Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (27 page)

“Whoah! Hey, Scotty’s grown a pair—”

“Shut up. Okay? My name is Scott. Or Scottish, or…” Scott took a breath. “Look, just because you’ve won doesn’t mean you’re clever, or funny. You’re just a horrible jerk with a gun. And an idiot. And you dress like an idiot. If you have a magic gun, you call it
Ex-Calibre
, okay? It’s obvious. You stole Glamdring from
The Hobbit
.”

“‘Ex-Calibre,’” Haskoll repeated. “Huh.”

“And seriously … friends are more important than air? Do you even listen to yourself? You talk like a birthday card. Some awful birthday card with flowers on the front.”

Possibly the greatest insult of all was that Haskoll wasn’t even looking at him anymore. His attention had been stolen by Harvey, whom Scott was dimly aware had begun to flinch and quiver as he muttered. The rabbit-man
was having a kind of fit, and his pink eyes flashed with something other than moonlight.

“So … you know, in closing: you’re stupid,” Scott added. “Can’t we just get this over with?”

“Yeah…,” Haskoll agreed, his eyes still on Harvey. “Yeah, maybe we should.” He pulled a walkie-talkie from the ATV to his mouth and said, “This is Haskoll. Converge on my GPS. I have two for transport back to HQ.” Then he leveled his weapon at Scott’s chest.

“WON’T NEVER GO BACK!” Harvey screeched.

“Why don’t you shut the—” Haskoll began, and that’s when he was crushed by something heavy from above.

It was a metal … something … the size of a refrigerator. It might conceivably have been cylindrical a second before but was now looking kind of cubist. It had landed with a powerful crunch and a thump that rippled through the ground to where Scott and Mick stood. It was smoking. It had Haskoll and an ATV under it.

An owl hooted, somewhere.

“What …
is
that?” said Scott.

Mick stepped forward. “I think it’s a piece o’ airplane.”

Scott winced at the sky. “Hopefully not a really important piece of airplane.”

“WON’T NEVER GO BACK!” Harvey said again. He was hoarse and panting. The light in his eyes had dimmed.

“Do you … think they can still converge on his GPS?” asked Scott.

“Hmm,” said Mick. “Either way, we better hoof it. Harvey?”

“Yeth,” said the rabbit-man. He was looking suddenly tired.

“Time to go.”

The metal crate in which they were being carried was just big enough that Erno could turn to look out the narrow opening beside his head, then back again to check on Emily. She seemed unhappy but calm, oddly resigned. As if she’d always expected to end up in a cage eventually. As though she’d been backing into one her whole life.

“I’m sorry, Erno,” she whispered suddenly.

“Sorry … for what? What did
you
do?”

“I knew this was going to happen. Something like this. I’ve known all along, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it. Did you know,” she continued, “that I did a little research about my ear infection a while back?”

Erno shook his head.

“All the books I checked said it should normally last about six months to a year. Six months to a year, and here I’ve had it since I was a baby.”

Erno nodded, and wondered if she realized her pink ear medicine had been causing the trouble rather than treating it. “Did you ask Mr. Wilson about it?”

“He said I had a special kind of infection. Very rare. He said I’d probably need to use these drops for a long time. I didn’t look into it after that,” Emily said. “I just trusted Dad. I was only five.”

Five
, thought Erno.

“I just didn’t think about it. I … didn’t let myself,” she whispered. “I’ve been like this for a long time. It’s like, I suddenly remember that I’ve forgotten something. Something really important. But when I try to concentrate, to recall what the important thing is, it slips away. It slips away, and I forget that I ever remembered that I forgot it, for a while. But I’m facing it now. I’m facing it all, and it’s like I already know everything.
Everything
. I know it’s not true, of course, but that’s what it feels like.”

“You don’t know everything,” Erno tried to comfort her. “You … don’t know what number I’m thinking of.”

“Seven,” said Emily.

Erno frowned.

“It’s like my mind’s a black hole,” she continued. “All the knowledge of the world just rushes in.”

“Wait,” said Erno. “I’m thinking of another one. Between one and one hundred.”

“Forty-three.”

“That’s … not it,” Erno attempted to say casually.

“Don’t lie.”

“Okay,” Erno admitted. “But how did you know?”

“You wanted a number near the middle because it seemed safer,” Emily explained. “All those other numbers, like padding on either side. But not
too
near the middle. So something in the forties, because you subconsciously believe anything over fifty is aggressive, and you’re not an aggressive person.”

Erno huffed.

“You chose an odd number,” Emily continued, “because odd numbers seem more ‘random.’ You—”

“Okay, new one!” Erno whispered hotly. “Sixteen!”

Emily paused, delicately.

“Erno,
I’m
supposed to guess, not—”

“Okay! Yes. I know that. So—you guess.”

“It’s still sixteen, isn’t it.”

Erno sighed. “Yes.”

“The only thing I don’t get is what happened in the tree house,” Emily said with a little frown. “When I blacked out.”

“The magic?”

She scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”

The guards carrying their crate trudged along out of the park, their gaits swaying the crate in a constant tide that was getting Erno a little queasy. He could only
imagine what it was doing to Emily. Somewhere, close by, still more soldiers were carrying the unconscious body of Biggs. It had taken ten men to subdue him.

“There’s something else I know,” Emily continued, more softly than before. “I know that … we were brought together and … raised together for the sake of an experiment. To test the Milk-7. I know… I know we’re not really brother and sister.”

Erno turned away from the window. Emily was all folded up, tiny as she could be, her arms hugging her knees to her chest. He reached out and put his hand over hers.

“Sure we are.” He smiled. “Don’t be stupid.”

“This is Biggs’s car?” asked Scott. It didn’t seem possible.

“I’ve theen him get out of it,” said Harvey as he unlocked the door. “It’th like a pop-up book.”

“An’ you have the keys … why?” said Mick.

“I was clothetht to them. We planned to meet at the car. Gueth they didn’t make it. So! I can drop you guyth thomewhere but then I’m driving thtraight through to Mexthico.”

“Wait,” said Scott, “no.”

“Harvey,” Mick began, “those kids need help. That big man who took yeh in needs help. Yeh said before that yeh could smell magic in Em’ly. I was thinkin’…”

Harvey spun around and threw his hands up. “What? That I could track her? Rethcue everyone? After that thtunt I pulled in the park, I’m lucky I thtill have enough glamour to light a candle!”

“Yeh owe these folks. They took yeh in. If you want that glamour back—”

“I gotta live an honorable life? Thweet Danu, are you joking? This ith where magic cometh to die, Mick! Have you theriouthly not figured thith out yet? Glamour doethn’t return, here. I’m… I’m thorry yourth ith gone, but…”

They fell silent, and Mick bowed his head.
He thinks it’s gone, too
, thought Scott.
Mick thinks his magic’s gone for good
.

“There’s livin’ well for its own sake,” Mick murmured. “An’ doin’ what’s right. There’s still that.”

Harvey lifted his ears, looked suddenly resolute. “You’ve forgotten what we are. We’re the angelth what didn’t fall all the way. We’re the mere anarchy loothed upon the world,” he told Mick. “You’ve forgotten what
I
am, anyway. In four thouthand yearth I haven’t never done no one a good deed he didn’t regret.”

“Forget it, Mick,” Scott muttered. “He doesn’t have to. He already saved my life.”

“Lithen to thith one. Thith really the kid you want to hitch your wagon to, Mick? I liked him better when he wath about to die. Thomeone should point a gun at him every day of hith life.”

“Shut it,” said Mick. “Forget what yeh owe that family, but remember what yeh owe
me
. I broke yeh outta Goodco twice, in seventy-three an’ in eighty-six. Take us where them kids’re being held an’ we’re square, an’ then it’s off to Mexico with you.”

Harvey’s ears sagged again. Then he stepped aside and opened the car door like a valet.
“Andale, muchachos.”

The slit window offered Erno and Emily only notions of where they were, and where they might be going. Still, Emily said “Freemen’s Temple” as their cage chattered across the floor of the pitch-black and rumbling cargo van, and when the doors opened, Erno thought she must be right. He saw bits and swatches of that Halloween building again, and their hutch was hauled by soldiers right up to its dark doors. The doors gave way, and then it was candlelight, bits of red and gold, two towering columns, men … in robes? Then hallways, more doors, and a floor in a great dark room where they came finally to rest.

A massive cluster of overhead lights came on at once with a sound like a cough, then grew slowly warmer and brighter as if the room itself were waking. They were on the cold marble of a sunken circular floor that was ringed by six rows of stadium seats—fussily decorated walnut wood seats with black velvet cushions and dark gold trim.
A gladiator arena
, thought Erno.

“A surgery,” said Emily. And then Erno realized she was right again: more than anything, the room resembled a painting in the Philadelphia art museum of a crowd of spectators watching doctors cut into a dead or sleeping patient.
The Gross Clinic
, it was called, and it was.

Four doors opened at compass points, and robed figures filed in. Black-hooded mantles, open in front over pink waistcoats, white aprons, and deep red pants. All men. They sat down silently, and in an orderly and practiced manner. Emily’s chest rose and fell rapidly to the shallow breaths and fluttering heartbeat of the tiny animal she was.

“Freemen,” said a voice somewhere. No one had stood, and the room was something of an echo chamber, so it was hard to determine who was speaking. “They say good things come to those who wait.”

“Whoever
they
are,” said another robe, and there was a murmur of good-natured laughter.

“Indeed,” said another robe, possibly the first again. Now Erno saw him, descending the stadium stairs to stand by the cage. “
They. They
with their ancient wisdom. The mysterious
they
who pull the strings. I think, for the sake of argument, that we can agree that
they
are
we
?”

Another murmur, one of agreement. “Quite so,” said an anonymous someone.

“They also say, I believe, that one cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I regret you can’t see much through this cage, but if, on your way to tonight’s ceremony, you choose to peek through its thin windows, you might pay your respects to these two unfortunate eggs we’ll be breaking.”

Erno was pretty sure he’d followed all that. He wished he hadn’t.

“And let us have a round for our Augustus Wilson—”

Emily gasped.

“—who like Launcelot has faltered and fled but like Launcelot has returned to us once more. Gus?”

Mr. Wilson pulled back his hood and rose to acknowledge the light applause. Emily wasn’t watching.

“It’s really him,” whispered Erno. “It’s—”

“I know who it is,” said Emily.

Harvey drove with wild abandon. Harvey drove as if cars, pedestrians, bicycles, and birds were all semi-imaginary figments to be dispersed with curses and constant honking. Harvey drove much like Scott expected him to, really. The fact that Harvey was doing all this with his rabbity head sticking out the window didn’t attract so much attention as the fact that nobody else on the road could see him in the first place.

In fact, when the attention of the other drivers wasn’t
focused on the sight of an apparently driverless car, it was focused almost entirely on the one passenger the drivers could see: Scott, who had somehow ended up in the backseat despite being the tallest if you didn’t count Harvey’s ears.