Undisclosed (13 page)

“Man, this sucks,” Marcus said.

Seth stomped his helmet in the air. “Party at my house.”

The distant throttle of their engines and howls quickly faded.

“As much I love our infrequent banter, I’m curious—why are you here?”

“Isn’t painfully obvious?” Harlan queried him. “Now, I’ve overlooked your little parties, and allowed you full run of the house, but even I draw a line. Don’t think for one minute because you are my son that you receive any more leeway than—”

“Your employees?” Deagan cut him off. “Yeah … I know. Just another number on the payroll; another cog in your shadowy empire.”

“Don’t play that little hurt boy card with me. You’re not seeing the bigger picture here,” Harlan whipped. “Deagan, have I not trained you to know better? You’ve taken your eye off the ball.” Harlan motioned to everything around him.

“There’s been a breach of data at the Lab.”

“I’m not responsible for what goes on at your lab, that’s your business.”

Harlan laughed.

“Hey, I’m just a mole, nothing more than an observer and informant in LAHS. Yep, I think that’s what Wesley said.”

“Deagan, do we have to rehash this again? LAHS is your training ground and not only are you ignoring your responsibility, you have become an embarrassment.”

“Ignoring my responsibility? Embarrassment? That’s fresh coming from you, Dad, being as the breach occurred right underneath your nose. Listen, thanks for another inspiring moment but I can take care of my own business.”

Harlan smacked the side of Deagan’s face with the back of his hand.

“No, you can’t,” he spat. “Otherwise you would know why I asked you to concentrate on Travis Marshall.”

Deagan wiped a small trickle of blood from the corner of his lip with the outside of his thumb. Turning back he gave a scornful look.

“I didn’t raise you to be scared, weak and powerless,” Harlan said. “Now I want you to focus all of your attention on Travis Marshall, do I make myself clear? Get me that data.”

Harlan momentarily surveyed the compound that Deagan had developed.

“It would be a shame to see all of this taken away, wouldn’t you agree?”

Harlan walked back into the house, leaving Deagan fuming inside. He turned and tossed his drink out into the night.

* * * * *

Ryan lived directly in the downtown; his parents had a small apartment right above where his father aired his radio show. Despite the fact that Travis had grown up in a fairly well-off part of Los Alamos and Ryan hadn’t, they still got on well, which to most may have seemed odd, yet it was probably because both their fathers lived and breathed their work and Travis didn’t really fit into the regular social cliques that most people ran around in.

Travis pulled up front of the shabby, run-down building and could see Ryan’s dad inside the large glass window that faced the street. A sickly yellow neon lightning bolt ran through the 105.2 sign above the door, making it stand out like a sore thumb. It buzzed and flickered and occasionally would stop working. His father was oblivious to Travis’s arrival, which was probably a good thing, as if he wasn’t busy he would pester him on how his mom was doing. It was obvious he still had a thing for her, despite him being married. His mom and he had known each other as kids; they were somewhat of a “thing,” as his mom would put it, before she caught him with another girl. Most in the town knew that he resented Travis’s father despite the fact that Laura would never be with him again after he cheated on her. It still didn’t stop him from trying to pry into their family affairs. One thing was certain; if he had caught wind of his father’s disappearance, it wouldn’t be long before he would be trying to gain his way back into his mom’s life.

Inside the dilapidated building the smell of a mixture of cheap aftershave and day-old coffee hung in the air. Travis tiptoed past the control room window, giving it a quick sideways glance. It was a real pigsty, littered with old pizza boxes, stained coffee mugs and ashtrays full of squashed cigarette butts. He moved through the dimly lit corridor and made his way up the dank stairwell. He tapped on the door, casting a quick glance down the stairs hoping Ryan’s dad hadn’t heard him come in. From within the apartment he could hear shuffling and then Ryan’s stepmom’s voice.

“Coming, coming.” The door swung open. Ryan’s stepmom was wearing nothing more than a transparent dressing gown. On anyone else it would have looked hot. On her it looked cheap and nasty. She spared him a glance and then bellowed, “Hold on a sec—Ryan!”

“What?” a voice returned

“It’s your friend.”

“Who?”

She looked him up and down like a piece of meat. “It’s Travis, right?”

Travis nodded.

“Don’t make me shout,” she said. “Come in, he’s just getting out of the bath.”

Travis strode in and closed the door behind him. Mrs. Logan was Ryan’s second stepmom; his father never seemed able to keep any of them happy. She curled up on the far end of the coach and stubbed out the cigarette in a dirty ashtray beside her that was filled with brown apple core and gum. He didn’t want to think about the last time they had emptied it. She immediately lit up another.

She blew a ring of smoke in his direction. “He won’t be a sec, how are you? I heard about the accident,” she said as if she had been trained to fish for gossip. Travis wasn’t about to play into it.

“I’m good,” he muttered. He stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, gazing around the dingy room. He felt sorry for Ryan, having to grow up surrounded by such a bunch of bottom feeders. He deserved better. His real mom had run off with a real estate agent when Ryan was only nine, practically leaving Ryan to fend for himself as his father couldn’t even crack an egg. Travis couldn’t blame her though, for as far as fathers went, Art was a real piece of work.

Even though their apartment was directly above the radio station it was fairly well insulated, as he could hear their large clock above their fireplace ticking away, while from below, only muffled sounds.

Finally, Ryan emerged from behind a door farther down the short hallway between the living room and their kitchen. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing a Sevendust T-shirt with a skull and wings. That was another thing they had in common—their taste in music.

“Dinner has been on the counter for the last hour. What the heck are you doing in that bathroom?”

Ryan ignored her. “Come up.”

Travis followed him up the stairs to the third floor, into a small bedroom with an American flag covering the window. Ryan slipped behind his computer and turned down the music that was cranked to ear-bleeding volume.

“Dude, I swear my stepmom has the hots for you. Have you seen the way she’s always eyeing you up?” Ryan said.

Travis shuddered. “Ugh, dude. Gross.”

They laughed and Travis spun slowly around on the chair. Ryan unpaused a shoot ’em up game that he had been playing.

“Hey, good to see you back on your feet. If you’re here to find out what I found at the yard, there wasn’t much to see. Your dad’s truck took one hell of a beating.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” he said. Travis watched over his shoulder. “Man, you’re cheating, you can see through the walls,” Travis blurted out.

“What, you don’t think everyone else can? This game stopped being good a month after it came out. If you want to survive two minutes in this game, you need hacks. Hey, check out this one I made.”

Ryan started playing a new game and before the other side could load he had reached the enemy’s side of the map and run around them, blasting them to pieces. Blood splattered all over the place while he roared with laughter.

Travis rolled his eyes. “That’s
great
, a speed hack.”

Seconds later Ryan was booted from the map, and he launched the game controller across the room. It smashed against the wall, sending plastic flying. “Man, this game sucks!”

Travis shook his head and grabbed his phone and handed it to Ryan. “Here, look, I need you to do something for me.”

Ryan took the phone and switched it on.

“My father has a folder in there that is locked. I need you to get it open.”

“You know how to open those,” Ryan replied.

“Not as fast as you can, and I don’t have weeks to let software try multiple combinations.”

Ryan stared blankly at Travis.

“You’re killing me, man, I’ve already been in enough trouble lately,” Ryan ranted.

“It’s not like anyone is going to know and I wouldn’t ask unless it was really important,” Travis pleaded

“What’s going on, Travis? What am I looking for on this?”

Travis hesitated for a moment, well aware of how mad this was going to sound. He wasn’t entirely convinced himself. He just knew that Ryan, of all people, would be more open to hear it. Hell, maybe he could make sense of it.

Travis began to recount the events that occurred from the crash to his visitation at The Black Hole, the Guardians, the Watchers and everything they had told him. When he was finished, his eyes were riveted on Ryan. A blank expression spread across his friend’s face. Travis bit his bottom lip. He couldn’t quite make out what Ryan could be thinking, but he imagined if he was in his shoes, he would be in fits of laughter by now.
Wait for it … wait for it …
he told himself.

“Right, I know… dumb, forget I even—”

Ryan cut in. “No, no … it’s plausible,” he mumbled. “In fact, it kind of makes a lot of sense.”

“It does?” Travis gave a surprised look.

“Yeah, like if you wanted to stay incognito because there was a band of hunters trying to eradicate you, would you arrive shooting and commanding people to do as they’re told, or take control—Trojan horse style?” Ryan said. “And as for your so-called Guardian buddies …”

“They’re not my buddies.”

“Right … well as for them, I’m pretty sure I remember my father telling me stories of ancient astronauts.”

“Ancient astronauts?”

“Yeah, you know—extraterrestrial beings visiting earth before history was even recorded and how we’re all meant to be … descendants, or creations of them—the missing link!”

Travis’s eyebrow arched. “Right.” He started shaking his head.

Ryan snagged an energy drink beside his ever-increasing stack of empty cans that formed a pyramid on his table; he cracked it open and took a giant swig.

“You said they pulled up Sumerian text, correct?”

Travis shrugged. “Yeah?”

“Well, if they’re the ones I think they are, those Sumerian tablets are presumed to contain knowledge of a race that came down from the sky, creating the first human beings in what the Sumerians called
Edin,
through genetic engineering.”

Travis noted the way he said
Edin
.

“C’mon.”

“It’s a theory as good as any other,” he said. “Think about it. What would have extraterrestrials looked like to people thousands of years ago? Angels? Demons? Gods?”

Travis sat up and paced back and forth.

“My father is a genetic biologist. The Lab has always been off limits to the public. No one ever talks about what goes on there, except what they share through the Bradbury Museum. “He paused. “So why the sudden change in opening the doors?”

“A PR move—maybe?” Ryan replied. “Deflect some of the unwanted attention from the surge of disappearances the town’s had lately?”

Ryan’s nose scrunched up as he began to grin. “Anyway, imagine that, frigging aliens right under our noses—my dad is going to lap this one up.” He jumped up from his chair.

“You can’t tell anyone, Ryan!” Travis exclaimed. “And especially not your dad, he would have a heyday if he caught even the faintest sniff that”—Travis hesitated, barely able to bring himself to accept it—“they were among us. Besides, he and my ol’ man have never seen eye to eye, this would only give him a reason to bring a media frenzy down on the town. No, you got to promise that this goes no farther than you and me, at least until I can determine who to trust here.”

Ryan slumped back in his chair like a deflated balloon. He twirled a pencil between his fingers, occasionally biting the already chewed end. He leaned forward and tapped the end of the pencil against the table.

“You think they were looking for this?” He pointed with the pencil at the phone.

Travis sighed. “I don’t know—possibly,” he said, “that’s why I’m here. For all I know they could all be in cahoots, and they’re just biding their time, waiting for the opportunity to snatch whatever it is they think I have.”

“So, did they tell you why people are being abducted?”

“I didn’t really give them a chance to get that far. Honestly, I’m still waiting for someone to jump out and tell me I’ve just been punked!”

Ryan chuckled.

“I still don’t get why they need my father. I mean, aren’t they meant to be super advanced?”

“Well, that’s the million-dollar question. The originals yes, but these, maybe not. You did say that a lot of what had been passed down had been lost or misunderstood.”

“Yeah, and who knows if he’s still alive.” The light went from his eyes.

Ryan stuck out his chest and tapped the air with the phone. “Well, you came to the right person, my friend.”

“Well, I better leave you to it.” Travis stood up. “And—thanks, Ryan.”

“Oh no, you don’t. You sly ol’ dog, you still haven’t given me the skinny on this girl, what’s her name again?”

“Jayde?”

“Yeah, yeah, her, so is she hot?”

Travis could feel his face going a slight shade of red. He shook his head at Ryan and his lip curled up. “I guess.”

“You guess? What the heck’s that mean?”

Travis scoffed, “Later, Ryan.”

Before Ryan could respond, Travis disappeared down the stairs, leaving him sitting on the edge of his seat with his hands up like an empty-handed beggar. Travis knew Ryan too well; if he didn’t head out now, he would be grilling him on every little detail.

His bike roared to life, kicking up dirt and sand, and yet even its noise couldn’t drown out his thoughts as they drifted back to Jayde.

Hot? Yeah—definitely beautiful …
He shook her from his mind; he couldn’t be thinking about her. He didn’t have time to dwell on a girl, there was a lot more at stake.