Mystics #1: The Seventh Sense (20 page)

Simon and Tristan came up beside her.

“He just mirror-ported,” she said, breathlessly. “If we go now, we
might still catch him in time to stop him.”

“
He
? So where’s the other
guy in the long coat?” asked Simon looking around. “We didn’t see anyone
outside.”

Zoey shrugged. “I don’t know. I lost him. He didn’t use the
mirror-port, though.”

“So
where
is he then?”
Tristan clenched his jaw. “He’s still here somewhere—”

“OUT!” bellowed a voice.

The three of them turned to see a very angry Mrs. Andrews. She marched
up to them, pointing her long finger. Her face was twisted in fury.

“Look at the state of you. You’re soaking wet! Dripping dirt all
over my clean floors! Out! All of you! Get out!”

Zoey was not intimidated, “Mrs. Andrews, did you see a man here,
moments ago? He just used the mirror-ports.”

Mrs. Andrews pursed her lips, her anger diminishing slightly. “Of
course I did. I work the main desk, don’t I? I
see
everything. Why do you ask?”

“Do you know who he was?” asked Zoey.

“Agent Sylvester Stokes, a mighty good agent. He’s always so polite
to me. He said he was off to lend Agent Barnes a hand on something
very
important. He also dirtied my
floors. What business is it of yours, anyway? Shouldn’t you kids be at home?”

Zoey looked at Tristan and Simon and said in a low voice. “He’s going
after the interloper. We have to warn Agent Barnes.”

Mrs. Andrews crossed her arms. “What are you three conspiring about?
You have the look of mischief—don’t think I haven’t seen that look before. You
kids—always getting yourselves into trouble!”

“We could try to get a message to him somehow,” said Tristan,
ignoring Mrs. Andrews who was leaning closer to hear what they were saying.
“Maybe we could try to contact London from here first?”

Zoey shook her head. “No, it’ll take too long to explain, and we’re wasting
precious time. We’ll have to stop him ourselves,” she said with a flutter of
excitement.

“What?” Simon nearly spit out his tongue. “Are you serious? You mean—the
three of us—going after the double agent on our own? Of course we are, how
stupid of me. Hang on while I go fetch my spy gear from my secret spy car.”

Zoey turned to Mrs. Andrews, who was still eyeballing as if she was
one of their supervisors.

“Agent Stokes is the traitor, and he’s going after Agent Barnes. He’ll
probably try to kill him to get the interloper.”

Zoey waited for Mrs. Andrews to close her mouth and then continued.

“You have to get a message to management and to the other agencies right
away, Mrs. Andrews. Tell them what I’ve just told you. And please hurry up
before it’s too late.”

Mrs. Andrews frowned. “These are
very
serious accusations, Zoey St. John. You can destroy a man’s career by saying
things like that. Are you
sure
he’s
the one?”

“We are,” said Zoey, Tristan, and Simon together.

“There has to be some mistake,” started Mrs. Andrews, “it
can’t
be Agent Stokes—he was always so
well mannered—so nice to me. He even brought me flowers once.”

“It
is
him. Do you want
Agent Barnes’ blood on your hands?” said Zoey dryly. Her voice rose as she started
to lose her patience. “Well, do you?”

“No.”

“—because that’s what he’s planning on doing if we don’t warn them
in time. Please, get the message to management. Tell them that
I
recognized the traitor. If you don’t
believe us, then do it for Agent Barnes.”

Mrs. Andrews nodded. The color had drained from her face.

“All right then. It doesn’t hurt to transmit a message, even if you might
be mistaken.” She hurried off towards the front desk.

Zoey exhaled and turned to her friends. “You guys ready?”

“Yes,” answered Tristan.

“No,” said Simon.

There was a moment of silence. “Okay, but let’s hurry. Do you have
weapons on you?”

Tristan smiled and pulled his S9 slingshot from his back jean’s
pocket.

“Never leave home without it,” he said and then shoved it back.

Simon searched his pockets like someone who was fighting against
their own clothes. He pulled out his slingshot triumphantly. “Got it! Thought
I’d lost it. Whew.”

 
Zoey stepped towards the control
panel, lifted her fingers, and paused.

“Uh, guys—where’s headquarters anyway? Am I supposed to type just
Headquarters
?”

“I don’t know,” said Tristan.

Simon shrugged. “I know it’s in Knightsbridge, London—but I’m not
sure if you’re supposed to type—”

BANG!

Someone screamed.

Zoey turned to see Mrs. Andrews collapse. Her head hit the floor with
an echoing
thud
, and then she was
motionless.

The man in the black wool coat stepped over her casually, and pointed
a very large gun at them.

“I hate kids,” he said in a deep voice. “—and I hate the ones that
don’t mind their business even more! I didn’t want to have to do that to poor
Mrs. Andrews, but
you
made me do it.
I couldn’t let her blab all of our plans now, could I?”

Zoey stared at Mrs. Andrews’s body. The gun’s blast still rang in her
ears, and she felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She never really liked the
woman, but she didn’t deserve to die. “You—you killed her,” her voice wavered.
“You didn’t have to kill her.”

“No,
you
killed her,” he
said, aiming the gun at Zoey.

“You should have kept your big mouth shut,
Drifter
. Now, look what you made me do. Her death’s on you.”

Tristan stood protectively in front of Zoey. “What do you want?”

As the man got closer, Zoey saw that he had one milky white eye and that
the other was blue. He was over six feet tall, broad shouldered, and under his
coat he wore an expensive black, tailored suit. He looked like a villain from a
James Bond movie.

 
“I don’t want to have to add
child murderer to my list,” continued the man. “But I will if you make me. I
can’t let you ruin our plans, you miserable little brats. Not when we’re so
close.”

 
He held out his free hand.
“Your DSM’s. Now.”

“Oh no, not again,” whined Simon. He pulled out his metal compact
and held it out reluctantly. “Are you going to give it back?”

“You won’t need it back,” said the man.

“What’s
that
supposed to
mean?” Simon tried to pull his DSM back, but the man scooped it up swiftly. He
then grabbed Zoey’s and Tristan’s DSM’s and pocketed them in the folds on his
long coat. When he was done, he pointed the gun towards the stairway.

“Move. Down to the basement level.”

The three of them obeyed and walked over to the staircase.

Poor Mrs. Andrews was dead. Zoey couldn’t get that awful scream out
of her head. The image of her body sprawled on ground, twisted and bent
unnaturally haunted her. If she hadn’t told her about the traitor, she’d still
be alive. The man in the suit was going to pay for what he had done, that was a
promise.

Every minute that passed endangered not just Agent Barnes’ life, but
the fate of the entire agency. They had to get past the man with the gun—but
how? She was positive he would shoot them in a heartbeat if he had too. They
were all armed, but their weapons weren’t faster than an automatic handgun.

They slowed when they reached the bottom of the stairs and arrived
at a set of large metal double doors. The sign over the doors read:

WARNING!

Hostiles inside, proceed with extreme caution

 
“Inside,” ordered the man.

She had always wanted to visit the basement area, but she hadn’t
imagined it with a gun in her back.

Tristan gave Zoey a worried look, opened the doors, and stepped
inside. The others followed.

Zoey wasn’t sure what she had expected to see, but this was not what
she had anticipated.

The room was enormous, the size of an entire floor at the hive. In
the middle of the room was a series of desks and tables with chairs. Glass
compartments that looked like individual prisons lined both sides of the
chamber. And inside each compartment was a mystic.

Over a hundred mystics of every race and size stared at them with loathing
through the glass. Zoey saw a winged, human woman with snakes for her hair; a
small, single black cat with red eyes; and a hairy, ghoulish creature the size
of a grizzly bear with a human face that looked neither female nor male. There
was a moving rock with human legs, a twelve-inch girl with purple pigtails in a
pink ball gown, a pile of steaming green blobs with hundreds of staring yellow
eyes, and many other mystics she had never seen before.

The cells on the left side had metal doors. The small square openings
in the doors were large enough to get a glimpse of the dangerous looking
mystics lurking within. The words “Maximum-Security Holding Cell”
were
written in black above each compartment.

Zoey could almost feel the evil seeping out through the glass cells
like a cold sweat, chilling her as she passed.

The cells on the right side were mostly made of Plexiglas, and the
mystics that occupied them seemed a little more docile. But she was sure that if
they escaped, they wouldn’t be so friendly—especially not to the people who had
put them there.

What she saw next made her heart ache—that beautiful fire stallion she
had seen on her very first day at the hive was locked away in one of the compartments.
Its
sad eyes met Zoey’s, and she felt tears sting her
eyes. Disturbing the Peace was written on the small screen next to its cage. Horses
didn’t belong in cages.

As they walked further inside, Zoey noticed that a flashing sign on
the side of their jails identified the crimes that had been committed by each
mystic. Illegal Border Crossing was written beside an enormous spider with the
head of a snake. It startled Zoey when it suddenly threw itself against the
glass with a loud boom

“Keep walking.” The man pressed the gun against her back.

Zoey released her breath and kept moving. She spotted a large
Krakenite
and felt her heart race. Caution – High intensity
Voltage was written on its compartment. It would get zapped if it tried
anything.

They were all locked up in these compartments. The mystics couldn’t
touch them. They were safe.

Their immediate danger was the man with the gun.

To her surprise, three booths were crammed with fairies. Their ugly
faces were wrinkled in hatred. They flew into the glass of their cages like a
giant swarm of angry bees. They hit the glass with their fists. Some stood back
and spit at the glass, while others made obscene gestures with their hands. Zoey
suspected that these were the same fairies that they had caught. She was relieved
that they were all trapped behind the glass.

They came to a cubical where an elderly man was writing in a large
ledger. With his pinstriped shirt and navy-blue tie, he looked like a two
hundred year old accountant. Above his cubical was another large flashing
screen, which read:

FREEDOM BAIL BONDS, call
now:
Fre
-e-
dom
—1Z1)373-3366

MYSTIC LAWYERS AVAILABLE - HELP
US HELP YOU!

Stacks of cards were littered across his desk. Zoey leaned over and
read:

Get out of jail free—This
card may be kept until needed or sold

“I feel like I’m in a game of Monopoly,” said Simon with a weird
smile on his face. “Love that game.”

The old man jumped when he saw them. “Leaping lizards! What’s going
on? Who are you? What are you doing here?”

He adjusted his glasses. “You’re not allowed in here! Get out! Get
out!”

He wiggled out of his chair and came shuffling up to them, pointing a
long, crooked finger. “I will report you! This is a direct violation of agency
rules—”

The man in the coat backhanded him with the handle of the gun. With
a frightening
crunch
, the elderly man
crumbled to the floor. Blood seeped through a large wound on the back of his
head. Zoey stared in shock—it had happened so fast—she didn’t even have time to
react.

She turned around and faced their captor. “How could you kill him?
He was an old man just doing his job. You’ll pay for this! I swear you will.”

The suited man was unimpressed.

“He saw me. I can’t have anyone identifying me.”

“But what about us? We see you?” said Simon. When he realized he had
stuck his own foot in his mouth, he paled.

“You know, I only have 20/200 eyesight.” He continued. “Technically
I’m legally blind. I couldn’t recognize you in a lineup if my life depended on
it—honest.”

Their captor gave Simon a small smile, a smile that killers give
their victims before they die.

 
“Stay,” ordered the man, as
though they were little puppies.

He stepped over the body and then leaned over the computer. When he had
finished typing, he took a step back.

And an alarm blasted throughout the chamber.

Zoey and the others winced and pressed their hands on their ears. She
was certain the entire north continent could hear it.

But the suited man didn’t cover his ears—he just looked at them
unsympathetically.

“Since you love mystics so much,” he shouted over the alarm. “Why
not make it a
permanent
thing? I
thought you’d enjoy a little get-together with your best
friends
.”

He moved away from the desk, but kept his gun pointed at them.

“If you move from that spot, I’ll shoot you. And don’t think I won’t,
because I will. Your lives mean nothing to me, but I’d rather not kill children,
if
I don’t have to.”

He crossed the room swiftly, smiled at them one last time, and closed
the doors behind him.