Edison’s Alley (25 page)

Nick held up the fan.

“The harp. Where is it?” Nick demanded.

The man hesitated.

“Don’t make me use this!”

The man, who had seen what the fan could do, pointed down one of the hallways with a shaky finger.

Nick dispatched him with the narc-in-the-box, and they went down the hall until they got to a door labeled
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
.

The room was empty except for a crate in the middle already marked with a shipping label.

“New Jersey?” said Mitch, reading the label. “Why would they send the harp to New Jersey?”

“We don’t know it’s the harp yet.” Nick unlatched a side of the crate and pulled it open. The harp was indeed inside, secured by some sort of magnetic restraint, which
seemed extremely complicated, except for the switch labeled
OFF
. Nick turned it off, and the harp was free for the taking. It seemed so easy, Nick half expected an Indiana
Jones kind of booby trap—like poison-tipped arrows shooting from the wall—but nothing happened.

“Don’t pluck the strings!” Petula warned. “We don’t know what they do.”

“It has no strings,” said Mitch.

Caitlin leaned toward it. “No—look closely.”

Nick did so and still couldn’t see any strings, but as soon as he started to shift his eyes away, he saw them. Not so much strings, but lines cutting vertically through
space—invisible in a direct line of sight.

With Caitlin checking that the coast was clear, Nick and Mitch carried the harp out into the hallway and toward the statue of Edison—but there were six passageways converging on the
rotunda, increasing the chances that they would be spotted. Sure enough, a group of men and women in pastel suits were coming down a hallway to the left.

Various shouts of “They’ve got the harp!” “Stop them!” and “Call security!” erupted.

“I got this one,” Mitch said. He put down his end of the harp and planted his feet apart like a police officer about to take out a perp. He aimed the bellows and pumped the handles
together, expelling a single blast of air down the corridor.

Within the confines of the hallway, it didn’t create a mini-tornado; instead, it turned the passage into a wind tunnel. The multicolored gaggle was blown off their feet and so far back
down the seemingly endless hall that they ceased to be a concern.

Nick considered the six entrances and couldn’t remember the way to go. He couldn’t even remember which way they had just come.

Caitlin read the look on his face and said, “It’s this way, to the right of where Edison’s pointing.”

But the Accelerati were now alerted to their presence, and three more agents ran toward them from that hallway.

Petula took the initiative this time. “Fingers in your ears,” she ordered. “Earwax-deep!”

Even with their ears plugged, they could still hear the horrific sound of the clarinet as Petula began to play. For Nick it was definitely the most unpleasant auditory experience of his life.
Like steroid-infused nails on a chalkboard. Like microphone feedback injected directly into his brain. It made him weak in the knees—but with his fingers in his ears, and the bell of the
instrument aimed down the hall and not at him, he and the others were able to withstand it. The approaching Accelerati were not so lucky. They were hit with the full force of Petula’s
soul-searing solo just as they entered the rotunda. They fell to the ground, clutching their heads in agony.

Nick grabbed the harp again, and Caitlin, who was closest, took the other end. They moved as quickly as they could. But as they reached the Great Hall, Nick realized they were one person
short.

“Where’s Mitch?”

Mitch hadn’t come for the harp. He had a much more personal agenda. While Vince was powered by a long-life battery, and Nick was powered by his growing connection to
Tesla’s machine, Mitch was driven by something else entirely.

It had begun as a furious desire for vengeance when his father was wrongly imprisoned. Back then Mitch had no idea who to take vengeance on. When he learned it was the Accelerati who had used
his father and tossed him away, his first wish was for all of them to suffer for the suffering they had caused his family. But Mitch’s need for revenge had evolved. It was more important, he
realized, to clear his father’s name. And to make sure he received adequate compensation for the year of his life lost to prison. Seven hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of
compensation, perhaps.

In the rotunda, while the other kids were focused on the harp, the clarinet-smacked Accelerati were scrambling away like the cowards they were. Mitch grabbed one of them before he could escape,
and pushed him hard around a corner.

Mitch was not the biggest kid, but he did have the inertia of a few extra pounds. That, coupled with the keen focus of intense purpose, made him a force to be reckoned with.

Before the man could protest, Mitch shoved the tip of the bellows into his mouth, and the guy’s eyes went wide.

“I’ll bet you can guess what this does,” he said. “Let’s just say, a single pump and you’ll blow up like a parade balloon. But since you’re not made of
rubber, you’ll probably just go
pop
.”

“Gwat goo oo gwant?” the man said, his words garbled by the large nozzle in his mouth.

“Where’s the money?” Mitch asked. “The seven hundred and fifty million you guys framed my father for!”

The man shook his head “Gign’t grame him…”

Mitch tightened his grip on the bellows handle. He wasn’t bluffing, and the man knew it.

“Ro-kay, Ro-kay, I’ll grell oo!” the man slurred.

“Then go ahead and tell me,” Mitch said. “You’ve got three seconds.”

“Brandon Gunther’s alligator!” the terrified Accelerati member said. “Grinthon! Grinthon! Brandon Gunther’s alligator.” Then he knocked the bellows from his
mouth and scrambled away, escaping down the hallway.

“Wait! What does that mean?” Mitch called after him.

What he’d said made no sense and that infuriated Mitch, so he pumped the bellows at him as he ran, but the wind just blew him farther down the hallway, aiding his escape.

Mitch would have gone after him, but Nick arrived and grabbed his arm.

“What are you doing? We’ve gotta get out of here!”

“Grinthon!” Mitch screamed. “Brandon Gunther’s alligator!”

Nick looked at him like he was crazy, and now Mitch was wondering if maybe he was.

In the Great Hall, the few Accelerati who were present on a Sunday morning—and still had the nerve to face the enemy—made their stand. There were about ten of them.
Nick didn’t recognize a single face.
How many Accelerati are there, in how many cities?
he wondered; all living normal lives, like Petula had said, while secretly devoting their
brainpower to the secret society. How could he ever hope to defeat a force so large and unseen? Well, if he could defeat the ones he could see in front of him right now, that would be enough for
today.

A few of them raised weapons, and though Nick didn’t know what those weapons did, he knew they would be “elegant,” as Jorgenson was so fond of saying. The technology might
artistically turn them inside out, or make them grow a third arm that would strangle them, or maybe convert them at a molecular level into a precious metal that the Accelerati could sell at a huge
profit. In any case, the weapons would leave Nick and his friends elegantly dead.

“Force field!” Nick shouted.

Caitlin must have practiced at home, because she knew exactly what to do.

“Stay close!” she said, and she began cranking the handle on the flour sifter for all she was worth.

Nick suspected that if it were attached to a source of electricity it could create a truly impressive field. Hand-cranked, it created a barrier just large enough to protect the four of them. One
of the men fired, and the bullet—or whatever came out—hit the force field and ricocheted, shattering one of holographic windows and ruining the illusion that they were in the
Himalayas.

Nick’s crew pushed forward together, toward the door, but as they did, Caitlin tripped over one of the coffee mugs dropped by the first two agents. It was just a slight stumble, but it was
enough to jar her hand from the sifter crank, and the force field failed. With no time to think, Nick grabbed the fan and turned it on full blast.

The Accelerati reacted immediately, racing away before the cold front could hit them. Only one remained, and all he did was turn around—which seemed odd, until Nick saw that he wore the
strangest thing on his back: a curved body-size shield that looked oddly like a tortoise shell. It was as if the Accelerati, in their underground lair, were turning themselves into mutant turtles
of the ninja variety. Nick didn’t want to even consider what that was all about.

He kept the fan aimed at the tortoise shell so the Accelerati on the other side wouldn’t turn around.

“Go!” Nick shouted to the others, and they carried the harp through the doorway. As soon as they were in the clear, Nick hurried after them, slammed
The Gates of Hell
, and
aimed the fan at the doors, icing the hinges so the doors couldn’t open.

“Well, it’s happened,” Caitlin said, looking at Rodin’s massive bronze doors. “Hell has finally frozen over.”

T
he lack of a sizable force of Accelerati in their Colorado Springs facility had nothing to do with it being Sunday. In fact, Sunday was usually a
day when their subterranean mecca thrived with activity. There were experiments, research, theoretical discussions, and, of course, Sunday brunch—which always featured a buffet of genetically
modified species of unique flavor, which would eventually find their way into the global food supply.

One reason so few Accelerati were in their headquarters that day was due to the electromagnetic trouble that was growing beyond anyone’s ability to ignore it. Even the world’s most
skilled deniers could no longer keep their heads in the sand.

The Accelerati were monitoring the exponential growth of static, magnetic anomalies, misdirected birds, and unplanned electrocutions. They had been secretly called upon by the Federal Aviation
Administration to troubleshoot the navigational nightmare that had grounded the world’s aircraft. This was more of a challenge than usual, because in other cases when the Accelerati were
called in to solve a problem, they were the ones who had created the problem in the first place—and already knew the solution, making themselves appear more than just brilliant, but almost
magical.

But, as Dr. Alan Jorgenson once pointed out to Nick Slate, there was no magic involved, only scientific illusion. Smoke and mirrors, practically applied.

On that Sunday, some of the Accelerati were gathered in government think tanks, trying to puzzle their way out of the problem. Others were in the field, monitoring the levels of magnetic and
electrical disturbances. Still others were negotiating for hiding spots in the deepest levels of NORAD, which was packing in high-level hiders trying to escape yet another end of the world.

This was the state of things when Harley Grabowski drove Petula, Nick, Mitch, and Caitlin back to Nick’s house with the harp, no questions asked. Clearly the instrument was low on the list
of contraband his vehicle had hauled.

In the open back of the pickup, it was hard to ignore the skies above, which were billowing with strange purple clouds that didn’t have anything to do with rain. The clouds strobed with
deep flashes, and occasionally lightning shot out—but the sound the bolts made was nothing like thunder. It was more like the hiss of a thousand snakes.

“I think we’re in trouble,” Caitlin said as the snapping and hissing from the sky grew louder.

But Nick was still too focused on the task at hand. “We have the harp—let’s deal with one thing at a time.”

“You can’t ignore what’s happening, Nick. Look at the sky!”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

At that moment Mitch said something they had known for weeks but hadn’t wanted to say out loud. It was a simple statement of fact. “This is because of us,” he said. “All
of it.”

But Nick knew what he really meant. This was because of
him
. Nick was the one who had opened this world-changing Pandora’s box. Well, how was he supposed to know? How could he
possibly have foreseen what would come from a simple garage sale? “Just because it’s worse than we thought, that doesn’t mean the machine can’t fix it. That’s what
it’s for!” Nick said. “We have to complete the machine.”

“What if we can’t?” Caitlin asked.

He wanted to lash out at her. She had to
stop
making him
think
.

He looked up to the sky, if only to avoid Caitlin’s gaze, which at the moment seemed all-seeing.

What he saw above was enough to shake him to his core.

There were still a few patches of blue sky through the building veil of smoky clouds, and now, through one of those patches, he caught sight of the orbiting asteroid. An object fifty miles wide
might sound huge, but it wasn’t by cosmic proportions. In daylight it could barely be seen from Earth—it was just a tiny gray dot in the sky. But now that dot was emitting menacing
spiderlike sparks. That’s when the truth finally hit home.