| |
––––––––
“Why can’t you get the lock open?” Gabby whispered so close Rayen jumped. Her shoulder bumped the computer science lab door.
“I don’t know.” Rayen put her hand back on the knob and tried to concentrate again, but her stupid power wasn’t coming through. “I can’t make the power appear the way you can just talk in other people’s heads.”
Gabby shifted the backpack that she had to be tired of carrying. “I do not talk in other people’s heads without permission.”
“You did in mine.” The metal knob still hadn’t changed temperature.
“I never know when you hear me,” she argued.
Rayen started to tell her that it didn’t change the fact that she heard Gabby’s voice in her head sometimes, but she caught sight of the clock above the door for this hallway. Two-forty-one.
She warned Gabby, “Stand back. I have an idea. I’m going to try something different to call up my power.”
Gabby shuffled away.
The lock at the pueblo had sounded as if Rayen had broken it. She had to be careful not to destroy the door, but she closed her eyes and blocked out everything. Next, she started imagining Callan being attacked. Blood running down his face and—
Her chest warmed.
Good enough. The knot in her stomach loosened.
She opened her eyes and took a moment to let the energy swirl then she focused on her fingers cupping the lock. Nice and slow, she felt the energy pushing out through her fingers and warming the metal.
Slowly this time. Don’t push too hard.
An image of the tumblers appeared in her mind. Click, click ... the next one stuck. Maybe she had to put more power behind it. Her hand trembled. She drew again on the power, and it flooded her arm then her hand.
Click, click, bang then pop!
Rayen released the knob and looked up at Gabby with a smile. “I think I got it.”
Gabby grinned, ready to move forward and enter with her. Rayen had just touched the knob again when she heard, “Stop!”
Hannah came running up to them.
What was she going to tell Hannah? This doesn’t look like what you think? Any idiot would realize exactly what she was doing.
Rayen didn’t get a chance to say anything, because Hannah said in a rush, “If you open that door, you’ll set off alarms.”
Gabby groaned. “What are we going to do, Rayen?”
“I don’t know.”
Hannah said, “Lucky for you two, I have access to the code. Stand back.”
Rayen looked over at Gabby who gave her an I-don’t-have-a-clue-why-she’s-helping-us look. They both gave Hannah room, and she slid a keycard into a slot next to the door that Rayen had ignored because all the doors had those.
When a tiny light beamed green on the card slot, Hannah said, “Now you can open it, but you have five minutes.”
Gabby asked, “Why?”
“Because I just saw Tony and he said you had to come see him before three AM. It will take me ten minutes to get you into his detention cell.”
Hope surged so fast and hard through Rayen it should have exploded her heart. “We’ll hurry.”
But the minute she stepped inside the room, the sheer volume of technical supplies against the wall overwhelmed her. She had no idea what they had to collect in computer parts. She was not the techno geek that Tony and Hannah were.
Asking Hannah for any more help at this point would open the door to questions she didn’t want to answer.
Rayen nudged Gabby in her side. “How do we know what parts to take for Tony?”
“Select them the same way you chose the laptop that can—” Gabby looked over at the door and said, “—you know what.”
She meant the laptop computer Rayen had accidentally found that had opened a time travel portal. She hadn’t really chosen it. The computer had chosen her by pulling her hand to it as if the laptop had been a magnet and she’d been made of steel.
Had the laptop recognized the power inside her?
She followed Gabby to a wall of cabinets that were six feet tall and a foot thick. Plastic drawers started at four inches square at the top and grew larger with much wider ones across the bottom.
This was where she’d seen Tony grab computer parts the day they’d first met and he’d gotten stuck with her as a project partner.
But Tony was a technological genius who knew exactly what he’d needed that day.
Catching Rayen’s attention, Gabby held her hands up, palms facing the bins. She whispered, “Hold your hands like this.”
Rayen did as she asked. Nothing happened. “We only have four minutes. Maybe we should just start grabbing—”
Fifteen drawers opened out toward them.
Gabby laughed and started pulling out odd little parts, which she handed to Rayen. “Put them in the backpack.”
“That was bizarre,” Rayen muttered, carefully filling Tony’s backpack.
Still speaking softly, Gabby quipped, “Is it any more bizarre than traveling to the future, meeting kids with all kinds of gifts, and fighting everything from croggles to attack vines?”
She had a point.
She handed Rayen a part the size of her fingernail and said, “That’s the last one.”
“Maybe we should grab some more.”
But Gabby was distracted by something on the other side of the room. She said, “Pick out some more parts and I’ll be right back.”
Rayen had her hands full when she returned, holding a shiny silver laptop. “What are you doing?” Rayen hissed, watching for Hannah.
“You need a computer to save Callan, right?”
“Yes.”
“This is it.”
“We can’t steal someone’s computer.” But even as she said the words, she knew she wasn’t leaving without something to bargain with to keep Callan alive.
“This computer is donated. Stick it in the backpack before we run out of time.”
Rayen was loading the laptop and parts into the backpack while trying to make sense of Gabby’s explanation when Hannah stuck her head in and said, “Let’s go if you want to see Tony.”
Speaking of Tony, he’d have a meltdown if he saw how they’d selected parts.
They hurried out the door. Hannah locked it behind them, then she swiped her card back through the slot. When the light turned red, Rayen assumed the alarm was set again.
Hannah took off and they had to jog to stay with her.
Gabby’s shoulders were sagging from the weight of the backpack. Rayen offered, “Want me to carry that?”
She sent back a pained look and shook her head. “I’d love for you to take this thing, but I’m afraid of going airborne without the weight.”
Nodding, Rayen grabbed a strap to lift the backpack and lighten the weight some.
They had been lagging, but now she and Gabby were really moving. She glanced over at her friend and did a double take.
Gabby’s feet were moving, but not touching the floor.
When Hannah finally stopped at an elevator and turned to check on them, Rayen let go of the backpack faster than she’d intended.
Gabby stumbled under the sudden weight and glared at her.
She murmured, “Sorry.”
Hannah might be pleasant to Tony, but with them she was abrupt. “I don’t have all day. Hurry up.”
While the elevator carried them down to the basement level, Rayen asked Hannah, “Why are you helping us?”
Her mouth twisted up as if she’d eaten something sour. “I’m not doing anything for you.”
This had clearly been for Tony, but that didn’t explain why she’d take this much risk.
Gabby must have picked up on Rayen’s thinking. She warned Hannah, “You better find a way to wipe your electronic trail out of security or they’ll be questioning you about what you were doing in the computer lab this morning.”
The elevator doors opened, and Hannah’s haughty smile came out. “I didn’t use my keycard.”
As they followed her down the hall, Rayen asked, “Whose did you use?”
“Nicholas Brown’s.”
Gabby grinned and covered her mouth to smother her laugh.
Rayen found that funny, too, but was too worried about what little time they had left to open the portal to actually enjoy the moment.
Hannah paused at a door and pulled out the same keycard to slide into a slot, but it wouldn’t open the door. “What the heck?”
She tried it two more times.
“Is that you, Hannah babe?” Tony called from the other side of the door.
Gabby made a silly face at the endearment.
Hannah said, “Yes, but I can’t get Nick’s keycard to work.”
Sirens whined upstairs. An alarm had been set off on another floor.
Hannah’s face drained of color. Her words rushed out in a flurry. “We must have tripped something by opening the computer lab door this early in the morning. If security contacted Nick, they know it wasn’t him and that’s why Nick’s card has stopped working. We have to get out of here now. Security will be here in five minutes.”
No. If they couldn’t free Tony, then Callan would die. Rayen would not panic, but those sirens were sending her pulse into overdrive. Heat built in her chest and wicked out through every limb.
She pushed Hannah aside and called to Tony, “Back away from the door and protect yourself, Jersey.” Gripping the knob, she called up her power and forced it into the lock.
The handle exploded and the door flew inward.
Tony stared at her then shook his head. “Daa-yum, Xena.”
He rushed out and looked first at Hannah. She stared at Rayen with her mouth hanging open. Tony grabbed Hannah’s arm, distracting her. “Can you get out of here safely?”
“Yes.”
Then Tony kissed her in a way that should have set off the fire alarms. He broke apart from her, worry chomping in his gaze. “Go, Hannah. Get out of here first so if we get caught you won’t be with us.”
She nodded and started for the elevator.
Tony turned to Gabby and Rayen. “If someone chases us, we separate, then once we’re clear, go to the computer storage room where we found the portal computer.”
Sirens whined all around them on this floor and a mechanical voice shouted, “A. Scolerio, return to your unit. A. Scolerio—”
What if that storage room was alarmed?
They didn’t have Hannah with a key card. They couldn’t make it back upstairs and they couldn’t access the portal computer if they had to leave it anywhere that people would find it while they were gone.
