Guardian Angel (18 page)

The answer: uncomfortably, to put it mildly. Raider of course drove, and Mr. Jenson got the front seat next to him. Meanwhile, I was crammed in the middle of the back seat with Alia on my lap, Ed Regis on my left and Terry on my right. But it was James who really ended up with the short end of the stick: he was put in the trunk with our baggage.

Or maybe James was the lucky one. At least he didn’t have to worry about losing his invisibility cloak. Though we weren’t barred from talking, we sat silently for most of the ride. Alia felt pretty heavy by the time we finally arrived in the outskirts of Lumina.

Though hungry for lunch, we had no time to eat now. Getting into Lumina wasn’t a simple matter of walking with an invisibility cloak. There were thermographic security cameras set in strategic locations all around the Angel city, and through these, the Seraphim could see our body heat. Fortunately, Resistance hackers had some limited access to these camera systems and could override them at prearranged times and locations.

“The thermographic camera system was originally set up by the Guardians to keep Angel phantoms out of New Haven,” Raider had explained to us the day before. “As long as we keep to our course and time schedule, the cameras will always be looking in the wrong direction when we pass them.”

We had little choice but to trust him. Keeping us strictly on need-to-know, Raider had told us nothing of our route into Lumina or our final destination.

Getting out of the car, I could tell by the sounds around me that Mr. Jenson was opening the trunk to let James out and re-cloak him. Our duffel bags had to be made invisible too. Mr. Jenson had probably made just his eyes reappear so that he could see what he was doing. In a few minutes, we had shouldered our bags and formed our train, tightly holding the invisible rope that Raider would use to lead us into the Angel city.

Even blind, I could tell that the others were nervous. This was no longer practice. One mistake by any one of us and we would all be discovered. Blindness wasn’t a problem for me personally, but I was worried for the others, especially Alia since she would have to walk faster to keep pace with us.

But Raider and Sharky were experienced guides. We would later learn that they had been handpicked by the Resistance leaders to make sure that we arrived safely. Loosely holding the end of the rope, I followed a step behind my sister as we moved carefully and silently toward the center of the Angel city.

As it was midday, and a weekday at that, it wasn’t very crowded on the sidewalk and Raider didn’t have to rely entirely on coughing signals. As he walked, he would mumble things like “right turn ahead” so that we would be ready when the rope changed direction.

After about thirty minutes, I suddenly recognized the concrete under my feet. I had traveled this road blind many times, and just by the sounds around me and the “feel” of the sidewalk, I knew that we were about to pass right in front of the entrance to New Haven One. This was where the Angels’ most prized hider allegedly lived on the topmost floor.

We passed the entrance without stopping.

A little later, we entered the park. Again, my ears and my feet instantly remembered the route I used to jog every day. I remembered the smell of the grassy field where Cindy had taken us to picnic in the summer. This was where I had taught Alia to ride a bike. It was where I had held hands with Laila Brown.

“Addy,”
Alia whispered into my mind,
“I think we’re in the park.”

I smiled. Even Alia, who had never experienced blindness before, knew where we were. So much for Raider’s need-to-know route.

As we continued through the park, despite the early-November chill, I heard the voices of a few picnickers, probably senior citizens. I also heard a baby crying in the distance. It made me think about baby Laila, and I had a feeling that Alia was thinking the same thing.

Exiting the park, we crossed a street. Raider coughed a warning. We were led up five steps and into a large room which I guessed was the entrance hall to one of the forty-story high-rises that the Angels had taken from the Guardians. There we stopped once. Raider greeted the lobby security team as if they were friends, but by their conversation, I could tell that these men were Seraphim.

As we started moving again, I felt myself brush up against Alia from behind.

Alia said in a panicked voice,
“Addy! Addy, I lost the rope!”

This was why Mr. Jenson had asked me to bring up the rear. With my free hand, I grabbed my sister by the back of her jacket and pushed her along in front of me.

We entered an elevator. As it started to climb, I heard Raider let out a sigh of relief, but his relief was nothing compared to mine. I carefully helped Alia find the rope again before the elevator came to a stop.

One short walk down a tiled hallway, through a door, and Raider said, “End of the line. Shake it off.”

I stomped my left foot on the floor. My vision returned, and I saw that we were standing in a small living room not unlike the one back in our apartment at Wood-claw.

Alia looked up at me sheepishly.
“Please don’t tell anyone.”

I grinned. “No promises.”

Raider turned to us, announcing, “This is my place. Yours is below.”

“Where are we?” asked Terry.

“New Haven Four?” I guessed.

“Correct,” replied Raider, looking surprised, “though now it is known as Lumina Nonus.”

“That’s Latin for ‘ninth,’ I believe,” said Ed Regis.

“Ah, an educated man,” said Raider, nodding appreciatively. “The Angels renumbered the New Haven buildings in Latin with little regard for the Guardians’ old system. Only NH-1 retains its place, officially Lumina Primus, though almost everyone calls it Lumina Prime.”

“We passed in front of Prime on our way here,” I said.

Raider looked stunned. I merely smiled.

“Okay, genius, what floor are we on?” he asked.

“The twenty-first?” I ventured, basing my rough estimate on the length of our elevator ride.

Raider stared at me in utter disbelief. Alia laughed.

We really were on the twenty-first floor, which put us exactly halfway up the building. Raider led us into his bedroom, where he pushed his queen-size bed off of a large rug set in the middle of the room. Then he rolled up the rug to reveal a trapdoor built into the floor.

Raider knocked several times on the trapdoor in a code-like pattern. After waiting for about thirty seconds, he slowly lifted the door up. A short wooden ladder extended down into the space below the floor.

“In you get,” said Raider as he tossed our bags down into the hole. “Welcome to the Resistance.”

Chapter 9: Nonus Twenty Point Five

The ceiling was higher than that of a crawlspace, but only Alia and I could stand up straight. My hair brushed up against the concrete. Everyone else either had to stoop forward or at least bend their necks to the left or right in a comical manner.

Mr. Jenson had come down with us, but Raider remained in his condo to close the trapdoor and hide it again under his rug and bed. There were two men waiting for us: Knights armed with automatic rifles. They greeted us and told us their call signs, and then, along with Mr. Jenson, they led us deep into a maze of corridors littered with supply crates and bulging garbage bags.

“We call this Twenty Point Five,” explained Mr. Jenson as we followed the Knights. “It spans the entire floor and serves as our headquarters in Lumina. There are several other entrances from the twentieth floor below and the twenty-first above, and even I probably don’t know all of them.”

“Where are you taking us, Sharky?” asked Alia.

Mr. Jenson smiled, saying, “To our leaders, of course.”

Pipes of all sizes cut across the ceiling, and we had to constantly duck under them as we made our way through the dark and stuffy labyrinth. Most of the corridor walls weren’t really walls so much as random sheets of plastic, metal and assorted junk that had been propped up between the thick concrete supports of the building. Through breaks in the various materials and through curtained doorways, we could see little rooms and occasionally a few people inside talking quietly, resting, or studying a computer monitor.

Another turn, and we stepped through a curtain into a largish square room that was dimly lit by two fluorescent lights lashed to the ceiling pipes. In the center of the room was a low coffee table with several mismatched chairs around it. Rectangular wooden boxes were stacked in one corner of the room while a long leather sofa sat against a wall. Against another wall was a dining table cluttered with papers and maps. Two men were hunched over the table, talking in whispers.

As we entered, they turned toward us, and I got an even greater shock than when I first saw Mr. Jenson back at the Chinese restaurant.

One of the men was our long-lost friend, Mark Parnell.

Letting out a cry of joy, Alia rushed forward and jumped into Mark’s arms.

The two Knights who had escorted us here reflexively raised their guns, but Mark called to them, “No! It’s fine.”

Hugging Alia tightly once, he set her back onto the floor and said, “No more sudden movements here, okay? People are very, very jumpy.”

Mark looked a little haggard but otherwise just as I remembered him with his shaggy beard, round glasses and his quiet, warm smile.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, shaking his hand. “We thought you were dead.”

“I had feared the same of you until we heard from Wood-claw of your visit,” replied Mark. “It’s good to see you again.”

The other man, whom I didn’t recognize, said, “Jacob here and I codirect the Resistance movement in Lumina. I’m Proton. Welcome to our headquarters.”

We introduced ourselves with our aliases. We were told to keep our real names strictly to ourselves, even between friends. Mark’s call sign, Jacob, had been taken from his long-lost twin brother. His partner, Proton, a pyroid and berserker with extensive training in urban warfare, had been a high-ranking Lancer Knight back in the days of New Haven.

“It is an honor to have you with us, Tiffany,” said Proton, shaking Terry’s hand. “I hear you have become a windmaster like your grandfather.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Terry replied frostily.

Proton turned to my sister. “And Gretel – I mean Alyssa – we are very fortunate to finally have another healer here.”

To my surprise, both Terry and Alia already knew Proton fairly well, having accompanied the Lancers during a number of missions against the God-slayers.

“The last time I saw you, Richard,” he said to me, cocking an eyebrow, “you were lying in the basement of a Slayer house with a chain around your leg. And you looked pretty dead.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I kept silent.

Proton continued in a friendly tone, “I wasn’t at the gathering of lesser gods, but I have heard of your exploits behind enemy lines. Here we need every good Knight we can get, and I’m glad to have you and your friends here.”

“Thank you,” I said carefully. “We will do all that we can to help.”

Proton shook James’s hand next, saying, “We’ve never met, Jack, but I knew your parents well. You look a lot like your father.”

James’s parents were Lancers like Proton, and Lumina Nonus was former NH-4: the very same building that our refugee children, James included, had escaped during the fall of New Haven. I wondered what floor James used to live on.

“Do you know what happened to my parents, Proton?” asked James.

“Unfortunately, no,” Proton replied apologetically. “Many of the Knights are still scattered and unaccounted for. But if we find out anything, we’ll let you know.”

James nodded his thanks.

Proton didn’t know about James’s combat experience and he knew nothing of Ed Regis, but Terry assured him that both James and Ed Regis were trustworthy and competent fighters. Though he looked like he had some doubts about James’s combat skills simply due to his age, Proton took Terry’s word for it on Ed Regis. We openly introduced Ed Regis as a former Wolf and we were happy to see that Proton wasn’t as prejudiced as Mrs. Harding.

“If Tiffany vouches for you,” Proton said to Ed Regis, “then that is enough for us. At least for now.”

I remembered how Mrs. Harding had described the Resistance as being even more security-cautious than she, but between Father Mark Parnell being codirector and Alia and Terry being personal acquaintances of Proton, I could understand why the Resistance had let us in without delving us – even with an ex-Wolf in tow.

Mr. Jenson and the two Knights who had guided us here left the room as Proton, Mark and the rest of us sat on the chairs around the coffee table. The taller people looked happy to finally be able to straighten their spines. A moment later, one of the Knights returned briefly to supply our table with cups of tea. I was as hungry as I was thirsty, but I guessed that Mark and Proton had already eaten.

“So how did you end up here?” I asked Mark.

Mark looked like he was about to explain, but Proton stopped him. “First things first,” said Proton, turning to Terry. “Your team came here bearing a secret, Tiffany. Something you couldn’t trust our members to delve. We usually do not allow secret-keepers into our ranks. Is this information something that you must keep from Jacob and myself as well?”

Terry nodded, saying, “Unfortunately, yes. I can only promise you that we are on your side. If that isn’t good enough for you, then we will leave.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Proton. “I was merely hoping that your secret, whatever it is, might provide some tactical advantage to us.” He let out a quiet sigh. “You see, we’re a breath away from losing this war now. The Angels – the
Guardian Angels
as they like to call themselves – have already begun their world conquest. They keep their progress as hidden as possible, but we know that our own government is so saturated with Angels that it is on the verge of being completely taken over. Meanwhile, in some other countries, both democratically elected leaders and military dictators alike are converted Angels.”