38 Things Get Stranger
The next morning, we all met in the lobby at six a.m. We had a long and uncertain day ahead of us. Yet I felt lighter than I had in weeks. Taylor and I were holding hands.
“How were the massages?” I asked Zeus and Quentin.
“Heavenly,” Quentin said. “I’m going to marry that girl.”
“He always says that after a massage,” Tara says.
“That’s not true,” Quentin said. “Just after the good ones.”
“Wait,” Nichelle said to me and Taylor. “What’s that on your hands?”
Everyone looked.
“Are you guys engaged?” Tara asked.
We looked at each other with broad smiles. “I guess we are,” Taylor said.
“Congratulations, dude,” Ostin said.
“Thanks.”
The girls all gathered around Taylor to hug her and see the ring. Zeus, Ian, and Quentin gave me fist bumps.
After things had settled down a little, Quentin said to me, “Sorry to bring us back to reality, but have we heard anything from team A or Veytric?”
“Nothing.”
“On to plan B, then,” Nichelle said.
“The B being breakfast,” Ostin said, walking to the buffet table.
“Eat up,” I said. “It’s probably going to be the last time we stop to eat today.”
We pulled a few tables together and got food. No one said much about the day; rather, we talked about our engagement and things that had happened the day before.
Finally I looked at my watch. “We’d better get going.”
As we walked around the corner of the hotel, two men walked out of the shadows. They were Peruvian men, one holding a machete, the other a knife. They were surprisingly well dressed. One of them said to Zeus, “Give us your keys and your money.”
Zeus just grinned at them with amusement. “Talk about wrong place, wrong time,” he said. “You morons know how to pick ’em, don’t you, guys?” He turned back to us. “Look at these clowns.”
“Give us your wallets and purses now!”
“I read that there’s a lot of petty crime in Huancayo,” Nichelle said.
“Where’d you read that?” Tara asked.
“Just online.”
“Want me to reboot them?” Taylor asked.
“No. I want them to remember this,” I said.
The muggers looked back and forth between us, growing increasingly impatient. The one holding the machete shook it threateningly and shouted, “Give us your keys and wallets now!”
Zeus shook his head. “Here you go,” he said, pretending to reach into his pocket. “No wait, I’ll give you this instead.” Zeus blasted them hard. One flew six feet back against the hotel wall and collapsed, unconscious. The other dropped to the ground unconscious and was foaming at the mouth. Smoke rose from their clothing.
“Take their knives so they don’t hurt someone else,” I said.
“I got them,” Nichelle said, taking the weapons from them. She brought them over to McKenna. “If you will.”
McKenna held the machete in one hand, the knife in the other, and melted both blades together, then ran her hand along the length of the blades, fusing them completely. Then she bent the blades back on themselves. She handed the thing back to Nichelle. “Hold it by the handles. It’s hot.”
Nichelle threw the melted thing down onto the ground. “You can try to bludgeon someone with that.” Then she knelt down next to the first guy. “These are nice shoes. I wonder who you stole them from. I bet someone more worthy could use these.” She took both of their shoes off and threw them next to a place where some homeless had clearly nested. “Now those guys have done a good deed.”
“Just think what they’ll be telling themselves after they wake,” Tara said.
“If they wake,” Taylor said. “Maybe they’ll rethink their life choices.”
“Or at least their career choices,” Nichelle said.
“That was a lot of electricity,” I said to Zeus. “A little pent-up aggression?”
“A little,” he said, grinning.
“Good. We’ll need it.” I turned to Ian. “You didn’t see them standing there?”
“I wasn’t looking. I was distracted.”
“By what?” Zeus asked.
“Those birds over there.”
“Not making me feel real safe,” Zeus said.
“Hey, when the game’s on, I’m all in. We’re still in the locker room.”
“So, technically, when are we on the playing field?” Zeus asked. “Just so I know.”
“When I say so,” Ian said.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We left the men still smoking on the ground.
We packed all our things into the cars, then split up into our previous vehicle assignments and headed north, backtracking our route from two days before. Our plan was to take what was originally team A’s route, then position ourselves in their perch and invade the colony from the north.
It took more than seven hours for us to retrace the route back toward the colony. We stopped in Alto Anapati.
“Look,” Ian said. “Their car.”
Team A’s car was parked behind a grove of trees. We walked over to it.
“Not much sign of a struggle,” Quentin said.
“I don’t get how it got here when we were chasing it,” McKenna said.
“More to this than it seems,” Ostin said. “We were chasing the trackers, not the car.”
“Which leads to more questions,” Quentin said.
We looked through the car more. Any weapons or electronics they would have had were now gone.
“Whoever did this was waiting for them,” Ostin said.
I looked around. So did Ian.
“Do you see anyone?” I asked.
“Not so far.”
Still, we parked our car a quarter mile away from where team A had parked, then, following Ian’s directions, headed up into the forest. The weather had turned slightly overcast, with darker clouds to the southeast. I just hoped it wouldn’t rain, taking Zeus out. We needed him.
“What do you think about those clouds?” I asked Ostin.
“Pretty,” he said.
I looked at him.
“I know what you meant. I’m just kidding. The wind’s in our favor,” he said. “Peru’s afternoon prevailing winds are southeast, so they should be blown away.”
I still wasn’t used to Ostin’s kidding. The hike was about three miles to team A’s first staging point. There was no indication that they had been there. Then we moved on to staging point two, a concealed area that looked out over the colony below.
“There it is,” Ian said. “The colony.”
I lifted the binoculars. In the distance I could see the tall wall around the compound. There was a large gate on the north wall.
“Do you see anyone?” I asked Ian.
“The tall building is the medical building. Colony housing is behind it.”
“They have a lot of land,” I said. “What are all those other buildings?”
“I just felt something,” Nichelle whispered.
“Felt what?”
“I don’t know. It was in my gut. It felt like a wave.”
“Maybe that’s coming from the one who can sense us,” Taylor said.
“Can you see anyone coming?” I asked Ian.
“No.”
“Can you see Abigail?” I pressed Ian.
“No. But there’s a lot of people. Almost forty.”
“Thirty-seven,” a voice said. “If you count house staff and the hospital crew.”
We all turned around. There were three people standing behind us. The one in the middle leaned on a cane. “You must be the Electroclan.” He looked at me. “And you must be Michael. It’s really an honor. My name is Chispa. We’ve been waiting for you.”