The Dominion Key (20 page)

The sun was just beginning to peer over the treetops when we reached Bear Creek. The town was just like Dr. Fleming had described. Not much to it. Not even a traffic light. We passed a diner, a church, a hardware store. A few other shops with boarded-up windows. A couple of streets led to small homes with overgrown lawns. And that was pretty much it.

I glanced around warily. With the sun coming up, a vintage red, white, and blue superhero car with four kids inside was a lot more noticeable. Luckily, it was still early. The streets and sidewalks were empty.

Like Dr. Fleming had said, at the edge of town was a street sign with the words we were looking for:

Sophie turned onto the dirt road. When we bumped over a pothole, Milton jolted awake. Blinking drowsily, he seemed surprised to find Cassie sleeping peacefully on his shoulder. As he shifted in his seat, Cassie’s eyes flickered open. Pushing back her silver hair, she rose to an upright position.

“Hope I didn’t drool on your shoulder,” she mumbled.

“No big deal,” Milton said. “I can handle a little drool.”

“We’re getting close.” Sophie guided the car over another pothole. The MarvelousMobile lurched and groaned. “Safe house should be coming up.”

I remembered what Dr. Fleming had said.
A dirt road that seems to go on forever without any sign of civilization
. It was starting to feel that way. Trees, trees, bump in the road, more trees. At least we wouldn’t be spotted by anyone. But the isolation also gave me a weird nervous feeling. What if something happened out here? Something unexpected? Something bad?

I pushed the thought from my head. We were on our way to a safe house. And a safe house is supposed to be
safe
, right?

“We’re here!”

As we rounded a curve in the dirt road, I saw it. The log cabin. It looked exactly like the photograph. Sophie
pulled the MarvelousMobile to the side of the road and we climbed out.

As we approached, I noticed that a few of the trees had been rigged with security cameras. A laser sensor poked up from the grass to scan our movements. If it weren’t for the fact that we had the exact same model on our own front lawn, I probably would’ve mistaken it for a sprinkler.

When we reached the front door, I looked around uncertainly.

“Uh … should we knock, or just—”

I went silent when I heard a sound.

Click
.

The door swung open.

Dr. Fleming was standing in the doorway. I stared in amazement. Last we’d seen him, he’d been pale and weak from Winston’s attack, hunched inside the library with nothing but Milton’s shirt to stop the bleeding. Now he looked as healthy as ever.

“Welcome!” he said. “So glad you could make it!”

After another second or two of disbelief, our questions came tumbling out all at once.

“When’d you get here?”

“How’d you make it out of the school?”

“What about your injury?”

“Can I use your bathroom?”

The last question came from Milton. He was hopping from one foot to the other. Sophie shot him a look.

“What?” Milton shrugged. “It was a long car ride.”

“I’ll explain everything in due time,” Dr. Fleming said. “For now, please, come inside. Make yourselves at home.”

Once all of us had a chance to use the restroom and wash up, Dr. Fleming showed us to the dining room. On the way, I gaped at my surroundings. The outside of his safe house looked like the kind of place Abraham Lincoln might’ve grown up in, but the inside was more like a high-tech home of the future. Voice-activated appliances, a couch that slid across the floor depending on where you wanted to sit. An entire wall was lined with LCD monitors, showing highdefinition security footage of the grounds outside.

When we reached the dining room, Dr. Fleming ran a finger across a touch-screen pad on the wall. A blank section of the floor flipped open and out popped a dining room table and six chairs. The table was already set with bowls and cereal.

“Sorry there’s no milk,” Dr. Fleming said. “Didn’t have a chance to stop by the market on the—” He went silent when he noticed for the first time who was missing. “What happened to Miranda?”

My eyes dropped to the floor. “She … didn’t make it.”

Dr. Fleming lowered himself slowly into a chair. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”

Choking back tears, Cassie told him about how Daisy twisted out of control, how Miranda lost her grip and dropped into the darkness.

“We didn’t see what happened after that,” Sophie said.
“For all we know, Miranda survived the fall and swam to shore.”

I tried to find hope in her words, but all I could think about was the dark, slashing rain. The crashing waves. The tall, sharp rocks that lined Alabaster Island. How could anyone survive that?

Even though all I’d had to eat in the last twelve hours was half a bowl of soup, talking about Miranda had caused my appetite to shrivel. I forced down a few bites of cereal as Dr. Fleming told us his side of the story.

“I waited inside the tunnel, pain searing my chest and shoulder, until I heard two voices on the other side of the shelf. One unmistakably belonged to that bratty girl we’d heard earlier. She kept screaming about how she’d gone blind—”

“Grifter,” I said. “She had a little run-in with a gigantic lightbulb.”

“The other voice was harder to place. A teenage boy complaining that all he had on were boxer shorts.”

“That would be Lunk. He doesn’t react well with water.”

“In any case, I overheard the girl say that you’d made it off the island. Unfortunately, this bit of good news was matched by some rather unfortunate news. According to the boy in boxer shorts, there were more Cyclaurs waiting on shore. I heard the static of a walkie-talkie. The girl alerted the Cyclaurs that their target would be riding a giant robotic duck. ‘Follow them!’ she commanded.”

“Yeah, they caught up with us a little later,” Sophie said.

“Luckily, we managed to escape in the MarvelousMobile,” Milton added.

Dr. Fleming wrinkled his brow. “The
what
?”

“We’ll tell you later. What happened next?”

“Grifter and Lunk assumed I’d made it off the island as well. They gathered up the remaining Cyclaurs and headed in the direction of their boat. Once I was sure they were gone, I climbed out of the tunnel. Fortunately, it was a short walk to the office of Bernadette Oakley, the school nurse. Under most circumstances, I would’ve spent the next week in the hospital recovering. With Nurse Oakley, it took only an hour.”

“Nurse Oakley’s the best,” Cassie said. “She has the power of healing. When I broke my arm in the third grade, it was completely better by that night.”

“So then what happened?” Sophie set down her spoon, turning back to Dr. Fleming. “How’d you get here?”

“After Nurse Oakley patched me up, I hurried back to my office. I could scarcely believe what I saw on the way there. Alabaster Academy looked like a war zone. Children were in shock. So were teachers. I wanted to help, but I knew there were more important matters at hand. In my office, I dusted off the old hover scooter that I keep in the closet. A few minutes later, I was on my way.”

“But what about the Dominion Key?” I asked.

“Ah yes.” Dr. Fleming fixed me with an odd gaze. It reminded me of the looks he had given me at Alabaster. Like he knew something about me that even I didn’t know. “If
you’re finished with your breakfast, I’ll be glad to fill you in on every last detail.”

I pushed away my bowl and stood from the table. “I’m ready.”

Milton took one last bite of his cereal. Still chewing, he said, “Me too.”

“Very well,” Dr. Fleming said. “Come with me.”

We followed him out of the dining room, up a flight of stairs, and through an open doorway. The room was nearly empty—no furniture, no windows—except for a built-in touch screen and a large silver ring that dangled from a hook.

Dr. Fleming plucked the ring off the wall and placed it over his forehead.

“What’s up with the headband?” Cassie asked.

“Oh, this?” Dr. Fleming adjusted the silver band. “You’ll find out in a moment.”

There was something strange about his tone. But I didn’t have a lot of time to wonder about it. Because right then, Dr. Fleming tapped the touch screen and the lights dimmed. In the center of the room, a 3-D holographic image appeared, a blue cluster slowly rotating halfway between the floor and the ceiling.

Dr. Fleming tapped the screen again. The image expanded. Then it broke apart into three different holograms, each bigger than me, that drifted around us like blue planets. They seemed to be diagrams. Technological designs, surrounded by equations and labels.

It was like being inside a science textbook.

I approached one of the holograms, reading the bold label that floated above it.
Platinum-Sealed Alpha Capacitor
. The same words I’d seen on nFinity’s list. The same object that Grifter and Lunk stole a few days earlier. The other two diagrams matched as well.
Oscillating Particle Immobilizer. Neutron Flow Reversal Chamber
.

“These are the objects that Phineas Vex has stolen so far.” Dr. Fleming gestured to the holograms. “All in his effort to build The Device. A weapon that can freeze time and space. That can turn every human on the planet into a perfectly still, helpless being. Like a mannequin in a department store. Armies toppled. The most secure bank vaults plundered. Entire continents falling under a single person’s control.”

“But where’s the Dominion Key?” Sophie asked. “Did you already destroy it?”

“Not exactly.” Dr. Fleming was standing inside one of the huge 3-D holograms. As the blue cloud swiveled around him, his features seemed to change, turning eerie and cold. The silver headband glimmered in the strange light. “You see, I couldn’t destroy the Dominion Key.”

Milton scrunched his brow. “What do you mean?”

“Yeah! What if Vex shows up?” Cassie asked.

“The truth is, I never possessed the Dominion Key.” The blue holographic cloud swirled and shifted around him. “Not until now.”

I was still trying to make sense of Dr. Fleming’s words when he tapped the touch screen again. The holograms vanished and the door beside him snapped shut.

Without the hazy blue veil over his face, I could see his expression clearly now. And it sent a chill down my spine.

“I truly am sorry about this,” he said. “But I had no other choice.”

Dr. Fleming tapped another key on his touch screen. All at once, I realized—coming here had been a huge mistake.

Before I could react, an invisible force knocked me off my feet. I felt myself snap backward as if I were flicked across the room by the world’s biggest rubber band. An instant later, my back slammed against the wall. Pain erupted through my entire body.

I was pinned to the wall. Unable to move. My arms and legs were spread like jumping jacks on pause. My head was tilted slightly to one side, so I could see the same had happened to my friends. They were sprawled out across different parts of the wall, each frozen in their own crazy poses. Cassie had hit the wall sideways. Even her hair was attached, spread around her head like a silver fan. Sophie was beside her. One arm above her head, the other close to her waist. Nearest to me was Milton. His eyes—the only part of his body he could move—darted back and forth.