Hunt for Jade Dragon (30 page)

“I told you, I'm Tara!”

The captain's eyes narrowed to angry slits. “You're playing with your life.”

“And you're playing with yours,” Taylor said.

“Enough of this,” the captain growled. “Take her.”

Taylor pressed back against the wall. “I can prove I'm Tara. If you touch me, you'll pay.”

The guards hesitated. Disobeying one of “Hatch's kids” was like disrespecting an EGG. Or worse.

“Don't listen to her,” the captain ordered.

Taylor looked up at the camera. “Dr. Hatch, they're going to kill the wrong girl. Taylor switched places with me. I can prove it and this fool of a captain won't listen.” She turned to the captain. “We both know they record everything. If something happens to me, Dr. Hatch will feed you to the rats next. I guarantee it.”

This time the captain hesitated.

“Just give me five minutes to prove who I am. Your life is worth at least five minutes, isn't it?”

“How will you prove it?”

“Get Quentin and Taylor. Q will know the difference between the two of us. He can verify who I am.”

The captain looked at her for a moment, then turned to the guard on his left. “Get Quentin. And Tara. Bring them both. Hurry. We have a feeding schedule.”

* * * 

Five minutes later Quentin stormed into the cell, with Tara and the guard following behind him. It was clear he'd been woken up. “What is it?” Quentin asked angrily.

“This girl claims to be Tara.”

“You interrupted my sleep for that?” Quentin snarled.

“She says she can prove it and that you would know.”

Quentin looked at her. “What do you want,
Taylor
?”

“I'm not Taylor,” Taylor said. “Taylor is standing next to you.”

“Oh, please,” Tara said. “That's just lame. You really are desperate.”

“Quentin, ask her something only
we
would know,” Taylor said. “Like what we had for dinner at the mall. You know, before we came to Taiwan.”

Quentin suddenly looked confused.

“Just ask her,” Taylor said.

He turned to Tara. “How did she know about the mall?”

Tara looked confused. “I don't know.”

“What did we have for dinner?”

Tara paled. “Oh, come on, you're not really going to play her game. You know me.”

“You didn't answer,” Taylor said. “So what was it? What did you have for dinner? Easy question.”

Tara looked panicked. “I . . . I had . . . we had . . .”

Taylor lifted one eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I'm not doing this,” Tara answered.

“It's a simple question,” Quentin said. After a moment he pressed her. “Well?”

“I . . . I don't remember.”

“Really?” Taylor said. “Because I remember that the calzone we all had was pretty good for a food court. And the capellini that Q ordered on the side was just as good.” Taylor looked at Quentin. “Ask her what ‘calzone' means.”

He looked at her. “What does ‘calzone' mean?”

Again Tara couldn't recall. “C'mon, this is a trick. She's doing something to me.”

“Yes, it is a trick,” Quentin said. He turned to the guards. “Take her.” They grabbed Tara.

“Quentin! Stop it!”

Taylor breathed out in relief. “Finally.”

Quentin stepped up to her. “How did this happen?”

“I went to visit her alone to see if I could talk some sense into her. But apparently she's learned some new trick. The next thing I remembered I was lying on the ground next to the little girl.”

“She's lying!” Tara shouted.

“That was stupid to come alone,” Quentin said. “Don't do it again.”

“Believe me, I won't. I thought I could save us some time. I thought you'd be proud of me.”

“I am proud of you.” Quentin turned to the guards. “Take her to the bowl. You're already late for feeding time.”

Tara turned white. “Quentin, I'm Tara!”

“Yeah, and I'm Michael Vey.”

The guards began dragging Tara away. Tara screamed. “No! Stop! Stop!”

“She was right about one thing,” Taylor said. “That was lame.”

“You have to be careful,” Quentin said. “These Electrodorks are clever little monkeys.” He put his arm around her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. For almost dying.”

“That was too close,” he said. He went to kiss her when, from down the hall, Tara shouted, “Quentin, my tattoo. Look at my tattoo.”

He stopped.

“My tattoo!” she shouted again.

“Hold up,” Quentin said to the guards. He looked at Taylor. “Show me your tattoo.”

“You just want to see my ballerina,” she said coyly.

He didn't smile. “Yes, I do.”

Taylor forced a smile. “I'll show you later. In private.” She rebooted him. “Shall we go?”

Quentin blinked a few times, then said, “Of course. I'm tired.”

They started to walk away when the captain said, “Sir, did you want to check the tattoo?”

“My tattoo!” Tara shouted. “You're the one who chose it. Look at my tattoo.”

Quentin looked at Taylor uneasily; then he walked over and pulled the collar of Tara's blouse down over her shoulder, revealing a tattoo of a ballerina.

“It's me,” Tara sobbed. “I'm Tara.”

He turned back to Taylor. “Show me your tattoo.”

Taylor folded her arms at her chest and grinned. “Like you said, we
Electrodorks
are clever little monkeys.”

Just then there was a blast of electricity and all three guards hit the floor. Then Tara and Quentin fell to the ground, doubled over in pain.

Taylor looked at Michael and smiled. “It's about time you got here.”

I
could tell we were near the bowl because I was feeling more electric. Sparks snapped uncontrollably between my fingers and legs and underneath my arms. I'm certain the three guards sprawled out on the ground had noticed how electric I was too. They were all still unconscious.

“Nichelle, stop this,” Quentin shouted from his knees. “That's an order.”

“
You're
giving
me
an order?” Nichelle said. “I think you've got that backward, Q-bert.” She crouched down until her face was inches from his and her eyes narrowed in anger. “You were the only family I had. And when things went bad you all left me to die. Michael Vey was my enemy, and he showed more mercy than all of you creeps combined.”

“You and Vey?” Quentin said. “That's pathetic. You're going to be sorry.”

“I was born sorry,” Nichelle replied.

I looked at Quentin and shook my head. “Karma sucks, doesn't it?”

Ostin and Ian gathered the prone guards' weapons while Jack and McKenna took their keys and handcuffs.

“Lock them all up,” I said.

“Problem,” McKenna said. “We don't have enough handcuffs for all of them.”

There were five of them and only three pairs of handcuffs.

“No problem,” Ostin said. “Guys, give me a hand.”

We dragged two of the guards to opposite sides of the metal toilet, put a handcuff on one of the guard's wrists, threaded it around back through the thick metal pipe that fed into the toilet, and attached it to the other guard's wrist on the opposite side. We then made Quentin and Tara do the same thing with the second pair. With the last pair of handcuffs, we slid the guard up the base of the toilet and handcuffed his hands around it. By the time we were done they definitely weren't going anywhere. And they looked pretty silly.

Nichelle smirked at Quentin and Tara. “You look like some weird monument to toilets.”

“You're a loser, Nichelle,” Tara said. “You always were. That's why everyone always hated you.”

“I'm so hurt,” she said. Nichelle put her hand out toward them and Tara and Quentin began to shake from the pain. “Who's losing now?”

Tara screamed out in pain.

“Nichelle,” I said.

She turned toward me. “What?”

“That's enough.”

“I've just started.”

“We're not like them.”

She looked at me with a peculiar expression, then I saw a look I hadn't seen on her before. She put her hand down. “No.
We're
not like
them
.”

“Where's Jade Dragon?” I asked Taylor.

“I don't know,” Taylor said. “The Lung Li guards took her.”

I turned to Ian. “Do you see her?”

“No. Just a lot of armed guards looking for us.”

“We can worry about her later,” Ostin said. “We need to get out of here before the plant goes on full alert.”

As we stepped out into the hall a siren went off.

“Too late,” I said.

“We can't leave without Jade Dragon,” Taylor said.

“We haven't given up on her,” I said. “But for now, Ostin's right. We need to get out of here if we can.” I turned around. “Ian, what's going on?”

“Chaos,” he said. “This place looks like an angry beehive.”

“Can you see any way out?”

“No. But we've got to move. There are guards coming from both sides of this hall.”

I pointed to a large set of double doors. “What's through there?”

“It's the underside of the bowl,” he said. “It's where they bring the fish in.”

“How many guards?”

“None. Just the feeders. All the guards are outside.”

Jack swiped one of the guards' magnetic keys across the door pad and the door unlocked. We hurried inside and the door automatically locked behind us.

With the exception of a massive steel-plated pool in the center of the room, the space was similar to the Peruvian feeding room, rectangular with a resin-coated concrete floor and forty-foot-high ceilings that curved on one side with the exterior of the bowl. The room was humid and smelled like a fish market.

It stinks in here. I hate fish.

I looked over at Taylor. It was her voice, but she wasn't talking. There was so much electricity in the air that I could read her thoughts.

“Ian, where do the wires from the lock run?”

He ran a finger down the wall. “Right here.”

“Tell me what this does.” I put my hand against the wall and pulsed. The intensity of the surge surprised me. Being directly under the bowl enhanced my powers to extreme levels.

“Dude, you melted the pad. You even melted some of the nails in the wall.”

“That should at least slow them down,” I said.

“Michael . . .,” Taylor said. “Look.”

“
Bu dung!
” someone shouted. I turned around. There were now a half dozen men standing on the other side of the pool in bright orange jumpsuits with rubber waders and gloves. One of them was pointing a shotgun at us.
“Da jya, syou chilai.”

“He said, ‘Don't move,' ” Ostin said. “And put our hands up.”

“Are there any others with weapons?” I asked Ian.

“Not that I can see.”

“I'm going to reboot him,” Taylor said. She looked at the man intensely. At first he looked confused and lowered his gun as if he'd forgotten why he was holding it. Then he fell over unconscious. The other men turned and ran to a door in the back.

“I think you melted his brain,” Ostin said.

I walked over to the man and checked him. He was out but still breathing. I picked up his gun and threw it into the pool.

“Look at all those fish,” McKenna said, staring into the water. “There's, like, a million of them.”

The pool was easily as large as the Olympic-sized one we had at Meridian High School, though much deeper. The water was dark and rough and the pool itself was steel-plated and riveted. There was a car-size, cagelike apparatus that hung from chains from the ceiling a few yards above the center of the pool, and a twelve-foot metal boat was tied to a cleat at the pool's far edge.