Justice (20 page)

‘So you did this to make sure your family became
wealthy?’ demanded Merlyn.

‘No,’ said Keyshawn. ‘Doe said he’d take care of them if I
didn’t
follow his orders.’

‘And what were his orders, exactly?’ said Ben.

‘Keep Foley under, but stable,’ Keyshawn admitted. ‘Develop new technologies. And test the Lawless students.’

‘Don’t you mean
train
the Lawless students?’ asked Vivian.

‘No, he meant
test
,’ said M. ‘The shot you gave us on our first day, it wasn’t the same thing given to all the other Fulbrights. We’re the trial run for the next generation of Fulbrights, aren’t we?’

Keyshawn nodded. ‘It’s true, everything she said.’

‘So why does John Doe need Foley?’ asked Merlyn.

‘He didn’t tell me,’ said Keyshawn. ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’

‘Then can you tell us why there’s a stockpile of spare organs in the infirmary, enough to rebuild an army?’ asked M.

‘What?’ asked Keyshawn. ‘No, I don’t know anything about that. I swear.’

‘You told us we had two weeks to train,’ said Merlyn. ‘What was supposed to happen after two weeks?’

‘The serum takes two weeks to fully fuse with the host,’ he confessed. ‘Over that period, the serum maps your instincts, your brain waves, adapting to the way you think and act, bolstering your every attribute. Once its work is done, well, in theory, you’ll become the perfect you.’

‘We know that already,’ said M. ‘Total Persona. What really happens after two weeks?’

Keyshawn shook his head apologetically. ‘It’s my family.’

‘What happens?’ repeated Jules, grabbing him by the collar.

‘Once the serum is fused with the body, it can also be removed, taking with it all of your special skills, like a copy of your DNA.’ He looked like he was going to be sick. ‘Then, technically, it could be used to grant someone else all your gifts. To create the perfect Fulbright.’

‘You’re not just stealing our identities. You’re stealing everything we are!’ Merlyn said angrily.

‘You tested this on Foley, too, didn’t you?’ asked M.

Keyshawn held his head in his hands and slowly nodded yes. ‘I gave him an early version, but something went wrong. This level of science is more of an art. He had an adverse reaction, but I learned from my mistake. I got your doses right, didn’t I?’

‘You’re a monster,’ spat Jules. ‘A monster and a coward.’

‘He’s not a coward,’ said M. ‘Because he took the serum, too. Didn’t you? That’s why you built a Fulbright suit for yourself.’

‘What?!’ said Ben.

‘So when did you take your dose, Keyshawn?’ M asked.

‘Almost two weeks ago,’ he said.

‘And that’s why you were so adamant about us getting our act together,’ she said. ‘There was never a field mission to save the world. There was just an end date to the test, a deadline for proving you got the right formula for Doe’s supersoldiers. And if you did, then your family would be safe and John Doe has a new weapon of mass destruction in his fight against all things evil.’

The group collectively exhaled as they processed the
magnitude of the revelations. Another moment of silence filled with the steady clicking of the train before M started again.

‘The
Mutus Liber
. It wasn’t originally in the cards for us to find one, since we were just the lab rats. So why are we out here now?’

‘I can’t claim to know what’s going through John Doe’s mind,’ Keyshawn said with frustration. ‘But I’m sure he has his reasons.’

‘Then what does John Doe want with those books?’ asked Vivian.

‘The books make something,’ said Keyshawn. ‘They work in unison, but I have no idea how. Only John Doe himself knows.’

‘No, someone else knows it, too,’ said M. ‘My mother, for one. And my money is on Ms Watts, Dr Lawless, and Zara Smith.’

‘What makes you think they’re involved?’ asked Merlyn.

‘A little birdie sent me this card,’ said M, holding up the slim piece of sturdy paper, ‘inviting me to New York City. And the delivery of the message was hallmark Lawless.’

‘Well, I’ll be,’ said Vivian, looking up from her tablet. ‘It looks like there’s been a coup in the black-market book world in the past hour or so, because according to my feed, the two remaining first-edition copies of the
Mutus Liber
were just purchased by an anonymous buyer in New York City.’

‘So that’s your lead and that’s your trap,’ said Ben. ‘Are we all game for visiting the Big Apple and taking a bite?’

‘We need to get those books,’ said M. ‘I don’t know why,
but I have a feeling that they lead to something that this world doesn’t need to experience. And since we’re being totally honest here, here’s my crazy proposal.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Keyshawn.

‘I propose that from here on out, we only trust one another. Even above your precious John Doe. He may be out for justice, but he’s not a good man.’

‘Careful, Freeman,’ said Ben. ‘John Doe is our leader
and
he was one of your father’s most trusted companions.’

‘Yeah, well, my dad’s not here to vouch for him and I’m making my own decisions now. And I say Doe is not who you think he is.’

‘Ben,’ said Vivian, whose face had turned bleach white. ‘I’m prone to agree with M.’

‘What?’ he snapped. ‘Breaking protocol for a greater good is one thing, but I’m afraid you’ve damaged your gauge of right and wrong. When did this Lawless garbage leech into your head?’

‘When I did some hacking and saw this,’ she said, and flipped the tablet around to show the address and name of the
Mutus Liber
’s no-longer-anonymous buyer. The address meant nothing to M. It looked like any other address in New York City: a series of numbers with a
W
and an
ST
thrown in. But the name of the buyer was loud and clear and terrifying, because the name of the buyer was none other than John Doe.

The train rattled onward as the passengers contemplated this news. Maybe it was a good thing that Cal had made off with the fourth copy of the book, thought M. Trees and valleys flew by outside the windows, flickering past her at
seventy frames a minute. Agonizing over whether they’d made a bad decision striking out on their own, Ben looked like a Fulbright without a country.

‘What are we supposed to do now?’ Merlyn spoke up. ‘I mean, “John Doe” could be anyone, right? That’s the name police give to unidentified people, so it’s probably not
the
John Doe, right?’

‘Seriously, Merlyn,’ said M. ‘What are the chances that another John Doe is going to be attached to those two books at this very particular moment?’

‘It could be someone from Lawless,’ said Ben.

‘I don’t think it is,’ admitted M. ‘The person who left me this message is from the Lawless School. And I don’t think she would have waved a red flag and invited us to disrupt one of her own schemes.’

‘You trust her?’ asked Vivian.

M thought about this question as it pertained to Zara Smith. ‘I trust her about this.’

A hush fell back over the train car as the group realized what they were about to attempt: an off-the-books strike against the leader of the Fulbrights.

Keyshawn was the first to break the silence. ‘I’m in.’

‘Me, too,’ agreed Vivian.

‘I never liked that creepy old guy, anyway,’ said Jules.

‘Ditto,’ said Merlyn.

The group all stared at Ben, the most loyal Fulbright of the bunch. His eyes were empty and his face was flat as the train shook slightly and clicked along its path. He looked up at M. ‘Your father, in his video, said that there was an evil in the world that was bigger than the Fulbrights could handle.
Do you think this is what he meant?’

M thought back to the video she had been shown only a few days ago, even though it felt like years.

Do as they say, not as they do.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘Ben, all I have to go on are the facts that we’ve found. We know that John Doe had us injected with a chemical that could create a mega-army. We know that John Doe wanted us to collect that book in Prague, but he didn’t want us to know what the book was or that it was a piece to a larger puzzle. And we know that someone named John Doe bought the remaining two copies of the
Mutus Liber
off the black market. To me, that’s a lot of John Doe.’

Ben sighed. ‘I’ve always heard you were different, M Freeman. But I never dreamed I’d find myself agreeing with you. I’m in.’

‘Then it’s settled,’ said M. ‘New York, here we come.’

CHAPTER 20

IF THE GLOVE FITS

As the jet’s engines silently lit up the meadow, M steered the ship westward and prepared for another long journey. Luckily she had a copilot, this time, in Merlyn. He couldn’t help fly the jet, but she appreciated having some company.

‘What did you think the first time you met me?’ asked Merlyn.

‘I don’t know,’ said M. ‘You talked a lot; that’s what I remember.’

‘Yeah, well, back then I felt like I had a lot to say,’ said Merlyn with a laugh.

‘Do you think the Fulbrights have Crimers?’ she asked.

‘Sure, but they probably call them analysts or detectors, something that doesn’t sound half as cool,’ he said. ‘Hey, M, do you ever miss it? The Lawless School, I mean.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ she said. ‘I actually miss it a lot.’ Merlyn’s question took her back to her original interview with Ms Watts. To the time when M had no idea what the Lawless School was and she thought she was interviewing for a
posh boarding school, where she’d be hobnobbing with future politicians and world leaders, not lurking in society’s shadowy underbelly with criminal masterminds. ‘You?’

‘Yes and no,’ said Merlyn. ‘I mean, yes in the sense that it was challenging and exciting. Cracking practice codes, solving practice problems, I loved the theory of it all. But when it became real, when we were in Hamburg, when Cal went under the ice, that’s not what I signed up for. I’m a tech geek, M. I like the problem solving and I’m good with gadgets. That’s what I bring to the table.’

‘Hmmm, I never thought about what I bring to the table,’ said M. ‘I guess, if you’re the brains, then Jules would be the acrobatic, unflinching brawn. And Cal would have been –’

‘Wait,’ interrupted Merlyn. ‘Why are we even talking about Cal? He’s not a member of the team.’

‘But he was,’ said M. ‘I think there’s a reason we were all given that serum, Merlyn. I thought it was because I insisted I have you guys with me, but I think you would have been pulled into this whether I’d made that demand or not. We’re all members of a team, we all bring something to the table. But I can’t place Cal in all this …’

M trailed off, deep in thought about Cal. From day one, he’d been a very likable idiot, yet he’d managed to outsmart a number of people: M, during Professor Bandit’s mark challenge; Foley, during the deep-freeze chase; Devon, during the class clash; Ben, in the Magblast duel; Adam, in Prague; and finally M again, in the British Library. ‘Why didn’t I see it before!’ she exclaimed. ‘He’s a Smooth Criminal, Merlyn! Cal’s a Smooth Criminal. The first in and the last out of a con … just like Zara described on my first day at Lawless. Awkward,
likable, and always three steps ahead of their mark.’

‘And we were the mark,’ said Merlyn. ‘He was playing us all along. Now I feel completely stupid for not seeing it.’

‘Don’t,’ said M. ‘None of us saw it.’

Light wisps of clouds hung in the sky as the jet rushed through the evening. The sun was gone but the full moon cast a murky glow on the stratospheric view, which stretched forever in all directions. M and Merlyn sat, privately recounting their past year and how it had led them to this very moment.

M had already let a black hole slip through her fingers and she wasn’t going to let this new disaster, however big or small, get past her.

The jet touched down in an abandoned warehouse lot somewhere deep in Brooklyn. The area was empty and barren, surrounded by husks of buildings and hangars that probably once housed airplanes, boats, or large props and sets for movies. Either way, it was the perfect location to secretly land and stash the plane. There was even a subway close by to carry them into the city.

Dressed in their Fulbright uniforms, the crew was relieved to find the subway car empty. But that didn’t last for long. Slowly the car filled up, despite the late hour. No one confronted or questioned the crew, though a couple of older kids could be heard laughing and giggling, clearly at their expense.

One boy snickered. ‘Oh man, I didn’t know this was a ninja train.’

‘Is there a dork convention in town?’ guffawed the other.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said the first, barely catching his breath. ‘It’s like, “take me to your dweeber.’”

Ben kept his cool and, under his breath, urged everyone else to as well. ‘Let them laugh. They have no idea what’s really going on here.’

M was thankful when their stop arrived and the crew left the train behind, pursued by the echo of croons, whistles, and tasteless jokes from complete strangers. ‘This is why I hate New York,’ said Jules. ‘Everyone’s got an opinion and they think everyone else needs to hear it.’

‘I could tap into the transit system and make that train run nonstop all night,’ said Keyshawn with a laugh.

‘You can do that?’ asked Merlyn.

‘Sure, it’s easy,’ said Keyshawn. ‘I gave a presentation last year at the academy, all about how unprotected infrastructures are around the globe. I could reroute this whole city if I wanted to.’

‘Sounds cool, but it’s not why we’re here,’ said M, trying to keep everyone focused.

The streets were not completely empty at this time of night, which surprised M, but she had always heard that New York City never slept. However, once they got off the busier avenues, the side streets were quiet and still except for the thrashing gusts of wind blowing periodically in from the Hudson River. M wished she could put on her mask, if only to protect her ears from the cold, but the crew looked suspicious enough as it was, and they couldn’t rely on camouflage in such a populated setting.

The street they wanted began as a residential neighborhood with picturesque brownstones walling them
in, but on the next block, the surroundings turned instantly industrial. There was a commercial bus line storage and cleaning service in one warehouse, next to a row of what looked like delivery hubs, where lines of truckless flatbeds sat along the street, huge and dirty white, like dinosaur bones unearthed and left behind.

Finally they arrived at John Doe’s address. Slipping on their masks, the crew spread out to get a better look at the building, which didn’t look all that impressive from the outside. It was a low structure by New York standards, standing only four stories high, with a façade that was mostly made up of twelve-foot-tall, wide-panel windows that lined the upper floors. The glass was old and grimy, covered in a filth that looked like it wouldn’t even be washed away by rain. It reminded M of the layers of dust that had covered the Lawless yearbooks back in Dr Lawless’s office in West building seven. It was an impenetrable dust. There was no way to see inside.

The ground floor, devoid of windows, was a mass of concrete blocks, with a metal door set back in a shadowy entryway. It was covered in tags and graffiti, swipes of color that wove over and over one another, making a twisted artistic piece that was forever unfinished.

‘Not the rich digs I was imagining,’ said Vivian.

‘Well, he did buy the books on the black market and not at a Christie’s auction,’ M reminded her. ‘This is another perfect place to hide something you don’t want found. The last forgotten part of Manhattan.’

‘But not for long,’ said Keyshawn, motioning across the street. There was new construction going up, scaffolding
platforms built layer by layer into the sky, walling off what was probably the beginning of the block’s first condo high-rise.

‘That’s our in,’ said Ben. ‘We can climb the scaffolding to get even with the roof and then set up a zip line across. Once on the roof, we’ll either find an entrance inside – fire escape, or what have you – or we can go down the side and cut through one of those dirt-encrusted things that are attempting to be windows.’

‘Or we could go in the front door,’ said Jules. ‘It’s already open.’

Indeed the door was open, slightly ajar and cloaked in the shadows of the vagabond vestibule. As M tuned her ears to the sounds of the night, the delicate creak of the door on its hinges became obvious. Jules had probably heard it without cranking the volume levels of her mask. It was one of her great tricks: she could hear a pin drop on a pillow.

Suddenly aware that they might not be the only ones here, M perked with anticipation. ‘Let’s see what there is to see, then.’

Switching her visual sensors to pick up both full light and full heat, she slowly opened the door and snuck inside. The first room was wide and open and completely empty – there was nothing in sight other than a set of stairs in the middle of the room. Moving forward, she felt a thin breeze on the air.

‘Wait, do you guys feel that?’ she whispered.

‘It’s called a draft, M,’ said Ben. ‘Not unusual for a dump like this.’

Jules took a step, but M quickly held her back. It wasn’t
just one simple breeze; there were several different breezes coming from every direction in the room.

‘It’s a trap,’ M said, scooping up dust from the floor and blowing it into the air. The cloud of dust scattered lightly and caught in the breezes, forming a crisscross pattern of X’s throughout the room between the crew and the stairway to the next level. ‘They’re using air instead of lasers. Impossible to see without tripping, even with aerosol sprays. Our masks won’t help us.’

‘Looks like we go back outside, then,’ said Merlyn, who took one step back toward the door.

‘No! Wait!’ screamed M, but the door slammed shut. Merlyn had tripped a switch and there was no telling what would come next. ‘Everyone, down!’

The crew dropped on their stomachs and a mysterious shadow covered them. A series of air-splitting
zisses
and
zasses
whisked wildly above them, striking the concrete walls with deadly-sounding pings. When the whizzing stopped, the shadow retreated, too. It was Keyshawn. He had expanded his suit to create a shield around the entire crew. M stood slowly, surveying the once-empty room that now looked like a pincushion. Small metal quills with razor-sharp tips were nailed into almost every inch of the walls around them.

‘Okay,’ said Ben. ‘Not just a draft. I can admit when I’m wrong. But you need to make me one of those suits if we get out of this alive, Keyshawn.’

Keyshawn smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘The door,’ said Vivian, trying to open it. ‘It’s locked.’

‘Looks like it’s up we go,’ said M. ‘Be on your best behavior,
everyone. We’re guests in this madhouse.’

After checking the stairwell for signs of another trap, they began their ascent. The second level was also vacant and the windows were plastered with old newspapers, which blocked out what little light might have entered the space. Jules had taken three steps in when she noticed a squishing coming from under her feet.

‘Maybe there’s a leak?’ said Jules. ‘This floor is pretty wet.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ confessed M as Keyshawn followed up the rear and stepped into the room.

SLAM!
The door to the stairwell clamped shut behind them. M turned and saw the walls begin to bleed… No, it wasn’t blood. They were leaking water.

‘Hold your breath!’ M hollered as a gush of water flushed through openings along the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, trapping the crew in an instant deluge, which pummeled them in every direction. Suspended in the water, M couldn’t tell if she was facing up or down. She swam over to the windows and kicked against the glass, but it wouldn’t give.

‘Relax, everyone,’ Keyshawn’s voice came through her comm link. ‘Fulbright masks have an air supply in them. You can breathe underwater, so please don’t hold your breath like our friend M suggested.’

M exhaled and took a deep breath. That alone made this experience very different from her time back in the freezing waters of Hamburg. ‘When were we going to get underwater training?’ she snapped.

‘I had it scheduled for next week,’ Keyshawn laughed. ‘No time like the present, though, huh?’

The crew swam over to the next stairwell door and
shredded it open with their Magblasts. The water rushed in and leveled out halfway up the stairs. M followed its lead and climbed up to the next level.

‘I think it’s safe to assume that if there were another person trying to break in here, we’d at least have seen their corpse by now, right?’ asked Vivian.

Through the door at the top of the stairs, the third level looked every bit as empty as the previous levels. ‘Maybe we’re too late?’ suggested Merlyn quietly. ‘Maybe Doe packed up everything and ditched this place because he knew we were coming?’

‘Or knew someone else was coming,’ said Ben.

‘No, whatever this place is, it’s not abandoned,’ said M. ‘That’s what he wants people to believe. Look at the floor. It’s impeccably clean.’

‘Who cleans floors in a run-down place like this?’ asked Keyshawn.

‘Same crazy person who tries to drown or make voodoo dolls out of his visitors,’ said Jules.

‘Someone who doesn’t want you to see their footprints in the dust,’ added M. ‘There must be an entrance on this level that he could slip in and out of without having to deal with the first two levels.’ She walked over behind the stairs and there, just as she had expected, was an unlatched window looking out over a fire escape. ‘Bingo. I don’t think John Doe let too many people know about this place. It’s made to be secret.’