Marrow (23 page)

“I’m going to be coordinating things with the police today about making preparations for the Cronus Cannon,” said Fantom. “I’ve asked Gustav to forward all emergencies to Nova, Apex, and Specter. This will give you a chance to relax. I figure you need it with everything that’s transpired lately.”

I nodded my heavy head—more out of instinct than acknowledgment.

The dining table was huge, easily twenty feet long. Fantom and I sat at opposite ends, and the distance between us was thick with awkward tension. I reckon that was mostly my fault.

“You haven’t touched your food,” said Fantom.

That wasn’t entirely true. I had succeeded in stabbing the yolks of my fried eggs and shoving their bloody yellow corpses into my hash browns and then mixing it all together with my every-kind-of-berry crepes. The end result looked like something had died a gruesome death on my plate.

I took a forkful of the breakfast slop and quietly shoved it in my mouth, forcing myself to chew. I had to give Gustav props. Even after desecrating his breakfast masterpiece, the food still tasted pretty dang good.

It was unfortunate that my stomach instinctively wanted to throw it all up.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Everything’s fine.”

I strained my face into a fake smile. I knew I wasn’t fooling anyone, though, so I don’t know why I even bothered.

Fantom set his fork gently on his plate. “Is this Flex thing going to be a problem?”

The guy sure had a knack for subtlety, didn’t he?

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I took the subtle approach as well.

“May I be excused?” I asked.

Without waiting for permission, I stood up and left.

I started for my room knowing full well that I would probably get lost. Despite the grand tour, the Tartarus was still a maze to me—a big, underwater, glass maze with mutated sea monsters trapped inside.

Can a kid get so lucky?

I was so lost in my own thoughts that I almost didn’t notice it as I passed—a glass door with yellow caution stripes and a numbered security pad. In bold black letters were painted the words:

L-01/SE-27

Restricted Area

Authorized Personnel Only

It obviously wasn’t the door from my dream, but heck if it didn’t ring some serious bells. What were those letters and numbers at the top anyway? Was it some sort of code?

You know those moments when you remember something you shouldn’t remember? When it comes to you as easy as your own name? Well…maybe you don’t. But if moments like that existed, this was suddenly one of them.

L-00/NE-00…

2-3-5-8-13-21…

It was like they were carved into my subconscious. But how? Normally, I would forget my dreams as soon as I woke up. How was this dream so different?

When you had something you really didn’t want to think about—and I had plenty—it was easy to run with a ridiculous idea like this. What was this dream door? Did it really exist? If so, where was it?

I glanced down at my wrist communicator.

It was time to see just how useful Gustav could be.

***

“Well, I’m glad you called me,” said Dr. Jarvis, flattening his comb-over across his shiny, balding head. “It’s refreshing to see an inquiring young mind seeking after knowledge. These days it’s always about video games and break dancing.”

“Break dancing?” I said.

“It’s a little suspicious if you ask me,” said Gustav. “Vhen I vas a young boy in Nizhny Novgorod, life vas much more simple. Ve entertained ourselves by getting into fights and pulling girls’ pigtails and biting vild animals.”

“Wow that’s…uh…that’s something,” I said.

“Biting wild animals?” asked Jarvis in mild alarm. “Is that even sanitary?”

“My family vas not superstitious,” said Gustav. “Ve did not believe in such things as germs and ghosts and stuff.”

“Ah,” said Jarvis, pressing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “That’s…interesting.”

“Vhy do you vant to see a map, anyvay?” asked Gustav.

“Just…curious,” I said.

“Suspicious indeed.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Jarvis. “I was curious when I was your age too. Tried to build my own nuclear reactor once. Plutonium’s a little hard to come across when you’re in the seventh grade though.”

“And people think Russians are scary,” Gustav muttered under his breath.

Jarvis continued to lead the way while Gustav and I followed. We entered a sphere chamber that Jarvis called the Command Center. Personally, I thought it looked just like all the other sphere chambers, but I wasn’t about to tell Jarvis that. The one distinguishing feature was a round central table with a computer interface built into it. The entire surface was like a gigantic touch screen. Jarvis navigated through several options with the flick of his finger. At last he selected one final icon and the entire table lit up. Glowing blue projector streams joined together, creating a three-dimensional image of the entire Tartarus.

“Welcome to the Tartarus,” Jarvis announced gleefully. “This is the best map of the facility you’ll ever see.”

Jarvis guided the hologram with his fingers on the interface, rotating it for a 360 degree view and slowly zoomed in. As he did, I noticed little white words pinpointing various rooms and corridors, labeling them like blueprints—from gigantic features like the Cronus Cannon and the Gaia Comet to the loading docks and the various functions of each sphere chamber. As Jarvis zoomed in further, I finally found what I wanted. There were dozens of them—tiny doors labeled with similar combinations of numbers scattered on every level of the Tartarus: L-03/NW-12, L-05/W-09, L-02/SW-17…

As I looked at the Tartarus from this eagle-eye view, the letters and numbers suddenly made sense and came together to form a bigger picture: L-01, L-02, L-03… Those were levels on the Tartarus. And the second set of letters were also grouped together in vertical waves: S, SE, E, NE… Those were directions: south, southeast, east, northeast. The numbers associated to these were more sporadic, but it didn’t take a genius to figure them out. They were the individual room numbers, repeating on each level.

But what were they?

“What are these rooms?” I asked, struggling to point to all of them at once. “The ones with the letters and numbers.”

“Those?” said Jarvis. “Those are the control rooms. They access various functions of the Tartarus and the Cronus Cannon.”

“Control rooms?”

“In general, the Tartarus is its own super computer system,” Jarvis explained. “It operates and sustains itself on its own. We, the scientists on board, merely study its operations and findings in regards to the Gaia Comet. But if something were to go wrong and some part of the system needed to be overridden, the control rooms would be where we would do that.”

I listened to his words, but my gaze still hadn’t left the hologram. I leaned closer over the table, cocking my head to view the bottom of the Tartarus. The most crucial piece of the puzzle was missing.

There was no L-00/NE-00. 

I bit my lip, struggling for the best way to ask about a room that didn’t seem to exist.

“So level one is the lowest level?” I asked. “There isn’t like…a level zero or anything?”

Jarvis’s lighthearted expression faded, scrunched into a scrutinizing look. “Level zero? Well that wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Might as well have a room number zero. I mean, that’s like saying it doesn’t exist.”

I forced a weak laugh that fell dead in my throat. “Yeah…I guess so.”

***

Specter’s house was part Professor Xavier’s mansion, part military training facility, and 99.9 percent pee-your-pants awesome—emphasis on the “peeing-your pants” part. Fortunately, my bladder and I narrowly fell into the lucky 0.1 percentile.

Narrowly.

We pulled onto the longest driveway I had ever seen. At the end was a gate with a camera—and a turret gun—pointed at our faces.

“Hallo, Specter, my dear,” said Gustav to the camera. “Hurry, you must open the gate for us. Young love avaits. Little Marrow’s heart yearns for his
golubushka
.”

“Wait, what?!” I said. “Gustav, I’m gonna kill you!”

The turret gun retracted and the gate opened. We proceeded to drive through the Specter Estate which was shaped like a horseshoe. Building after building—sleek, savvy sandstone structures—passed us on either side, loosely connected by stone pathways. Eventually they came together into the main part of the estate, this artsy manor of slanted sandstone surfaces and sharp edges. Gustav hadn’t even parked the limo before Sapphire came running out. Her blue hair was an ocean crashing against the pale shore of her face.

As soon as I exited, her body crashed into me, and I crashed into the door of the limo.

“Hey, hey, hey, vatch the paint job, you treacherous little heathens,” said Gustav.

Sapphire ignored him, continuing to hug me to death and crush me into the side of the vehicle. When she finally pulled away, she sighed.

“I miss human beings that aren’t Specter,” she said.

“Really?” I said. “I couldn’t tell.”

Specter exited the manor in long strides, still wearing her skintight Super suit. Each step seemed to emphasize her curves. And oh boy, did she have curves. Like, the curves of Lombard Street in San Francisco had nothing on her. Nothing!

Gustav seemed to appreciate where I was coming from because he immediately stood up straight and ran his beefy hand through his hair.

“Hello, Marrow,” she said. “Hello, Gustav.”

“Miss Specter,” said Gustav. “You look as radiant as the electromagnetic glow of Cherenkov radiation in an undervater nuclear reactor.”

“Oh, Gustav,” said Specter, smiling this smile that turned my insides into microwaved butter. “You’re too much.”

“So,” said Sapphire. She seemed to say this extra loud, as if to remind me that she was still there. “What do you need a VCR for, anyway?”

I lifted the videotape, still in its manila envelope packaging. “This.”

“And what, pray tell, is that?”

As Sapphire led me to the surveillance room, I explained everything. The surveillance room wasn’t far, but it
was
located at the very top of the three-story Control Tower—the keystone of the Specter Estate’s technological infrastructure. There was a stairwell, but we took the elevator. The surveillance room wasn’t especially elaborate—just a single chair perched in front of a whole lot of TVs, packed together like ice cubes in an ice cube tray. They displayed every angle of the Specter Estate. In one particular corner was a various assortment of recording equipment.

And a VCR.

“So we’re watching a home movie,” said Sapphire. I didn’t think she could look or sound less enthusiastic if I brought a documentary on the history of grass.

“At least that’s what Flex thinks it is,” I said.

“Yay.” Her tone was flat and anything but yay-ful.

“This is the thing Oracle sent Flex right before she betrayed us. Doesn’t that make you just a little bit curious?”

“Personally, I’d rather watch cat videos on YouTube. But whatever.”

I ripped the manila envelope off, revealing a plain black videotape—no label or anything. I inserted it in the VCR and hit play.

The plain blue TV screen flickered to a darkened kitchen illuminated almost exclusively by seven candles on a birthday cake. The young, sandy-haired boy sitting behind the tower of chocolate was grinning wildly, exposing his two missing front teeth. He was surrounded by friends and looked like this was the happiest day of his life. The camera was horribly off-center, cutting off the top of the boy’s head and making it obvious who was behind the camera.

“Okay, Flex, make a wish,” said a younger-sounding Oracle behind the camera.

Seven-year-old Flex let his big eyes drift up as he pondered.

“I wish I was the stwongest Supewhewo in the wowld,” said Flex in his most serious tone. “So if you wewe evew in twouble, Auntie Owacle, I could save you.”

“Aw,” said Oracle, chuckling softly. “That’s very sweet of you. But you’re not supposed to tell us what you wished for.”

Flex’s eyes went wide with alarm.

“It’s okay though,” said Oracle. “Go ahead and blow out your candles, sweetie.”

Flex’s scrawny chest puffed as he inhaled and then threw his body forward as he blew.

The picture flickered with sudden static.

The birthday party was gone, replaced by a new image—a dark hallway. The camera wasn’t moving.

Sapphire leaned forward. “The heck? What just happened?”

I mirrored her, leaning closer to the still, dark image. “It looks like somebody taped over the video.”

The camera moved, inching forward slowly.

“Hello?” said Oracle’s voice. “Is someone there?”