Keystone (39 page)

“You know his secret?” she asks, watching me as she tugs out more hair.

“I do. Roger hid Walter’s memory really well,” I say, trying to move things along.

“Yes. Because he’s the smartest man in the world.”

“He is,” I say, even though I know we’re each talking about different he’s.

“No one’s ever going to find it,” she giggles. “Because Roger didn’t have to hide it at all.”

“That’s what he told me too,” I say, hoping she’ll say something coherent. “But I wanted to see it to be sure.”

“The old man…he was
insane.
Wrong as raindrops! All those numbers and letters…they didn’t say anything at all.”

“At least Roger put it in a good place,” I say, but I know it’s a mistake when she jumps to her feet, tugging out one hunk of hair and going right back for another.

“IT WAS NOT A GOOD PLACE,” she shrieks. She stands, coming down the stairs one at a time, as she spits through her hair, “He traded with Dimitri for
them
. Not me! It was only supposed to be me! Only me!”

“So, the Mastermind has the Memory?” I ask and Ignatia halts on the steps.

“LIAR! You don’t know!” she screams. I almost fall on Garrett. She scuttles down the stairs, toward me, pushing what’s left of her hair out of her face. “You don’t know!”

But instead of coming down the last five steps, she just dives.

Chapter 17

IGNATIA SLAMS INTO ME LIKE a cinder block. My field explodes right before she makes contact, so I get a hold of her, but we tumble backward into Milo and the three of us go down the last couple of steps together.

Ignatia’s scratching at me and Milo’s trying to grab her and Garrett’s hands cut through it all. He pulls me from them, Ignatia landing a kick, meant for me, in Milo’s stomach. Milo drops on the landing and Ignatia scrambles away, up the stairs.

“Get her!” Robin shouts, but Ignatia’s already out of arm’s reach. She stops at the top of the stairs, whirling around to face us.

“Kill, Princess! Get ‘em!” Ignatia snaps, but the Chihuahua blimp only wheezes as it straggles up the stairs after its master. Ignatia turns and runs, throwing herself into a room and slamming the door shut behind her. Princess is stranded in the hall.

Zane hits the first stair, but Garrett grabs him by the shirt.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says. “She told us what we need to know.”

“We don’t know anything!” Robin says. “We don’t know who Dimitri is and if he’s the Mastermind!”

“She’s got a gun,” Milo croaks, clutching his stomach as he gets to his feet.

“Where?” Zane stumbles back down the steps.

“In her hands!” I shout as Ignatia reappears, struggling to hold the shotgun up and align her eye in the scope at the same time.

“Rule number one!” Zane hollers as my field opens with a crack. I swipe the Cavis away from my heart, even though I can’t imagine what good moving my Cavis makes when Ignatia’s got a gun swinging around at us. It’s not like she has to worry about a bulls-eye to my Cavis, if she’s got a gun loaded with buckshot.

We both grab Milo on the way out the door. Shred’s settled back in the driver’s seat, watching a woman in a bikini weeding around her front steps, as we barrel into the van.

“Get us out of here!” Robin shouts as she slams the door shut. Shred gets an eyeful of Ignatia as she busts out her front door and he guns the engine. I hang onto the seat, but the force of the first squealing turn rams me right into Garrett.

The entire left side of my body molds against him and I’m held in place a minute by centrifugal force. The feeling coming off Garrett is incredible. My senses all come alive at once, as if they are arms, reaching for his scent and his touch and the sound of his breath. A wild burst of adrenaline rips down my side from my shoulder to my toes and back again. I pull in my breath, expanding everything I can to get more of Garrett in my lungs, my eyes, my ears, my pores.

“Hey!” Zane shouts and he reaches over the back seat and wrenches me away from Garrett.

It’s like being pulled from the equator to Siberia. A phone rings and Shred pokes Zane with it, so he lets go of me.

I glance at Garrett. His eyes are shut tight and I watch as he opens them up wide, as if he just got a baseball bat to the chest or just came back to life. He shakes his head and flexes his hands.

“You two aren’t gonna be any good to anybody if you’re drained. Milo, get in between these two!” Zane says with the phone away from his ear, and Milo, with a puppy grin, flips from my right side to my left, squeezing between us and blocking Garrett completely.

But I don’t feel drained at all. There’s a raw current running through me, zigzagging around my body like a haywire pinball machine. My fingers are tingling. I feel like I could lift a bus.

“What was all that back there?” Shred asks in the rearview mirror. He brushes the hair off his sunglasses and strains up on his seat to see us on the backbench from his rearview mirror. I don’t know if he’s asking about the electrical fire that just blew up between Garrett and I or if he means Milo’s crazy armed aunt.

Zane hands the phone back to Shred. “We’ve got to get back to the hotel,” he says. “There’s a problem with the Outer Curas.”

“Did they arrange a Totus so they can see the Addo?” I ask.

“No, they’re moving on us.” Zane says. “As in, attack.”

The van rocks around corners and bumps over potholes, but no one speaks. We can’t get there fast enough.

We pull into the hotel garage and as we all pile out, Mrs. Reese comes down the steps with Freddie, VanWeider, and Zane’s dad right behind her. Their faces are all the same kind of grim.

Garrett moves closer to me than he should, and asks his mother, “What’s going on?”

“Milo, could you excuse us?” Mrs. Reese says.

“Oh yeah, sure,” he says with an embarrassed nod. He bobs up the stairs and through the door leading into the hotel. Once the door is closed, Mrs. Reese begins again.

“The outer Curas are banding together,” she explains. “Someone’s been circulating the rumor that our Cura is making a move with The Fury. They’re saying that we’re keeping the Addo imprisoned and collecting Veritas. The Outer Curas are preparing to attack.”

“Why would they do that? Don’t they know we wouldn’t do that to the Addo?” I say.

“They should know,” Freddie says. “But someone’s stirring things up out there.”

“Why don’t we just call a smaller Totus so they can see him once and for all?” Robin says.

“We can’t put the last Addo right out in the open where anyone could get at him,” Ash Middleditch tells her. “It’s not like guarding the president. If somebody kills him, that’s it. It’s not like we have another Addo to take his place.”

“From the inside,” Zane says. “That’s what you think. That it’s coming from the inside, right?”

Mr. Middleditch nods to his son.

“Couldn’t very well be coming from the outside,” He says. He cracks his knuckles, pushing his laced fingers down and out. “The Curas should be operating like we are. Closed up and suspicious of whatever doesn’t make sense. And even what does. But for them to be banding without communication to us, they must really believe something is going on.”

“So what’s our next step?” Robin asks. Principal VanWeider unfolds his arms from his chest.

“We could attack first…” he says.

“Which would be suicide,” Mrs. Reese interrupts.

“Quite,” Principal VanWeider says with a short grin. “But, I’m not proposing the usual attack…”

“What kind of attack wouldn’t be a Kamikaze mission?” Mr. Middleditch says.

“A small one, like Robin suggested.” Principal VanWeider answers with another polite, but short, grin. After a pause, which I think is meant to get out any more interruptions, he continues. “We cannot risk our numbers on a large scale confrontation and the Outer Curas have expressed their own suspicions in meeting with us in smaller numbers. I propose we try to isolate a few of the outer Cura’s Procella, then we would be able to hold individual Totuses with all those lead Contego at once, while also being able to monitor contact with the Addo.”

Freddie winces. “How are we going to isolate them when we don’t know which Contego are the Procella and which are the regular warriors? We haven’t recovered any thumb drives from any of the Indiciums.”

“It sounds like you’re saying we should take prisoners?” Mr. Middleditch says. “This is nuts. And I don’t see how imprisoning each Cura’s top Contego will convince the Outer Curas that we’re on the straight and narrow.”

“I’m not sure we have a lot of other options,” Mrs. Reese says. “It’s a risk, but I think that if we have the opportunity to give proof to the Procella that the Addo is still functioning, they will come to their senses and spread the word. All we need is for the Addo to be able to recall the names of some of the Procella.”

“It’s too risky,” Garrett says suddenly, his eyes on his mother. “You said you haven’t found any of the Indicium drives. The only other option is to go completely off the Addo’s memory. It’s too big a risk. I mean, we’re relying on his
memory.
The Addo can’t even remember how many cookies he’s eaten five minutes ago. What if he mistakes Sue Jones for Sam Jones? It’s Russian Roulette.”

“While playing musical chairs with land mines,” Zane agrees.

Mrs. Reese waits until her son and Zane drop into silence. And then, her voice comes like a soft mallet. Even Shred, still on the front seat of the van, jumps a little.

“Fear,” Mrs. Reese says with a frown. Then, so soft it’s nearly a whisper, “You know better, Garrett.”

But Garrett answers with his own mallet. “It’s not fear at all, Mom. I’m thinking it through and I’m not going to risk my entire family on a plan that relies on faulty information.”

“Which is what I thought you would say,” Mrs. Reese puts on a smile with her chin up, but the edges of her lips twitch. “That’s why I’m the only one going. You are staying back to guard our Addo, and Mark and Brandon will be on perimeter watch.”

Garrett pulls away from her.

“No,” he says, glancing at Freddie and then Mr. Middleditch and last, at Principal VanWeider. But none of the men return his gaze. “You’re not going without me.”

“I’m sorry, Garrett,” his mother says. “But as the Lead Procella of this Cura, it’s my duty to go and it’s my duty to decide where to position the rest of my Cura. We need all of our numbers to face the Curas. Your place is to stay here and guard the Addo along with the rest of our family.”

“Because the Addo
is
our family,” Garrett whispers, and I see the faint nod Mrs. Reese gives him. Garrett shrugs. “You could give up Procella and stay here instead. You don’t need to be the leader. We can double up the protection here.”

“Fear,” Mrs. Reese says softly.

“You got me on that one,” he says and his mother laughs.

“Besides, you do have double protection,” Mrs. Reese nods in my direction. I almost drop to my knees with the weight of what she’s saying. She can’t really believe that I’m even ready to protect a plate of the Addo’s cookies. I forget to move my Cavises. I only trained a couple times. There’s an encyclopedia more to learn and I’ve only got the index. There’s no way I’m ready for the real thing. But Garrett says, “Alright, Mom, tell me what you need us to do.”

Mrs. Reese lowers her voice so that only Freddie, Garrett and I can hear her.

“Only Freddie, Van, the Middleditch’s, Deeta and our family know where the Addo is hidden,” she says. “The hotel will be on lockdown once our van leaves.”

“We’ll lock it up, but if you have to seal up the hotel core,” Freddie adds, “just remember that once it’s sealed no one is getting in or out without the code. The roof is a separate seal. Make sure Brandon and Mark aren’t up there if you seal it off. That one should be last and only if necessary.”

“I want you guarding Addo, Nok, Sean, Iris and Zaneen. Your main concern is protecting those five. But, of course, our Veritas and Addo are our main priority.”

Her eyes well up as she says it. She’s telling us that her own daughter has to come last in the line of who gets our protection.