The Boy Who Knew Everything (24 page)

“What's this?” Conrad touched the top of a wooden wand mounted on the wall.

“Uh, I dunno. Lemme think.” Max picked it up and turned it over and then started carelessly throwing it in the air. “Oh yeah, I remember. It's a water-thingy. It purifies water or something, but I can't get it to work anymore. Once I was talking to this guy and he told me that all the water is going to like dry up. Wait, what was that dude's name again? Nost-something.”

“Nostradamus?”

“Whoa, how'd you know that? You've got like a gift. Anyway, he said the world was gonna go thirsty and it was gonna happen real sudden. And it'd be bad, too, and throw the whole planet into a dark age, cause without clean water everyone would lose their minds and fight and stuff. So one of the folks up here cooked up this water purifier. It'll turn sand into clean drinking water. Amazing, right? Except they died and I can't make heads or tails of it. Too bad 'cause it'd have saved millions of lives. Or maybe billions.”

Suddenly bored, Max tossed the water purifier aside and forgot about it. “Anyway, it's a cool, fun, party-time up here, right?” Max flung his arms open wide. “Betcha never seen stuff like this.”

Conrad nodded. “It's impressive.” Turning around and surveying the new domain, he took a deep breath of satisfaction. “Let's get to work.”

 

CHAPTER

34

By the time they arrived at Area 63 Jasper was so nervous he could hardly put two words together.

“H-H-Hellion,” he struggled, unable to say more.

“Yes, yes, they're keeping Letitia in there. We'll break in and get her out.” J. spoke in his usual no-nonsense manner. He'd led the kids to a thicket of trees under the cover of darkness where they could gather themselves before breaking into the facility.

“And why is this a good idea, again?” Kimber eyed the guard towers and armed security forces lurking within.

“Without my sister there's no way to fly across that valley. Letitia's probably the only person alive who can help us figure out how to get to Conrad and Piper.” J. tied a rope around his waist and attached night-vision goggles around his head. “There are seven separate checkpoints, sensors on all walls, some of which are activated by body heat. Violet and Lily will go in first and—”

“We don't need you to tell us what to do,” Nalen said stiffly.

“We can figure it out ourselves,” Ahmed agreed.

J. noticed how the kids all stood close together, glaring at him. He threw up his hands. “Fine,” he surrendered. “Lead the way.”

If J. was impressed by what he saw over the next ten hair-raising minutes, he managed not to show it. Ahmed and Nalen created lightning, which they directed to hit the main power grid, blowing it out and allowing them a sliver of opportunity to enter the facility before the power transferred over to generators; Smitty located every sensor, and Kimber disabled them with electrical bursts; Lily moved a shrunk-down Violet up to the cameras, and Violet directed them away.

J. took them to Letitia's room and Daisy broke the door open so that they could silently creep inside.

Letitia Hellion had her back to the door and sat on the side of her bed, looking at the wall in front of her. She'd been fitted into a straitjacket and her arms were tied securely at the back of it. There was a ghostly silence in the room so that their footfalls sounded ominous and clumsy.

When Letitia didn't move or respond to their arrival the tension mounted.

“Are you sure that's her?” Violet whispered to J. The mat of black hair looked familiar but nothing about the woman before them was as they remembered her.

“Of course,” J. returned. He cleared his throat and spoke gently. “Letitia, it's me, Jeston. I've come to get you out.”

Letitia did not respond.

“Letitia?”

“I thought you said she was okay,” Smitty hissed.

J. raised his hand to silence Smitty, his brow furrowed with concern. “I found it, Letitia. It was just like you said, and I can take you there now. I've come to get you out.”

Letitia remained like a statue.

The small hairs on the back of J.'s neck stood at attention. “Stay here,” he commanded the kids, and cautiously approached Letitia.

J. was conscious of the way he placed his feet, wanting to ease toward his sister without startling or upsetting her. He had expected her to be excited to see him. What could have happened since he'd been gone?

Coming around the side of her bed, J. kept his eyes fixed on her and what he saw sent shivers down his spine, stopping him in his tracks.

Letitia Hellion's face was frozen in a position of abject terror; her eyes open and large, her pupils fixed on something only she could see. Her mouth quivered open but made no sound. It looked like she was screaming: a scream only she could hear.

“Letitia!” J. rushed to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Letitia, what is it?”

Letitia Hellion seemed unaware of J. Whatever she was seeing was so terrible she couldn't move.

J. grabbed for the straitjacket and roughly pulled at it. Now that they could see that Letitia was not a threat, the kids rushed forward to help, and Daisy promptly shredded the jacket off of her.

With her arms free Letitia threw them forward as though reaching for someone. J. tried to take her hands but she reached past him.

“Look!” Smitty pointed at Letitia's throat.

All eyes focused on a necklace made of twisted gold with a flashing red stone mounted in the center that made the children recoil.

“How did Dr. Hellion get a bloodstone?” Violet breathed in a hushed voice.

J. quickly yanked it from her neck, threw it to the ground, and crushed it beneath his heel. A bright red light exploded from underneath his foot.

Letitia sank into herself like a deflated balloon. Her arms fell and her face slackened but still she did not acknowledge the presence of J. and the kids.

“She's falling and I can't reach her,” she babbled in a whisper. “Must save her. Can't let her fall.”

“Letitia?” J. touched her shoulder. “Letitia, it's all right.”

“She's falling. She's falling!” Letitia continued to whisper in frantic tones. “No! No!”

J. let his hand drop and rubbed his fingers against his jaw.

“What's she saying?” Kimber leaned closer to Letitia. “What's the matter?”

“She thinks she's back with Sarah. Sarah was our younger sister and Letitia accidentally dropped her while she was flying in a rainstorm.” J. sighed deeply. “It's her worst nightmare.”

“Dr. H-H-Hellion?” Jasper was by far the most frightened of Letitia, but he also happened to be the most kindhearted of the group, and it pained him to see anyone in such a state. “Dr. Hellion, it's o-okay.”

Letitia was out of reach of Jasper's words and so he rubbed his hands together until they glowed and lay them on her. But his healing light seemed to have no effect on her, for better or worse, and she continued her muttering.

“Grab my hand. Hold on,” Letitia panted. “Don't let go.”

Jasper looked to J. for direction.

“He got to her before we could,” J. growled, “and trapped her inside her worst fears. Probably so she couldn't help us.”

Smitty looked over his shoulder, scanning the hallway for movement. “He who?”

“Exactly,” J. agreed. “Who? The same
who
that left these bloodstones at the accident sites and shot Conrad. That
who
.”

“But what do we do now?” Violet worried. “How will we get across the valley?”

As a beeping siren sounded in the depths of Area 63 the gathered group stood watching a madwoman, lost and muttering.

For once J. had no plan. He sat down next to his sister, defeated.

“It's n-n-no good staying here.” Jasper's thin voice quavered. “L-let's go.”

“What about her?” Lily nodded at Dr. Hellion.

J. looked to Jasper with haunted eyes and for once Jasper made a decision without first thinking what Conrad would do.

“We'll take her with us,” Jasper said, tossing J. his backpack.

Moments later when the guards stormed the room they found it empty, making Letitia Hellion the first and only prisoner ever to escape Area 63.

 

CHAPTER

35

At last Conrad got a proper glimpse at the inner workings of the bloodstone, thanks to Max. Max rummaged through the deepest reaches of the Knowledge Center and pulled an eyeball the size of a loaf of bread from a back shelf and dusted it off. Max explained to Conrad how he'd salvaged the eye from the carcass of a giant a few thousand years ago, and showed him how to strap it over his own eye and peek through it. When Conrad did so the eye granted unearthly vision and the secrets of the bloodstone appeared before him.

Conrad wasn't surprised to confirm that the bloodstone was mainly comprised of beryllium and lanthanum. But an unidentifiable mystery component mixed in held the stone together and gave it the deep red color. For lack of a better word Conrad described the component as “intelligent.”

“It's reactive!” Conrad explained to Max.

“I don't get it.” Max lounged on a Ming dynasty chair and was amusing himself by throwing nasty-nuts into an old vase he'd placed on a table several feet away.

“Whatever is in the bloodstone, it's adapting, changing right before my eyes.” Conrad quickly pulled together a few nearby materials and created a small explosion on the table.

This caught Max's attention. “Whoa.”

“Watch!” Conrad pointed at the rock as it began to glow and suck the explosion toward it. “It's absorbing the energy. It's acting like a giant magnet, pulling the energy into its core and then holding it there like a battery.”

Max repeated Conrad's experiment and created a similar result. “Awesome. Now what?”

Conrad bent over the rock, studying it further. “It's adapting. Which means it's trainable and … it's learning.” Conrad remembered the rock around his father's neck. “I'm willing to bet that you can program these to live off someone's life force like a parasite.”

“How'd you do that?” Max was poking at the rock now with one of the instruments.

“I don't know the
how
yet.” Conrad stood up and began to pace.

Max got up and paced too, like he was trying on a role for size. “I dunno what's happening, but something is happening and it's totally wild. So what are you going to do now?”

“I need to create a model that will allow me to extrapolate and predict future events.”

“Huh?”

“I don't have a statistically relevant pool of data.” Conrad was talking more to himself than to Max. “I need to create search criteria that will isolate similar global events that match the pattern I have already identified. I'll have to work my way through history—not all of history, just the last thousand years.…”

With great fervor Conrad began moving through the room, collecting information and bits of equipment. Obviously, his Direct Brain Interface was in perfect working order, but without access to the internet in Xanthia he was bereft of large online data pools. This was no longer a problem with the resources of the Knowledge Center at his fingertips.

The thoughtful and stationary aspect of this work suddenly discouraged Max. “Oookay.” He sat back down. “That sounds time-consuming.” His foot tapped back and forth impatiently. “Dude, I'm hungry. You hungry?”

“Mmm.” Conrad was giving Max only a small portion of his available attention.

“Well, I'm gonna get some grub. You want some too?”

“Mmmm.”

Max headed for the door.

“Oh, Max?” Conrad had suddenly snapped back to the moment at hand. “Can you find Piper? She'll want to be part of this and she doesn't know where I am.”

“Piper?” Max looked confused. “You mean the flyer?”

“That's the one.”

Max pointed at Conrad and made a clicking noise. “You got it, big guy. Back in a flash.”

Conrad hardly noticed when Max returned.

“Piper wants to hang with AnnA. Apparently AnnA's going to show her the singing caves,” Max reported. “She says she'll catch you later.”

Conrad nodded and continued with his work.

After Max had eaten his food and then eaten Conrad's food he began to rappel from the ceiling of the Knowledge Center. When that got boring he jumped from bookshelf to bookshelf without touching the floor. That got old too so he dressed up in a suit of armor from a fifteenth-century English castle and began attacking imaginary foes.

*   *   *

A day later Max had exhausted all possible variations of jumping, climbing, fighting, and juggling the many artifacts in the room. He lounged on a guillotine and made popping sounds with his mouth.

“Clu, clu, clu.” Max varied the volume, playing with the echo in the room.

Conrad was no longer aware of the passage of time. His days and nights were marked by only one thing: quantifying damage and assigning a numeric amount to each encounter. Every war, every disaster created surges in energy and those surges created patterns that were not accidental. There was a purpose to it all. There was a plan.…

He was learning that whoever was behind these events would be striking again soon—and in a big way. The pattern suggested that every few years there was one disaster or another. According to Conrad's estimation the next one was due to be a big one, and it was imminent. He was getting closer to it—so close, until …

“Done!” Conrad completed what he was writing with a flourish and held up a piece of paper with six numbers on it.

Max jerked himself upright. Conrad hadn't spoken in so long that he hung on his every word. “What's that?”

“Those are the coordinates of the next disaster site,” Conrad said with certainty.