The Doomsday Device (Teen Superheroes Book 2) (8 page)

“This is too weird,” Chad moaned. “How did it all come to this?”

“Do you really want an answer to that?”

“No.”

We rung the front bell and it chimed a little ditty for a few seconds. I thought it may have been Can’t Help Falling In Love by Elvis. The door opened and the King of Rock and Roll – or a fairly reasonable facsimile – stood in the entrance. He was wearing a white jumpsuit with a bright red collar and flared pants. The entire outfit was decorated with gold grommets and colored rhinestones.

“Hello boys,” he said. “Lookin’ to get hitched?”

“Not to each other!” Chad exclaimed.

“I have a card,” I said. “I’m here to see Mr. Floyd.”

Elvis nodded. “Come right in boys. You’ve arrived at the right place.”

He opened the door wide and we stepped inside. We found ourselves in a short corridor. The walls were painted lilac pink. The interior smelt of cologne. Plastic flowers decorated the corners. Pictures of Elvis decorated the walls as well as dozens of photos of just-married couples.

“I’m in Hell,” Chad muttered.

Elvis ignored him. “Come on through to the chapel, boys.”

We followed him into a clean and neat chamber with rows of seating on both sides. A small enclosed gazebo sat at the front. Its ceiling was made of hanging pink satin sheets and plastic white and pink roses. An organ was located to the left of the gazebo. An elderly lady was practicing the organ.

She looked up at us. “Hello boys.”

“Ma’am,” I greeted her.

“They’re looking for Mr. Floyd,” Elvis said.

She nodded.

Elvis hit a button on the left hand side of the gazebo. There was a soft click and the entire structure lifted up into the ceiling. Directly below it was a small and modern looking elevator enclosed in steel and dark glass.

“Mr. Floyd is right this way,” Elvis said.

We wordlessly stepped into the elevator.

Elvis winked. “If you rethink that marriage…”

Doors slid across and Chad and I looked at each other. Before we could say a word we felt the elevator smoothly drop a few feet. The doors slid open. A modern office lay before us. We could see about twenty desks with people working at wide screen computers.

We stepped out of the elevator. On both the left and right of the chamber were walls with various maps of parts of the world displayed on them. Military personnel were all over the place, speaking to administrative staff.

A woman aged about twenty-five with short black hair and round rimmed glasses suddenly appeared. She wore a neat, blue office suit and flat shoes.

“You are looking for Mr. Floyd?” she said. “You’re names are -?”

“Axel,” I said. “And Chad.”

She nodded. “Follow me.”

Leading us through the heart of the office, we reached a barrier and I abruptly realized the entire office was actually only a mezzanine area. Beyond it lay an even larger room, hundreds of feet in length. At the far end lay a massive video display made up of small screened television sets. There seemed to be hundreds of different channels playing at once. Hundreds of other desks had people sitting at them, typing or speaking over hands free phones.

“Wow,” said Chad.

“You’re right about that,” I replied. “Super-wow.”

A man weaved his way through the maze of desks towards us. He was tall, clean shaven with short cropped brown hair, a grey suit and shiny black shoes.

“Hello boys,” he greeted us. “I’m Mr. Floyd.”

We introduced ourselves.

“Mr. Jones told me you might be in contact with us,” he said. “I’m glad you took the initiative.”

“Actually the initiative was taken away from us,” I said. “We were attacked last night by -.”

He held up a hand. “Let’s find a meeting room first.”

We followed him in silence past the back wall with all the television screens. Beyond it lay another sunken area where more people were working at desks inputting information and speaking on phones.

My mind was whirling. All of this was taking place beneath Las Vegas. In fact, it was taking place directly underneath the Hound Dog Wedding Chapel. I was dying to ask him about the installation, but now was not the time. He led us into a meeting room with a large oval desk surrounded by about twenty chairs. A screen hung from the wall at the front of the desk. Mr. Floyd indicated chairs to us while the girl in the suit closed the door behind us.

“I don’t know if you’ve been introduced to Agent Palmer,” Mr. Floyd said.

We nodded greetings to her.

“Okay boys,” Mr. Floyd. “Tell it from the top.”

Between the two of us, we spent the next fifteen minutes describing the events of the last twenty-four hours. Chad even brought my fading super powers into the discussion which I wished he had kept to himself. Finally we told them about making our way back into town and arriving at the Hound Dog Wedding Chapel.

Mr. Floyd nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. We picked up a news story earlier about your house in the desert. The fire department was called out there after motorists on the interstate saw a glow in the sky.

“They found the whole place had burnt to the ground with nothing left standing.” He paused. “Regarding your powers, Axel, I’m not sure what to make of that. I know very little about The Alpha Project. Are there any scientists remaining from the original program?”

I was surprised. I expected him to know more than me. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I think they were killed and the research destroyed.”

He thought for a moment. “Twelve’s actions are infamous. He brought an enormous amount of disrepute to The Agency.”

Chad and I didn’t say anything in response to this.

Mr. Floyd continued. “I do have some thoughts about the group that attacked you. From your descriptions they sound like a group of vampires that call themselves Wormwood. They’ve been working this part of the country for decades.”

“Vampires,” Chad repeated the word as if Mr. Floyd had said something in a foreign language. “We are talking real vampires.”

“Of course,” he confirmed. “Vampires have existed for centuries. They prospered until Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. When that book was released they realized they had to revert to a low profile. They’ve remained underground while the view of their fictional selves has propagated.”

“What would they want with Brodie and the others?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Mr. Floyd said. “Wormwood are a type of bounty hunter. People pay them to carry out tasks and duties like a Special Forces team. They would have been under the employ of someone else.”

“So this someone else is the one pulling the strings,” I said.

“Exactly,” Mr. Floyd replied.

“So where do we go from here?” Chad asked. “We need to get our friends back.”

“And we want to help you,” Mr. Floyd said. “But we are going to need an assurance from you.”

“What sort of assurance?” I asked.

“That you are prepared to be affiliated with The Agency,” he said. “We need -.”

“No way,” Chad interrupted. “I am not working for you people. Especially after what you did to us.”

Mr. Floyd held up his hand. “Please hear me out. Try to think of the arrangement as being, not so much working for The Agency, but working
with
The Agency. We have mutual aims. You want your people back. We want them safe too.”

“What’s your interest in this?” I asked suspiciously.

“There is a change in the air,” Mr. Floyd. “I can’t say what that is, but I can tell you this. Some time soon you’ll have to make up your mind as to whose side you’re on.”

“What sort of change?” I asked.

“We’re not at liberty to say,” Agent Palmer said. “All we can say is that a big change is coming. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be part of that change. We are prepared to help you get your friends back, but we need you to be on side for us too.”

“I can’t speak for the others -.” I began.

“I don’t expect you to,” Mr. Floyd said. “But you can speak for yourselves. We want you onside after all this is over. If you can’t agree to that then…” He shrugged.

“Then what?” Chad asked.

Mr. Floyd inclined his head. “The door is that way.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. We were being offered a way forward, a way to help our friends, but there was a cost. I wondered about the alternatives. We had no money. No home. No car. Nothing. Only the clothes on our backs. The Agency could change all that.

Chad seemed to be having the same thoughts. He looked across at me glumly. I know he hated the idea, but there was little else we could do. Chad might happily abandon me and Dan and the others, but Ebony was his sister. He would not leave her in a million years.

“Okay,” he said. “Count me in.”

“Me too,” I said.

Agent Palmer nodded. “There are some details we need to work out. We will be supplying standard contracts to you -.”

“Contracts?” I interrupted.

“-but we don’t need to worry about those yet,” she concluded. “First of all we need to find your friends. The paperwork can come later.”

“In the meantime,” Mr. Floyd said, “you boys need some food and sleep. We’ll get someone to show you to a room. Hopefully we’ll have a lead for you by morning.”

Both Mr. Floyd and Agent Palmer left the chamber. I was slightly relieved to note that the door closed, but was not locked after their departure. Chad looked over at me and slowly shook his head.

“It looks like we’re back,” he said. “For better-“

“-or for worse.”

I hoped it was the former and not the latter.

Chapter Sixteen

“The good news is we believe your friends are alive and well,” Mr. Floyd began. “The bad news is we think they’re being held by a man named Jeremiah Stead.”

It was the next day. We were sitting in a meeting room in another part of The Agency complex beneath the streets of Las Vegas. Our new residence was a room in a hotel called The Windsor Arms. It was located down the block from The Hound Dog Wedding Chapel. I don’t know what they told regular people who wanted to stay in the hotel, but as far as we could tell, the entire place was reserved strictly for Agency personnel.

Our room was on the third floor and had a view across the Western side of Las Vegas across the great urban sprawl. It wasn’t the greatest view, but we weren’t there to look out the window.

Agent Palmer had collected us before eight o’clock and taken us to a cafeteria in the hotel. After that she took us down an elevator and through a labyrinth of corridors to a meeting room where Mr. Floyd was already waiting for us.

“Who is Jeremiah Stead?” I asked.

“I believe you’ve already had a discussion about him with Mr. Jones,” Mr. Floyd said.

I looked at him blankly.

“Jeremiah Stead is the man responsible for the theft of the Doomsday virus from the Germans,” Mr. Floyd explained. “Possibly that rings a bell.”

More than a bell. Rather, it rang a long and disturbing chime of doom.

“How does all this fit together?” Chad asked.

“You may have heard of the rise of militia groups in the United States over recent years,” Mr. Floyd said. “They are isolated groups, very often numbering less than a few dozen individuals who band together against the government.”

“Why are they against the government?” I asked.

“They generally share a belief that the government is working against them and they have to take up arms to protect themselves.”

“Where would they get that idea?” Chad asked sarcastically.

Mr. Floyd ignored him. “Most of these groups are harmless, although a number of them have turned to violence over the years. As they break laws the government is required to step in and bring them to justice.”

“I saw something on television about the Freeman movement,” I said.

Mr. Floyd nodded. “They were one of the more violent groups. There have been others. Confrontations between the FBI and these groups have resulted in shoot outs and deaths.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with Ebony and the others,” Chad said.

“We believe that your sister and the others were collateral damage,” Agent Palmer said. “We think your friend Ferdy was their real target.”

“Ferdy?” Chad said in disbelief. “He can barely tie his shoelace. Why would they want him?”

“Ferdy is challenged,” Agent Palmer agreed. “But he is far from stupid. Prior to leaving The Agency his IQ was measured to be three hundred and ten.”

“Three hundred and ten?” I said. “Isn’t the average around one hundred?”

“It is indeed,” Mr. Floyd confirmed. “Ferdy not only has a staggering ability to remember information, but he also has a unique ability to work with numbers and patterns.”

I was finding this a little hard to believe. We had grown to accept Ferdy as one of our group over the last few months. Particularly since he had been so badly treated by The Agency, we had made a point of making certain he felt like an integral part of our dysfunctional family. In that time, however, apart from his amazing abilities to single-handedly wipe the Trivial Pursuit board with us or throw a car thirty feet, he had displayed little in the way of survival skills.

He could barely change channels on the television without our help and Chad’s comment about his inability to tie his shoelace was not far off the mark. I had persevered in helping him carry out normal day to day tasks, but it had been a long battle. I had seen improvements, but it had made me sometimes wonder if he wouldn’t be better off in some sort of institution.

An IQ of three hundred and ten?

Really?

“Assuming you’re right,” I said. “How can Ferdy help them?”

Agent Palmer continued. “Doomsday is sealed within a tube constructed from T5K. That’s an incredibly dense metal only recently developed by the British government. It’s unlikely that even a nuclear blast could break it open.

“A sophisticated locking mechanism keeps Doomsday contained. The code that operates that mechanism is called Barricade. It has some two hundred billion unique combinations. We believe it’s unbreakable, even by the world’s most sophisticated system.”