Fall of Hades

  The key was to make him run. A man holed up in a fortification can dig in for days, but a man on the run is exposed, vulnerable, and more likely to make rash, poor decisions.

  * * *

  Daines’s force moved quickly as it surrounded the farmhouse. Drones, snipers, and men with high-powered binoculars watched every inch of the farm. Welch couldn’t go anywhere without being seen. In addition, they were tracking his phone. Daines, who was positioned in a jeep at a vantage point a hundred yards away, was watching a monitor with a green dot designating Welch’s phone’s location. It was currently moving from side to side inside the farmhouse.

  Daines said to Hatch over his handheld radio, “Sir, we’ve got the target located and surrounded. We’re ready to move.”

  “Then move,” Hatch said. “Bring me his head.”

  “Roger that,” Daines said. He set down his radio and turned to his lieutenant. “Move in.”

  “Yes, sir.” He spoke into his radio. “The guard will advance.”

  The staggered line of Taiwanese soldiers began closing in on the farmhouse.

  After a minute Daines radioed his advance team. “Can you see any movement from the house?”

  “Nothing,” a voice replied. “A couple dogs just ran out of the house.”

  “They must have heard us.” Daines looked down at his monitor. “Are you sure you see nothing? There’s target movement on my monitor.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Could there be an underground tunnel?”

  “No, sir. We’re surrounded by rice paddies.”

  “We need to move in faster. Secure the facility. Let no one past you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Daines watched his troops close in around the farmhouse, the green dot on his monitor suddenly passed through the army’s line.

  “Captain!” Daines shouted into the radio. “Welch has just crossed your lines and moved outside your circle. He’s behind you.”

  “Unless he’s invisible, that’s impossible. Give me coordinates.”

  “Five, two-three-four, seven. Is he disguised as a soldier?”

  “There is no human at those coordinates.”

  “Well, something just walked through your lines.” Daines pulled out his gun and turned to his driver. “Go!”

  The driver followed Daines’s directions until he shouted again, “There! He’s stopped in that clearing.” Daines jumped out of the truck, holding out his gun. “Cover me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Daines walked around the brush, expecting to surprise Welch. Instead, all he found was a small, underfed dog lapping at the water in the rice paddy. It docilely looked up at him as he approached. The dog had silver duct tape wrapped around its torso.

  “What have you got there?” Daines said, squatting down next to the animal. There was a rectangular, boxlike lump under the tape. Daines ran his hand over it, then let out a deep breath. “Welch, you clever devil.”

  Welch’s cell phone was strapped to the dog’s back. Unbeknownst to them, Welch was already in the center of Changhua.

  By the time the Elgen had reached Changhua, Welch had used four of the six cell phones Mei Li had purchased for him. He would use each phone only once, then discard it, usually attaching it to a random vehicle or animal. One he had placed inside the bumper of a bus headed north to Taipei, another on a frozen-fish delivery truck. His first phone he had taped to the dog in Changhua.

  It was the same phone that Gervaso had called to contact him. For the time being, Welch had taken the batteries from the last two phones. He wouldn’t need them for a few more days—not until the Electroclan arrived in Taiwan. Until then he would lay low in a small apartment Mei Li had found and stocked with food and water.

  Still, he was anxious. He just hoped the Electroclan found him before the Elgen did.

  Michael Vey at Christmas Ranch

  My life has taught me that nothing in this world stays the same. Nothing. Not me. Not even you. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can figure out how to live your life. Maybe even enjoy it.

  Two things I know about change. First, sometimes it seems like we’re just bobbing up and down in the ocean trying to keep our heads above water, when really we are being moved along by unseen currents, imperceptibly being dragged to some distant shore.

  Second, it pretty much always hurts.

  I keep reminding myself of this, because while the world we live in is changing, so are our hearts and minds. Things that are important now won’t be important later. And things that aren’t important now will be super-important later. It’s true for everyone. You start out thinking you’re going to be some kind of person and that life is laid out and as predictable as a video game. Then you realize that the rules have changed. There are characters in your game you didn’t plan on. There are things you have to do that you never wanted to do. And sometimes the purpose of the game seems to change. I suppose it’s like that for everyone. Everyone must come to the realization that the life they have and the life they thought they’d have aren’t ever the same thing. And then the question is, what are they going to do about it?

  I suppose that’s what Hatch and the Elgen are about. Change. Evolution. Or de-evolution. Oh, I guess there’s one more thing I know about change. Not everything changes for the better.

  It was a Sunday, I think. I wasn’t sure. Since arriving at the ranch, it had been hard to keep track of what day it was. The sun was setting over the western hills of Kane County, casting the ranch in a rose-gold hue, which, in spite of all the fear I carried, was still beautiful.

  After dinner, Taylor and I grabbed a couple of quilts from my bunkhouse and walked down to the pond. We lay the blankets flat on the wooden dock that hung out over water that had been dyed blue-green so it looked more like water from the Bahamas than a cow pond.

  The sun had fallen during our short walk, and the canyons to the east were bright pink with the sun’s last offering. We lay down next to each other.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Taylor said.

  I pointed toward a large stone outcrop. “See that ridge right there, that juts out? It’s called Queen’s Throne.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Ostin,” I said.

  “Ostin,” she repeated. “Of course Ostin knew.”

  “Just past that is the city of Kanab. They used to shoot a lot of old Western movies there. They call it ‘Little Hollywood.’”

  “Ostin again?”

  I nodded. “He knows everything.”

  We looked out over the horizon in silence. The canyons changed as the sun fell more and shadows crept up from the plateau’s jagged foothills like a rising hand.

  I swatted at a moth that was fluttering in front of my face. Being outside at night at the ranch was a problem. As the sun set, the insects were attracted to our glows, but especially mine, which now seemed to be getting brighter almost daily. I felt like a glowstick. Or, more accurately, a bug zapper. (An Electrical Discharge Insect Control System, as Ostin would call it.) The truth is, I didn’t need to swat at the bugs. They’d disintegrate as soon as they landed on my skin. I just didn’t like the powder marks and the smell of burning insects on my body.

  “Your glow is getting brighter,” Taylor said.

  “I’m still getting more electric.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure what it means.” I looked at Taylor. “I find myself still worrying about that lie Hatch told me at the academy about some of the electric children dying of cancer.”

  “He uses fear and lies to control people.”

  “The thing is, I know it’s a lie. So why do I still think about it?”

  “A lie can exist in your mind even when you know it’s a lie. That’s why you should never stop challenging your beliefs.”

  I looked out over the pond. A fish jumped. “You’re right.”

  “It’s so peaceful out here,” Taylor said. She was tracing the fernlike s
cars on my arm with her fingernail.

  “They’re weird, aren’t they?” I said.

  “I like them. I always have.” She was quiet a moment more, then said, “I’m afraid of this mission. I have a bad feeling about it.” She looked up into my eyes. “Are you afraid?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah. Like out of my skull afraid.”

  “Then why are we doing this? Why don’t we just stay here?”

  “Because eventually the Dark Lord will reach the Shire,” I said. Taylor looked at me peculiarly. “I mean the battle will come here, too.”

  “Then let it,” she said. “Let them come to us.”

  “By the time it reaches us, it will be too late. We’ll have no chance at all.”

  She sighed. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but I know you’re right.” She went back to tracing on my arm. “Is everyone coming?”

  “So far.”

  “Even Grace?”

  “No. She’ll be helping from back here. She’d just be another person we’d have to watch out for.”

  “My parents are freaking out about this. My father doesn’t want me to go.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “Last night. He said we just got back together and he’ll never let me out of his sight again.”

  A part of me was glad to hear this. The protective part of me didn’t want her to go, even though I honestly didn’t think we could succeed without her.

  “This morning I heard him telling the chairman that this was a suicide mission and he couldn’t believe the chairman would send a bunch of kids to their deaths.”

  “What did the chairman say?”

  “He said that we aren’t just a bunch of kids. That we’re not only gifted, we’re smart.”

  “That describes us,” I said sardonically.

  “Then he said he knew it was dangerous, but these are dangerous times.” She hesitated. “No, he said desperate times. And desperate times require desperate measures.”

  “So we’re a desperate measure,” I said.

  “Apparently.” She frowned. “You know what’s really weird? My brothers in college have no idea what’s going on. My father hadn’t even told them that my mother was arrested.”

  “How would you even begin to explain things to them?”

  “I have no clue. Especially since they probably think our parents are dead.” She shook her head. “They don’t even know I’m electric.” Taylor’s frown deepened. “Do you think that the Elgen would hunt down my brothers?”

  I didn’t want to tell her what I really thought. The truth was, I was surprised that the Elgen hadn’t found them already. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “So what are you going to do about the mission?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  I thought for a moment, then breathed out slowly. “I want you to be safe. I want you to be a million miles away from Hatch and the Elgen.”

  “That would put me on the sun.”

  I grinned. “The sun is ninety-three million miles from the Earth.”

  She grinned back. “Really, Ostin?”

  “Sorry. I am starting to sound like him.”

  “One Ostin’s enough.” She laughed. “Actually, one is more than enough.”

  “My point is, I don’t care how far you are from Hatch, just as long as he can’t find you.”

  “So you don’t want me to go?”

  I again hesitated. “I want you to be safe. But I don’t know if we can do it without you. I know I can’t. You saved my butt at least ten times.”

  “You’ve saved mine, too,” Taylor said softly. “Don’t worry. I know you need me. And I’m not a kid asking my mommy and daddy for permission anymore. I left all that back in Idaho. My dad still doesn’t understand the big picture. He still believes that things can go back to the way they were and we can be a cozy, innocent little family. What he wants right now doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is whether or not it’s the right thing.” She touched my face. “You taught me that.”

  “If we don’t stop the Elgen, they’ll just grow more powerful. The longer we wait, the more dangerous they become. Like python eggs.”

  “Exactly. Easy to crush, but let them hatch and grow, and they’ll crush you.”

  Let them Hatch, I thought.

  “There’s something else I don’t know what to do about. . . . I mean, in case we don’t make it back,” Taylor said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I know what Jade Dragon knows. I mean, I don’t understand it, but I could recite it all. Should I tell them?”

  I swatted at another moth. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t trust the resistance?”

  “I don’t know if I trust them with that.”

  “But we’ve trusted them with our lives.”

  “It’s not the same. Even if they weren’t our friends, our lives are important to them. But this is different. Some information is too tempting. It’s like, I’ve never stolen anything before, but if you told me that there’s a million dollars, unguarded, in a box behind the school, I might consider taking it. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What if someone decides that it’s a good idea to beat Hatch at his own game by creating their own electric civilization?”

  “Someone? You mean, the resistance?”

  I nodded. “We don’t really know much about the voice, do we? What I do know is that that much power in one person’s hands is too much. Besides, they know where to find Jade Dragon.” I kissed the top of Taylor’s head. “There will be time to figure this out after we come back.”

  She nodded. “After we come back.” She cuddled back into me. We lay there quietly on the quilt with my arms around her, and her head on my chest. She felt so good. So warm and soft. In spite of the mess of my life, I still felt lucky. If my electricity had brought me nothing but Taylor, it was worth it. I couldn’t imagine loving anyone more than I loved her.

  Then Taylor lifted her head and looked at me. “There’s something else I want to tell you. But I’m afraid.”

  I leaned up on one elbow. “Why would you be afraid?”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”

  “I know you’re crazy,” I said.

  She punched my shoulder. “No, I’m serious. It’s weird.”

  “So? I’m weird. Tell me.”

  She took a deep breath. “How do I begin?” She hesitated a moment, then said, “I read something the other day that said we only use ten percent of our brains. Except, like Ostin, he probably uses like ninety percent, but this article said that if we could use all of our brains, we would not only be able to read minds, but we’d be able to see the future.” She looked at me intensely. “I thought it was interesting that they made the connection of mind reading to seeing the future. What do you think of that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know how you could know something that hasn’t happened. But I don’t know if time is really the way we think it is. Ostin once tried to explain to me Einstein’s theory of relativity and how time warps. I didn’t get it. He also said that Stephen Hawking said that he couldn’t understand why we couldn’t remember the future, so maybe if our brains were powerful enough, we could.”

  “So you think that it might be possible to tell the future?”

  “Yes. I mean, people have made predictions before, like prophets and Nostradamus and stuff.” I looked into her eyes. “Why?”

  “Something is happening to me. I keep having dreams. But they don’t feel like dreams, they feel real. Almost like memories. And they come true. At least they have so far.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  She sat up, pulling back from me a little. “Like, right after we escaped the Starxource plant in Taiwan, I had a dream that all these black dragons were flying over Timepiece Ranch and then they started breathing fire over it until everything was burned to ashes. After it was over, there was one dead dragon on the ground.


  “And when we got there, that’s what we saw—the ranch was completely burned up and there was one crashed helicopter on the ground.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your dream?” I sat up too.

  “I didn’t think it mattered then. I mean, we were facing real nightmares in Taiwan. But then I had another dream. The night after we met up with Gervaso in the Gadsden, I had a dream that my mother was in a cage and my father was walking around it dressed in his police uniform. I asked him why he didn’t let her out, and he said, ‘Because she stole you.’ I said, ‘How could she steal me, I’m right here?’ and he said, ‘No one can see you, so the police won’t let her go.’” Taylor exhaled slowly. “Then, just a few days later, we find out that my mother had been arrested by the Boise police and charged with my disappearance.”

  “That’s weird,” I said, not sure what to say. Taylor looked upset.

  “I don’t know what to make of it.” She looked me in the eyes. “Am I, like, psychic?”

  “Maybe we should talk to Ostin about this. I’m sure he’ll know something about this.”

  Taylor put her hand on my arm. “I don’t want anyone else to know. At least not yet.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anyway, if it’s true, then it’s a good thing. We’ll have an idea of what’s going on.”

  “Yeah, if we knew what my dreams meant. Like, last night I had a dream that my father grew antlers like a deer and was running around the ranch being chased by hunters. Then one of them shot him.”

  “Were they Elgen?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, it was like they were just . . . hunters.”

  Just then the serenity was broken by the sound of three gunshots—the sharp recoil echoing through the surrounding hills.

  “What was that?” Taylor asked.

  “Gunshots.” My worst fear flooded in. What if the Elgen has found us?