Omega City (3 page)

“Don't you think it's weird that Dad is showing his research to some lady from his beginner classes?” I asked him now.

“Some lady? You mean his
girlfriend
?” Eric corrected.

“Whatever. We barely know her. What if she's another one of those reporters, looking to do a story on crazy Dr. Seagret and his conspiracy theories?”

Eric looked up from the screen. “She'd better not be. I'm not going off the grid again. It took me three months to
get my rankings back on this game after last time.”

When the book scandal first broke and Dad was put on leave, we were hounded by journalists, got mysterious hang-up phone calls in the middle of the night, and some other scary stuff Dad wouldn't even tell us about. So he packed tents and supplies in the car and drove us out to the wilderness until, as he put it, “things cooled down.”

A month later, Mom walked off our campsite and filed for divorce. We came home all right, but it's never been the same. Dad said it was Dr. Underberg's enemies, out to ruin him, too. And if that's true, then it worked. Because here we were, totally ruined.

“On the plus side,” he added, “she keeps paying for his classes.”

“I don't like her.”

“Why? Afraid she's going to be competition for president of Dad's fan club?” Eric put down his controller. “You're the one always saying people should believe Dad. You should be glad someone finally does.”

“Fiona isn't the someone I meant.”

He just returned to his game. I knew that pose: mainstream phase activated, conversation over. Eric was not going to be any help.
Again
. Biting back a sigh, I headed into the kitchen. Time for Paper Clip's dinner. I grabbed a can of cat food, then rooted around in the drawer for a can opener.

Some resource manager—whatever that meant—Dad met in a beginner class at the Learning Annex was in no position to help him. Nobody could, except maybe if Aloysius Underberg himself rose from the grave and proved all Dad's theories were true.

The way things were going, that would probably be Dad's next talk. “The Government's Secret Zombie Program for Dead Geniuses: From Einstein to Steve Jobs.”

I popped open the can, but weirdly enough, Paper Clip didn't appear. She usually had a sixth sense about food. I wondered where she'd gone.

Dad and Fiona were holed up in the study, and knowing how Dad felt about Paper Clip, I doubted I'd find her in there. In the living room, Eric was engrossed in his game. I headed for the mudroom. The second I opened the door, a yellow furball darted past me and into the house, like she already knew she was in trouble. As soon as I flipped on the light, I saw why.

“Paper Clip,” I groaned. “What did you
do
?”

Paper Clip is generally a pretty good cat. She has just one tiny vice: she loves mint. Like,
loves
. It's insane. Dad says if she ruins anything else trying to get to her favorite treat she's out on her furry little ear. So Eric and I know enough not to keep gum or candy anywhere Paper Clip can get at it. She'd tear through pockets and chew open backpacks and scratch apart pantry doors. But I guess Dad
never informed Fiona about the mint thief in the house. From the tiny green speckles all over the floor of the mudroom, I guessed Tic Tacs, a Paper Clip delicacy.

The black zippered laptop case still hung on its peg, gaping wide open. Paper Clip is oddly skilled at zippers. She just hooks a little claw in the hole and lets her body weight do the rest. Papers were strewn all over the floor, along with file folders, a whole mess of business cards, an assortment of chargers and, worst of all, a laptop.

Yet another reason Fiona was trouble. Now Dad would make us get rid of the cat because she killed his stupid new girlfriend's laptop. That was, unless I could fix it. As quickly as possible, I gathered up Fiona's stuff. She probably wouldn't miss the mints. The big issue was going to be the computer. If it was broken, we were done for. Holding my breath, I booted it up.

It made exactly the kind of grinding sound you'd expect an expensive laptop to make after being violently attacked by a mint-crazed cat. But then I heard fans start to whir. The screen flickered to life, and all kinds of windows popped up with “(Recovered)” in the file name. Maybe Fiona would think she'd just bumped it a little and forced a restart?

As long as it worked, right?

I was about to close the cover and slip it back in the bag when one of the files caught my eye. It was a scan of a
diary page of some sort, and the file name read “Omega-AU-pg126 (Recovered).” You could see the edges of the book and the shadow of the spine from where it had been pressed against the scanner plate. Most of the page seemed to be a doodle of concentric circles, like a bull's-eye. But there was a single line of handwriting on the bottom of the page.

“X marks the spot” has been done. I far prefer IX
.

I knew that handwriting. I'd seen it a lot in the months and months I'd spent helping Dad in his office.

It was Aloysius Underberg's.

“EXACTLY HOW MANY FILES DID YOU STEAL OFF YOUR DAD'S GIRLFRIEND'S computer?” Savannah asked me, her blue eyes looking even bigger and rounder than usual.

“Would you all please stop calling her that?” I said, exasperated.

Eric smirked and knocked off three or four zombies with his grenade launcher on the TV screen. “Could be worse, Gills,” he said, his fingers moving fast over the game controller. “Could be ‘stepmom.'”

“That doesn't sound half bad,” Savannah said, sweeping her blond hair behind her shoulders. “You say she's really pretty and knows how to dress.”

“You're missing the point, Sav,” I said.

“Right.” She nodded. “Stolen files.”

Savannah always comes to dinner on Thursdays, because Dad teaches his night class and leaves money for Eric and me to buy pizza. She loves ordering pizza, especially on Thursdays.

Savannah's been my best friend since we were both six years old. Well, kind of. Until recently, we were only summer best friends. She lived in one of the mobile homes in the park on the other side of the creek, and we'd spent every summer for as long as I could remember splashing back and forth across the water, splitting Popsicles and trading books. In the winters, when I lived in the city, we sent emails. I told her about all the cool city stuff—like first-run movies and music festivals and ice-skating rinks in the park. She told me about how she was the most popular girl at school. Sav was the only one happy we were moving into the summer cottage for good, and even I had to admit that I liked the idea of starting at my new school with a ready-made best friend.

And it has been great. Mostly. Savannah's different in the fall. Like how she spends more energy deciding where to sit at lunch than she does on the average quiz, and last week, she pretended not to know the answer to a problem in math class, even though she was the one who showed me how to solve it when we were doing our homework the
night before. School Savannah introduced me to all the cool kids and made sure we were in the same homeroom, despite the fact that her last name starts with an F and mine starts with an S. But I still miss summer Savannah.

I spread out my evidence on the coffee table: four printouts and my pink jelly USB bracelet, the one I'd used to copy Fiona's files off her laptop before I'd stuffed it back in her bag, zipped it up, and pushed it far out of Paper Clip's reach. “They're stolen files all right. Only I don't think I was the first person to steal them.”

Eric snorted from in front of his video game. “You think Fiona stole the stuff you found on her computer?”

I waved one of the scanned diary pages in the air. “Yep. From Dad.”

Aside from the sheet marked “pg126,” there were two others that also looked like they were from the same diary and then one that made even less sense to me, since it was just a spreadsheet of really big numbers with words like “steel” and “pipe” and “lead sheeting” next to every row. I only took that one because it was also marked “Omega” in the file name.

Only problem was, I wasn't sure what “Omega” meant.

“AU,” however, I felt much more confident about. “All these diary pages were saved under the heading ‘Omega-AU.' I think that last part—‘AU'—stands for Aloysius Underberg.”

“Or maybe gold,” said Savannah. “‘Au' is the chemical symbol for gold.”

I shot her a look. This was exactly the kind of thing she acted like she didn't know at school.

“And astronomical unit,” Eric prompted without looking up from the screen. “And alternate universe.”

“Dude, get off the internet,” said Savannah.

“
Dude
, get out of the jewelry aisle,” he replied as he made his character duck and cover behind an overturned car. Savannah thought Eric was a huge dork. Eric thought Savannah was a huge airhead. It had been this way for as long as I could remember.

“It's Aloysius Underberg,” I insisted. “It's his handwriting. I think it's his diary.”

Now Eric paused his game and turned to me. “What are you talking about, Gillian? Dr. Underberg's diary was destroyed when that pipe burst. Remember? The Reistertown Historical Society banned Dad for life.”

“Exactly!” I said. Eric and I had shoveled soggy pulp out of the office for two days. “And yet, here are pages from the diary. What does that say to you?”

“That someone was smarter than Dad and scanned it a long time ago, before it was destroyed?”

“Nope.” I tapped the page. “The scan is date-stamped. Date-stamped
last month
. Which means that this diary wasn't destroyed in the flood. Maybe none of Dad's notes
were. Maybe that pipe in the wall didn't even burst.”

“Don't joke about that,” said Eric. “I lost my comic book collection and my PlayStation in that flood.”

“Just hear me out,” I argued. “Someone out there didn't want Dad to publish that book about Dr. Underberg. That part we know.”

“
You
know.”

“What if the flood wasn't an accident?” I pushed on, ignoring Eric's crack. “What if it was all part of the plan? They broke into the house and staged it to look like the flood ruined Dad's stuff, but really
they
broke the pipe and stole his files, hoping that if his research was gone, he'd have to stop writing the book.”

“Ha,” Eric interrupted. “They've clearly never met Dad.”

I ignored him. “And when he published the book despite everything, they knew the only thing to do was ruin
him
.” Ruin us.

“
They?
” Savannah asked, wrinkling her eyebrows. “Who is
they
?”

Eric snorted. “With Dad and Gillian, there's always a
they
.
They
covered up the Roswell experiments.
They
know who killed JFK.
They
destroyed Dr. Underberg and now
they
are out to get
me
—”

“Well, if there is a
they
,” I said, cutting off my brother, “then Fiona is one of
them
. Because she has pages from
Dad's Underberg diary, which supposedly doesn't even exist anymore.”

“If she's part of the conspiracy, she must be getting a real laugh from the nuts in Dad's beginner classes,” Eric said.

Savannah looked more contemplative. “What do you think she's trying to do, Gillian? I mean, your dad can't do anything to expose”—she made air quotes—“
them
anymore. After everything that's happened, well . . . people just sort of think he's crazy.”

“You can say that again.” Eric unpaused his game and went back to killing zombies like the conversation was over. Fine. He could waste his time chasing video game monsters. I was going after real ones.

“I don't think she's trying to do anything to my dad,” I said to Savannah. “I think she's trying to get something
from
him.”

“Like what?”

“She said last night that Dad was the greatest scholar of his generation. If anyone can figure out what happened to Dr. Underberg, it's him.”

“I thought you said Dr. Underberg was dead.”

“Right, but there's still a lot we don't know about how he died. Or where. Or what happened to his stuff.” Soon after the government fired him over the Underberg battery, he stopped filing patents, sold his house . . . and then one
day, he disappeared. Like he got bumped off by the CIA or the KGB or some other organization with a couple of letters and a lot of spies. The prototype for the hundred-year battery disappeared, too. Official sources say the battery never worked. But Dad's book says different.

“Look.” I pointed at the first page. “The things Underberg is writing in these pages, it's all really weird, like he's talking in code.”

“
Underberg?
” Eric mocked as he battled the undead. “
Weird?
You don't say.”

Savannah read the top page. “‘X marks the spot has been done. I far prefer IX.' Yeah, that makes no sense.” She picked up the next one, which Fiona had given the file name of “Omega-AU-pg125.” “‘My last and lasting gift to mankind . . .' blah blah blah ‘. . . we are not ready for the stars, though there are those who would Shepherd us there against our wills. While the Earth remains, so shall I.'” She glanced at me over the top of the page. “Your dad read this whole diary?”

“And it all sounded just as nuts,” said Eric. He tossed the controller to the couch. “I can't listen to this anymore. I'm going to be in my room. Come get me when the pizza's here.” He leaped over Savannah and stomped off.

Savannah nodded at the other papers. “So what do the rest say?”

I handed over the spreadsheet with a shrug. “There's
this one, which is just a bunch of numbers to me. And then this one, which I can't even figure out why she bothered scanning.” I passed Savannah the last scan, which simply showed the edge of a torn-off sheet. The only writing visible was a few pen marks on the edge of the ragged page.

Savannah looked at them all, then tapped the edges against the coffee table until they were in a nice, neat stack and laid them down carefully. “Gillian,” she said slowly. “Let's say Fiona
did
break into this house two years ago and stole your dad's files and caused a flood and then ruined his life. If all that's true, then she's already got whatever information he has about Underberg. So why is she dating him now? Why is she going to all his conspiracy theory lectures and stuff?”

“You're siding with Eric?” Some friend!

“No.” She held up her hands in defense. “I'm just saying . . . it's a big leap. Maybe she's not one of . . .
them
or whatever. Maybe Fiona doesn't have the diary because she stole it from your dad. Maybe she bought it off eBay or something, not realizing it was stolen. You said she met your dad in one of his classes. What if she's just interested in this stuff, same as him? Maybe your dad even knows about the scans.”

I narrowed my eyes. “If my dad knew that diary was still around, he would have mentioned it to me.” He'd
complained often enough about it being gone. Fiona was fishy. Why didn't anyone believe me?

The doorbell rang. Savannah perked up. “He's here! How do I look?”

“Great,” I said. Sav always looked great.

This was the thing about Thursdays.

“Girls,” came the voice on the other side of the door. “Can we not do this today? I've got, like, ten deliveries to make.”

Savannah, already crawling toward the windows near the door, covered her mouth with her hand and squealed. She twisted around and beckoned to me, eyes glittering with excitement. I sighed and crawled after her. Paper Clip followed, yellow tail flicking in the air. When we reached the window, Savannah lifted the curtain a fraction of an inch, peeked out, then slammed her body to the floor.

“He's there! Gillian!”

“Of course he's there,” I whispered. “We ordered pizza from him.”

“Girls?” came his voice again. “Please? I'll give you a free order of egg-roll calzones.”

Savannah crouched beneath the windowsill and lifted the curtain again. I caught a glimpse of his truck, a beat-up red pickup with a magnetic General Tso's Pizza sign affixed to the side. Our town's too small to have more than one delivery place, so General Tso's does pizza and Chinese
food—and to be honest, they're kind of bad at both. The only decent thing they have going for them is this delivery guy, who Savannah, in keeping with the military theme, has christened Private Pizza.

Private Pizza is really, really cute. He's very tall, very tan, has very dark hair and very beautiful green eyes and as far as we can tell, he only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Savannah was now putting on lip gloss and arranging her long, stick-straight blond hair over her shoulders. She handed me the lip gloss but I shook my head. Banana-flavored. Yuck. I did, however, tighten my ponytail.

She stood up, smoothed her top down over the waist of her jeans, and took a deep breath. “Okay. I'm going in.”

I gave her a thumbs-up.

She yanked the door open. “Hi,” she cooed.

Private Pizza stood under the porch light, pizza in his hands. He wore his red General Tso's T-shirt with its ironed-on military fringe and Mandarin collar under an unzipped blue hoodie. “Hi.”

“Is this our pizza? Tomato, cheese, and sesame chicken?”

“Should be.”

Savannah cocked her head to the side. “I don't think that's what you're supposed to say.”

Private Pizza rolled his eyes. “Come on, kid.”

“I think,” Savannah went on coyly, “that if you don't say it, we get it free.”

He sighed, straightened, and clicked his heels together. “I present to you, lovely maiden, this golden disk of the seven heavens, baked by the flame of four noble dragons.” He bowed his head over the pizza box and held it out.

Savannah giggled, took the box, and handed him the money Dad left for us. “Awesome.”

Private Pizza stepped back. “Yeah, no free egg-roll calzones for you,” he said, and jogged off the porch.

Savannah closed the door, but watched him as he got back in the car and peeled off down the driveway, gravel spinning out from under his wheels. “He's so hot.”

“Hotter than the pizza,” I said, grabbing the box. “Since you make him stand out there for five minutes first.”

“He's my future husband!” Savannah insisted, following me back to the dining room table. “I want to spend as much time with him as possible.”

“Your future husband?” I asked skeptically. “You don't even know his name.” I opened the box. Nestled into the corners around the pizza were four wrapped fortune cookies. I yelled for Eric.

“That'll come later,” Sav declared, and snagged a slice.