Hamish X Goes to Providence Rhode Island (13 page)

No.
He shrank against the wall, careful not to brush up against any of the Grey Agents as he backed away, heading for the entrance.
I have to make a plan. I have to use my brain
. He had limited resources, very few remaining weapons, and no allies. The one thing he did have in his favour was that the ODA didn't know he was there. He had to remain hidden until he could make his move. He would find a place to hide, learn the layout of the complex, and find out everything he could about the ODA's operations. Armed with that knowledge, he might be able to strike a blow that would free all the children.

And who knew? Maybe Hamish X and Mimi were on their way here right now. He hadn't told anyone where he was going when he stowed away in the cargo carrier, but
Mimi would have noticed he was missing. She would try to find him. Of course, she might not have made it out herself …

No.
Parveen shut out that possibility
. She will come
.
Hamish X will come. They won't abandon me. I have to be ready. I have to have everything in place to help them when they arrive.

He watched and waited while Noor was transferred from the surgical table back onto her pallet. He trailed after the robot that carried her into the Hall of Batteries. He stood in the shadows as Noor was hooked up to a feeding tube and the strange harness. He waited until she was left alone, one of many inert children dangling in space. She hung on the lowest tier, at the height of Parveen's shoulder.

After the robot had trundled away, Parveen crept to his sister's side. He laid a hand on her cool forehead and said, “I'm watching over you. Rest now. I'll come and get you soon.” He smoothed a strand of dark hair away from her face and padded away.

An hour later, after dodging many Grey Agents and searching several corridors, he had discovered the loose grille. Using the multitool from his pack, he quickly tugged on the grille until one side swung out from the wall. Ducking inside, he discovered a warren of tunnels carrying warm air throughout the complex. The shafts were a perfect height for him to walk upright and gave him access to everywhere he might need to explore. Settling on one central junction as a headquarters, he hunkered down and, wrapping himself in a thermal blanket, fell deeply asleep.

That had been yesterday. He sat up and looked at his watch. It read 6:00 a.m. He had slept for twelve hours. He didn't know what time zone he was currently in, but it
didn't matter: he always kept his watch set to Greenwich Mean Time,
⁵²
or Zulu Time as the military called it.
⁵³
No doubt he had needed sleep. He stretched his arms and legs, wincing as his muscles protested the hard metal floor.

“Time to explore.” He packed his knapsack, pulled his hood up, and trotted off down the tunnel in search of a shaft that would lead him to the ODA's evil gateway.

Chapter 13

After many false turnings and dead ends, Parveen finally found his way to a shaft that ended a few metres short of the gateway. He huddled behind a broad-bladed exhaust fan, its metal arms swinging lazily as they siphoned away heat from the infernal machine.

Sitting so close to the gateway was difficult. First of all, the ring of metal emitted a sickly glow that was difficult to look at. Parveen raised a gloved hand to his goggles and flipped through a sequence of filters that blocked different kinds of light: infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. Nothing seemed to ease the nausea he felt as the weird light cast its glow over him. He hypothesized that perhaps the light was from a spectrum not of this Earth.

He observed the Grey Agents below as they scuttled here and there servicing the banks of computers that regulated the machine. They wore no special protective gear to shield them from the energy radiating out of the device. Either they were used to it or …

“Maybe it's natural for them,” Parveen whispered to himself. “Maybe it isn't dangerous to them because it comes from their home environment.” He gasped as a realization struck him. “It's a gateway to their home world.”

Parveen's ruminations were interrupted by a mechanical hum coming from the ventilation shaft behind him. Someone was coming! Had they found him? Had he tripped some alarm?

He was at the end of the shaft. There was no escape route. The only way out was back towards the approaching sound
or out through the fan and into the gateway chamber below. That way would lead to certain discovery. He had only the camouflage of the sneaky suit to protect him. Pressing himself against the shaft wall, he checked his hands and his hood to make sure every centimetre of his skin was covered. Satisfied, he held his breath and waited.

The mechanical hum grew louder. After what seemed an eternity, a robot rounded the final corner. The machine was basic: a tracked vehicle with mechanical arms ending in articulated claws attached to a vague torso, making the robot vaguely anthropomorphic.
⁵⁴
Parveen sucked in his breath, trying to make himself as small as possible as the machine passed by him and went straight to the fan housing.

A maintenance robot
. Parveen breathed out softly.
Perhaps he hadn't been detected. The robot was doing routine upkeep on the ventilation system.

The robot's arms extended, telescoping out until the articulated claws could reach the housing of the fan motor. A tiny nozzle emerged from the tip of one claw. With a hiss, oily liquid sprayed out of the nozzle into a hole in the housing. Having finished its lubrication procedure, the nozzle retracted, followed by the arms. The robot's inner workings whirred and clicked, its torso spun, and it headed back the way it came.

As it passed Parveen, it stopped. Parveen held his breath again. The torso spun in his direction. A tiny camera irised out from the centre of the torso. For a few seconds it tried to focus on Parveen's chest. After a number of whirs and clicks,
it gave up. The camera retracted, the torso spun, and the robot trundled off up the ventilation shaft without a backwards glance.

Parveen's heart slowed and he breathed deeply. He would have to be careful. The suit had succeeded in hiding him again, but he would have to be very cautious from now on. With a final look out at the terrible gate, he turned and headed off after the robot to continue his investigation of the ventilation shafts. He felt better and better every step he took away from the gateway. He didn't know how harmful the energy of the other world was to him, but he knew he didn't want to spend more time than necessary in close proximity to the horrible apparatus.

Already very difficult to detect in his sneaky suit, Parveen was certain he could become a veritable ghost now that he had the ventilation shafts as his own personal thoroughfare. He doubted that the Grey Agents ever entered the shafts. But he would have to be careful to avoid the little maintenance robots. He made his way by memory back to the place he had designated as his sleeping quarters. Ensconced in his hideaway, Parveen sat with his back to the wall. He reached into the hood of his suit to pluck the stub of pencil from behind his ear. Rummaging in his backpack, he found a crumpled sheet of paper. He smoothed out the paper on his knee and made a list.

“Number One: I'm alone,” he said softly as he wrote. “Number Two: Noor is safe for the time being. Number Three: I know the Grey Agents use the older children as hosts. Hypothesis: The big apparatus in the main chamber is a huge version of the machines they use to possess their human hosts.”
⁵⁵
He shuddered at the thought of being possessed by one of the entities calling themselves Grey Agents. Who knew what their true nature was? Their human forms were gruesome enough. “Lucky that Noor didn't qualify,” Parveen murmured to himself. He had no idea what the long-term effects of being used as a battery were, but they had to be better than becoming a Grey Agent. He wondered if the process of becoming an agent was reversible. Did the person
possessed still exist somewhere within the unlucky body? He hoped so, for Aidan's sake. And for Hamish X's. The golden hue of the Grey Agents' eyes was so like Parveen's friend's eyes. What did that mean? Was Hamish X doomed to be like the Grey Agents? Was he one of them deep down in his soul? Did he have the potential for their wickedness and evil? Parveen could only hope that the colour of his eyes was the only trait Hamish X shared with these entities who were bent on enslaving the Earth.

A thought struck him: if the agents were really people who had been possessed by entities from another world, when they were killed was the human host killed as well? It was a terrible thought. He had cast a female agent from the
Orphan Queen
during the assault on the Hollow Mountain. Had he killed some poor human being as well as the agent? He felt a stab of guilt but ruthlessly crushed it a second later. They were at war with the ODA. The Grey Agents had to be defeated. When the war was over, there would be plenty of time for guilt and soul-searching.

Parveen looked at his list. What he knew was very scant indeed. He had to learn more and try to find a weakness to exploit.

“First things first,” he whispered, turning over the sheet of paper. He began to draw the beginnings of a map of the ventilation system. The very act of making a blueprint calmed him. He was not exactly happy, but he was making a plan and that was something, at least. He always felt better when he had a plan.

Chapter 14

MIMI

Mimi looked up at the great dome of Atlantis. Above her, millions of tons of water and salt were restrained only by the frail crystal barrier that arched over the city where she stood.

She was in the Great Square. She was alone. Where was everyone? Had they gone and left her here?

A sharp rending sound drew her attention back to the dome above. With a boom like a gunshot, a crack appeared in the dome directly above her head. As she watched, terrified, the crack began to spread, radiating outwards like the web of a crazed spider. She wanted to scream but couldn't open her mouth. She wanted to run but her feet were fused to the stone.

Wide-eyed with terror, she watched as the first drops of water fell from above. The drip quickly became a torrent. Salty water pounded onto her upturned face. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't turn away. Her nostrils and mouth filled with brine. She was choking! She couldn't breathe!

She awoke in the darkness, bathed in sweat, and her dream had come true. She couldn't breathe! Something was covering her mouth and nose. She was suffocating!

“Mimi,” Cara hissed at her ear. “Mimi! It's me, Cara!”

Mimi relaxed. Cara stood over her in the gloom, the pale light of the dome washing in through the balcony
doors. Cara's right hand was pressed over Mimi's mouth. When she saw Mimi relax, Cara took her hand away and raised a finger to her lips. “Quiet.”

Mimi sat up, pulling the twisted sheets away from her limbs. “What's the big idea?”

“Shhh!” Cara said with a hushed urgency. “Xnasha woke me moments ago. She says she wants to talk.” Mimi looked over to find the Atlantean woman standing in the doorway of the bedchamber. Xnasha smiled and beckoned the girls with a wave of her hand. In her other hand she held a glowing lamp in the shape of a seashell.

Mimi swung her legs out of bed and stood, pulling her Guards jacket on as she joined Cara. The floor was smooth and warm, but she stepped into her boots anyway. One never knew what might need a good kicking in the middle of the night. When she was ready, she nodded. Xnasha stepped back into the hallway, and when the two girls joined her, she led them through the silent house.

Silence, of course, is relative. Xnasos's snoring was a rumbling drone that swelled as they passed quietly by his bedchamber. Xnasha rolled her eyes and led them down the stairs and out into the square.

The public space was empty. All the refugees had been taken into the homes of the Atlanteans. Obviously, the sea folk didn't see the newcomers as any kind of threat because there were no guards on patrol. Most of the windows in the buildings around the square were dark. Here and there, a lamp glowed. The dome above was dim, blocking out the ocean. After the dream she'd just had, Mimi was thankful for that. The weight above seemed less oppressive when she couldn't actually see the swarming fish and pale blue water.

The Temple of the Crystal Fountain shone its weird blue glow and its guards stood stiff and straight. They took
no notice of the little party as they passed below the great broad steps. Mimi assumed they were concerned only with what the temple held. As long as the group made no effort to approach, the guards would take no particular interest in them. Xnasha led the girls down the shadowed edge of the square, the glowing shell lamp guiding them along the stone walls until they reached an alleyway. Xnasha turned up the alleyway and increased her pace. Though she was short and stocky, the white-haired woman could certainly move at a surprising speed, which Mimi and Cara found themselves hard-pressed to match.

This part of the city was more decrepit than the area around the square. Moss grew on the damp stone walls and the air was scented with mildew and decay. Xnasha led them through a bewildering maze of narrow passages between buildings whose roofs were lost in darkness. The scuff of their feet was the only sound.