Break The Ice (24 page)

“Anybody?” Dan says. He stands in the middle of it all, between the three Dinmani and me. His eyes shift every two seconds. Me. Dead Dinmani at my feet. The others. Me again.

“Nothing good,” I say.

Ti lets out a primal scream. She grabs the closest table and flips it sideways, sending it ten feet farther away from us. “I’ll kill him myself.” Marching towards me, she says, “Take me to Tinjo.”

It’s hard to find my words. “I can’t,” I finally get out.

Ti grabs my collar. She’s a few inches shorter than me, but her intense stare makes up for it. I’d never noticed how intimidating she can get. It’s not usually noticeable because of her playful demeanor. At this moment, it breaks through. Every muscle tense, every vein bulging, she looks me in the eyes and tightens her grip. “I said take me to him.”

I place a hand on her shoulder. There’s no use getting angry at her aggression. I understand it. I envy it a little. Watching her makes me a little ashamed at how absent I am about Ted’s death. Loch and she knew each other longer, but that doesn’t excuse anything. “I can’t. Not unless you know where he’s hiding at. But I will. Alright? And trust me, we’ll all get a crack at him.”

Ti pushes past me but stops for a second by the building’s entrance. “Not before I do.” She disappears inside.

“Wait,” Tinjen says before I can even try following. “We must take Loch’s body back to Dintar. He deserves to lie in peace on his homeland.”

Without much thought, I snap my fingers and a portal opens up next to me. The tug of energy pulls me down a little more. I pushed myself too hard in the fight, and it’s obvious now.

“You will not take him yourself?” Tinjen says.

“I need to make sure Ti doesn’t go get herself killed. Dan, will you–”

“Yes,” he says, not making any cracks about being alone with Tinjen.

I nod. “Get back here as soon as you can. We have work to do.” Turning my back on them, I follow after Ti, leaving the portal open and draining the little amount of energy I have left.

“You.”

The word comes from a hallway up ahead as soon as I take my first step into the building.

“You killed him!”

Mel.

I race forward, darting around the corner and pushing through the unlocked door into the main lobby. Mel stands beneath Ted’s body. Her eyes are red and swollen, wet with tears. She’s only a foot away from Ti. There’s a tension in the air and my hair stands on end, waiting for the worst.

Neither of them make any moves. I inch closer, hoping to get in the middle before Mel launches herself at Ti again.

“You killed him,” she says again.

“No,” Ti says. Her voice is calm and collected, the opposite of only seconds ago. “But I know who did.”

“You’re all the same,” she says.

Ti shakes her head. “I would never kill somebody. Not like this, not for no reason at all.”

Mel shrinks a little next to Ti as she lets her body relax. She stumbles forward but Ti catches her shoulders. “They killed my friend,” Mel says.

“They killed my brother,” Ti says.

I stop, suddenly cold and finding it hard to breathe. Loch, her brother? “Ti…”

She holds up a hand without even turning to look at me. “Nobody knew, not even Loch. My mother made me promise to keep her secret before she died, and I did.”

“Sounds like we’ve all lost someone now.” It’s Dan. Tinjen and he stand next to the door.

“Let us find the man who took them away,” Tinjen says.

Mel wipes a falling tear away. It cuts through the dirt and grime on her face, leaving a thin streak. “Right. What do we do now?”

“We find Tinjo,” Ti says.

Dan laughs. “He hasn’t exactly sent us a post card with his address on it.”

“My father, he would not stay in the same place for very long. He likes to move around.”

“Great,” Mel says. “You brought the guy’s son to hunt him down?”

“But,” Tinjen says, continuing, “he has a bad habit of returning if he thinks the place is important to him.”

“Like the hospital,” I say.

“What hospital?” Dan says.

“Where my…where I met him for the first time.”

Tinjen steps away from the door and walks closer to me. “You met with him face to face?”

“Not at first. He hid in the shadows. But eventually I did. It’s where he crossed over.”

“That is his anchor. He will be strongest there.”

“Does it even matter?” Ti says. “He gave up his Dinmow when he tricked Sam into helping him.”

For the first time, Tinjen chuckles. “You have never met my father. I am certain he sacrificed as many Dinmani as necessary to gain his strength back. Probably on the same night.”

The giant bonfire of burning Dinmani flashes in my mind.

“So what are we waiting for?” Ti says. She looks at me and holds my stare for a few seconds.

“I’m not sure I can. Not right now. I almost passed out with the last one.”

“Then what? You expect us to wait until you feel up to it?”

“I don’t think running into Tinjo’s main base with one less person is going to help much.”

“He’s right,” Dan says. “When we go in, we need everyone.”

“So then what do we do?” Ti says.

“I have an idea,” I say and snap my fingers and everything goes black.

BlueKnight
: hey sam

BlueKnight
: you on to play something?

SamTheDestroyer
: What?

BlueKnight
: was my question too difficult? :)

SamTheDestroyer:
Am I dreaming?

BlueKnight
: who dreams in messages?

SamTheDestroyer:
I probably do.

BlueKnight
: maybe you’re dreaming then. why are you asleep?

SamTheDestroyer:
I can’t remember. I was standing

SamTheDestroyer:
Wait. Why am I wasting my time explaining?

SamTheDestroyer:
Where are you?

BlueKnight
: on my bed, where i always am

SamTheDestroyer:
No. I saw you get taken. Are you okay?

BlueKnight
: you should sleep. you’re acting weird.

SamTheDestroyer:
I can’t. Tell me where they took you!

SamTheDestroyer:
Kaitlyn?!

SamTheDestroyer:
Kaitlyn!

BlueKnight is offline. Try sending your message again later.

“He’s waking up,” someone says.

“Give him some more space.”

“Don’t test me, blue. I’m on your side, but I still don’t like you.”

“Will you two quit fighting already?”

“I agree. I am starting to like the Sunjin most and that is a problem.”

My eyes snap open, and I find myself staring at a floral curtain, closed tight so none of the light makes it through the window and into the room. The design is ugly. The colors don’t complement one another and the stitching zigs and zags. It’s horrendous but, looking at the crooked flower with its uneven petals, I can’t help being at peace.

“Home,” I say.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dan says. Mel smacks his arm, and he clears his throat.

“It’s a bit much to take in,” I say.

“What is the purpose of these statues?” Tinjen says, picking up the small figurine. “They will not stop staring at me.”

I swing my legs off the couch and push against the arm. Sitting up, I say, “Be careful with those. Mom will kill you if one breaks.” The words sound ridiculous out loud.

“Where’s she at?” Dan says.

Mel hits him a second time. She gives him a stern look but doesn’t say a word.

“He didn’t know,” I say to her. “I never told him about what happened.”

“What did happen?” Ti says. Even though I can see the pain behind her eyes, she sounds like herself again.

“Cancer. She went into the hospital the night Tinjo contacted me for the first time.”

“I’m sorry,” Dan says, this time genuine.

“So am I. Two days later I started hunting down Sunjin.”

Dan bites at his lip. He never shows it but the memory of his father’s death must still be fresh.

“You were tricked into it,” he says.

“I do not know of cancer, but how did he trick you with it?” Tinjen says.

And so I tell them the entire story, from the beginning. The hospital room talking to me. The deal we made. His fake cure for cancer. Nobody interrupts the entire time. Dan moves a few times, but Mel shuts him up before he can talk. By the time I finish, I’m in a fog worse than when I woke up from the dream. So much happened in the span of a week. Laid out like that, it makes my head spin.

“His cure for your mother’s cancer is not false,” Tinjen says. “If she possessed a Dinmow, one could theoretically heal her like we would one of our own.”

“Theoretically,” I say.

“Well it’s never been done on a human before,” Ti says. “You’re the first.”

“And we know it works on you,” Tinjen says.

“So where’s she at now?” Dan says.

“I wish I could tell you,” Mel says. “She was in her room when the staff got abducted and thrown into the cafeteria. That was the last time I saw her.”

“I have no idea. He hid her somewhere so that I can’t get to her.”

Dan paces in front of the couch and stops near the front door. “So let’s go find her. Zap us over and we’ll hunt for some Dinmani rebels who know where she’s at. Maybe Kaitlyn will be there, too.”

Mel stops looking out the window and lets the curtain fall into place. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” I say.

“You found me and…and Ted. And I thought…I didn’t say anything because I thought you already knew.”

“Knew
what
?”

“It might be nothing. It’s probably nothing.”

Without realizing it, I’m on my feet. The dizziness disappears and my heart hammers. “Melanie, stop rambling and tell me.”

“The blue guy holding me prisoner, he said that Kaitlyn helped them find me. That’s why I’m in the cage and not her. He said she helped them capture Ted, too.”

I shake my head. That’s not possible. No matter what they told her, there’s no way she’d sell out her friends. “She wouldn’t sell you guys out like that,” I say, repeating my thoughts.

“Like I said, he might have lied.”

“Of course he lied,” I say.

“Or your friend is not as trustworthy as you thought,” Tinjen says.

I slam my hand against the wall next to him. The clock hanging from a nail shakes back and forth before falling to the floor and cracking. “Watch it,” I say through gritted teeth.

“If she’s working with Tinjo,” Dan says. He holds up his hands and shrinks back a couple inches. “I said
if
. If she is, he’d probably keep her close by, right? Might even have her in the same spot as your mom. So the plan falls back to finding him. We find him, we end this whole mess before he orchestrates another ice age.”

Dan makes eye contact with everybody, twice with me, before he nods. “Great, we’re all in agreement. So who wants to get us there the fastest?”

Tinjen and Ti look at each other but neither says anything.

“What, too shy?” Dan says.

“We cannot create the portal to this hospital,” Tinjen says.

“We never could,” Ti adds.

“I’ve seen you do it,” Dan says.

Tinjen crosses his arms. He leans back against the wall and shakes his head. “It is impossible. I can take us from here to Dintar, but I do not know where the portal will open up. This one,” he points a thumb at Ti, “she cannot even do that.”

“Only a few Dinmani can actually open portals. It’s not easy. And I only know two who can actually choose where their portals are going to appear.”

“My father and the King.”

I snap my fingers and an empty street extends from my living room wall. “And me,” I say. Cold air gushes through the opening making my eyes burn. I turn to Mel. “Will you be okay?”

She nods. “The guy who kept me hostage, he did something. It’s still cold, but I can flex my fingers at least.”

Dan puts a hand on her shoulder. A thin line between his hand and her shoulder glows red. She stops shivering. “Stay close,” he says.

Each one of them crawls through until I’m standing in my living room alone, looking at the pictures of mom and me on the walls. I can see the edge of the door leading to my bedroom. I don’t know if I’ll ever step foot down there again. My books and my computer, the things that kept me going through high school, are only a flight of stairs away. At this moment, they shouldn’t be important, but they are. They’re my escape from solitude, a distraction from loneliness, and my connection to Kaitlyn.

“You coming?” Dan says, he’s sticking out of the portal now, half in the house and half on the street.

I finish looking around the room when my eyes fall on a small piece of gray plastic sticking out from underneath the TV stand. Bending over, I pull it out and hold the remote control. I spin it around in my fingers a few rotations before chucking it onto the couch. “Yeah. Just saying goodbye.”

I don’t know what I expected once I stepped through my living room wall. Destruction, chaos, death–everything I witnessed at the Orange Cone but a hundred fold. I’m a little shocked when there’s nothing happening. No ambulances racing down the street. No alarms going off or tanks rolling in. Not even a barricade around the hospital. Nothing.

“You’re sure this is the right place?” Dan says. “It looks a little…”

“Ordinary,” Tinjen says.

Dan nods. “To say the least.”

“This is the hospital,” I say, looking at everything around it, trying to make sure I’m not wrong.

“It is,” Mel says, reassuring me. “Let’s go, the employee entrance will take us closest to your mom’s room.”

“She is coming with us?” Tinjen says.

Ti rubs her neck. “I hate to agree with him, and believe me when I say that, but he has a point. She can hardly stand out here. The energy a large group of Dinmani give off, well, it’s hard to bear if you’re not made for it.”

“I can handle it,” she says even though her hands shake a little already. “Besides, I know this hospital better than any of you.”

Dan slides next to her. He’s putting off so much heat that it hits me six feet away. “Like I said, she can stay close to me and we’ll be fine.”

Tinjen and Ti look at each other. They’re communicating without words. After a few head tilts and eye flickers, Ti nods. “I trust you.”

Mel takes us around the hospital’s perimeter and through a parking garage attached to the side. She passes an elevator and two staircases before stopping outside a tiny blue door. She tries the handle but it’s locked. Patting her back pocket, she removes a small black wallet and slides a card out from the side. “Up the stairs and to the left. Get through that first door and we’ll be fine.”