The Gifted

  Hayasa was still there waiting for me, so I put my hand on his head, feeling his curly fur. “What are we going to do, boy?” I said. Hayasa wagged his tail while I stroked his head, and then sped off into the room and began barking at the troll. The troll turned, trying to reach for the dog, but Hayasa was far too quick for him. In fact, the troll was quite slow. Once the troll lunged at Hayasa I saw my chance. The door was completely unblocked. I ran through the room and toward the other door. As I reached the other side I yelled back, “Hayasa, come here boy!” Before I’d taken my next step he was beside me. I almost stepped on him.

  I was immediately met by a man in a white lab coat. He had a gun and a moustache, only the moustache didn’t bother me. “You will have to be eliminated. This is a secret facility. To see it means death.” The others already had their hands handcuffed behind their backs.

  I tried to use my gift, but the man just laughed. Even with a smile, he said, “No you don’t. I can feel your influence, but it changes nothing. If you try to use your gifts against me, I start shooting.”

  At gunpoint they marched us to the back of the room and through another door. This door had a code as well. Unfortunately I could not see what numbers he punched. He took us through and moustache man said, “We are a bit busy at the time, but someone will execute you after lunch, so relax and enjoy yourselves until then.”

  Han was silent, but did not look worried. How did he do that? Tracy had tears in her eyes. I sat down feeling nothing, thinking nothing. Maybe I was too tired. I wanted to scratch my nose, but couldn’t reach it.

  We all sat in silence, and I prayed.

  After a couple of minutes I called out, “Guido?” There was no response. “Guido?” I said again.

  “Tracy,” I said. “What happened to Guido?”

  “Shhh,” she said. “Act sad.” She said this as another tear slid down her face. She deserved an Oscar! I continued to sit and stare, but inwardly I was listening for signs of Guido.

  We heard and saw nothing. “Maybe he’s going for help,” I said.

  That was possible. I tried praying for Guido, like Han was probably doing.

  After about fifteen minutes a short man came in with a gun. He did not speak and he did not smile. A hat that looked too big was covering his head and most of his face. As he came near, he looked up. It was Guido! “Guido, how did you do it?”

  “I had to knock each guy out. I used a big rock from the troll room. Do you know how hard it is to knock someone out with a rock? It takes practice, but I’m getting used to it.”

  “But we can see you,” said Tracy.

  “New clothes. I got them from one of the men. A bit big on me though. In a couple of minutes you’ll stop noticing me again.” He produced a key and unlocked our handcuffs.

  Tracy rubbed her wrists, “Those things hurt,” she said.

  As we moved out of the room, all five scientists were tied up with white strips of cloth and were lying on the ground. All of them were gagged and unconscious.

  “Where’d you get the cloth?” asked Tracy.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask,” said Guido. Then he whispered to me, “I tore up my underwear. It was the only cloth I could tear easily enough.” I laughed.

  “What was that, Guido?” asked Tracy.

  “Never mind,” I said aloud. “Guido’s a smart guy and he just saved our lives. Let’s leave it at that.”

  All of us looked at the room we were in. It was full of computers, but no nuclear warhead. On the largest screen was a diagram of the bomb and it said, “Armed!” in bold red letters.

  “Not good,” I said. Under that it read, “The New York Special.”

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “Let’s go get ourselves a nuke,” said Guido, who was no longer wearing underwear.

  Chapter 26: Twelve million

  The room we were in had entirely too many exits. We checked them all. One, of course, led to the room with the troll. Now I knew why the door was only halfway open. And then there was the cell we just came from. There were five storage closets with equipment we could not identify. Tracy found a refrigerator in a lunchroom that had cold pizza. I was hungry, but would feel guilty if I let New York get blown up because I had a craving for pepperoni.

  We had to walk around tied up scientists as we looked for the right door. We found a janitor’s closet, a bathroom, which Guido and I used, and a door which led to another tunnel. This we saved for last. After every door was checked, we entered the tunnel. It was a large one, maybe thirty feet high and fifteen feet wide. This might have been so they could move heavy equipment through it. If that was true, then maybe this was where the nuclear warhead was.

  The tunnel was long and winding. There were more LED lights along the sides and it looked very well maintained. Even the stone floor looked swept clean. I could imagine giants in here, since it was so large. Maybe a three headed hydra or something.

  “If we were not trying to save the world,” I said, “I would love exploring this place. It’s like the coolest cave ever!” When I shouted this I heard my voice come back in an echo.

  The cave ended at a door that went almost from the ceiling to the floor and from one wall to the other. A number pad was positioned on the right hand side.

  “I’ll try my lucky number,” said Han. He typed in 11111 and nothing happened.

  “It was worth a try,” said Tracy.

  “Any other obvious numbers?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Han. “I could try the others that follow.” He tried 22222, 33333, 44444, 55555, 66666, 77777, 88888, 99999, and 00000. None of these worked. Then he tried 12345 and that didn’t work. “Maybe we should use letters. Can anyone think of a good keyword?”

  “How about ‘world domination’?” asked Guido. “Or ‘nuke New York’?”

  “Too long,” said Han. “Look, this is the same make as the keypad from before. The screen has just enough space for five numbers or letters.”

  In my mind, I searched through what I had seen, using what I had learned back at our training. I tried to remember everything we had seen back in the computer area, picturing every detail. There had been no signs on the walls and no papers posted next to any of the computers. One desk had a picture of a woman, probably in her 30’s, and she was pretty for someone so old. She was probably a scientist’s wife, so that could be important. Underneath the picture was a name, but I couldn’t quite picture it. I wondered. “I have an idea, I’ll be right back.” I raced back to the computer area.

  Back in the room again, I saw some of the scientists conscious now and struggling, but without getting free. I quickly found the desk with the picture of the woman, and under it was the name Chris. Probably short for Christine.

  It occurred to me then that these men had families. That was an odd thought. They were just people, even if they were planning to end the lives of everyone on the east coast. I didn’t know how I felt about that. These men were choosing to kill millions, but yet some of them probably had kids at home that they loved. That made me feel weird inside. It felt wrong somehow. Like their families deserved better. How can someone who’s kind to their kids, go to work and plan to kill so many families, including children, who might have played with their own kids?

  Chris. Five letters. Maybe that was it!

  I raced back to where my friends were and saw them staring up toward a high spot on the wall. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Oh,” said Tracy. “Guido said he saw a small gap at the top of the door. He said he wanted to try climbing up the wall. I thought it was a bit crazy, but he really wanted to try it.”

  “But how can you tell where he is?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Tracy. “Remember when he wears something new you can see him for a couple of minutes? Well,” she blushed, “I gave him my bracelet.” There had to be something going on between these two. Did they like each other?

  I looked up the wall about twenty feet and the
re was the bracelet, and if I looked closely enough, I could see an arm attached. “Be careful, Guido,” said Tracy.

  At that moment Guido missed his next handhold and he fell. This was quite a fall. Guido tried to land on his feet, but only one leg got under him. When he fell, all his weight was on that leg. He hit the ground hard. “Argh!” he yelled.

  “No, no-no-no!” said Tracy.

  “You okay?” I asked. A dumb question, it was obvious he wasn’t okay.

  “My leg!” shouted Guido. He rolled up his pant leg and it was turning black all over. There was also a bloody scrape on the shin.

  “What do we do?” asked Tracy.

  “Got the code?” Guido said. “Go without me. Too important.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “All right,” said Han.

  “Ooohhh!” said Tracy. “We’ll come back for you!”

  She was such a girl. I guess I hadn’t noticed it before.

  I went back to the keypad and I told Han my guess. He used the letters and spelled the name “Chris.” The light turned green and the huge door slowly creaked open from the side. It worked! It sounded like it weighed a thousand pounds.

  “We’re in!” I said.

  “Good guess,” said Han.

  We looked up into blinding lights. For a moment we couldn’t see anything because they were so bright. But then we stared up, up, up to the tallest cavern yet.

  And there was the nuke.

  Chapter 27: A desperate plan

  You know when you watch a movie and there is a bomb about to go off. There is always a scene when somebody has to choose between cutting the red wire or the blue wire and if he cuts one it means the bomb will go off and if he cuts the other it means it will be disarmed. Well that does not come in anywhere here, in case you wanted to know. We knew nothing of wires and we had nothing on us for cutting.

  Staring at the ceiling, I was overwhelmed by the size of this cavern. But then I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t a cavern at all. It was a missile silo. The only reason I knew that was because I heard Han say, “Hey, It’s a missile silo! We found it!”

  “Yes,” I said. “We found it.” It was colossal. And out of the blue, I realized I had no idea what we were doing here.

  “Now what?” said Han.

  “Now we do what we do best,” Tracy said. “We destroy things.”

  “Is that what we do best?” I said.

  “It is this time,” she said.

  Suddenly it was as if my brain had finally engaged and in a surge of confidence I said, “Of course we do!”

  I noticed a set of stairs as part of a scaffolding on the left side of the missile. They were rusted but solid looking. The missile too was rusted with mismatched panels. Some were not even cut evenly and did not fit correctly. “We need to climb to the top,” said Han.

  “How do you know that?” asked Tracy.

  “From an old movie,” he said.

  Tracy looked at me, “I trust him,” I said.

  We all started the climb up the scaffold of stairs. That is all except Guido. He had limped into the room and now rested against a wall in front of the stairs, petting Hayasa. I could see him already getting hard to spot.

  There must have been about a hundred stairs! It was a good thing we had been running and working out before we left the training facility. Still, my legs were getting rubbery from the long day.

  We got to the top of the warhead and I could reach out and touch it. We were maybe fifty feet in the air. There were panels on it, and everything looked welded or riveted, but I could get my fingers under one piece because there was a gap.

  “We can’t get into this,” I said. “We might as well go back down.”

  “What about with a crowbar?” yelled Guido.

  “Even with a crowbar, we aren’t that strong,” I said.

  “Then what are we going to do?” asked Tracy. “Maybe we should go back and see if one of the men from our group knows something about disarming one of these. It’s over our heads.”

  “Good idea,” I said. I took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “Let’s go back and get them. Why did we ever expect to do this on our own anyway? We’re just kids!”

  We came down the stairs, tired and resigned that we could do no more. We got to the bottom and Guido, I’m assuming from somewhere against the wall, said, “What’s the plan?”

  “This is a job for the adults,” I said.

  “Then we’re done with our part?” he said.

  “I think so,” I said. “Han, can you come with me to find them?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Tracy, can you stay with Guido,” I said. “I don’t want to leave him here injured by himself.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Han and I headed back through the huge tunnel. We didn’t hurry because we had no need to. The tiredness was starting to catch up to me. My legs were sore and now I was getting a headache.

  “How do you like this adventure?” I asked Han.

  “Too much for me,” he said. “I like quiet nights reading or surfing the Internet for origami ideas.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I like going out with friends sometimes. I also do sports after school.”

  “Which ones?” he asked.

  “I like basketball and soccer mostly. I tried baseball once, but didn’t like it so much. Too much waiting around. Do you play sports?”

  “No,” said Han, “not really. I tried the swimming team once and did pretty good, but I only did it because my friend was doing it. I never tried it again. What I really like,” said Han, “is origami. I search for different designed online and then try them out. Once I found out I could breathe life into them I liked it even more. I would make a couple of dinosaurs and watch them fight.”

  “Cool,” I said. “I wish my gift was like that!”

  “You have the gift God gave you and I have the gift God gave me,” said Han.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  We were coming to the door where the scientists were tied up again. Once we entered, we were surprised to find that several were up on their feet and many of them were trying to get free. One had a little knife attached to a set of keys and was trying to get the blade out behind his back.

  But the thing that Han and I noticed mostly was that one, who was at a computer, had his back turned so his tied hands were over the keys. He seemed to be typing something. When he saw us he turned around and pretended that he had been doing nothing. Then we all heard a voice coming from the computer say, “Please hit enter to confirm launch.”

  Han and I looked at each other and both of us started running toward the man. But he was quick. He fell on his knees just as we reached him and hit enter with his nose. He hit it so hard, his nose started to bleed. Even through the blood he smiled. “Too late now,” he said.

  “Five minutes, zero seconds,” said the male computer voice.

  “What do you mean, too late?” I said. “Turn it off!”

  Another scientist who had his gag off, said, “That’s a one way switch. We couldn’t turn it off even if we wanted to.”

  Han and I looked at each other. Without saying a word we both ran back to the missile. About half a minute later we were standing in front of it again.

  “Tracy!” I yelled. “Let’s get up the stairs; we need to break into that warhead! It’s preparing to launch!”

  We all ran to the top of the stairs. In front of us was the top of the missile. “Can you heat that enough to melt through?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Now’s a good time to find out. We have about four and a half minutes before this launches and twelve million people die!

  She closed her eyes to focus. Han and I tried to stay quiet, but that was hard to do when I was practically jumping out of my skin with anxiety. After about half a minute, she said, “Any difference?”

  “Not yet,” I said. Then losing patience I walked up to the panel in front o
f us put my hand on it. It was nice and warm, but not hot. “Why can’t you do it? You melted the lock!”

  “I think the heat is dissipating. Too much metal in one place. The lock was small.”

  “Great,” I said. “Han, can you get one of your planes through that?”

  “Think of a block of wood smashing the side. That’s all you’d get.”

  “Ahhh!” I yelled. I was hyperventilating now. “What do we do?” I pounded my fist on the metal hull.

  “You guys okay?” yelled Guido from below.

  “New York’s going to get nuked and we’re the only ones who can stop it!” I screamed.

  “Calm down,” said Han. “You sure a crowbar won’t work?”

  I shot back, “Look at that plate of metal, it’s too thick. No one is strong enough to. . .”

  Then it hit me. Perhaps the dumbest idea I have ever had in my life. “I’ve got it!” I said.

  “What are you thinking?” said Han, looking a little scared.

  “Chess! We have to get the king. We can’t play safe anymore!”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Wild and whacky things!” I yelled. “This time we’re playing to win!”

  I laughed, half crazed as I took off down the stairs with Han just behind me. I headed down the hallway and came upon the scientists, still trying to break their bonds. I ignored them and ran on. There he was. The troll was trying to scratch his back against the far wall. I pressed the button that opened the door all the way, but I could tell it was still going to be too small. The troll kept scratching his back.

  “Aren’t you afraid of the troll?” asked Han.

  “Not this time,” I said.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the troll, trying to make him like me, to follow me. I was afraid, so I used that fear to concentrate harder. Then I opened my eyes. The troll had stopped his scratching and paused as if lost in thought. Then he went back to scratching. Since he didn’t have eyes, it was hard to tell what he was thinking.

  “It’s not working,” I said. “It’s not working. We need. . .Ah!” I ran over to the refrigerator and grabbed the leftover pizza. “You’re going to eat pizza?” said Han.

  I ran over to the other door and said, “He has a huge nose for a reason, right? And we need a monster right now!”

  I ran back to the troll. I held the pizza box up and waved it at him. The troll sniffed and then turned toward us. Then he started to move. He tried to come out to where we were. The only problem with this is that the door was too small. Even if he squeezed he couldn’t get his shoulders through.