Zeke Bartholomew (12 page)

7:09 p.m.

Fifty-one minutes until some guy with a funny accent in his name destroys everything. And is his first name really Le? His parents must have wanted him to get made fun of more than mine.

We walked into the capsule, and the moment our feet crossed the threshold, the fake wooden door whooshed shut and suddenly we were hurtling downward at a speed far faster than any normal elevator.

“I think I'm going to be sick,” I said.

“For once in your life can you go thirty seconds without threatening to puke?”

“Um, not today.”

“Fine.”

Sparrow looked around the capsule while I did my best to keep my lunch where lunches are supposed to stay.

“I don't see a camera,” she said.

“Me either,” I replied.

“That's not a good thing. It means somebody definitely knows we're coming. And wherever we're going, we're going there fast, which means when we get there, we're going to have a welcoming party.”

“Okay, so what do we do?”

“Go over by the wall,” she said.

“Okay.” I did as she told me.

“Now give me a boost.”

“Okay. Um, what?”

“I can push out one of these ceiling panels,” she said, pointing. “We need to get on top of the elevator.”

“Um…why?”

“If there are no cameras, they know that whoever is in this elevator isn't supposed to be here. But since there are no cameras, they don't know who we are. We need to get out of sight. Now, boost me up.”

I knelt down, cupped my hands, and held strong as Sparrow put her boot into the hold. On the count of three, I lifted her with all of my meager might until she was able to reach the ceiling.

She slipped her finger inside her uniform and pulled out a small file. Using it, she began to unscrew a ceiling panel. As she was doing so, the elevator began to slow down. We were nearing the bottom.

“Hurry,” I whispered.

“Going as fast as I can.”

One screw came out. Then a second. Then a third. One left. The elevator was slowing down even more.

“Done!” she said as the fourth and final screw fell to the floor. There was a loud scraping sound as Sparrow pushed the ceiling panel away, revealing hundreds of feet of empty blackness above us.

“Push me up.”

I did, and she clambered through the hole and into the elevator shaft. Then she leaned back down, the wind whipping her hair about her. She leaned over and stuck her hand down.

“Grab it, and I'll pull you up.”

I reached up and took her hand, and she began to pull. I could hear her grunting in pain, the shoulder she'd separated not making things any easier.

“Stop!” I shouted, letting go of her hand and falling back to the floor.

“What are you doing, Zeke? We're almost there!”

I bent down and picked up something from the floor. The fourth screw that she'd loosened from the ceiling panel.

“Don't need anyone finding this,” I said. She smiled.

“Now, come on.”

I gripped her hand, and at the same time she pulled, I reached up and was able to get my other hand through the hole and onto the top of the elevator. She pulled, I pushed, and soon I was sitting next to Sparrow on top of the elevator as we descended through the darkness.

I looked up. I couldn't even see the entrance we'd come through. No wonder Le Carré's headquarters couldn't be found. It was thousands of feet below the ground. That's what the mobile military antenna across the street was for. There was no way he could get the necessary reception down here, no way he could broadcast with SirEebro without a mechanism on the surface to do it.

I helped Sparrow replace the ceiling panel, and we sat and waited as the elevator continued on its downward path. There was a small grate through which I could peek down and see the inside of the empty elevator.

“Odds are they'll just inspect the elevator and leave. Then we can go about finding and destroying SirEebro,” I said.

Sparrow nodded.

The elevator slowed down, slowed down, and finally came to a grinding halt. I did the quick math. I estimated that we were at least a mile below ground. Unfathomable.

“A quick check,” I mumbled, “and then—”

Suddenly the air erupted in huge thunderbolts. We covered our ears as sparks and smoke blew up in the elevator right below us. Red beams of light blinded me. The shock waves sent us both tumbling off the top of the elevator. I was able to grab a cable to hold on to, preventing myself from falling over the side to my death. I couldn't see Sparrow but couldn't risk calling out to her. Not that she could have heard me anyway. It was like the Fourth of July times a thousand less than five feet away from us.

Finally the explosions stopped. I was afraid to breathe.

Quick inspection, my butt. They opened fire without even waiting for the doors to open. I'd been five feet from being Swiss Zeke.

“All clear,” said a male voice from below us.

“Elevator is secure,” a female voice said.

“Must have been an electronics malfunction. Send a repair team.”

That's odd
, I thought. Those voices sounded strangely familiar…

I could hear footsteps in the elevator, which went away after a few seconds. When it appeared that we were alone again, I hoisted myself back on top of the elevator, trembling like a little bird. Sparrow was above me, clutching a cable. She slid back down and joined me on the elevator top. We both looked down.

“Wow,” I said. “I think they even shot up all the dust particles in there.”

“What were those things they were firing?” Sparrow asked.

“It didn't sound like gunfire,” I said. “And those beams were some sort of laser rifle. I've never seen or heard of anything like it before.”

“Let's admire their handiwork later,” Sparrow said. “Coast is clear. No time to waste. Let's move.”

She began to remove the ceiling panel again, but I grabbed her arm.

“Are you nuts? There could be a hundred guards just inside waiting for us. We go down there, I'm half the kid I used to be.”

“So what do you suggest?” Sparrow asked.

I pointed across from us to an open air vent.

“There,” I said. “We make like tunnel rats.”

She looked below, then looked at the burned-to-smithereens elevator below us. My option seemed like the choice least likely to get us pureed.

“Okay. You first.”

“So ladylike,” I said. “Come on.”

There was no way I could squeeze through the vent with my backpack strapped across me, so I tied it to my ankle. I slid across the top of the elevator and barely pulled myself through the air vent. I could feel the fat on my love handles squeaking as I shimmied through the vent. The backpack slid behind me, thankfully not making much of a sound.

“Maybe cut down on the waffles for breakfast,” Sparrow said.

“Right. Because I balance my diet based on how many evil air ducts I'm going to have to crawl through on a given day.”

I kept going. There were noises below us, but I couldn't make anything out. Still, something stuck in the back of my mind. I recognized those voices back in the elevator. The man and woman who'd blown it to kingdom come. I had no idea how or why, but something told me I knew who was down there with Le Carré. Nevertheless, I had to find Kyle.

We came to a T-junction, splitting off to the left and the right. Both trails curved off, preventing us from seeing where they led.

“You go left, I'll go right,” Sparrow said. “But neither of us does anything without letting the other know what's down there. We meet back at this junction in five minutes.”

“You got it,” I said, trying to sound brave, but in truth ready to soil my underwear at the prospect of skulking around a secret, guarded underground lair without Sparrow. Still, she was right. It was the only way to know for sure; a few wrong turns and we would run out of time.

I began to shimmy left while Sparrow went right. I crawled along the corridor, nothing but metal surrounding me on all sides. My backpack was still attached to my ankle, and I pulled it along with me as I moved.

I could still hear voices below me, and my breath caught in my throat every time my fat made a noise that might give away my position.

After about fifty yards, I came to the end of my line. The vent was sealed off by an air duct. I shimmied to the very end and saw that the vent was about fifteen feet off the floor. What I saw below me made me nearly cry out.

It was Kyle.

He was sitting in a cell, beams of red light crisscrossing the entrance. His head was in his hands, and he was nibbling on his fingernails. A common Kyle trait when he was nervous.

I could see spots of blood on his hands. He'd chewed through his nails and was now eating his cuticles. Gross.

Every few seconds Kyle would raise his head up to look at something outside his cell that I couldn't see. He looked tired, scared, hopeless. I wanted to reach out to him, to let him know that Zeke Bartholomew was here to save the day.

Actually, I'm not so sure that would have made him feel any better.

I waited until a little while had gone by without any movement from Kyle—which meant he wasn't being watched at the moment—and then reached into my pocket and took out that last screw Sparrow had dropped in the elevator. I aimed carefully and tossed it into Kyle's cell.

It pinged at his feet, startling Kyle, who leaped up.

“Sit back down!” a voice outside the cell shouted. Kyle did as the voice ordered.

But then he reached down and picked up the screw. Turned it over in his fingers. Then, slowly, he looked up. And based on the totally incredulous look in his eyes, I knew he saw me.

Kyle's jaw dropped.

I waved at him. Because, well, I didn't know what else to do.

I motioned for him to stay put. Kyle's mouth flapped open and closed. I couldn't rescue him right now. The air duct was too high for him to climb up to, and there was no sense in my dropping down into a guarded cell.

So, as much as I hated to do it, I mouthed to Kyle,
I'll be back
.

His eyes basically said,
You've got to be kidding me. Get down here and get me out of here!
And his mouth let loose a silent barrage of obscenities that I'm pretty sure he hadn't learned from Mrs. Hooverville, our English teacher. I don't even think the majority of them
were
in English.

Hopefully he'd understand in a little while.

I tentatively turned around, trying to make as little noise as possible, and began the shimmy back to the T-junction to meet Sparrow.

A few minutes later I arrived back just in time to see her coming around the bend. She met me in the middle.

“Did you find anything?” she whispered.

“I found Kyle. They're holding him in a cell at the other end of that tunnel. Some sort of infrared laser gate, same color of red as those beams inside the elevator. I can't get him out from here. We're going to have to find another way. What did you find?”

“I think I found another way,” Sparrow said. “That tunnel leads to a generator room. I didn't see anyone inside. We can go from there.”

“Good. Because I told Kyle I'd be back.”

She cocked her head. “What do you mean you told him you'd be back?”

“Well, I didn't
tell
him, tell him. I threw a screw at him, and I think he saw me and got the picture.”

“So you're telling me that he clearly acknowledged you.”

“Yes.”

“The prisoner that they're guarding and probably have cameras on at all times.”

“Yes.”

“You're telling me he looked directly at where you were lying.”

“Yes, why are you…oh, no…”

The second my stupidity registered, the metal enclosure around us erupted in a cascade of sparks and fire. Red laser beams cut through every inch of the metal tubing, miraculously missing us by millimeters at most.

I screamed. Who wouldn't? Laser holes poked every inch around us, cutting through the metal like it was paper.

“Come on!” Sparrow yelled.

I crawled behind her, covering my head, but trying to avoid the lasers in a small, enclosed tube was like trying to avoid getting wet in the shower. I felt them slice through my clothes, felt them singe my eyebrows.

We tried to make it to Sparrow's side of the tunnel, but then there was an awful lurching sensation, and the entire duct system around us broke free, fell through the air, and down to the ground.

The wind was knocked out of me, and the smell of smoke and gunfire made my dad's barbecue seem appetizing. I coughed and hacked and tried to open my eyes through the dust.

Then, finally, I opened my eyes. And what I saw in front of me made my head spin. I knew why I had recognized those voices from before.

Standing over us, with strange-looking rifles pointed directly in our faces, was the singing duo of Penny Bowers and Jimmy Peppers.