The Subatomic Kid (17 page)

“You know, now that I think about it, the special effects were incredible,” Kate added. She was trying to act nonchalant after their mind-numbing experience. She eyed John curiously as she stood up.

“Well, that’s good to know,” said John. “Now let’s get out of here.” The four of them took off into the maze of metallic machinery in search of yet another door.

Doctor Leitz opened his fingers and peeked through the spaces. Using his feet, he spun himself around in a circle; he looked like a strange insect searching for prey, his occasional giggles sounding like chirps.

His hands slipped away from his eyes and reached tentatively for the revolver. He snatched it from the floor and hugged it to his chest. “Mine,” he said, stroking the barrel gently. His eyes looked empty. Gone was his usual bravura and gusto, his body had become a minefield of involuntary jerks and twitches that exploded when he was least expecting them.

He could see all of this from a very dark corner somewhere deep inside himself. He had been banished to the Siberia of his soul, and no matter how loudly he shouted or screamed, there was nothing he could do to regain control.

“Undo! Ha, ha,” he blurted, “must undo, ha, ha.” He sprang up from the ground and rushed over to the control panel. It was ridiculous, he was privy to all of his thoughts, but they were not the thoughts he wanted to have, and he had no way of changing his own mind.

“Abolish, ruin, wreck, abate, abrogate, annihilate, obliterate,” he heard himself say, and he cringed at the implication of his outburst. His fingers flew over the buttons on the control panel, and being as intimate as he was with the machinery and its software, he realized this was the beginning of the end.

Reams of paper began spewing from printers as the computer at the heart of the laboratory began the tedious task of reprogramming itself.

“Destroy, atomize, decimate, demolish, destruct, dismantle, dissolve,” he sang at the top of his voice while scampering over to one of the printers. He tore off a sheet of paper and stared at the bizarre columns of ones and zeros. It was the language of change, everything and nothing, empty and full. He held the piece of paper up in the air and tore it in half.

“Annul, invalidate, negate, nullify, quash,” he shouted each time he tore it in half. He threw the pieces up in the air, and as they floated down, he tore off another sheet, repeating the process over and over again until the laboratory was littered with the discarded remnants of his self-proclaimed genius.

CHANGING FACES

Hunter was in an extremely bad mood. He had executed his task to the best of his ability and he’d had a 100 percent success rate. He had earned some kickback time, a chance to refuel his jets and blow off some steam. As far as he was concerned the whole business with the kid and the school was over, but now here he was driving back there.

He hated to do things twice; if he spent his whole life doing everything twice he would only get half as much done. Plus, he felt the first time he did something, it was spontaneous; the second time it was mechanical and boring; it made him feel like he was wasting his time. The fires of his anger had also been stoked by the fact that he had no idea what he was getting into. In the espionage game, rushing headlong into the darkness invited failure to leap out of the shadows and sock you on the chin. It was like dancing in tight shoes; it just didn’t feel right.

Under normal circumstances Hunter would have given the mission to Steve because he needed the experience of working on his own, and if Steve got himself into trouble, Hunter could step in and save the day. But Steve was on his way back from the city with a new car they were going to outfit with listening devices, and he wouldn’t be back at the school for a while.

What could have gone wrong, he wondered? Miss Moon would only say that there was potential danger, and he should get back and keep an eye on Doctor Leitz. He spun various scenarios around in his mind, and only one made sense,—the doc wanted to keep his toys for himself. When it gets right down to it, human behavior is very basic; you either want to share, or you don’t want to share. It has been the basis of every war, fight, or squabble since the dawn of time, and it is invariably over one of two things—toys or love.

As kids we are most certainly not interested in sharing our toys, and we are vehemently against sharing the love of a parent, even with a sibling. That’s how Cain and Abel got into their feud, and Hunter was willing to bet the farm that Angstrom and Leitz were just following tradition. He also knew that in situations such as these, common sense and adult behavior fly out of the window, and human nature resorts to name calling, making faces, and eventually brawling, often with lethal consequences.

He knew the last place a sane person wanted to be was in the middle of two warring siblings. It was a no man’s land, mined and booby-trapped with anger and guilt. He also knew that the chances of survival were slim and none. Even armored with the skin of a rhinoceros and armed with a Machiavellian nature, endurance was uncertain.
Genius is a burden
, he thought, because it allowed him to understand all of that, and at the same time it allowed him to understand that he was going blindly into that dark night like a lemming rushing headlong toward the edge of a cliff. He was doomed unless he could get Steve back here as soon as possible. He poked the key on the cell phone that speed dialed his number. “Steve, where are you now?”

Hunter passed the cigar beneath his nose and drew in the hand-rolled Cuban aroma with a self-satisfied smile. “Sure I need you,” he said. “How can I pass along my knowledge if you’re not around?”

“Okay,” Steve replied, “I’ll be there soon.”

“Good,” Hunter affirmed, disconnecting the call. He put the cigar between his lips, flicked open his Zippo and fired it up in one motion. The cigar leaves crackled and sighed as he applied the flame and drew in the sweet smoke. He was a survivor, nothing more, and nothing less. The world was a dangerous place all of the time; one had to learn to read the signs and cover the bases. As he blew out a satisfied stream of smoke, his anger subsided.
Just another step on
the road
, he thought—just another step on the road.

***

Ron had always dreamed of being a cop, but it had never worked out. Intellectually and physically he could have met all of the requirements but one: he wasn’t tall enough. He stood five feet two in his stocking feet, and because of his vertically challenged status he didn’t even want to try. He suspected it would be too hard to advance through the ranks of tall people. Life had dealt him a bum hand.

As a night security guard for the school though, it didn’t matter that he was short. He got to wear a uniform, carry a gun, and he was responsible for the whole building and the grounds surrounding it. He knew there was some strange stuff happening on nights and weekends, and he also knew there were visitors at odd hours during the night. But as long as they had the access code for the gate, he never bothered them.

The school and its surroundings were his world; if anything so much as moved in a goofball way, he wanted to know about it. Tonight he had decided to be extra vigilant; he knew something was happening inside the school because he could feel the low humming rumble in the earth beneath his feet.

He had decided to double his patrols and check every door and window as often as he could, because Doctor Leitz himself had explained to him that many schools were after the secrets of the J. R. Leitz Academy of Educational Excellence, and it was his job to protect those secrets at all costs.

He never circled the building at regular intervals; he had seen too many movies to fall into that trap.
It was preferable to use a spot check technique,
he thought,
turning up at any place on a whim and shining his powerful flashlight deep into the shadows to illuminate wrongdoers.
He had never actually caught anybody, but as far as he was concerned it proved that his superior method of patrolling was a sufficient deterrent to any form of skullduggery.

The top half of every door in the school was fitted with zone-toughened glass, which from a security point of view was excellent. It meant he could see inside and at the same time it was hard to break into. But on this night, as he was sweeping the exterior of the building, he thought he detected some movement inside, which aroused his curiosity enough for him to move in and take a closer look.

***

John imagined that for the first time in his life he had actually used his head, which had become a necessity, because he wanted to remain as normal as he could to Kate, Cal, and Tex. He realized that he had already revealed more than he should about his peculiar new ability to metamorphose, but that was before he had actually grasped the enormity of the concept.

In many ways he felt he was leaving the protected environment of childhood behind and taking a giant leap into the province of adulthood with all its traps, pitfalls, and temptations. But he knew the heart beating in his chest was that of a kid and try as he might, he was not capable of changing that. It was a task for time and it couldn’t be hurried.

It was important to him that his friends didn’t look at him as some kind of oddball freak; if they did he would be ostracized. It was hard enough to deal with the ramifications of his changing world as it was. If he were shunned he would have no idea what to do with himself. He would have to move to another planet or something, and that would be a complete drag.

Responsibility was a new cloak, and it was uncomfortable to wear. It meant considering the effect of what you did before you did it. This was a novel concept because he had always just done whatever came into his mind, and then if there were a mess afterwards, he would clean it up, or leave it for someone else to deal with.

That kind of behavior was no longer feasible now, because he had a responsibility to himself, his friends, and to the Subatomic World. The consequences of danger were astronomical. He could no longer leave a tiny little mess anywhere, because it would fester and grow, and eventually come back to bite him in the butt when he least expected it.

He consoled himself with the thought that the ordeal was nearly over, and he hadn’t really revealed that much to Tex, Cal, and Kate. He had disappeared twice, and maybe he had alluded to the Subatomic World in passing. But he was fairly convinced they had no idea he had taken on the form of Doctor Leitz. As outrageous as it seemed, he was sure they believed they had suffered a mass hallucination, brought on by the fact the poor boob was arguing with himself as he was going insane.

After leaving Leitz and the laboratory behind them, they found themselves back in the darkness again. But this wasn’t the bad darkness of the sub-basement they had escaped from; this was the good, wonderful, wholesome darkness of a sky with stars in it.

“Man! It’s dark already,” Tex marveled. “How did that happen?”

Cal glanced up at a window high in the wall; he could see a sliver of moon obscured by clouds. “I dunno,” he said with a quizzical look on his face, “but I suspect the passage of time has something to do with it.”

“Now look, sister,” Cal protested, “I hit baseballs, I throw baseballs, and I catch baseballs. The square root of eighty-one is irrelevant. If I started thinking about that stuff I’d never be able to do my job.”

“I rest my case,” Kate concluded with a grin.

“No, you don’t,” Tex interjected. “As much as I hate to agree with him, he’s right. He’s physically conditioned to work within his area of expertise. Like an animal, he uses instinct. If he hits a home run with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth that wins the game, the square root of eighty-one isn’t gonna have a lot to do with it.”