The Twin Powers (8 page)

“Enterprise Two, where are you?”

“That doesn't sound like a cop radio,” said Ronnie.

“It's got to be a federal task force after the aliens.” I felt excited and scared. “Like a special unit. X-Files.”

“What?”

“And those call signs: Enterprise and Federation. Pretty cheesy. You'd think they could do better than
Star Trek
.”

“What's that?”

“A TV show about looking for aliens. After your time.”

“Enterprise Two, you are moving. We have you.”

“Okay, Ronnie, off the highway fast. Gotta find, like, an underpass or a concrete building that might block the GPS signal.”

I knew he didn't fully understand what I was talking about, but the little guy knew just what to do. Ronnie took a screaming right onto a highway exit, yelling to me, “Gas, gas, all you got . . . okay, lift off the pedal . . .”

I kept poking my head up from under the dashboard, taking quick peeks as we started weaving through side roads toward what looked like an old abandoned industrial park alongside railroad tracks overgrown with weeds.

We circled the area, which was surrounded by a twenty-foot chainlink fence with barbed wire on top.

“Brakes!” The SUV jerked to a stop in front of a gate too heavy to crash through. There was a massive padlock on the front.

I leaned out the window and focused hard, thinking
wind, storm, gale force, cyclone, hurricane, tornado
. The fence was rattling and my head felt as though the padlock banging against the chain links was banging against my skull. But the lock and fence held. I fell back exhausted.

“Can't do it,” I whimpered.

Buddy licked my face, hard, to get me going. It didn't feel friendly.

“You can do it,” said Ronnie.

I took a deep breath and stuck my head out again. This time I imagined a ray of sunlight shining through a magnifying glass focused on the padlock, imagined the ray narrower and narrower, stronger and stronger, a pencil of light with the heat of a hundred suns, a million suns, burning, scalding out of my brain, boiling me along with the target. The padlock began to sizzle and smoke. Just before I passed out, the padlock melted and the gate swung open.

BRITZKY

SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA

2012

 

W
E
were near Washington, D.C., when Alessa and I were kidnapped off the tour. One minute we were sitting in the wagon eating turkey wraps, and the next we were being hustled toward a van by Erin and two security guys. We didn't have a chance to say goodbye to Eddie, wherever he was. Would Eddie even care?

I tried to squirm out of a security guy's grip. “Where are we going?”

“Someplace else.” He pushed me into the back of the van. Alessa was pushed in next to me. There was a metal screen between the front and back of the van. We were in a cage.

Erin leaned in. “It's nothing personal.”

Yeah, right,
I thought. I said, “Is the tour over?”

“For you two. We're headed for the Capitol.”

She slammed the back door shut and locked it. The van began moving.

“Wasn't the tour about kids leading the way?” said Alessa.

“That was then,” I said. “Before Homeland Security took over.”

“What about Eddie?” said Alessa.

“The good jock? He goes along.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“I do,” I said. “Remember when he was pretending to be Tom last year? He did everything we told him to do. I thought it was because of us. But it's him, the way he is.”

“He came up with the idea of Tech Off!” said Alessa.

“Because he couldn't figure out how to turn on a computer.”

“What's your point?”

“If you can convince him that something is good for the team, he'll go along,” I said. I felt a little disloyal dissing Eddie, but it was the truth. “He's the good jock. He won't ask questions, try to look under the rock.”

“And that's bad?”

“It is when there's something under the rock.” I suddenly thought,
We could be bugged in here,
and I made the
zip your lip
signal to Alessa.

Alessa got it and shut up too. We looked around for hidden cameras and microphones.

The van was on a highway, then outside a small city, then within rows of suburban homes, and finally into farm country. We turned up a two-lane road, then a one-lane dirt road leading up to a farmhouse surrounded by empty fields as far as I could see.

A man and a woman in dark suits came out of the farmhouse and opened the van doors. The woman said something to the two men in the front seats of the van, then hustled Alessa and me into the house. The van drove off. I could tell that Alessa was getting more scared now. I winked at her, trying to keep a brave front so she wouldn't freak out, but my knees felt like Jell-O.

They put us in separate rooms.

TOM

SOMEWHERE IN NEW JERSEY

2012

 

B
Y
the time I came to, Ronnie had driven through the open gate of the industrial park and into an abandoned warehouse, a dingy, rusty old building with high ceilings and a floor littered with scraps of tire rubber and metal shavings. Rats scurried. Were those bats flying up near the ceiling? Buddy leaned out the window and barked at them. I thought I saw a snake slithering through piles of garbage. I shivered.

Ronnie put a hand on my forehead. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I growled, but I wasn't. I had to hug my elbows to keep my body from shaking. I couldn't tell if it was from thinking about snakes or from using my powers. I hoped using them wouldn't always knock me out.

“That was amazing, the way you melted the lock,” said Ronnie. “Can you see through things?”

“Just fuzzy shapes,” I said. “I have to practice.”

Ronnie frowned.

Then a scary thought elbowed in. “How did they find you?”

“I don't know. I thought I was home free, but then Buddy caught up to me and the agents showed up.”

“You didn't take Buddy with you when you took off?”

“He's Eddie's dog.”

“Eddie left him,” I said. “Eddie said they wouldn't let dogs in the hotel.”

We looked at each other but neither of us said anything about Eddie abandoning the rest of us for a hotel room. Neither of us wanted to diss Eddie. Yet.

Ronnie finally said, “I guess after a while, when Eddie didn't come back, Buddy took off after me.”

“Why didn't he go after Eddie?”

“Dunno.”

“How could he find you?” I said.

“Buddy's a spaniel. He can smell your tracks.”

I didn't want to say anything about Ronnie and smells. When I'd first met him and he'd been homeless, you could smell him coming.

Buddy knew we were talking about him. He climbed into the front seat and onto Ronnie's lap. Ronnie lifted one of Buddy's floppy ears and talked to him in a little baby voice.

Ronnie is gay,
I suddenly thought. Not that there was anything wrong with that. I believe in equality for everybody, even though you can't trust most people. I wondered if Eddie knew.

After a while, I said, “We can't stay here. There are tracking devices in the car. The warehouse walls may not be enough to block them.” I started ripping out all the dashboard wires. One of them had to be the GPS.

“I need to ask you,” said Ronnie in a low voice. “Can you see through clothes?”

“I haven't tried.” That was true. I hadn't had time. I remembered the guy on the toilet in the trailer. I hadn't looked through his
clothes.
“But I think so. Why?”

Ronnie's mouth twisted as if he was trying to say something and couldn't figure out how to form the words. He kept stroking Buddy, nervously, harder and deeper, until Buddy started to squirm.

“Hey, what's this?”

Ronnie grabbed one of my hands and guided it to a spot on Buddy's back, near his neck, where the fur and flesh were thick. I felt something solid, pea-size.

I fingered it, and when Buddy didn't seem to notice, I squeezed it hard. Buddy still didn't react. It wasn't part of his body.

“Must be a microchip pet finder,” I said. “People implant it right under the fur, and then if the pet goes missing, they can track it. It's a kind of GPS.”

“GPS? When are you going to tell me what that means?”

“It's an electronic tracking device. I bet somebody used it to find you.”

“That makes no sense,” said Ronnie. “I don't think we have microchips on our planet yet.”

“They could have put it in Buddy here on the tour. Maybe that security guy Brown. Takes a minute to inject it. They probably figured Buddy would always be with Eddie. It was a way to keep track of him.”

“What are we going to do?” said Ronnie.

“Leave him here, tied up so he can't follow us,” I said.

Ronnie's eyes actually bugged out. His mouth dropped open. “Can't do that. It's Buddy.”

“You want to get caught again? What were they doing to you when you were screaming like a girl?”

Ronnie sucked air. “I'm not leaving Buddy. You're so smart, Tom—figure something out.”

ALESSA

SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA

2012

 

M
Y
room had a narrow bed, two wooden chairs, and a chest of drawers. No window. There were two framed needlepoints on the wall. One read
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS.
The other read
THE ROAD TO A FRIEND'S HOUSE IS NEVER LONG.

The signs made me lonely and sad. I sat down on the bed and cried for a minute or two, then stood up.
Pull yourself together, Lessi. It's always darkest before the dawn.
Now, that was a needlepoint for you!

There was a knock on the door. Before I could say, “Come in,” the door banged open. The woman in the dark suit marched in, slammed the door behind her, and sat down in one of the wooden chairs.

“Sit down,” she said.

I kept standing. I didn't feel so small and weak when I was taller than her.

“Whatever. I'm Agent Mathison and you are in big trouble, young lady.”

I sat down.

“Here's the deal. We know everything. Your pal Todd just spilled his guts, which confirmed what we already knew. He won't be prosecuted. But you will be prosecuted and so will your parents. Prison time. Unless you cooperate.”

“How?”

“Tell us what you know.”

“About what?”

“About Tom.”

“What about him?” I felt confused. Tom as Tom, or Tom as Eddie, or Eddie pretending to be Tom? I almost asked Agent Mathison, then bit my tongue to shut myself up. Just what was it Agent Mathison knew?

“When did you first meet Tom?”

Be cool. Tell the truth as much you can.
“Last year when he started Nearmont Middle School. We were both in orchestra. I played cello and he—”

“Who had the idea of Tech Off! Day?”

It had been Eddie being Tom, I thought, but something warned me against saying too much right away. I didn't believe that “Todd just spilled his guts.” That wasn't Britzky. “It was Tom's idea. He thought people really needed to talk to one another face to—”

“What about the voices?”

I went into dumb mode. It worked with Mom and Dad when they interrogated me. “Voices?” I thought she was talking about the voices Tom hears, which he had thought were imaginary but now knew belong to Eddie and to aliens, like his dad and Dr. Traum.

“Telling him what to do.”

“Tom never lets people tell him what to do.”

“You think you can play dumb with me, young lady?” Agent Mathison was scowling.

“Is Tom in trouble?”

“Worry about yourself. You're the one in trouble for withholding information from a federal officer.”

“Like FBI?”

“FBI takes orders from us.”

“I haven't really seen much of Tom lately.” That was true. True was good when you were playing cat and mouse. “He's, like, off the wagon a lot.”

“Where does he go?”

“I don't know. Erin says he's getting ready for his interviews.”

“I'm losing patience. What about the aliens?”

“You mean like illegal . . .”

“Now I'm getting angry.”

“Aliens from other planets?” I made the face Mom hates, the gimme-a-break face.

“Don't play with me.”

I wondered how much Agent Mathison knew about the aliens. Obviously, she didn't know Tom was a half alien or a twin. Had to keep it that way. What about Britzky? If he spilled his guts and I didn't
. . .

“Do you think Tom is crazy?” said Agent Mathison.

“No. Why?”

“We know about the voices he hears. And talks to. We think you know about them.”

“I don't.” I tried to put a lot of sincerity into my voice. Probably a mistake when you're lying.

Agent Mathison stood up. “I'll let you think about it. I hope you're not hungry.”

She marched out. As I heard the door lock, I realized I was very hungry.

BRITZKY

SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA

2012

 

T
HE
room had a narrow bed, two wooden chairs, and a chest of drawers. No window. There were needlepoints on the wall.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
and
MY HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE.

Pretty obvious attempt at a psych-out, I thought. Trying to make me lonely and afraid. They didn't know who they were dealing with. I jammed a chair under the doorknob. I thought about Lessi. Hoped she was okay.