Justice (22 page)

‘You’re crazy!’ said M. ‘You think you can eat us like food?’

‘Freeman, I know I can,’ said Doe. ‘The serum has been inside you, cataloging your best attributes. Soaking up your intellect, your drive, your ceaseless ability to get under
people’s skin, and I plan to take that from you and put it into me. Along with your vitality, of course.’

She had a realization then. The body parts from the infirmary – the countless eyes, hearts, lungs, spleens – they were all plastic, all labeled, and all meant to replace the broken pieces of John Doe. To keep him alive while his ultimate plan came together. She looked at him, at his gray skin, false teeth, and sunken eyes. How had she not seen it before? The man was basically a zombie.

‘How old are you, anyway?’ asked M.

‘Almost old enough to finish what I’ve started,’ Doe said, ‘once I’ve caught Fence’s boy and uncovered the final missing book that your no-good mother has hidden along with the moon rock, of course. Ah, but I must be boring you with such a deluge of information. You’ve been through enough floods for one day, I hear.’

‘What’s in those books, Doe?’ demanded M.

‘Dear Freeman, those books hide a map that will make sweet Devon’s sinkhole pale in comparison. Ah, your father would have loved to have seen it. But now I must ask you to do your part and give up your ghost for the greater good. What a pity. If you had chosen the Fulbright Academy to begin with, we would be in a very different position right now. Perhaps you would have been in Devon’s place? Or in Bandit’s place, carrying bodies to the chambers.’

Hearing Doe say
chambers
, M suddenly thought back to the oversized, coffinlike machinery at the academy, which she had climbed over to find her mother, in the room with the canisters of gas. They were meant for her all along.

‘The moon rock’s no good, you know?’ she yelled.
‘You don’t have the meteorite anymore.’

‘Oh, Freeman, have you ever been so wrong?’ said Doe as he held up the amber stone, the same stone Dr Lawless had given her, the same stone Devon had supposedly used up completely. ‘It’s a tricky science, alchemy. To create the
umbra mortis
, one must use equal parts lunar rock to a particular comet debris. And the results are quite fetching, wouldn’t you say?’

M had heard enough. Full of rage, she morphed her suit into dozens of spikes, which cut into the hands of the unsuspecting Fulbright who held her. The move shocked John Doe, too, and she took advantage of his surprise, lunging forward and grabbing the meteorite. Doe struggled to hold on, but M raked her fingers across his face and kicked him ferociously back into his chair.

M pulled back her hand and saw it was covered in gray and black soot. What was this guy?

Tucking the stone into her suit, she turned to Ben, whose wide eyes screamed for her to run. She knew what he was thinking: more Fulbrights would arrive any minute. She mouthed an apology to Ben and Vivian and bolted from the library.

M dashed into the art gallery she had always called the once-living room. There she found Jules, Merlyn, Foley, and Keyshawn locked in the chambers, which were all wired together like futuristic sarcophagi. Another two chambers stood open and empty: one for her and one for Doe. M tugged at Jules’s chamber, but it wouldn’t budge. Then she heard Doe’s stern voice down the hall, calling out.

‘The meteorite!’ screamed Doe. ‘Get the meteorite!’

M hoped that maybe she was an important part of Doe’s life-stealing equation. If she could stay out of his grip, there was a chance that the others would be safe.

She heard something in the front yard. Looking out the window, she came upon a horrible sight. Professor Bandit was standing next to five holes in the ground. He was digging graves, just like in her nightmare.

In a panic, M’s instincts took over and before she knew it, she was heading down into the basement. She ducked under the low beam, like in the Maze, then closed her eyes and followed the same path. She swept past stacked boxes and came to the end of the room, where she felt the cracked foundation with her feet and faced her father’s rusty tools, hung on the wall. But now what was she supposed to do? In the Maze she had simply been corralled into a trapdoor.
Could it be?
thought M. She pounded her foot against the floor, but it didn’t give. Maybe there was a hidden switch? She reached out and started pulling tools off the wall. A hammer, a wrench, a hacksaw, until finally a paintbrush would not come free of its hook. M tried twisting the paintbrush, kicking at the crack in the foundation … and then the earth dropped out from underneath her.

She fell hard, fast, and head over heels down a sloping tube slide until she landed in a bizarre room that she had never seen before. M pulled on her mask to survey the space. It was wooden, like a log cabin, but it had to be buried deep in the ground, given the distance she’d tumbled. She flipped a switch on the wall, and a buzzing erupted overhead as a long halogen bulb slowly came to life. The light was eerie and unsettling, but it allowed M to see without wearing the
mask, and that made her feel more like herself and less like one of John Doe’s henchmen.

The room was empty except for a chair and a desk. What was down here that her father wanted her to find? M raced over and tried to move the desk to block the slide that she had come down, but the furniture wouldn’t give an inch. She sighed and sat down to regroup her thoughts. Why in the world would her family have built an underground shelter? Then she paused and felt the air. The room was cool and reminded her of the British Library’s lower levels. M opened up the desk’s top drawer, and sure enough, there was a single book inside.

She pulled it out and stared at the cover.

Lawless School, Year One.

The book had the school’s insignia stamped into the cover, a skull with keys for its mouth and the motto, Chaos infinitum enim, Chaos forever. M opened the book carefully and looked through the faded pictures of the students, all kids just like her. Why would her family have this in their house? Were they preserving it for some reason? It seemed like a perfectly innocent collection of photographs from a very, very, very long time — even if the subjects of the photographs were not innocent themselves. M kept flipping through the pages of criminal headshots, searching for a connection, and when she found it, her blood stopped cold.

M stared at the photograph and couldn’t believe her eyes. It was John Doe. But it wasn’t a younger version of the madman. No, it was John Doe looking just the same as
he looked today, just as ancient as he’d appeared fifteen minutes ago, when she’d swiped at his face.

But the timeless photograph wasn’t the reason M felt like darkness had crept inside her and stolen all the warm thoughts she’d ever had. It was the heading over the portrait:

M closed her eyes and opened them again to make sure that she was actually seeing what was in front of her, but each time she did it, John Doe’s picture and Jonathan Wild’s moniker were still there.

The sound of the trapdoor above her made her cringe and slam the book shut, tossing it onto the desk. This was it, her last stand. M braced herself to fight, turned out the light, and pulled her mask back down, wishing more than anything that Doe hadn’t disconnected her Magblast.

Someone tumbled down the slide, a familiar figure who landed on his feet.

‘Well, this is a fine mess you’ve got us in, M.’

It was Jones!

‘Jones! You’ve got to stop doing that!’

He smiled and threw his arms around her, squeezing hard. ‘I apologize for the surprise, but this place is swarming with Fulbrights. Lucky you found your father’s panic room.’

‘It wasn’t luck,’ said M. She took a deep breath. ‘Are my friends … are they going to be all right?’

‘What’s most important is that you escape,’ he said. He pressed down upon a beam of wood and the rear wall slid
open. ‘There’s an escape pod back there. It will take you to safety.’

‘Wait,’ argued M. ‘I’m not going to escape! I can’t leave my friends up there. I can’t let Doe steal their lives.’

‘Right now, you don’t have a choice,’ said Jones. ‘M, I’m sorry to do this, but I’m pulling rank. There’s far too much at stake. We need to get you out of here.’

‘But what about me, don’t I have a say in this?’ asked M. But looking into Jones’s eyes, she knew the answer already. She didn’t.

‘I love you like a daughter,’ he said and hugged her tightly. She was so confused that she didn’t know whether to hug him back or shove him away.

‘I love you, too, Jones,’ said M. ‘Mom has the moon rock.’

‘That’s good,’ he said flatly.

‘And Cal Fence stole a copy of the
Mutus Liber
,’ she said.

‘That’s better,’ he said.

‘And I have the …’ But before she could finish, a Fulbright agent came crashing down the slide. Judging by his shredded gloves, he was the same Fulbright who had held M in the library. Jones lunged forward, but the Fulbright Magblasted him up and against the ceiling — hard. Jones went limp and crashed back down to the floor. A pool of blood formed around his head.

‘No!’ cried M. The intruder stepped over Jones’s life-less body and walked toward her. He held a finger to his wire-laced lips. Then he charged his Magblast and aimed it squarely at M.

M shook her head and flicked out her sword from her programmable matter again. The blast was furious and just missed her. Swiftly and instinctively she slashed downward,
lopping off the Fulbright’s weapon. Blood spattered as his four fingers fell to the floor, writhing like worms in the sun. Still, he didn’t miss a beat. He brought a heavy punch down on M’s right shoulder. Using the strength and momentum of his attack, she spun around on her heel and let her sword follow its natural path. The Fulbright couldn’t block in time, and she felt the sickening resistance as the sword struck true. By the time she’d completed her spin and faced him again, he was already lying on the ground, his breathing labored.

‘Who are you?! Who are you?!’ was all M could scream, but the Fulbright didn’t move. With her sword aloft, she knelt down to pull off his mask.

But with a cackle, the Fulbright plunged a syringe into her neck. M stumbled backward, kicking him in the face, and pulled the needle out. ‘What was that? What did you …’

The room shifted like a carnival ride. Quickly she grabbed the yearbook from the desk and turned back to see the carnage in the room. Jones wasn’t moving and neither was the Fulbright.

M stumbled backward and fell, barely making it into the escape pod, which looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It sat at the mouth of a dark tunnel, which shushed with a continuous blast of cold air.

‘You can’t stop me, Wild!’ she screamed. ‘I’m going to find you and put an end to this once and for all!’

Then her head went woozy with a headache that made it feel like her very brain were being rewired. She couldn’t remember what she was shouting about or why. Memories that were solid and true one moment faded
away the next. Her father, her mother, the Lawless School, the Fulbright Academy, they all started to disappear. And as the pod closed, M felt her body drift away, too, light as air and flying soundlessly away toward a brave, new nowhere.

It takes one person to dream a story. It takes many more people to build that story into a book. Then even more to make a trilogy. We are not alone.

First, I want to thank you for reading this book. Thanks for supporting M on her mysterious journey. Then I have to thank everyone at Piccadilly Press for believing in this story.

Josh, Tracey Adams and Alice Williams also deserve a standing ovation for being terrific innovagents.

Thanks to my friends, Geoffrey Todd, Ganesh, and Timmy G, who are always up for adventure and really bad movies. Christopher Michlig, Sam Shaw, Ben Barnett, Pete Swanson, Paul, and Kirsten, who helped me through my own fish-out-of-water story way back when.

Mom and Dad will always have my love for their never-ending support for my creativity and because they are two of the most amazing people I know.

Thanks and congrats to my brother, Matt, and his wife, Ashley, for being in love.

To my daughter, Wren, thanks for listening to so many of my stories. Even the bad ones. There were a lot of bad ones.

To my son, Dez, thanks for laughing. Keep laughing. It makes the world go round.

And to Adrienne, thanks for laughing at all my bad stories. And making me better.

Jeffrey Salane grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, but moved north to study in Massachusetts and New York City. After spending many years playing in bands, he now works as an editor and author.

The suspect was last seen in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife and kids. He has not been convicted of any crimes … yet. The author can prove his innocence at

www.jeffreysalane.com

Also available:

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