Marrow (24 page)

Oracle guided the camera down the hall, descending hesitantly down stairs that creaked with each step. The stairs ended in her familiar living room. Well…what
used
to be her living room. Every vase and laced doily was exactly as I remembered it. Whenever Oracle filmed this, it wasn’t long ago.

“Spine?” she asked. “Is that you?”

I went rigid at his name.

“If that’s you, Spine…I’ve been seeing you,” said Oracle. “You keep appearing in my foresight.”

For some reason, there was doubt in her wavering tone.

“But you’re not Spine…are you?” she said. “Are you a friend of his?”

No response. Nothing.

“Are you a Telepath?” she asked. “I can feel
something
. Something trying to reach into my mind.”

There was a slight, indiscernible sound, like scratching. I would have missed it if I wasn’t sitting right in front of the TV. But whatever the case, it caused Oracle to whip her camera to the side. She plunged through her living room and past the kitchen. She stopped at the sliding door to her tiny excuse for a backyard, which was enclosed within a claustrophobic chain-link fence. The lights were shining on her porch. I didn’t know if the lights were motion sensors, but Oracle’s breath was heavy and frantic. Everything was glistening and wet as if it had just rained. The light reflected bright on the puddles.

The camera crept closer. A withered hand extended into the view of the camera, pulling the sliding door open.

“Who are you?” asked Oracle.

Whoever was out there—if anyone even was out there—didn’t respond.

“Why are you trying to get inside my head?”

Again, no response. Oracle waited several long seconds before lowering the camera. The video ended in a flurry of snowy static. When the image returned, we were staring at the very same birthday the video had started with.

“Well,” said Sapphire. “That was thoroughly weird.”

I just kept staring at the screen—at the birthday party—but really, I was staring
through
everything. Lost in my own jumble of thoughts.

“Marrow?” said Sapphire. “Hello, Marrow. Earth to Marrow. Ground Control to Major Tom. Is anyone aboard the U.S.S. Marrow?” She waved her hand in front of me, finally eliciting a blink.

“Why would Oracle send this?” I asked.

“Um, you said it yourself. She was just trying to lure you and Flex to her place. All she needed was something to get your attention.” Sapphire gestured elaborately to the TV screen. “Mission accomplished.”

“You think she staged that whole scene?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“What about the part where Oracle thinks it
isn’t
Spine who’s lurking around her house?”

“What about the part where WHO CARES? She used you and Flex as Spine bait! She threatened to kill you guys! She’s obviously a twisted old psycho-grandma who has way too many cats and not enough CAT scans.”

I pressed my lips in a straight line. Sapphire was right. It was ridiculous to try and make sense of a woman who was possibly mentally unstable.

“Can we just like…I dunno,” said Sapphire. “Play Mario Kart or something? I really need to do something fun before Specter sentences me to death on that stupid obstacle course.”

“You have Mario Kart?” I said. My mouth slipped into grin.

“Heck yes, I do. And you better believe I’m gonna shoot one of those blue turtle shells at your head.”

“Bring. It. On.”

***

Marrow…

Nero was standing in front of the door with yellow stripes bleeding across it—L-00/NE-00. The door stood out from the shadows like a monolith floating in space. He clenched his trembling hands into fists, but there was no masking his fear. He reached for the security pad and punched in the numbers slowly, almost reluctantly.

2…3…5…8…13…21.

Marrow…

The door sliced open.

Nero’s eyes went wide, his pupils swallowing his irises. He did not see the thing that emerged from the shadows behind him until it was too late. 

His scream became my scream.

I flew up in my bed, thrashing against my covers and drenched in my own sweat. My heart throbbed and my breathing was rapid. My eyes darted around the room until reality caught up with me.

A dream. It was that same dream.

I glanced at my bedside alarm clock—3:07 a.m. From there, my gaze slowly shifted to the door.

You know those moments when you’re about to do something really stupid, but you know there’s no talking yourself out of it?

Yeah. It was time to go exploring.

I jumped out of bed and got dressed, putting on my entire crime-fighting shebang—except
my communicator. If I was going to snoop around, it was kind of a good idea that I
not
wear a tracking device.

I retracted my bone density and drifted out of my room like a shadow.

The Tartarus was dark and dead. Even with all the machinery, the facility was an empty shell without the scientists moving about. Several of the computers were in sleep mode. Those that weren’t continued to purr and blip and blink like stirring creatures. Misty green light continued to emanate and swirl from the jagged surface of the Gaia Comet. It seemed more prominent than ever, casting the entire facility in an ethereal glow.

I stood slightly dumbfounded when I reached the glass door labeled L-01/NE-01. Beside it was a glass tube elevator. If such a door as L-00/NE-00 existed, I had to be practically standing on it.

I turned away from the door and went for the elevator. The control panel labeled levels one through six. That was it. I ran my hand across the control panel as if it might be hiding one last button that would allow me to go down. No such luck.

I don’t know what I had expected to find, but I had deduced this much—my detective skills made Scooby-Doo and Shaggy look like Sherlock Holmes.

This was a dumb idea. I was going back to bed.

Stepping off the elevator, I started back the way I came. My sense of adventure had been completely devoured by the groggy crankiness that was typical of anything being done at three o’clock in the morning. I was so groggy it was a miracle I even noticed it—an empty
clank
beneath my step.

I stopped.

The floor consisted of light metal paneling. Such a sound would not have bothered me if it wasn’t for one glaring detail—I hadn’t normalized my bone density yet. At the moment, I hardly weighed anything.

I tapped the panel again with my toe. The metallic emptiness resonated deep below.

It was hollow.

Stooping down to my hands and knees, I dug my fingernails around the sides of the panel. It was difficult to get a firm grip, but once I did, the panel lifted easily enough. I slid it aside.

In the panel’s place was a concrete hole with a steel rung ladder. The bottom was too dark to see. Assuming it did have a bottom, that is. I suppose it was always a possibility that the Tartarus had a secret passage to China.

Now that I had finally found what I was looking for, I suddenly wasn’t too keen on exploring.

I went down anyway.

The ladder didn’t go down far, eliminating the China possibility. I turned around, surprised to find light in the distance. Dim light, but it was light nonetheless. The corridor only traveled one way. I proceeded forward with cautious steps.

Everything was beginning to look way too familiar. The dark, dank, metal walls, the running pipes, the occasional light bulb leading the way. One particular light bulb flickered and buzzed, causing my insides to flutter. It seemed like exactly the sort of thing to happen in a horror film before the unsuspecting victim was eaten by a ghost. Or whatever the heck it is that all those angry Hollywood ghosts do to people.

I got so distracted by this ridiculous train of thought that I almost didn’t see it appear. Those haunting yellow stripes sliced through the shadows.

The door.

I approached it like a hunter approaching a large, dangerous predator—except I imagine a hunter would probably have a clue what the heck he was getting himself into. When, at last, I found myself standing at the door, I could barely move.

“I’m a Superhero,” I breathed to myself. “I laugh in the face of danger.”

I forced a pathetic excuse for a laugh to reassure myself.

Taking a deep breath, I punched the numbers into the security pad. The door zipped open, releasing a hum of channeling energy.

The room was not what I expected. In fact, it was a stretch to even call it a room. It was more like a cave. The floor, the walls…everything was rocky, except for the ceiling which consisted entirely of metal grating, bathing the stone chamber in slits of green light. It was also empty, except for a single titanium pod that was built into the rock with a black-tinted hatch. Wires and coils sprouted from the roof of the pod, snaking up through the ceiling grating. As my gaze drifted upward, I realized where I was at.

I was literally
inside
the Gaia Comet.

Or at least halfway inside. The grating was merely the floor for the lowest part of the scaffolding  infrastructure built around the comet. From this vantage point I could see the Cronus Cannon from its colossal base.

My gaze narrowed back on the pod. What was this thing?

Fear was replaced by gnawing curiosity. I approached the tinted hatch door which had no handle. This dilemma solved itself as I merely touched the surface. The hatch reacted instantly, shifting outward slightly with a hiss of released pressure, then slid upward.

The inside of the pod was all wires and tubes feeding into a single chair. A dome-shaped helmet was perched at the top of the chair, clearly positioned for someone’s head to fit comfortably inside.

“Hello, Fantom,” said a voice—a computerized female voice that caused me to jump and nearly have a heart attack. “Are you ready to initiate Project Cronus?”

A holographic image had appeared on the back of the hatch—the outline of a handprint.

“Place hand on hologram for security identification,” said the voice.

Crap. This was my cue to leave.

I backtracked my way the heck outta there. I made my way out of the hidden, level-zero control room, through the glassy corridors, and back to my room. I hadn’t even opened my door when I heard the buzzing/ringing sound.

Huh?

I swiped my keycard, and the door’s control panel blinked green. The door slid open. That’s when I saw the culprit, flashing and vibrating on my nightstand.

My communicator—it was going off.

Crap crap crap crap crap.

It stopped ringing and vibrating the moment I reached it, but the display was still lit up. It read:
9 missed calls
.

FREAKING CRAP SANDWICH.

I exited out of the screen to view my missed calls. They were all from Specter. Which meant they were
really
all from Sapphire. This calmed me down a little—at least Fantom or someone wasn’t trying to contact me for an emergency—but it made me panic for an entirely different reason. Why would Sapphire try to call me a gazillion times in the middle of the night?

I selected Specter’s name and hit “Call.”

Sapphire’s face appeared almost instantly—but a completely different Sapphire than the one I knew. This one had puffy, bloodshot eyes, and her face was glistening from what had clearly been a good, hard cry.

“Sapphire?” I said. “Are you okay?”

Her trembling lips hovered open. And then her face collapsed into a choking, sobbing mess.

“Sapphire, what happened?”

“H-h-he’s gone,” she said. “They…they took him.”

“Who? Who’s gone?”

“Whisp,” she said, weeping. “They took Whisp.”

The communicator practically slipped out of my fingers. I snapped out of my daze, struggling to form words into coherent sentences.

“Wha—? Who took him?”

“Th-th-th-the police,” said Sapphire. She sniffed again, seeming desperate to compose herself. “They just arrested him. Nova tried to stop them, b-b-but they took him anyway.”

“I don’t get it. Why would they arrest Whisp?”

“Haven’t you been watching TV? It’s the Cronus Order. They arrested him because of the Cronus Order.”

“But he’s not a Telepath!”

“According to the police, he is. They called him an animal-Telepath. I mean, technically that’s what he is. He communicates with animals telepathically.”

“That’s ridiculous! How can they even consider that the same thing?”

“I think it’s because Oracle used him to control her cats. Once it got all over the news that she was controlling cats too and they realized she used his power, they linked him as a threat.”

I was speechless. Whisp—shy, innocent, inhaler-huffing little Whisp…

Flex was right. This wasn’t justice. There wasn’t anything even remotely just about it. It was just wrong.

“So what?” I said. “They’re just going to take his power?”

“At eight a.m.” said Sapphire, sniffling. “The police said he’s going in with the first batch of Telepaths. It’s sick, Marrow. They’re televising it live and everything.”

My grip tightened on the communicator while my free hand balled into a fist.

“We can’t let them do this,” I said. My brain was spinning too fast. “We have to stop them.”

“Marrow…”

“There’s still time. We can save him!”

“Marrow.”

“We’re stronger than the police, Sapphire! We can—”

“MARROW.”

Even over the communicator, Sapphire’s voice was piercing and irrefutable. My gaping mouth closed.

“Marrow, there’s nothing we can do,” she said. “We can’t take on the whole world.”

She was right. Even though we were strong—Superheroes-in-training, even—there was nothing we could do to save Whisp. He was beyond saving.

“So we just sit here while they take his power away?” I asked. My voice was cracked and defeated.

Sapphire pulled the communicator away from her face. Even with silence on the other end, I could tell that she was crying again.

“I just…I just want to be with someone,” she whimpered. “I can’t do this alone. Can you come over?”

I glanced at the time display; it was four in the morning.

Four in the morning in a research facility at the bottom of the ocean.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

I ended the call, only to call Gustav a few short seconds later. It only rang once.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Gustav. He was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Specter already called me.”

Welp. That stole my thunder. So instead, probably sounding a little too surprised, I said “She called
you
?”

“Fantom had to take an emergency call. So yeah, she called me.”

“Wait, what? He got an emergency call? Like, a crime-fighting, justice-fulfilling, save-the-day sort of emergency call?”

“Yes. That kind of emergency call.”

“And he left WITHOUT ME?”

“Oh, believe me. This is not the sort of emergency call that Fantom takes sidekicks on, nor is it
vone
that you vant to be involved in.”

“Oh,” I said, sounding thoroughly hurt. Because, like, what else was I supposed to say?

“Trust me, Fantom’s doing you a favor. Besides, you do vant me to take you to Specter’s place, yes?”

That snapped me out of my elevated moment of self-pity. I’d already made a promise to Sapphire. Right now,
she
needed me.

“Meet me at the loading dock in ten minutes,” said Gustav.

***

It was still dark when we arrived at Specter’s place. Nevertheless, Sapphire was sitting on the front porch, hugging her knees. Her blue eyes were still framed in red bloodshot lines. The moment I stepped out of the limo, she tackled me in a hug. Not the playful tackling hug from before though. She squeezed me tight, like I might disappear if she gave anything less. And then she glanced down at the thing in my hand—Oracle’s videotape, stuffed back in its manila envelope.

“You would,” she said. Her tone wasn’t accusing or even irritated. Simply matter-of-fact.

“You know,” I said, “in case we get bored.”

Sapphire rolled her bloodshot eyes. “I’ll never get bored of kicking your butt at Mario Kart.”

We entered the front door of the manor, following behind Gustav. Specter’s interior decorating maintained an awkward balance between rustic countryside cabin and modern art. Polished wood surfaces. Space-age furniture designs. Classic Victorian fabric patterns. Sharp modern edges and angles. Wildlife decorations intermixed with indecipherable, avant-garde art. It was weird and arguably kitschy and awesome.

Specter was curled up on the loveseat with a coffee mug in her hands, wearing a silky bathrobe. This
might
have been the hottest thing in the universe…if I didn’t feel so craptacular inside. Gustav sat down on the adjacent recliner and the two of them quietly discussed stuff that I didn’t even care to eavesdrop on.

Instead, I offered to make Sapphire something to eat. She wasn’t hungry. I asked her if she wanted to watch the news—you know, just to stay current on everything that was happening. She said she’d rather stick her head in the microwave.

So we just sat there. Or rather—I sat there. Sapphire curled up into a ball and cuddled against me, squeezing my arm tight and nestling her head into my chest. We stayed like this for a long time. We stayed until the sun peeked its reluctantly bright head over the horizon. I expected cuddling like this to feel a little more romantic. Instead, I felt empty helplessness expanding inside of me. Occasionally Sapphire would start quivering like she was on the verge of falling apart again. Just when it seemed like she was doing really good, she asked what time it was. I glanced at the kitchen clock and winced.

“Seven fifty-two,” I said.

Eight more minutes until Whisp had his powers taken away forever. The knot in my chest was suffocating.

Sapphire fell apart in my lap—shaking…sobbing.

I held her as the minutes ticked closer. The worst part was that I remembered that power-extracting chamber so vividly. The way that the Cronus Cannon pointed directly into it—like a gun to someone’s head. The shocking size of the spherical glass chamber. Dr. Jarvis’s words echoed in my skull:

We actually designed it to contain more than one subject if the need ever arose.

I couldn’t stand it. It was like they had
planned
for this! Everything about the Tartarus and the Cronus Order made me sick. And don’t even get me started on that hidden chamber beneath the Tartarus, located on a level zero that, according to Dr. Jarvis, shouldn’t even exist! What the heck was going on?

At last the time came—the minute hand lurched like a swinging axe, slicing into the twelve.

The silence was chilling. I glanced down at Sapphire whose downcast gaze was entranced on the floor.

Whisp…

***

Sometime during the deathly silence that followed, Sapphire fell asleep. I was glad. She needed it.

I wasn’t even close to sleepy. Instead, my alert gaze was riveted on the manila envelope that I had left on the kitchen counter.

I carefully slid my fingers into Sapphire’s blue hair and lifted her head off of my lap. Sliding as stealthily as I could across the cushion, I wiggled myself free of her arms and gently set her head back down.

I left the house and made a straight line for the Control Tower. A brisk walk and two flights of stairs later, I was in the surveillance room. I popped the videotape in the VCR and pressed play. I was once again introduced to a seven-year-old’s birthday party.

“Okay, Flex, make a wish,” said Oracle.

I pressed fast-forward. I hit play as soon as the birthday part was cut short by a dark hallway.

“Hello?” said Oracle’s voice. “Is someone there?”

I watched closely—intently—as Oracle crossed the hall, descended the stairs, and entered her familiar living room. I don’t know
what
I was looking for, but whatever it was, I was looking hard for it. A clue.
Anything
to make sense of this bizarre video.

“Spine?” said Oracle. “Is that you?”

Spine was the obvious culprit. If Spine broke into her place, sending us this video to lure us there made perfect sense.

“If that’s you, Spine…I’ve been seeing you. You keep appearing in my foresight.”

And then her voice wavered.

“But you’re not Spine…are you?” It wasn’t a question—not really. “Are you a friend of his?”

She wasn’t just asking. The way she said it, it was like she
knew
it wasn’t Spine. But who could it possibly be?

Yeah, Sapphire thought the whole video was staged. But why? Why would Oracle make a fake video, hinting that there was anyone or anything to worry about other than Spine?

“Are you a Telepath?” she said. “I can feel
something
. Something trying to reach into my mind.”

And then there was that slight scratching sound. Oracle plunged through her house, clear to the sliding back door. Her porch lights illuminated just how small her backyard was, confined within a chain-link fence. The lights glistened on dewy grass and reflective puddles after a fresh rain.

“Who are you?” said Oracle. “Why are you trying to get inside my head?”

Oracle lowered the camera, and the screen was lost in a blizzard of static. And then the video was back to six-year-old Flex’s birthday party which I had no interest in.

I hit rewind and watched Oracle backtrack her way through the whole house. When she was back in the dark, upstairs hallway where she started, I hit play.

And then I proceeded to watch the whole thing all over again. I focused even harder on the details—every word, every movement, every shadow. In the end, my obsession came down to a single line:

“But you’re not Spine…”

If Oracle hated Spine so much, why would she lure us to her with a fake video that pointed the finger of blame at someone else? It didn’t make sense. It was like she was trying to tell us something. But what? And better yet, why? If she just wanted to use us as bait, why would she be trying to tell us anything?

Maybe Sapphire was right. Maybe I was overthinking this.

The door to the surveillance room opened. I nearly fell backwards in my chair.

“You nerd. How did I know you’d be in here?”

It was Sapphire.

“Sweet Mother Teresa,” I said. “You scared the crap out of me.”

The good news was that she looked ten times better. Apparently sleeping it off did emotional/psychological wonders. The bad news was that she was drilling holes through me with her skeptical gaze.

“What?” I said.

“You do realize,” said Sapphire, “that Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“You do realize,” I said, “that I don’t care.”

“Yeah, I’ve realized that much.”

“Good.”

Sapphire’s gaze drifted past me to the TV screen. “It
is
weird though. I’ll give you that.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. I mean, who plans out and choreographs something like this? Just to get you guys to come to her house? That’s beyond psychopath weird. That’s just…
weird
weird.”

“Um, yeah. That’s what I’ve been saying.”

I followed Sapphire’s gaze to the TV screen. Oracle was looking through the screen door, talking to herself or who-knows-what.

Oracle lowered the camera and everything became static.

Sapphire went rigid. “Wait. I saw something.”

I shot Sapphire an incredulous stare. “What?”

“Go back. Rewind.”

I wanted to press for details, but I pinched my mouth shut and hit the rewind button.

“There,” she said.

I hit play.

“Why are you trying to get inside my head?” said Oracle.

She was staring out into her backyard once more. I squinted beyond her lit-up back porch, straining to see something in the shadows.

She lowered the camera and the screen erupted in electric snow once more.

“There!” Sapphire exclaimed, pointing. “Did you see it?”

“See what?” I asked in exasperation.

“The puddle! There was something in the puddle!”