Rise of the Elgen (13 page)

“No, sir, Homeland Security doesn’t need warrants. This is for your safety. We don’t need your permission to enter your home.”

There was a long pause. “Come on, Mitchell,” I said. “Think of something.”

“Look, I just got my little sister to bed. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?”

“It will only take a few minutes, sir.”

“Come on, guys. It took me an hour to get her down.”

We heard a high voice say, “Mitchie, who is it?”

“Mitchie?” Zeus whispered.

“Was that Ostin?” I asked.

Taylor shrugged. “He kind of pulled it off.”

“Just some government guys!” Mitchell shouted. “Go back to sleep!” Pause. “Really, guys. I’m sure there’s no radiation around here, or I’d be glowing or something, right? Just come back in the morning.”

“Do you mind if we check around back?”

Taylor and I looked at each other.

There was a long pause. “No problem,” Mitchell said. “Help yourself.”

A different voice said, “I’m not pulling a reading.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“All right. Looks like you’re good. Thank you, sir.”

“Yeah. No problem. Come back when my parents are here.”

We heard the door shut and lock.

“He handled that surprisingly well,” I said.

“You think that girl’s voice was Ostin?” Taylor asked.

“Probably Jack,” Zeus said.

“You’re so mean,” Abigail said.

I looked at Abigail. She was smiling at Zeus.

“I don’t like where that is headed,” Taylor whispered to me. “I see a collision coming.”

I
an watched the guards until they left Mitchell’s street and started on the next. A few minutes later Jack and the rest walked back into the pool house. Jack had his arm around Mitchell, who was beaming like a conquering hero.

“How’d I do?” Mitchell asked.

“You should win an Academy Award for that performance,” Taylor said. “So who was the girl calling for ‘Mitchie’?”

“That was me,” Jack said.

“Told you,” Zeus said to Abigail.

Jack scowled at him.

“Okay,” Abigail said. “Can we go to bed now? I’m exhausted.”

“Me too,” McKenna said.

I looked at Taylor. She grinned. “Me three.”

“Someone’s got to stand watch.” I looked around the group. “Anyone not tired?”

No one said anything. Finally, Jack looked at Zeus. “If no one else is going to man up, I’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it,” Ostin said.

I looked at him in surprise. Ostin was one of those guys who always went to bed at the same time and always before ten.

“Really?” I asked.

“If we can upload Grace, I’ll stay up and go through the files.”

Grace had been so quiet I’d almost forgotten she was there. She took a deep breath. “Let’s get it over with.”

*   *   *

While everyone else got ready for bed, Ostin, Grace, Taylor, Jack, and I followed Mitchell to his room on the second floor of the main house. Not surprisingly, his room was huge—larger than my room and my mother’s combined. It was also a mess, strewn with clothing, cracker boxes, and candy wrappers. The walls were covered with magazine pictures of cage fighters and
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit models.

There was a large, beige computer next to his desk with a huge monitor on the desktop. Ostin was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

“That’s a custom Alienware Aurora,” Ostin said. “Maybe the best gaming computer ever built. It looks brand-new. Have you even used it?”

Mitchell shook his head. “Nah. My dad bought it for my birthday. I’m not really into computers that much.”

“He means he doesn’t know how to turn it on,” Jack said.

“Neither do you,” Mitchell said.

“I would kill for one of these,” Ostin said, sitting down at the keyboard. He fired it up and the screen’s glow lit his face. “Let’s go, Grace.”

“You’re not going to break it, are you?” Mitchell asked.

“Would you even know if we did?” Ostin said.

Mitchell just looked at him.

Ostin rolled his eyes. “No, we’re not going to break it.”

Grace sat down in a chair next to the computer. She took a deep breath, put her hands on top of the CPU, then closed her eyes and began to concentrate. Files began filling the computer as sweat
beaded on her forehead. Just a minute into the upload she began to shake and her eyes rolled back into her head like before.

“That’s creepy,” Mitchell said.

“No it’s not,” Taylor said indignantly.

“Shh,” Ostin said. “You’re slowing her down.”

It took nearly five minutes for Grace to upload everything. When she was done she fell forward onto her knees, panting heavily like an athlete just completing a sprint.

Taylor put her hand on Grace’s shoulder and knelt down next to her. “Good job.”

Ostin just stared at the screen. “Mitchell, do you have a pen and paper?”

“We’ve got some downstairs.”

“I’m going to need a whole pad. Actually a couple. Is there paper in your printer?”

“What printer?”

“Just get the pen and paper, Einstein,” Jack said.

I checked the printer drawer. “Looks full.”

Ostin continued examining the file names, shaking his head in wonderment. “That’s a lot of data. It’s going to take me all night. At least.”

Mitchell returned. “Here’s your pen and paper,” he said, setting two yellow writing pads on the desk next to Ostin.

“You’re sure about this?” I asked. “I can stay up if you want.”

“I’m good,” Ostin said. “Everyone can go to bed.”

“This
is
my bed,” Mitchell said.

“Not tonight it’s not,” Jack said. “Ostin’s got work to do.”

“A few terabytes’ worth.” Ostin said this more to himself than us, and I could tell that he’d already started to slip off into his own world. I don’t think he even noticed when we left.

“M
ichael.”

I opened my eyes to see Ostin standing over me. I had fallen asleep on the couch on the main floor of the pool house, and sunlight was streaming in through the blinds above me.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Morning,” Ostin said, looking very tired.

I rubbed my eyes. “Did you stay up all night?”

“I found your mother.”

Suddenly I was wide awake. “You found her?”

“She’s in Peru. I found her file on the computer.”

“Peru? Show me.” I pulled on my T-shirt and grabbed the cell phone.

We were walking to the front door when Taylor called to me. “Michael.”

I looked up. She was leaning over the loft railing. “What’s going on?”

“Ostin found my mother,” I said.

“I’ll be right there.” Taylor hurried down the stairs and joined us at the door. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure she was there when Grace downloaded the information,” Ostin said. “They could have moved her.”

“How did you find her?” I asked.

“I tracked her through their internal travel logs. I started with the date she disappeared, then went from there.”

Taylor and I followed Ostin back to Mitchell’s room.

“Is anyone else awake yet?” I asked Taylor.

“No. Everyone was exhausted.”

“They should be,” I said.

We walked into Mitchell’s room.

“I’ve got a feeling things are going to get even crazier,” Ostin said, pointing to a picture of my mother on the screen.

My heart froze at the sight of her. She looked tired and frightened and was wearing an Elgen jumpsuit.

“She’s being held at the Elgen Starxource plant in Puerto Maldonado, Peru.”

“Isn’t that where the fire rats escaped?” Taylor asked.

“Exactly,” Ostin said. “It’s a jungle town in the Amazon rain forest.”

“How long has she been there?” I asked. I noticed I was ticking but didn’t bother to try to control it.

“The travel records show that she was transported to Peru directly from Idaho.”

“How do we get to Peru?” Taylor asked. “Can we drive?”

“I’m not sure. We’d have to go through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador and halfway through Peru.”

Taylor just stared at him. “How do you know all that?”

“Geography is my strong subject,” Ostin said.

“Everything is your strong subject,” Taylor said.

“We’re going to have to fly,” I said.

“All of us?”

“We might have enough money,” I said.

“You can’t just fly into a foreign country,” Ostin said. “There’s customs and border control. Do you even have a passport?”

I had never traveled outside the country, so I hadn’t thought of any of that. “That will be a problem.”

“Not our biggest one,” Ostin said. “The compound she’s being held in is a fortress. It’s more prison than energy plant. It’s built on a twenty-five-thousand-acre ranch, and it has hundreds of guards. At least ten times more than what we faced at the academy.”

All the excitement I felt at locating my mother vanished in a puff of impossibility. What good was knowing where she was if we couldn’t reach her? She might as well be on the moon.

I put my head in my hands.

“What do we do now?” Taylor asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I turned to Ostin. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I think . . . ,” Ostin said. He thought for a moment. “I think I need some sleep.”

I exhaled heavily. “Yeah, get some sleep. Thanks for staying up.”

“No problem,” Ostin said. He lay down on Mitchell’s bed. A feeling of despair permeated the room.

Taylor said, “I know what we should do.”

“What?”

“Get bagels. I need to get out of here.”

After all we’d been through, something as normal as going out for bagels sounded fantastic.

“Maybe Jack or Wade are up by now.”

I looked at Ostin. He had already shut his eyes.

“Do you want something from the bagel place?” I asked.

“Sleep,” he said.

“Wow, you are tired,” Taylor said.

“And a blueberry bagel,” Ostin added. “Or chocolate chip if they have it. With strawberry cream cheese.”

“You got it,” I said. I started for the door, then suddenly stopped and turned back. The picture of my mother was still on the screen.

Taylor took my hand. “Things have a way of working out.”

I looked at her. “My mother used to say that.”

W
hen we walked back into the pool house, Jack was sitting at the kitchen table holding a spoon and eating from a carton of vanilla ice cream. “Where were you guys?”

“With Ostin,” I said. “He found my mother.”

He set down his spoon. “Awesome. Let’s go get her.”

“It’s not that simple,” Taylor said.

“She’s in Peru,” I said.

“Is that in Idaho?” he asked.

Taylor covered her eyes.

“No,” I said. “It’s in South America. They have her locked away in a huge compound.”

“Good,” he said. “I like a challenge.”

“Well, you’ve got one. The first is how we get there.”

“Maybe the
voice
can help us,” he said.

Taylor looked at me. “He’s right. I bet they could fly us there.”

The thought gave me hope. “If they call again.”

“They’ll call,” Taylor said. She turned to Jack. “In the meantime, we’re hungry for bagels. Will you drive us?”