of the plane.

Even though it was early morning, the air outside was already hot and more humid than anything I'd ever felt before. It was like walking fully dressed into a steam room.

“I'm not used to drinking my air,” I said to Taylor.

“My hair is definitely going frizzy in this,” she said.

“I'm going to melt,” Ostin said. “I swear it.”

Nichelle was the last one off the plane. She hadn't said a word to anyone the entire flight, which worried me. At the bottom of the jet's stairway she looked around and shook her head. “I should have asked for more money.”

As we retrieved the last of our bags, a young Chinese man, probably in his early twenties, walked up to us. He was about
my size, thin, and dressed simply in denim jeans and a light-blue sports shirt. He had short, spiky hair and a birthmark across his right cheek. He looked us over as if he was counting, then said with a light accent, “Welcome to Taitung. My Chinese name is Chen Jya Lung, but call me Ben.”

“Why are we in Taitung?” Ostin asked. “I thought we were going to Kaohsiung.”

“We are going to Kaohsiung,” Ben said. “But it is far from here.”

“That's my point,” Ostin said. “Why are we so far?”

“For safety. The Elgen have spies everywhere. They will be watching the airports carefully. Taitung is small, so they will not be watching it. We are one hundred sixty kilometers from Kaohsiung. It will take us maybe three hours to reach our hotel. Do you all have your bags?”

I looked around. “We've got them.”

“Good. We will go now. Follow me.” He led us to a small service door a short distance from where we had landed. A Chinese man in a police uniform opened the door for us. Ben handed him a red envelope.

“Don't we have to go through customs?” Ostin asked.

“There are ways to not do things,” Ben said. “Especially when you do not know who you can trust.”

He opened the door and we entered the main terminal. As we walked through the crowded corridor, it felt like everyone was looking at us. We were the only non-Asians in the airport and, with the exception of McKenna, we stood out. I wondered if McKenna felt that way in America.

“I only have American money,” I said to Ben.

“You will need to exchange it,” he said. “I will do it. We do not want anyone to see your identification.”

I handed him all the money Joel had given me except a thousand dollars.

“You have a lot of money,” he said.

“It's not mine,” I said.

He took the bills up to a currency exchange booth and returned a
few minutes later with a stack of bills. I gave everyone the equivalent of a couple hundred dollars and kept the rest for our expenses.

“Can we get something to eat?” Ostin asked.

“Yes,” Ben said. “We will get food; then we will drive to Kaohsiung. I know you are tired of travel, but it is a beautiful drive.”

We followed Ben out to the airport parking lot and to a long white van covered with Chinese characters.

“Can you read what it says?” I asked Ostin.

“Something like Taiwan Excitement Travel Company.”

“I'm sure it will be,” Taylor said.

After we were all inside the vehicle Ben said, “I know a place in Taitung with good fish noodles.”

“Lovely,” Tessa said. “Nothing I like better for breakfast than a hot bowl of fish noodles.”

“I am happy you like fish noodles,” Ben said.

“I don't think he understands sarcasm,” Zeus said.

“So it seems,” Tessa replied.

I don't know what she was complaining about—after all the bugs and slimy creatures she'd been eating in the Amazon, fish noodles sounded normal.

We drove into the Taitung city center and Ben parked the van in front of an open restaurant. We all sat down at two round tables on the uneven concrete sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Christmas music was blaring from a CD player inside the restaurant, which seemed weird to us, but I figured was no different from any other American music to them. I lifted a menu. Not surprisingly, everything was in Chinese.

“At least the Chinese restaurants at home have pictures of the food,” Taylor said.

“You're not at home,” Ostin said.

“Really,” Taylor replied, looking over her menu. “I thought this was Boise.”

“This is my favorite restaurant in Taitung,” Ben said. “I will make your life easy and order for you.” He shouted something across the room to a woman standing behind a large serving table. A moment
later she came out with a tray filled with glasses and bottles of amber liquid. “This is
pingwo sidra
,” Ben said. “Apple soda. You like soda?”

“We like soda,” Ostin said.

Tessa was the first to try it. “That's not bad. Kind of cidery.”

“Cidery?” Ostin said. “Is that a word?”

Tessa ignored him.