Justice (19 page)

They boarded the elevator and M punched the button
and welcomed that slow, sinking feeling. When the doors opened six floors below, she was met with the chill of climate control. The room looked more like a computer server room than a library. The bookshelves were white monoliths crowded together side by side, without even enough space to walk between them. A three-pronged black handle at the end of each row could be turned to slide the shelving units left or right to open aisles between them.

Silently they tiptoed down the hall, afraid to make any noise that would draw attention to themselves. The librarians, however, were quite loud, which was unexpected but welcome, since M could gauge exactly where they were by the sounds of their voices and heavy footsteps. Avoiding a few close calls, eventually the crew found the correct aisle. Cal turned the handle like he was steering a ship, and the white bookshelves parted like waves in the ocean. Even before the path was fully open, M slithered inside, searching for the familiar leather binding among several racks filled with leather books with blank spines. Vivian followed suit, facing the opposite side, palming over the uniformly sized books before pulling one out. This edition of the
Mutus Liber
was in slightly worse condition than the Prague edition, but inside, the same paper and the same creepy drawings confirmed it was a match.

‘Excuse me!’ exclaimed a disembodied voice that echoed through the chamber. ‘You are most certainly not authorized to have access to this level.’

Cal peered around the corner calmly and pointed into the aisle. ‘They’re here!’ he called out. ‘Those two kids from the tour that went missing!’

‘What are you doing, Cal?!’ yelled M as a female librarian shoved Cal out of the way and entered the aisle.

‘I saw them,’ Cal continued. ‘They grabbed the guide’s credentials and I followed them down here. They’re up to no good.’

‘What do you have?’ asked the librarian, reaching for the book that Vivian held aloft.

‘Nothing that concerns you,’ said Vivian angrily.

‘Put that down now!’ demanded the librarian.

‘Of course.’ Vivian smiled as she tossed the book to Cal.

‘Wait!’ yelled M, but it was too late. Despite what Vivian must have thought, Cal wasn’t playing innocent to confuse the librarian. He’d actually trapped M and Vivian red-handed. And now he had the
Mutus Liber.

‘Sorry, M. Once a crook, always a crook,’ Cal said with a shrug of his shoulders before he turned and clamped on to the nearest fire alarm. The familiar blaring rang through the chamber and he took off in the opposite direction of the elevator.

‘Out of the way!’ yelled M as she tried to push past Vivian and the librarian, but both of them were stunned at what had just happened. ‘He’s getting away!’

As Vivian’s senses came back to her, the walls of books around them started to shudder and rumble.

‘What’s that?’ asked M.

‘The fire prevention process,’ said the librarian. ‘The aisles are all collapsing to protect the books!’

‘Who’s protecting us, then?’ asked Vivian.

‘This way!’ yelled the librarian. She took Vivian’s hand and pulled her down the narrow path as the heavy shelves
slid closer and closer together. M was right behind them, but the walls were coming together too fast. She leapt forward, shoving Vivian with as much power as she could muster, and the aisle clapped closed with a nauseating crunch that clutched M’s ponytail. A stinging sensation jolted through the back of her neck as she tried to move. But Cal already had a head start, so she threw her head forward and clenched through the pain that left wisps of her hair behind.

‘Where’s the book-delivery conveyor belt?’ she demanded.

The shocked librarian was breathless and sprawled out on the floor, but she pointed in the direction Cal had run. Taking the cue, M and Vivian sprinted madly down the hall. Other librarians appeared, but the duo pushed past them until they reached a small entry, like a butler’s pantry, that led to the British Library’s mechanized delivery system. Vivian jumped through first and M followed, clambering up the moving conveyor belt, which was meant to carry boxes of books to and from the reading-room floor. This led to a larger conveyor belt system made of metal rolling pins that rolled along, oblivious to the chaos Cal had unleashed.

‘Which way?’ asked Vivian.

‘Up,’ said M, catching her breath as boxes slid by. ‘He’ll follow the flow of the delivery system up and out.’

On their hands and knees, M and Vivian hopped onto the main belt and moved as fast as they could. M’s feet kept getting snagged in between the rollers and her knees were on fire, but she kept on with the chase. They rammed boxes that were in front of them, shoving parcels full of antique texts out of their way. Finally they spotted Cal ahead of
them, just as he reached the ground level and leapt out. M and Vivian did the same, totally expecting to land in a bizarre scene where hours, days, years of silent research would be curiously interrupted by kids spewing out of the delivery system. However, something more alarming had beat them to it.

‘The fire alarm!’ M shouted.

It was chaos. M and Vivian exited their wild ride only to slide into each other as every member of the reading room was hurriedly escaping the threat of fire. M saw a flash of Cal, but then he submerged into the crowd, mixing into the ocean of dark-colored clothes. The mass exodus carried them outside into the courtyard, where there was no further sign of Cal. He had vanished just as easily as if he had been wearing his Fulbright suit.

‘M, Vivian!’ cried Merlyn. ‘Over here!’

M tunneled through the crowd and met up with the others.

‘Where’s Cal?’ asked Ben with a dawning suspicion in his voice.

‘Turned,’ said Vivian, out of breath and shaking her head. ‘Played us. Stole the book. Pulled the alarm.’

‘I knew something was up when he disappeared,’ said Ben. ‘It’s my fault for not keeping better tabs on him.’

‘No, it’s my fault,’ said M. ‘I thought I could trust Cal and I thought you were crazy for not trusting him.’

‘Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s no fun being right all the time,’ deadpanned Ben. He pulled out his phone and studied it. ‘His tracker … it’s off-line. How in the world …’

‘He’s smart,’ said Keyshawn. ‘Too smart.’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ commanded Ben. ‘We’ll radio base and take our lumps. Chin up, everyone. All’s not lost, I’m sure.’

Ben’s optimism looked small in the London evening, like a bird with a broken wing. M wanted to pick it up and nurse it back to health, but at the same time, she was afraid that the bird might be sick and that the disease might be catching. Optimism was what got her into this situation in the first place, after all.

CHAPTER 19

BREAKING PROTOCOL

Sirens wailed across the London streets as the police halted all traffic outside of the library, dutifully interviewing any and every eyewitness they could find. The descriptions of the perps were anything but accurate. Some claimed to have seen a team of vandals, while others swore they’d seen a lone thief chased by two good Samaritans. Neither story mattered, though, as the crew had already blended into the background of lookee-loos, displaced researchers, and pedestrians trying their hardest to get home through the surge of activity. M channeled
perturbed commuter
and shouldered her way unapologetically through the King’s Cross crowd.

Once inside the station, Ben decided to take advantage of the traveler mentality. ‘Wait here. While all these people are worried about their trains, it’s probably a good time to call base.’

Ben retreated to a secluded area of the grand hall and put his phone to his ear. Keyshawn followed after him.
‘Wait, let’s talk about this,’ he pleaded.

‘That is not going to be a fun conversation,’ said Merlyn. ‘Good day for bad news, Mr Doe. We lost the second book, stolen by Calvin Fence, then we lost Calvin Fence, and oh yeah, his father’s still missing, too. I mean, what is Doe going to do to us?’

Jules punched Merlyn lightly in the arm, though by his reaction, M figured that Jules’s idea of a light punch and Merlyn’s idea of a light punch were drastically different. ‘You’re not funny,’ said Jules.

‘I know,’ said Merlyn. ‘But somebody’s got to try. It beats wondering why Cal just robbed us blind.’

‘It’s his mother,’ said M. ‘She has him twisted in ways that we could never understand. In ways that he probably can’t understand, either.’ She sighed. ‘You know, Cal told me about his life growing up with one foot in Fulbright Academy and one foot in the Lawless School. He was badgered by his father for not being good enough and he secretly longed for the mother he never knew, who he also wanted to punish for leaving him alone in such a do-right-or-else situation.’

‘So you think he’s working for Ms Watts?’ asked Jules. ‘The same woman that left him at the bottom of a frozen river?’

‘No,’ said M. ‘I think he’s working against Ms Watts.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Merlyn.

‘Cal’s on a dark path and nothing’s going to stop him,’ said M. ‘He’s out for something uglier than justice. Revenge. He’s looking for a chance to make his mother finally see and appreciate everything she left behind … The monster she created.’

With that declaration drifting through the air, M stepped back from the group and wondered why she hadn’t seen the signs earlier. Cal had basically been calling out to her from the moment he confessed to being Ms Watts’s son in a secret passage under the Lawless School. The chill of London winter wafted around M and wrapped her in an icy grip. The King’s Cross station, which had seemed so majestic only a short while earlier, now seemed ominous. The open airiness felt like a vast chasm, mirroring the endless divide between the girl M had been before the Lawless School and the girl she was now. The white girder awning that appeared cloudlike before now loomed like a giant skeleton’s chest cavity. M was trapped inside the beast, swallowed whole. Following the bend of the roof with her eyes, she landed on her own reflection in a distant window and was scared. Scared that she suddenly looked so small in such a big situation.

It was an audible
plop
that brought M back from her thoughts. The plop was so wet and thick that, for a moment, she thought her own heart could have slid out of her chest and hit the floor. She looked at her feet, but her heart was nowhere in sight. However, what lay in front of her definitely quickened her pulse. It was a wallet, an innocent black wallet that sat before her in a stream of rustling coats and scuffling heels, and M was certain that it hadn’t been there just a moment ago.

She bent down and carefully picked it up. The leather was buttery smooth and warm in her hands. Its edges weren’t worn away, the usual wear and tear of credit card outlines wasn’t there, and its spine was uncracked. M quickly
looked around, searching for anyone who might be combing through the crowd, searching for his legitimately lost wallet, which could have been mistakenly kicked over to her. But there was no such person. The wallet became heavy in her hands, not from the weight of money, but from the weight of knowing what it meant and who had sent it.

M opened the wallet and pulled out its only contents: a white card that read,
It’s time to come home to NYC, M.

Instantly she flashed back to her unassuming interview with Ms Watts and Zara.
If you found a wallet near your
house, what would you do?
The answer seemed obvious now. She stuffed the card in her pocket, casually trashed the wallet in a waste bin, and walked back to the group, where Ben was talking with the others.

‘Good, you’re back,’ said Ben. ‘I was beginning to think you ran away, too.’

‘No, just lost in the architecture,’ said M. ‘What’s the word?’

‘Keyshawn here has convinced me to give him some time,’ said Ben. ‘He’s tapped into London’s CCTV cameras in an effort to track Cal down, but so far he seems to have eluded them all. Shop cameras, traffic cameras, nothing’s put eyes on him.’

‘What about the police?’ asked Merlyn. ‘I mean, I know it’s weird coming from me, but shouldn’t you and Scotland Yard pool your resources?’

‘Fulbrights work alone,’ chided Ben. ‘Those other agencies, FBI, Interpol, and the like, are not to be trusted. If they got things right in the first place, we wouldn’t exist. We go this alone and if we come up empty, then we’ll have no choice but to contact the academy and await further instructions.’

‘No.’

The group turned in shock to hear the word so defiantly declared by the least likely person.

‘No, I won’t contact the academy and await further instructions,’ said Vivian. ‘I’ve awaited further instructions all my life and I know where that leads: down a rabbit hole filled with paperwork and desk jockeying and cross-referencing minutiae. That’s not what I signed up for when I chose to become a Fulbright. There has to be a better solution, a lead that we haven’t found yet. To go back empty-handed and outsmarted would guarantee that none of us would see the field again.’

It might guarantee that none of them would even see the light of day again
, thought M.

‘Then what’s our lead?’ asked Ben, surprising the group a second time. ‘Given the urgency of this assignment and Fence’s idiocy, I’m willing to strike out on our own again if we had a next step. If only to catch Fence and drag him back to the academy myself.’

‘I have one,’ admitted M. ‘And it’s a good one, but there’s one catch … and there’s one thing we have to promise each other.’

‘I’ll promise anything to stay out of that hole-in-the-ground academy,’ said Merlyn.

‘We have to promise to come clean with each other about everything,’ said M. ‘Spill the secrets. It’s going to be hard, but if we do that, we may have a chance of solving the mystery of the
Mutus Liber
and the traitorous Cal.’

One by one, the group all agreed to an honesty pact. Even Keyshawn looked up from scouring the closed-circuit
public spaces of London and nodded his head.

‘Now that you’ve strong-armed our integrity, Freeman, what’s the catch you mentioned?’ asked Ben.

‘I’m pretty sure that if we follow this lead, we’ll be walking straight into a Lawless trap.’

Night fell while the train crossed the English countryside. The stars hummed with a cold brightness in the dark that made M feel like she was staring through the atmosphere and into the deepest point in an ever-expanding universe. She refocused on her reflection in the window, which was wet from the conflicting temperatures, inside and outside. The train ride had been quiet, but it was time to unleash their secrets, put them on the table, and reconstruct the whole truth. Luckily they were blessed with an empty car, probably because it was the last train to run from London to Leeds.

Ben looked at his phone. Seventeen messages from home base. He shook his head slowly. Keyshawn had come up with a haphazard collection of products to scramble the team’s trackers. Layers of tin foil, plastic wrap, wet bandages, and small magnets chafed against their arms, but the effect drowned the signal.

‘Since we’re avoiding telling the truth to the base, maybe now’s a good time to tell the truth to one another,’ said M. ‘Let’s start with the Fulbright Academy.’

‘What do you need to know about?’ asked Ben.

‘Why were you holding Cal hostage?’

‘Didn’t Cal just answer that question at the library?’ said Ben.

‘Total honesty, Ben,’ said Keyshawn.

Ben relented, uncrossing his arms and leaning toward the group. ‘All right. He was a liability and a special case. When we pulled him from that river, Mr Fence demanded that we get him healthy and leave him unquestioned. He was looking for a father-son reunion, until Cal came to and had a different idea. He slipped past his direct one night and contaminated the cafeteria meals. Made the entire school sick. It was awful. Never seen anything like it.’ Ben turned green just thinking about the whole rancid deal. ‘Then, while the infirmary was at capacity, Cal took advantage of our depleted man power and hacked into our system. We finally cornered him moments before he took over the entire school. After that, any other student would have been treated worse than an enemy combatant. But not Cal. No, Mr Fence convinced everyone that detention and observation was the best response.’

‘Classic Cal,’ said Merlyn.

‘You captured another Lawless student that night,’ said M. ‘What happened to him?’

‘The Foley kid,’ said Ben, looking very uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, our team brought him in. Pulled him out of the fire he started, actually.’

‘No way, you guys started that fire!’ exclaimed Merlyn.

‘We did?’ said Ben. ‘In the official report, it was started by two Lawless kids, this Foley guy and another girl.’

‘Yeah, and who wrote the report?’ asked Jules. ‘And either way, it’s not like the Fulbrights tried to put
out
the fire. Those irreplaceable masterpieces were torched.’

‘Excuse us for trying to save the world,’ said Ben in a low,
steady tone behind his clenched teeth. ‘If you want to serve a greater good, then you learn to look past the little things.’

‘The little things are important,’ replied M. ‘You learn that at the Lawless School. Now let’s talk little things. What happened to Foley?’

Ben shifted in his seat. ‘He … he was delivered to John Doe for interrogation.’

‘And?’ cajoled M.

‘And that’s it,’ he said. ‘I swear. I’m a direct, not top brass. When a prisoner gets the call-up, they are out of sight, out of mind to us.’

‘Is that how you felt when Mr Fence had you taken to a Glass House for the night?’ asked M. ‘That everyone should look the other way and let whatever happened happen to you?’

Ben sat stone still, grinding his teeth at an audible volume, which made the hair on the back of M’s neck stand at attention. She’d finally broken through his Fulbright shell. She saw the realization in Ben’s eyes, how easily roles can be reversed, and how even those who stand against everything you believe in are still people, at the end of the day.

‘It’s okay, Ben,’ she said. ‘What they did to you wasn’t fair. You were doing your job and hardly deserved to be punished. And I believe everything you’re telling me now. But I don’t believe you, Keyshawn.’

‘Me?’ asked Keyshawn, shocked. ‘How did I get dragged into this?’

‘We’re all in this,’ said Jules.

‘You know something about Foley, don’t you?’ inquired M.

‘Total honesty,’ echoed Ben, turning in his chair to stare
down Keyshawn, who kept up his charade of surprise.

‘Tell them, Keyshawn,’ said M. ‘Let’s start with Foley in the infirmary. Tell them about how he’s in a coma. Tell them about how he’s wearing more wires and tubes than a mainframe server. Tell them, even though he’s unconscious and strapped to a hospital bed, that he’s still being kept under surveillance by cameras.’

‘What!’ gasped Merlyn and Jules at the same time. Their stares turned full force on Keyshawn.

‘That’s my guardian, man!’ yelled Merlyn.

‘That’s our friend,’ said Jules.

‘He’s a bad guy!’ Keyshawn blurted out. ‘Come on, Ben. Tell them. Foley is a bad apple. You’re with me on this, right?’

‘What do you know, Noles?’ demanded Ben.

‘I – I,’ stammered Keyshawn, now manic, with his knees bouncing up and down uncontrollably. ‘I know so little about … you see, it was direct orders.’ Sweat dampened the neck of his sweater. ‘John Doe said Foley was an imminent danger; that he would never turn to the Fulbrights; his mind was totally corrupted, so this was the best way.’

‘What was the best way?’ said M.

‘Forced deep sleep,’ he said. ‘But it was a direct order from John Doe. No one says no to Doe.’

‘You did,’ sniped M. ‘You said no to Doe earlier today. Tell the others why.’

Keyshawn raised his head slowly before placing it in his hands and covering his face. ‘Yes.’ It was a simple, rugged word that fell from his lips. ‘My family, Doe said he’d take care of them.’