Quantum (12 page)

“Arizona?” Gramadea inquired.

“I’m sorry. Something tickled my nose,” I said, making sure not to catch Kellan’s gaze. “So, what’s this got to do with us? I mean, I’m concerned for Simla, but I’m not sure that I can help in any way. Mom’s okay, I assume. Or
you
wouldn’t be here,” I said, looking over at Rupert.

“Yes, she’s fine, very concerned obviously. She’s still over at Constance’s house,” Rupert reassured me.

“Why did Mom take Simla over to see her dad in the first place? Why couldn’t one of the Wanderers have taken her?” I could see Rupert hesitating at my question.

“Simla went to meet with her father, to give him the blueprints to the portal,” he offered, looking at his mother intently.

“Why would Mom give her the blueprints now that we’re all safe?” I asked.

“She was blackmailing Mom with other stuff,” Rupert mumbled.

“I get that! What other stuff?” This was like bleeding a stone!

“Simla had apparently contacted Dillard Stevens in Leeds and threatened Olivia that she would tell him about you and Ella if she didn’t hand over the blueprints.”

“Ah.” I had to hand it to Simla. Good move on her part. Telling Dillard about us would certainly have turned Mom’s life into a circus.

Gramadea continued. “So Raj now has the blueprints, except they aren’t the real ones. Olivia gave Simla a set of fake prints. However, it will take Raj some time to figure it out. Olivia told Constance that Simla had made arrangements with her to be taken through the portal again in a week, as she had arranged to meet her dad again. Simla didn’t tell Olivia for what. When Simla doesn’t turn up to this meeting, goodness knows what Raj will do. The concern for us is what, if anything, he can do to you. So, my reason for telling you all this is to warn you. You all need to be vigilant. Not only may we have Raj to contend with again, but we may also have Simla, with or without the rogue faction of the Sigma-W. It’s the uncertainty that’s particularly scary.”

“Geez, no kidding!” I spluttered. “You’re basically saying that we could be kidnapped once again!”

Kellan grabbed hold of my hands to calm me. “Tell us more about the rogue Sigma-Ws and how they concern us,” he asked Gramadea.

“The rogue group was formed by a Sigma-W called Potomal after a power struggle between himself and the present Sigma-W leader. The main aim of the group is to overthrow the present regime. The group is very small. Due to our basic nature, becoming
rogue
is unnatural.”

I couldn’t help but catch the word
our
, but I let her continue.

“So, Potomal only has a handful of allies. He’s always looking for new recruits and his interest is obviously piqued if he hears of a Wanderer with less than pure intentions. Word of Simla’s defiant nature has obviously been picked up by his Intelligence team. Simla is a special case. She was born to a regular Wanderer and her father is human. She seems to have inherited some of his traits. We are still not sure that Potomal got to her, but we’ll find out soon enough. It could well be that he had her taken from the portal.”

“How would he
take
her?” Kellan asked.

“Oh, he would have transported her through to another dimension, just like you were, last year. So, we think that, however it happened, Simla
wandered away
when she was in the portal.”

 
“Gramadea, you said
our
,” I finally got out.

“
Our
?” Gramadea asked, looking decidedly puzzled.

“Yes. You said
our
when you talked about Sigma-W. Are you a Wanderer? A Sigma-W?”

Gramadea nodded.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised that she was a Wanderer. Not a lot surprised me anymore. I guess I would have been a bit more surprised if she’d said that she was a werewolf or something. I looked over at Rupert. I had always wondered about him. That whole story, the one that had started all this–
come find me two years ago
–only really made sense if he was a Wanderer of some kind. He didn’t look like one and he didn’t exude the same serene quality the rest of them seemed to. Still he was Gramadea’s son, so it kinda followed that he was one as well. “I’m guessing you’re some kind of Wanderer as well?” I asked, looking directly at him.

He shook his head, but remained silent, looking over to his mother.

“Arizona, the wanderer abilities of the offspring of Sigma-Ws lie dormant until activated. Once they are activated, the Sigma-W must serve the cause. Rupert chose to not have his abilities activated so that he could remain with your mother.” Amadea hung her head in sadness.

I could see Rupert’s jaws clench down as he comforted her by putting his arms around her.

“Does Mom know?” I asked. When Mom and I had our heart-to-heart chat she wasn’t able to explain how Rupert had known to ask her to come and find him in the past. This sort of explained it, but just sort of.

“No, Arizona, not yet. I was hoping that she would accept the Wanderers before I tried to explain this to her.” Rupert looked to his mother. “We need to tell her.”

“She’s been told, I hope. I asked Constance to explain it to her,” Amadea offered. “However, by all accounts, Olivia didn’t absorb it. She still thinks it’s a lot of hogwash. She thinks that Simla has disappeared
within
the portal somehow. She and Larry are going to return to Ames to try to examine it.”

Kellan sighed. “Can we backtrack for a moment? So, to get this clear… Raj made contact with Simla, how?”

“We don’t know, we suspect it was a prearranged meeting from the last time they saw each other,” Rupert mused.

Kellan continued. “So Simla heads through the portal with Olivia and meets her dad. Then she comes back to return here. Olivia and she start to transport, but somehow Simla disappears during the procedure. And we are now hypothesizing that this was caused by one of two methods. She may have spontaneously gained the ability to wander since her mom was a Wanderer or a rogue group of Sigma-Ws took her. Geez.” He shook his head. “If the rogue group took her, what do you think will happen now?”

Amadea shrugged. “I’m not sure. Potomal’s only motive is to strengthen his group and ready them for a takeover. He would develop Simla’s wandering abilities for that purpose. However, Simla has a mind of her own. I’m sure that as soon as she learns what she can, she’ll be back to help her father.”

“What if she spontaneously gained the ability to wander? Then where do you think she went?” Kellan asked.

“She’s had no training, so she will have no control over her ability. She could have disappeared anywhere,” Amadea explained. “It will be very disorienting and frightening for her.”

“Wow. This is hard to absorb. What are we to do now? Will you start a hunt for her? What about Raj?” I asked.

“We have no answers yet. Sigma-W Intelligence is trying to find out if Potomal has her. We are standing by until we hear from them,” Amadea replied. “If he doesn’t have her, we’ll need to start a search. We will at least know that she is at the same geographic point, but even a time/dimension search could take forever. We may never find her.
 
We can only hope that she manages to take control of her abilities and transports herself back here.”

“Kids, I’m going to head off to Constance’s house now and then perhaps over to Ames. Kellan, you will stay over. Your dad will come by later. Hopefully we’ll know more by morning,” Rupert said. “My mom is going to stay here and watch over things.”

The doorbell rang.

“It’s probably Grandma, she’s staying over, too.” Rupert went through to let her in.

“Grayson, hello!” Amadea said, looking over me as Rupert came back into the kitchen. “I thought you were going to wait over at Constance’s house.”

“Justin’s disappeared,” Grayson said, his voice cracking.

“Disappeared? How?”

“I was bringing him with me to Constance’s house. We were in the car, I was driving, he was sitting in the passenger seat with his ear buds in listening to his iPod. Then he just vanished. One moment he was there and then he was just gone. I don’t know how. He can’t wander–at least I don’t think so. I’m very worried. I was driving fast when he disappeared.”

As we stood there listening to Grayson’s strange story, his voice seemed to fade a little bit. Then I felt something pull at me from above and everything in the room began to fade. The last thing I saw was the desperation and shock in Kellan’s eyes as he tried to grab hold of me.

T
hrough my tightly closed lids, I could feel the bright sunshine, which glowed a bright, orange-red. I was afraid to open my eyes. I felt disoriented, I wasn’t even sure if I was stationary. I could feel a pressure in my shoulders and my feet felt light. I was definitely not standing on them, but I wasn’t lying down either. I felt weightless. The closest I had come to a similar sensation was when I
wandered
with Morgana. However, the feeling of warm euphoria was missing. I felt frightened and unbalanced, like I could fall at any moment.

There was a passing calm as I felt a pressure on my back, like a support, while I was maneuvered to what felt like a horizontal position and then I hit a firm surface. The back of my head ached from the impact, but I was okay. I couldn’t have fallen far; it was like being suddenly placed on a hard floor after having been carried around for a while–unexpected, rather than traumatic.

The bright sunlight–at least that’s what I assumed it was–still shone through my eyelids, which I still had firmly shut. My olfactory senses were assaulted by a circus of smells I had a hard time analyzing. It was mostly pleasant. Fresh bread and strong coffee dominated the mix. There was an underlying whiff of stale tobacco and… pee, yuck. The aroma was unmistakable. I have been here several times, even spent a whole summer here when I was younger. Paris. The aroma was much stronger than I remembered. Different neighborhood, I guessed. Of course, it couldn’t
really be
Paris. I couldn’t have traveled for more than half an hour, probably less.
 
Wherever I was, it had that distinct smell.

“Where am I?” I whispered, with my eyes still firmly shut. I listened with my ears wide open, at least that’s how I imagined them to look. I could hear faint sounds, mostly the sound of engines–cars. A muffled undertone of chatter could be heard through the sound of the traffic. I listened for a response to my question and when I felt like I had waited long enough, I opened my eyes to the world. I was immediately blinded by the rays of the sun coming through the skylight above me, so I shielded my eyes with my palms, turning away from the light to face the large window that dominated the wall to my right. The window was trimmed with heavy auburn velvet and gold tassels–for whatever reason they reminded me of Grandma, she was fond of tassels. I quickly scanned the room, I was alone. The room itself was fairly large and decorated with old-lady furniture–heavy, dark fabric on dark polished woods, ornate mirrors and oil-on-canvas paintings of country scenes. I had been placed in a large four-poster bed, trimmed with the same velvet and tassels as the window. My head must have hit one of the posts on my descent, hence the pain. I moved over to the luxurious pillow and slumped down on it, looking over to the window. I could make out the dark outline of something through it, but couldn’t make out what it was. So, I got up and walked over. The Eiffel Tower. Well, it clearly didn’t look or smell like Vegas, so, good grief, I must be in Paris after all! But how?