Prank Wars (44 page)

Day 114

0134 hours

“
People are getting hurt. I’m not talking broken hearts or Jell-O packets in the shower heads; I’m talking real scary stuff. Things like this happen in New York, Chicago, Ogden even, but here in Provo? Something strange is going on here...and it’s not just the students.

No one is what they seem. The player? A terrorist. The heart-breaker? A no good spy. My neighbor? They’ve taken her. The jerk? A pretty decent guy. My roommate? An utter sneak—but then again I always knew that.

Grades? Dates? Pranks? They’re nothing to the danger that stares us in the face. You’ve got to believe me. If I could go back before everything—before the world went terribly wrong—would I change what I’ve done or have these meaningless pranks made me better able to fight this?”

—
Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Wednesday, June 6th)

Well, that’s what I would’ve written if I had my war journal handy. Later I would…
if I survived.
For now my war journal sat in my cargo pockets waiting to tell a tale that might not be told. I sprinted after Byron and Eric. It was obvious who was trained by the CIA, KGB, SIS, whatever it was.

I still could barely take everything in. Eric was good then bad then good, though in my opinion, still a double-crossing cheat, who was afraid of commitment. Didn’t he say he was dating Thanh for years? Byron was an undercover agent. I had been right about Thanh all along. Cameron was actually a decent individual. To top that off, Sandra was even meaner than I thought, which I had no idea was possible. Oh, and terrorists had taken over Provo. All in all, it had been a pretty eventful morning.

Tall chain-link fencing surrounded the Provocity towers on all sides. They were spiked on the top. As we veered closer, it seemed impossible to get in, but I was wrong. Byron took the fence in a couple of leaps and scrambled over to the other side, almost losing the side of his shirt on the barbed ends. Eric did likewise. I wasn’t about to be outdone. Taking a deep breath, I jumped and scaled to the top. Metal jutted out from it and caught my capris. I wrestled free, trying to figure out a way to get past this mess.

“Mad!” Byron called out. “Just go back.”

That was the clincher. I used the main pole as a handhold and jumped, ignoring the pain that seared through my hand. I hit the ground and winced, holding my scraped palm up to the light of the moon. The metal had poked it deep. I wiped the blood off on my black shirt.

“Let me see.” Byron was at my side. He unwrapped the bandage from his hand and wrapped it over mine instead. I made a face. We were officially blood brothers now. “The camera’s been disabled.” Byron gave it an assessing glance. “Sandra’s team took out the security system.”
Weird. Sandra had a team?

“Where’s the device?” I asked.

He searched the surrounding area. The Provocity tower was essentially a utility building made of brick with about twelve stories to it. Its three roofs were flat and tiered like a fortress. A blackened tower on the highest roof looked suspiciously like Rapunzel’s. The second tower was taller and rose up from the ground next to the building with only a catwalk between it. It said
Provocity
on the side in big bold letters. A ladder molded to the side went straight to the top. I had to avert my face; it made me too dizzy to look up at it.

“The device is on the top of the Provocity towers.” Byron pointed. “Someone’s been giving the towers a paint job. See the scaffold. The hostiles went in under the cover of painters to get the wiring in.”

Keeping my eyes carefully averted from the high ladder, I stared at the plank where the terrorists had worked. Ropes were rigged to the side of the cage. That’s where we’d have to disable the device. I tried to mentally connect my way up the side of the building with the catwalks and ladders. No matter what, going up would be scary. One false move would prove fatal.

I tried to find an alternate entry through the building. My eyes—trained by months of prank wars—picked out broken windows in the corner of the basement. No one suspected foul play in the relatively quiet little town of Provo…
well,
quiet where criminals were concerned.
There was also a coal shack to the side that could connect us to the building through a basement, and a tall metal door to the warehouse that looked like it led inside to a loading dock of sorts. Getting in would be cake, but I was afraid of what we’d find inside.

Byron firmly pulled me aside. “Mad Dog, you don’t have the training to do this. I need you out here.” I wanted to agree with him, but I couldn’t let Byron go into this by himself, especially with
lover boy
at his heels.

Eric stopped scanning the length of the towers to give me a considering look. “We can’t leave Mad out here by herself,” he said after a moment.

“We need her as our lookout,” Byron argued impatiently.

“How? Our cell phones don’t work.”

Byron’s eyes were hard on Eric. “Let’s fix that then. If one of us turns off the generators, it’ll lessen the frequency interference so we can use our cell phones. Either way, we’ll stop these guys.” He gave me a measuring look. “If we don’t get through, we’ll need someone to take out the control box from the top of the tower.”

“And who would that be? Mad?” Eric’s face screwed up in anger. “You expect her to scale up the top of that tower on that ladder? That’s suicide.”

Byron licked dry lips, sparing me a glance. “You don’t think she can hack it?”

“I can hack it,” I cut in; pretty sure I was playing into Byron’s trick—but we were wasting valuable time. We had to stop these guys from testing out the device. Already I could hear the creaking and the high-pitched sounds of buzzing from the generators inside.

Byron pressed his hand over mine. For once, his touch didn’t stem from being undercover. My hand tingled slightly, but the look in his eyes did more. There was a tenderness in them that looked familiar; he always looked at me like that. “Thanks cuz,” he said in an undertone. “I need you to be here.”

It was a big sacrifice. I would be standing out here, shivering in the dark, wondering if Byron was okay. Sure, no one made me angrier; no one else felt as close to me either. I
did
like him. It was a very inconvenient thing to realize now that I might lose him, now that I didn’t know if anything between us had ever been real. For the first time in a long while, I felt like someone who could love—even if that love wasn’t returned, though judging by how Byron looked at me now, he felt the same way I did. I surprised us both by throwing my arms around him in a tight hug.

He grinned tensely and gently tilted my face up to his. He brought his mouth close to my ear. “There’s something you should know...” he whispered. Then he kissed me fully on the lips, making me miss a breath. “Eric’s a June 6th.” I heard him say as he pulled away.

I took a shaky step backwards. Eric didn’t look pleased; it wasn’t what Byron had said, since I had barely heard him. Eric was a June 6th? Like completely? I avoided looking at Eric. He had shoved me into the Suburban to get me in the way, a lowering thought, but terribly true. Byron wasn’t fighting him now, so that had to be it. When had Byron figured it out? Since he had brought Eric along, it had to be during the car ride.

Byron watched me closely until I acknowledged his words with a slight nod. “Let’s split up,” he said immediately after. “Eric, you take plan A. I’m on plan B.”

“Plan A?” Eric asked.

Byron’s eyes were on mine, and I knew these were my orders. I tried to pay attention, but my stomach felt sick. Byron had just kissed me to give me valuable information. Was it
that
or the bad news that I had a more dangerous role to play that made me want to cry? “Disable the device from the bottom,” Byron said. “Go through the basement windows and find the stairs. The generators will be on the ground floor. If you turn them off in time, it’ll cut off the power and stop the chain reaction. Then the hostiles won’t have enough energy to get this device working. If that doesn’t work—the device has already secured the energy it needs.”

Eric’s lips were white with tension. “Then they can target us?”

“Only if they have the missing piece.” Byron kept his face devoid of anything that might betray his suspicions.

“Well, if nothing, turning off the generators will give us back our cell phones.” Eric flexed his muscular arms, his athletic frame nothing short of threatening. He gave me a hard look. “You still have Byron’s iPhone, right?”

Eric knew I had Byron’s cell? He was a complete June 6th! He had been the one I had talked to on Byron’s phone. That’s how he knew I had it. I refused to give away I was onto him, and nodded instead. Did he think I was a complete moron for not catching on? Eric extended his hand out to Byron. “Give me one of your light sticks.”

Byron gave one up to him and threw me the other for good measure. I slid it into the waistband of my khakis, trying not to think about going through the dark basement with some bright light making me the target for every bad guy down there. Byron’s hand found my back. “Find a good place to hide, cuz.” He pushed me away.

I sprinted behind the Provocity tower, almost bumping into a trailer with the figurehead of an iron pig that some insane engineer made out of spare parts. “What are
you
going to do?” I heard Eric ask Byron behind me.

“The control room.” Byron meant the information for me. He headed for the ladders that made a zigzagged line between the building and the smoke stack. “They’ll try to control the device from there with a laptop of sorts. I’ll take out whoever mans it. Whoever meets their target first, well, we both win, right?”

I took a deep breath, resting my face against the iron pig. Whoever made it first
would
win. Eric couldn’t warn his men up there with this frequency interference, and Byron couldn’t let Eric know he was onto him when I was stuck in the middle. There was no time to waste on punching out our differences down here.

Eric took a step closer to the basement window. “And if we fail, you’ll really send Mad up the tower for plan C?”

“Why not?” Byron’s hand landed on the top rung of the metal ladder. “Don’t do anything crazy, Mad. Wait for radio contact.” It was a warning not to do it, but how long would I have to wait for Eric to go in before I could turn off the generators myself? Stepping behind the shadows, I watched to make sure we really got rid of Eric.

Eric smashed the rest of a broken basement window nearest him and crawled inside. As soon as his feet hit the ground, his head popped up like a meerkat and he watched me intently, his face ghostly under the light stick. Byron didn’t move from the ground, staying in the shadows. After a moment of being creepy, Eric left us, disappearing hurriedly into the darkness beyond.

That was Byron’s signal to scramble up the ladders. He shot up, his every movement screaming of prior training. Would it be enough to stop whatever force was inside? He crawled through the catwalk between the smokestack and the main building, morphing into shadow. He reached the top, landing onto the gravel over the lower roof then trailed out of sight. He was in. I let out my breath. Was it my turn already?

Sneaking past Eric seemed impossible. What if I just went directly to plan C? I studied the Provocity tower high above me. It cut me off from the moonlight and made my head swim. The swinging scaffold loomed threateningly near the top. The control box was attached somewhere up there. I tried to mentally work a way up the towers that didn’t take me straight up the steep ladders. I could take the shorter ladders Byron took to the smokestack then catch the catwalk between it to get to the highest roof on the main building, but even after all that, I’d only be halfway to the antennas. There was still a long stretch where I’d have to climb that freakishly sheer ladder up the side of the Provocity towers—without a harness. All to take out the control box.

I forced myself to think clearly. Eric had a race to win. He wouldn’t still be waiting for me down in the basement. If Byron failed to stop whoever was manning the frequency remote on the top floor, it was up to me to turn off those generators. I stared at the convenient hole Eric put in the basement window for me. I hoped he’d see the irony after I showed him how much I could get in the way.
The weasel
.

I ducked under the ladders, and vaulted through the window. Swinging my legs, I landed into an empty room on a hard cement floor. My hands met a cold wall. I could see the dim outline of the shelves against the walls. The light of the moon drifted through the cracked windows. Anything could be waiting for me down here. I listened intently for breathing. No whispers. No gentle fall of feet. Tory trained me well.

I had the whole basement to myself. Maybe that’s why Byron had let me come this way? He had been the distraction; I was the action for once. Eric would’ve grabbed whatever back-up he could on his way upstairs to take out Byron. It left the basement unguarded, leaving me free to roam. So, where were the generators? Byron said to take the stairs to find them. I didn’t know where those were either. I cracked open the light stick, and it flooded the room with light. It trailed over the door that led from the workroom. The door was still closed. I tried not to think about what waited behind it. Just pushed it open.