Justice (15 page)

M found the Orloj clock right away. Truthfully it was hard to miss. The first thing she noticed was how the tower rose into the sky like a stone arm trying to snatch the moon. It cast its shadow across the square grounds even at night. M could make out the charcoal-gray stones and spire roof that
seemed to whisper ‘haunted mansion,’ and, for a moment, made her feel like she was back home in upstate New York.

‘That thing is awesome,’ announced Merlyn over their comm channel as they drew closer. And he was right. The structure was one of the oldest and most magical things M had ever seen in her life. It looked like a giant cuckoo clock, standing at least three stories high, with carved and detailed pillars on each side of two large clock faces. Statues were perched around the structure, too. Some were angels, some were people, and at least one was a skeleton holding an hourglass and a bell pull, like death personified, ready to ring in the next disaster.

‘Whoa, talk about “for whom the bell tolls”,’ said Cal. ‘But seriously, how is anyone supposed to tell time with this thing? I don’t even see a regular clock.’

‘The regular clocks are on the adjoining sides and high up on the tower,’ answered Keyshawn. ‘But these larger “things”, as you refer to them, are much more interesting.’

It was true. The bottom face was bright, round, and golden, its outer arc filled with a row of incredible artwork arranged in twelve circles, almost like scenes in a storybook. Farther inward toward the center of the clock face, another twelve smaller circles held what seemed to be zodiac signs. And, finally, in the center was the image of a castle surrounded by a moat of barbed crosses.

‘This one is a calendar,’ said Merlyn. ‘Twelve months, twelve astronomical signs.’

‘That’s right,’ confirmed Keyshawn, who sounded impressed. ‘Care to guess what the upper “clock” actually is?’

‘Ugh,’ interrupted Devon. ‘We’re not here for Clock Watchers 101, you dweebs. How do we get inside?’

Ignoring Devon, M studied the more frenzied clock face looming above them. It held wildly structured circles crisscrossing one another like a mad Venn diagram. Letters like runes ran around the outer circle while Roman numerals lined the inner circle.

No, on second glance, the outer signs weren’t runes at all, but numbers 1 through 24 written in an antiquated script. It looked startlingly like the title page of the Chaucer book. The weight of that book flashed back into M’s hands and now the strange mechanism above her cast an equally enigmatic weight on her entire person.
There are no mistakes in life
, John Doe had said. She stared at the clock. ‘What’s the connection between you and Chaucer?’ she whispered to it.

Instantly Keyshawn turned toward M. Seeing the movement out of the corner of her eye, she smiled. Even a whisper over these headsets could be heard, and Keyshawn had just tipped his hand. Whatever the connection between this thing and the Chaucer book was, it was important to him.

‘Seriously, snap out of it, cadets,’ scolded Ben. ‘We’re not alone anymore.’ He pointed upward at a zip-line rope that stretched across the square from the top of a nearby building to the clock tower. M caught the high-pitched sound of sliding rope as she looked up to see several shadows floating in the sky directly into the clock’s upper level.

‘Follow me!’ said M as she ran to the tower door. The lock was a joke; she unlatched it in no time flat. Pushing open the door, she turned to the others. ‘Did they see us?’

‘Impossible,’ Keyshawn assured her. ‘These uniforms are cloaked. If someone walked by, all they would see is a projection of the wall behind us.’

M remembered the first time she’d encountered Fulbrights, in the forest. How their uniforms had shimmered green, keeping the soldiers hidden until they’d been right on top of her.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I counted three of them, so we have the upper hand in terms of numbers, and we have the element of surprise on our side, too. Jules, can you climb this thing?’

‘Definitely,’ she said with a smile.

‘Wait, who died and made you boss, cadet?’ demanded Ben. ‘I’ll take it from here. Byrd and Zoso, shinny up to the top and we’ll have them surrounded.’

M was ecstatic that Devon would be preoccupied with the mysterious strangers rather than searching for the box. Fulbright or not, Devon had been skulking behind that mirror back at the academy, and M had a nasty feeling that she was up to no good.

Ben continued barking orders as Devon and Jules stepped into the shadows at the tower’s base. ‘Cal and I will stand guard out here in case there are others coming,’ he said. ‘The box search is on the rest of you.’

‘Everyone else, follow me, then,’ said M, and she entered the building with Vivian, Keyshawn, and Merlyn behind her.

The inside of the tower was completely open; M could see all the way up to the tower’s top floor. A cylindrical elevator shaft stretched the entire height, wrapped in a spiral structure that looked like a strand of DNA. Against the walls of the tower, a gated walkway also led upward.

‘We’re taking the walkway,’ said M. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for the box … and for anything else that might be lurking in here.’

The crew made its way up the curving, slanted path. M tried her best to be as quiet as possible, but Vivian and Merlyn weren’t the stealthiest sneaks in the world. Their footsteps were irregular and, worse, shuffling. Vivian had an excuse with her injured knee, but Merlyn should have known better.

‘Keep it quiet, everyone,’ warned M. ‘Your insanely loud walking could give us away.’

Scouring the walls, she searched for anything that looked out of place. With her mask, the older stones were easy to pick out from the touched-up areas. They had a darker, heavier look to them, not to mention that they were obviously fashioned with more ancient tools, giving them a more distressed shape. Still, nothing screamed
supersecret hiding place
, so she moved on.

‘I don’t hear anyone above us,’ whispered Keyshawn.

‘Are we walking into a trap?’ asked Vivian.

‘More or less,’ said M. ‘They know we’re here. Must have heard Mr and Mrs Bigfoot. They’re waiting for us to find the box so they can steal it from us.’

‘That sounds like bad news,’ said Merlyn.

‘Not at all,’ answered M. ‘It means they don’t know the box’s location any more than we do. Otherwise they’d grab it and go, rather than risk a confrontation. Jules and Devon will flush them out soon enough. Let’s keep looking for this whatever-it-is.’

M continued on and came across a closed door partway
up the path. Slowly she opened it – and found twelve mysterious figures lurking in the dark. With an audible gasp she leapt back and nearly flipped over the railing before Merlyn caught her.

‘It’s okay!’ said Keyshawn from behind her. ‘They’re not thugs. You just found the apostle statues. Look.’

M peered into the room and saw that he was right. The statues were busts of the twelve apostles, expertly crafted with a halo above each of their sculpted wooden heads.

‘What are they doing here?’ she asked.

‘They’re part of the clockwork,’ said Keyshawn. ‘Part of the show. Every hour on the hour, a gear turns, presenting each apostle out of the two closed windows there, above the clock.’

‘This place is too weird,’ replied M.

Vivian peeked in and examined the room. ‘No box in here. Let’s keep looking.’

Again they climbed the walkway, higher and higher, but there was nothing that stood out among the centuries-old architecture. M turned to Vivian and shrugged as if to ask,
Where to now?

‘Get down!’ Jules’s voice rang out both in the open room and over everyone’s comm link. A sonic blast pulsed through the door at the top of the walkway and sent a flailing body careening down the clock tower shaft. M ran to the edge in time to see the figure’s face. It was Rex Sykes, the muscle-bound Master from her Lawless past, and he shot her a chilling smile as he hurtled toward the ground. Before she could react, he released a powerful flare that lit up the tower shaft. The bright light sent her mask sensors
into hypermode, leaving her temporarily blind.

M ripped off her mask and blinked rapidly until her normal sight started to return. She looked back down to find Rex, but he was gone. She looked up just in time to see another blast from her past leap lithely onto the skeletal framework of the elevator and drop down into the shadows. It was Angel Villon, another Lawless Master. Devon and Jules were in pursuit, scaling the frame in his wake.

‘Cal! Ben!’ M hollered. ‘We need you now!’

She heard the door burst open below, followed by the unmistakable sounds of fighting. The scuffling, grunts, and groans echoed off the old stone walls, and Vivian and Keyshawn ran down the path to join in the battle. M moved in the opposite direction, up the walkway to the highest point, where she rushed through the door and was met by the sight of Prague expanding for miles all around her. She had to take this opportunity to find what they’d come for. Behind her, she heard a shuffling footfall.

‘Merlyn, please tell me that’s you,’ said M, but she turned around to see none other than Adam Worth, leader of the Masters, gripping Merlyn in a sleeper hold.

‘Here’s Merlyn,’ he said as he held her friend’s unconscious body against him like a shield. ‘You look good in black, M. I could do without the mask, though.’

‘But you went to jail,’ said M.

‘Yeah, I did,’ confirmed Adam. ‘It wasn’t for me. I need the open air; that’s where I thrive, and quite frankly, German jail cells, well, they’re just too stifling, you know?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Whatever it is you came here to find,’ said Adam. With
a furious lunge, he tossed Merlyn aside and grabbed M, forcing her through a window. Her legs dangled in the open air. ‘Now be a good traitor and tell me where it is.’

M twisted and squirmed to escape his grip, but when Adam eased his hold on her, she realized that he was the only thing keeping her from falling to the empty town square far below. She craned her neck to see if there was an awning to possibly catch her below, but the drop was sheer and unrelenting.

In the rush of fear, though, M also saw the clue they’d been looking for.

Embedded in the sidewalk below was a replica of the clock-face calendar from the tower. It was large, but unmarked with artwork: a series of empty circles within a circle. At ground level it was a flourish that people would almost never notice because they were too busy gazing up at the clock, but from up here, the design looked like the bull’s-eye of a hidden target.

‘It’s not here,’ M lied. ‘My mom got to it first.’

‘Interesting,’ said Adam with a sneer. ‘Then it looks like our business transaction is over.’

Callously and casually, Adam dropped M, sending her tumbling through the night … but that’s exactly what she had wanted. With her Magblast, she shot the ground beneath her, hitting the calendar-replica stonework squarely and cracking the sidewalk, while also bouncing her into the air like a pogo stick. The speed of her fall negated, M bounded back onto the street unharmed.

Looking back up, she gave Adam a small wave and ran to the newly demolished cobblestones. The center circle
was crushed into chunks, and from under those chunks M pulled out a smooth wooden box about as big as, well, the Takeaway Rembrandt. The weight felt oddly familiar in her hands. So did her urgency to escape.

From the top of the tower, Adam screamed with frustration and quickly rappelled down the side of the clock. M pulled on her mask and took off toward where the Fulbright van had been, shouting, ‘Target acquired; mission accomplished. Now let’s all get out of here! And someone grab Merlyn – he’s at the top of the tower.’

‘M, where are you?’ called out Keyshawn.

‘I’m almost at the van …’ answered M, but when she reached the rendezvous, the van was nowhere to be found. ‘Guys, we’ve been cut loose!’

‘Well, what did you expect?’ said Adam, panting from the run as he came up behind her. ‘The cavalry?’

M bolted in the opposite direction, deeper into the winding streets of the old city. Around a corner, she ducked into a shadowed alley and hid while Adam hurried past her. Retracing her steps, she stumbled upon a parked moped.
Bingo
, she thought as she jumped on, hot-wired the ride, and zipped back toward the clock to meet the others.

But trouble wasn’t far behind her: Adam had doubled back. He lunged at the moped and grabbed hold of M’s suit. She swerved violently, trying to throw the hitchhiker off, but he held tight. The box remained clutched in her right hand, pressed against her chest, but that left only one hand for her to steer with. She tried directing the moped back to the old city, but Adam had other plans. With his free hand he jerked the handlebars to the side and sent the two of them
careening off in another direction.

‘Heading away from you!’ M calmly explained over the comm link, but there was only static in return. Adam must have disconnected her suit somehow.

As they bounced over the uneven cobblestones, M felt him clawing at her fingers, trying to strip the box away from her. She threw her head back, connecting with Adam’s nose. The blow stunned him and he almost let go of her but recovered, redoubling his grasp.

‘Come on!’ he screamed. ‘Not cool, M! Not cool!’

Ignoring him, she focused on keeping the moped upright as they raced through the narrow, weaving streets until suddenly the city fell away and they found themselves streaking across a bridge. Gas lamps lined the barrier walls, casting a soft glow in the night that highlighted dark sculptures standing watch over the bridge like gargoyles. One by one the statues flew by as M and Adam raced over the bumpy, cobbled causeway, and M had an idea. It wasn’t a good idea, but it was all she had.

She hit the brakes and turned the moped into a power slide. Violent sparks screeched in the darkness as the metal of the vehicle scraped against the cobblestone street. Adam was flung to the side and struck the bridge’s wall solidly. M jumped clear of the bike and rolled over and over and over, crunched between the cold, hard ground and the mysterious box, which she kept tucked against her. Even when she’d come to a stop, the world spun viciously, pushing her back down to the ground when she tried to stand up. She could see Adam rise up slowly, shaking his head as he walked toward her.