Battlefield (3 page)

“I do manual labor on a regular basis actually. It helps me to relate to all of you little people in the world.” Orlando wasn't being serious, but when his buttons were pushed the wrong way, he let it fly, and there was little that could be done to hold him back.

“Guys,” Cadence cut in before JD could think up a response. “We don't need to fight. How about we meet at about twelve-thirty tomorrow afternoon. It's not too early, but not too late. We'll have plenty of time to talk for awhile if we need to. Are you sure it's not going to be a problem if we're over there? No, you know, unwanted eyes and ears?”

“I'm sure,” Orlando managed to say without grinding his teeth. “My parents are out of town for a while. The place is usually empty, and we've got a number of good, sound-proofed meeting areas in the house.” Not to mention hidden rooms. Some his sister didn't even know about. “I'm sure we can find a spot that will be more than enough to meet our needs. Who knows? Maybe we can even make it a headquarters or something.”

“Like a bat cave. I've always wanted a bat cave,” JD said with obvious awe.

Orlando was pretty sure he even heard the other boy giggle a little. What kind of a guy giggled? The sound grated on his nerves.

“I'll get you one for Christmas. I'll be sure to have something ready for lunch and tell my sister you're coming so she's not caught off guard,” he said. Timmy finally wasn't able to take the forced cuddling anymore, and wiggled free from his grasp. With a pout, he began to chase the cat around the room. “Anyway, I should get going. I'll see you tomorrow.”

He didn't wait for them to say goodbye and hung up as he watched Timmy jump onto his bookshelf and scale to the top. “You know I don't like it when you go up there and eat my books.” The cats had a bad habit of chewing on anything made of paper.

Checking to see if the door was indeed locked, Orlando concentrated on Timmy and bringing him back down to the ground. It didn't take long for the cat to float into his arms and let out a quiet howl of surprise.

“Don't go up there anymore. It's not safe. Go and chase your brother or something.” He put Timmy on the ground again before shooing him out of the room.

Lyssa hadn't noticed or come to check on him, and she was still nowhere nearby. He closed the door again, only this time he left it unlocked and went to his bag to pull out his books. He couldn't stay focused on his reading though. His mind kept wandering back to the events of the day.
Super powers...

 

JD got out of his car and looked at the Holmes Mansion. “Yowza! I'm pretty sure this thing is as big as the high school.” He couldn't help but admire the stone walkway that lead up to the large, red-brick mansion that could easily pass for a modern castle. It was an amazing sight to behold, and he was convinced it had the length of an entire city block.

“I don't know about that,” Cadence said. She tried to hide it, but he could tell she was also impressed. It would have been stupid for either of them to not be, but he knew she had a personal issue with turning into a bumbling idiot over material-type things. There was something else different about her as well, but JD couldn't quite put his finger on what, or if he liked it. She'd been unusually quiet the whole trip there.

“Look, there he is.” She pointed towards a small section of garden near what they assumed was the front entrance. Orlando was kneeling over a pot and pulling at a patch of weeds when he noticed them. He acknowledged their presence with a nod before returning to his work.

Seeing Orlando do physical labor gave JD a lot of joy for some reason. Then again, he'd always thought the guy had it made and would never know what real work was. “What? No gardener to do it for you?” Cadence shot him a dark look. Orlando did, too.

“I told you, I had chores,” he said with a grunt as he gave the weeds another rough pull.

“How about a break now that we're here?” Cadence suggested.

“Sounds good to me.” He stood up and dusted off the spilled dirt on his jeans and sighed. “I would have made myself more presentable for you guys, but my sister said I wasn't allowed to look normal as part of my punishment. Sorry if I smell a lot. I've been out here all day. There's lunch though. I'm not sure if you've eaten or not.”

“I'm always ready to eat. Lead the way,” JD said.

“Right,” Orlando mumbled and made a weak hand gesture for them to follow him inside. JD had a hard time keeping up with him because every so many feet he'd stop to gawk at something: the crystal light fixtures, the marble floors; it was all like something out of a fairytale for him.

“I can give you a grand tour after we eat if you want. Then you can be amazed and stare as much as you want, but I'm kind of hungry,” Orlando said.

“Sorry.” JD bit his lip and tried to contain his curiosity for later.

There was grilled cheese waiting for them in the kitchen, and he was pretty sure there were cookies in the oven, too.

“I didn't realize you liked us enough to bake,” JD said as he grabbed a couple of sandwiches and poured himself a glass of lemonade.

“Hate to disappoint you, but my sister made lunch.”

JD and Cadence exchanged a glance and shrugged. Conversation was weak at the table while they ate, but they were only there for business anyway.

“So where are we going to work on this? Do you have a place where we won't be bothered by any unwanted visitors?” Cadence asked.

“Of course.” Orlando flashed her a smile as he collected the used plates. “Lyssa is good about keeping her nose out of where it doesn't belong, but there are a few nooks and corners she doesn't know exist. My dad, when he designed the building, littered this place with secret passages going all over the place. I know a good one. It goes to a completely separate wing of the house. She doesn't know how to get there.”

Orlando led them through the hallways, down the stairs to the basement level, and into a bland, dirty, and spider-covered storage closet.

“And you found this how?” JD asked with wide eyes, a tingle of excitement running down his spine. An entire secret wing to this mansion? He'd always wanted to live in a house with secret passages. Now his jealousy was doubled.

Orlando rubbed at the back of his head, glancing back at the other two. “Random chance.”

“This is gross,” Cadence said. “Like really gross and unsanitary.” She picked a spiderweb from her hair and checked to make sure no creepy eight-legged beasts were crawling on her.

Orlando stared at her with a raised eyebrow. “And I was looking for spiders so I could continue to practice my black magic,” his voice rich with sarcasm once more. “Actually, I have a den not too far away from here that I'll hang out in sometimes. I was playing around with a ball, and it rolled in here and to the back.” He motioned for them to come closer. “When I picked it up, I found this.” He pointed towards a barely visible crack in the wall.

It would have looked natural, but when they followed the crack for long enough, they found it separated into the shape of a square exactly five inches by five inches, on a set of hinges. Orlando demonstrated how to open it, and inside was a small lever. After he pulled it, a section of the wall released for easy maneuvering.

“I got curious.” He gestured for them to go through first.

“This kind of makes me feel like I'm in a horror movie,” JD said as he walked through the wall and stepped into a tight hallway made of cement blocks.

“Yeah, you caught me. I'm a serial killer who likes to collect shrunken heads. You better run away as fast as you can,” Orlando said as he closed the wall behind them. He gave JD a nudge forward. “There's nowhere to go except to the other side.”

The hallway itself was fairly long. It went the rest of the length of the house and then turned left. Almost immediately after the turn was a door with a keypad lock. Orlando entered the code and opened the door. On the other side was a completely empty room the size of Cadence's one thousand square feet, two-bedroom apartment.

“Welcome to the secret house in the house. I was thinking about this last night after I got off the phone. It seemed like it might meet our needs,” he said with a smirk.

“It actually is like a bat cave, only without all of the bats. Or anything, actually. But how are we supposed to get in? We can't just come into your house all of the time. That would be a little weird,” JD said.

“There's an entrance on the outside, too. We can get a lock installed and get a secret code. Assuming we do this, of course. Also, you know those tunnels that run through the town for all of the random sanitation stuff they do? They're connected to this, too. There are a lot of ways to get in, and a lot of ways we can make, so you two don't have to come over to ‘play' all of the time. After all, I'd hate to tarnish your image.”

He then escorted them to a massive spiraling stairwell spanning from the basement all the way up to the top, fourth floor.

JD stared up it in awe. “Can we get a pole? Or an elevator? Or both?”

“Maybe.”

The next floor had two rooms and a bathroom. One of the rooms was completely empty with large glass windows looking out toward the forest in the backyard. The other room had a wall containing only books—old, dusty books, at that. The following floor had two more rooms that were slightly smaller to compensate for the larger bathroom complete with a Jacuzzi bath and a large steam shower. The fourth and final floor was similar to an attic, small and only usable for storage space.

“Can I move here? Seriously, this would be amazing if it wasn't invaded by dust bunnies,” JD said. The idea was tempting. He'd have peace and quiet here, and he wouldn't be at the beck and call of his parents all of the time.

“So you approve? Because if we're going to do this, then we're going to need a base of operation,” Orlando said, looking between the two.

Cadence stared, soaking it all in. “Well, it would meet all of our needs, but are you sure it's secure? Nobody knows about it?”

He shrugged and found a spot on the wall to lean against. “My parents and the builders of the house. I'm pretty sure the builders don't care, and my parents? Well, if you take a look at the state of things, you can see they don't either. I don't know why they even built it. My sister doesn't know it's here, and as far as I know, it's secure. We can change the code on the lock easily without any problems. It won't be hard to work around at all.”

She nodded and looked around some more. “That's good. I like it. It seems practical. We can divide the rooms up for all sorts of different things. I don't know what we're going to have to do, but I imagine our alien friend will be telling us soon. He did say he'd get in touch with us if anything ‘interesting' happened soon. Which reminds me of why we were meeting in the first place.”

“Right, show and tell,” Orlando said. The two of them both faced JD.

“What? Why are you both looking at me? One of you go first,” he said, shifting slightly where he stood. How was he going to tell them he still didn't have anything ‘unique' happen? As far as he knew, he was powerless and didn't know how they would react to that. More importantly, he didn't know how Alan would react. He didn't think the alien would hurt him, but he couldn't be too sure.

Orlando gestured at Cadence. “Ladies first, I insist.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I can't exactly show you what it is I do, but somehow in the course of the last twenty-four hours my intelligence has increased to the point where I know, basically, everything there is to know.”

“Nobody knows everything,” Orlando countered. His eyebrow shot up, and he adjusted his long bangs so they were no longer in his face.

“I do. I mean, I can't see the future, but somehow I've gained a lot of knowledge I didn't have before,” Cadence said with a shaky voice. JD wouldn't have believed it himself if she hadn't seemed so distressed over the idea. He knew her well enough to be able to tell she was scared. Still, she had to prove it.

“I mean, I like, calculated the value of pi to the one-hundredth decimal last night because I was bored and I could. I, like, even checked it on the Internet, and it was right.”

Orlando gasped at the news mockingly. “Like, OMG! Really?”

“I'm being serious here!”

“And I think I need some more solid proof.” He folded his arms in front of himself. “What's two plus two?”

“Oh man, give me a break. Four.” she groaned.

And he continued to run her through every possible combination of math problem he could think of, though whether or not he knew the correct answer or not, JD didn't know. Regardless, she answered them all and did so with confidence and grace.

“Explain quantum physics to me,” Orlando said.

“For the love of,” JD began to mumble under his breath. “Dude, you're going to break her brain asking her things like that.”

Cadence let out a quiet growl. “No, if he wants to discuss quantum physics, we can, but maybe we should wait for a time when it won't break your brain.” She glared at JD and folded her arms in front of her chest. “I wish you'd have more faith in me.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” She shook her head and returned her attention to Orlando. “Look, I don't know how to prove it to you, but you're just going to have to trust me. Why would I lie about something like this anyway? You both know me, or know enough about me to know I don't lie when it comes to this stuff. It's freaking me out a lot.”

JD stared down at the ground because she was right. He shouldn't have doubted her. Why would she lie, especially to him? Orlando's jaw was slack.

“Well,” he started, obviously placing a lot of thought into all of his words because he spoke slowly. Normally, Orlando was quick to jab. “I think I'd rather talk more about the meta-physical. I don't suppose you know a whole lot about telekinesis?”

“I know a few theories on it, but there isn't much that's conclusive on the subject. Why? Are you saying you're telekinetic?” she asked.

Orlando nodded. “Something like that.”

As JD continued to watch the exchange between his two comrades, he couldn't help but begin to feel lost. Cadence used a large word like ‘conclusive'? And while he was familiar with the term telekinesis, he would never admit out loud that he didn't know the exact meaning of the word. Especially considering how he prided himself on his vast knowledge of super powers and comic book heroes. He wondered how long he could ride it out and fake his way through the entire conversation before they figured out he had no idea what was going on.

“Cool. So show us. Come on,” JD said.

With a deep sigh, Orlando closed his eyes and concentrated hard. Within seconds there were books floating around the room. They were removed, one by one, from their place on the nearby bookshelf and circled the group. Just as quickly as it had begun, it abruptly ended, and they all fell to the ground simultaneously.

“I won't say it necessarily hurts, or that it's hard to do, but it does take a lot of my willpower to stay focused. I think I can figure out how to make it work better,” Orlando said.

“That's really cool,” JD said quietly. His jealousy was becoming harder and harder to hide. Of course Orlando would get the best power of the three since he had the best of everything else. “So we have the brains of our operation, and the obligatory awesomely powerful one who can do anything, and me. I didn't get any powers yesterday. At least, I didn't get any that I'm aware of.”

“Oh,” the other two said quietly in unison.

“It'll come. We can still talk logistics and strategy, although I don't know what we're supposed to be doing exactly. I guess we wait for our hot alien friend to fill us in on those details, huh?” Cadence said with a weak smile.

JD's jaw tightened, and he was about to say something when, as if on cue, Alan spoke.

“Yes,” his voice came from nowhere. The trio searched the room for him, but came up dry.