Crypto-Punk

  The sisters trained their eyes on the rise, and the silhouettes appeared—inhuman profiles, their features masked by the twilight.

  “What are those things?” Susan muttered. She reached for the little girl’s hand, but when she turned around, the girl was gone.

  The Cryptos swarmed across the bombed-out street, crawling, lumbering, and slithering toward them according to their respective anatomies--all tusks and horns, barbed tails and spiny plates. No two were alike, but they shared a common vocabulary of guttural grunts and groans, growing louder and more terrifying the closer they got.

  The sisters fell back, but the Cryptos advanced faster than they could retreat. “We need help!” Lucy cried out.

  A flash of blinding white light split the gloomy sky in two—in answer to her prayer, or maybe in spite of it. Thundering shockwaves rippled through the earth an instant later, racing toward them at the speed of sound.

  The sisters clasped hands, repeating the jumbled incantation that brought them there in the first place. The last thing Susan remembered before everything went black was a mushroom cloud blooming like a hellish flower on the horizon and the unbearable heat that followed…

  * * *

  When the sisters opened their eyes again, they were back in the library.

  “Everybody make it back in one piece?” Susan asked.

  Lucy fell backward in a dead faint. She’d always been the most sensitive of the three and, accordingly, the most susceptible to the kind of experience they’d just endured.

  Penelope propped her up against the ottoman and loosened her clothes to make her as comfortable as possible. She poured a glass of lemonade and forced it into Lucy’s trembling hands.

  “Ya shoulda loosened yer girdle ’fore we started,” Penelope said in her told-you-so tone.

  Lucy struggled to raise the glass to her thin lips and took a sip, clutching at her heart. “What were those things?”

  “Cryptos,” Penelope said, “Means hidden or unknown in Greek.”

  Susan grabbed a crystal decanter from the top of the roll-over desk and poured herself a shot. “We done been to where all tomorrow’s shadows end. We gotta do somethin’.”

  “Hold yer horses,” Penelope said. “This ain’t like before. We’re too old to go tiltin’ at windmills like we used to. I had hip replacement surgery last year, and ya saw what just happened to poor Lucy.”

  She turned the lights back on. “Besides, what happens? All we know is that sometime, someday, something happens, but we don’t know what or when.”

  Looking at Lucy and Penelope was like looking into a mirror, and Susan saw herself grown fat and lazy from years of easy living.

  “I know that look on yer face,” Penelope sighed, “and I can tell ya already made up yer mind.”

  Susan poured herself another shot, downing it just as quickly as the first.

  “So whatcha gonna do?” Lucy asked.

  “Cryptos,” Susan said. “That’s what the little girl said. That’s where I’ll start.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The next Saturday, Mr. Frost came out of the storage closet dragging an AV cart behind him, stacked to the brink of overflowing with cardboard boxes. He opened one of the boxes, and a dozen or so Lego kits tumbled out onto his desk, some spilling onto the floor.

  “Have you ever heard someone say, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door?” he asked, looking out across the room. “Yes? No? Maybe? Well, that’s what I want you to do.”

  The kids leaned forward in their chairs, and he knew he had their attention.

  “Our little friend Romeo has proved my maze is no problem for him. So instead of you just sitting there during detention—sniffing glue, huffing paint, or whatever you normally do—I want you to turn these block kits into a maze that will really challenge him.”

  “This could be cool,” Newton whispered to Drew.

  But Drew just shrugged his shoulders and kicked back at his desk. This was exactly the kind of thing Mr. Birdsong would have done, and therefore, the exact opposite of what Mr. Frost would do. So Drew decided that he’d react the opposite way that he would have if Mr. Birdsong had come up with the assignment—or something like that.

  Besides, this was detention. Why should he play along?

  “You might be asking yourselves, what’s in it for me?” Frost said. “Well, I’ll tell you what’s in it for you. The team with the best design wins a get-out–of-jail card.”

  That really got their attention.

  “That’s right,” he said. “The winning team doesn’t have to come to Saturday school again, regardless of the felony that brought you here in the first place.”

  Frost divided the students into teams according to where they sat, and each team grabbed a few of the kits from the front of the room before rushing back to their desks to begin.

  “Don’t be afraid to mix and match,” Frost said over the rising din. “Use your imaginations. Think outside the blocks.”

  Clementine looked at the cover art. “Lego Medieval Torture Dungeon Set. Wait a minute. These aren’t Legos, they’re Leegos, manufactured in the Republic of Leego.”

  “Leego? Where’s that?” Spider asked.

  “Don’t know.” She opened the package, and the plastic blocks tumbled out across the table. The name was different but the principle was the same; the knock-off plastic blocks snapped together just like the real thing.

  They started grabbing for pieces in a free-for-all, but Newton stopped them before they got too involved. “Wait. Remember how we built the Groovejet?”

  Spider thought about it for a moment. “We had a plan?”

  “Right,” Newton said.

  “But following the plan got us in here in the first place, bro,” Grady reminded him.

  “Yeah, but this time it’ll be different,” Newton promised.

  That’s what he always said, and yet here they were. Because nobody wanted to argue the point and he was going to do it anyway, they let Newton sketch the basic layout. He incorporated suggestions as they shouted them out, and it didn’t take them long to get into a rhythm, the ideas pouring out almost as fast as he could write.

  “Put a trapdoor there! With spikes underneath!”

  “How about some broken glass here?”

  “Water—no, not water—gasoline here, so we can light it on fire!”

  “Razor blades here…here and here!”

  After a while, they were so wrapped up in the assignment that they forgot everything else, all except Drew. Something about this didn’t feel quite right, even if he couldn’t explain exactly what that something was.

  * * *

  Dr. Camaro was young for a doctor, unshaven and unkempt and wearing rumpled clothes that didn’t quite fit. He looked like a kid playing dress-up with his daddy’s clothes on a rainy afternoon, and his appearance made it tough for Drew to take him seriously.

  “Relax,” he said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Yet sitting in the office, Drew was anything but at ease; the window behind Camaro’s desk overlooked the water tower, buzzing with activity during the reconstruction the last few days. Watching the workers put the pieces back together felt a little like returning to the scene of the crime.

  Drew had never been in the school psychiatrist’s office before because the school didn’t have one until this year. But now that they did, every student was getting the once over from the new shrink, including him.

  The doctor thumbed through Drew’s file, looking up at him every so often, his eyes widening in surprise. “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you into this little meeting.”

  Drew had seen that look before. He saw it on the old man’s face the very first time they met—the unique combination of confusion and dread as someone realized he was now their problem.

  “You’re an interesting case, to say the least,” Dr. Camaro said, his eyes closing at the end of the sentence like they did at the
end of every sentence. “You’ve been in and out of trouble, but nothing too serious. Mostly you seem to suffer from being interesting.”

  Drew tried to smile, but he was nervous and his lips stuck to his teeth. “Don’t believe everything ya read, Doc.”

  Dr. Camaro nodded in agreement and put the file aside. “Anyway, as I was about to say, you’re an interesting case.”

  The way he kept saying “interesting” worried Drew. “Whatcha gonna do? Expel me?”

  Camaro shook his head. “Promote you,” he said, giving Drew a moment to let the idea sink in. “Tell me, are you ever bored with school work?”

  “Doc, ya read my mind.”

  Dr. Camaro held up a thick folder for him to see. “I thought so. I have a secret I’m going to let you in on. Bixby Elementary has been awarded a grant to set up a special studies program for students that seem…interesting.”

  The Doctor got out of his chair and sat on the edge of the desk, close enough for Drew to smell his coffee breath. “We’re looking for a few good kids to place in this program, and I think you might be a good candidate. So what do you say?”

  * * *

  Drew had heard the usual playground rumors about the school bunker, but he’d never seen it firsthand. Like Atlantis, its exact location was a mystery that became the mythical destination of every kid who ever moved away or didn’t come back after summer vacation.

  Dr. Camaro showed him the door in the gym that led to the bunker. All this time it’d been hidden behind a moldy gymnastics mat hanging on the wall.

  They climbed down a flight of stairs, passing a radiation-warning symbol stenciled into the concrete-block wall, a reminder of the days when any building with a basement was considered a fallout shelter.

  Drew didn’t see any spider webs, which meant that the stairs were used frequently. And the bunker wasn’t damp and musty like he expected; rather, it had an antiseptic smell to it, more like a hospital.

  The lights flickered stubbornly for a while until they finally came on for good. Stacks of sundries and janitorial supplies filled the shelves, and littered among the staples were crates marked U.S. ARMY, which seemed curious. But if Dr. Camaro was concerned that anybody saw them, he didn’t let on.

  Drew wandered through the bunker while Dr. Camaro explained the details of the special studies program to him. But Drew wasn’t paying much attention; he was more interested in the door marked DO NOT ENTER at the far end of the bunker, which, of course, only made him want to find out what was behind the door that much more.

  “Understand?”

  “What? Yeah…gotcha,” Drew assured him, though he hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

  He climbed the catwalk’s steps, inviting Drew to follow. “Come over here. There’s something else I wanna show you.”

  * * *

  The chair’s arms and legs bristled with electrodes connected by a tangle of wires that ran to a fuse box bolted to the wall. An array of cameras placed a few feet apart formed a ring around the chair’s platform, like a ceremonial altar demanding a sacrifice.

  “What is it?” Drew asked.

  “What’s it look like, dummy?” Harley snorted.

  Dr. Camaro excused himself and unbuckled Harley from the chair’s restraints.

  “Oddly enough, we call it the chair,” Mr. Frost said, appearing at the far end of the catwalk. “Of course, this one is the first, a sort of prototype.”

  Frost called Harley forward with a wave of his hand, and Harley obeyed, chasing after him like a puppy.

  “How’d I do?” Harley asked.

  Frost walked him toward the exit with his arm around his shoulder. “You did great! In fact, you’re score is the highest so far. Nobody else was even close.”

  Drew watched them walk away, gobsmacked by the lavish praise heaped on Harley, who’d never been a particularly good student, nor particularly good at anything.

  Dr. Camaro cleared his throat. “So, what do you think?”

  “Pretty cool,” Drew said, “but shouldn’t ya be strokin’ a white cat and tellin’ me how you’re plannin’ on killin’ James Bond or somethin’?”

  The Doctor sighed indignantly. “Funny. I meant the chair.”

  “Dunno,” Drew answered. “What’s it s’posed to do?”

  “The chair uses proprietary technology to stimulate the brain’s alpha wave production. Subjects in this enhanced state remember more of their lesson than by using traditional study methods.”

  “Is it safe?” Drew asked.

  Camaro stood behind the sinister contraption, daring him to sit. “You’re not afraid—are you?”

  Drew accepted the challenge, wiggling back and forth until comfortable. “If the governor calls at the last minute, take a message.”

  Camaro ignored the quip. Instead, he clamped the restraints down and powered up the chair.

  Electric current coursed through Drew’s body, strong enough to make his teeth chatter and his hair stand on end.

  “Relax,” Camaro said. He adjusted the chair’s visor, snapping it into place over Drew’s face, calibrating the eyepiece until it was aligned.

  Drew waited for more instructions, but none came. He wasn’t sure of what he was supposed to do, so he didn’t do anything. Sitting in the chair, waiting for something to happen, he wondered how smart it was to let himself get tied up in a basement nobody had seen him enter.

  Before his paranoia could build any further, the lights dimmed. Abstract images and contrasting colors began to flicker across his field of vision, their luminosity and frequency increasing gradually.

  Suddenly, he felt very drowsy…

  * * *

  The drone of the chair powering down woke Drew from his stupor. Dr. Camaro unbuckled him, and he slumped to the floor, drained by the experience.

  “Musta fell asleep,” Drew mumbled. “How long was I out?”

  Camaro ignored him and kept scribbling in his journal.

  “How’d I do?” Drew asked.

  The Doctor didn’t lift his head. “We’ll compare your results with the others and let you know if you’ve been selected.”

  Drew steadied himself and staggered out of the strange room, still feeling lightheaded. In the hallway he’d come in through, a long line of students waited for their turn in the chair.

  * * *

  Quiet was the default setting in the teacher’s lounge, and quiet was nice, but a new and different kind of quiet had taken hold in the weeks since school began. This quiet was not an absence of conversation, but a conspiracy of silence. The distinction wasn’t lost on Bixby’s veteran teachers who knew the difference. Something was lurking beneath the surface that nobody seemed willing to talk about, though some were less afraid than others.

  Miss Burnside poured herself another cup of coffee and plopped down at the lunch table next to her favorite wispy bachelor.

  Mr. Sorbet lowered his glasses and raised his eyes, then took another bite of his stale sandwich, brushing the errant crumbs from his sweater vest. He chewed each bite thoroughly, giving his turkey waddle a good workout in the process.

  Miss Burnside tugged at her mumu where it rode up, adjusting it until she was comfortable, and then made sure to take a big slurp of coffee, something she knew irritated him like nails scraping across a chalkboard.

  “I wouldn’t eat anymore of that sandwich,” she said.

  “Why not?” Sorbet asked, poised to take another bite.

  “Because the ham in your ham and cheese is green,” she said, “and unless Doctor Seuss packed it for you, it’s probably spoiled.”

  He took a closer look at the sandwich; she was right. He hated when she was right.

  Coach Hula snickered while waiting for the microwave’s ding. She was the youngest on staff and new to the school this year. Being the gym teacher meant wearing a tracksuit most days, and the others didn’t take her seriously as a result—though being vaguely pretty didn’t help either. But they also left her out of the
ir petty skirmishes, which suited her just fine.

  “So what do you guys think about this new thing the kids are doing?” Miss Burnside blurted out between slurps. “Weird, huh?”

  * * *

  Miss Burnside buried her chin in her chest and raised her shoulders up around her ears like an owl. She’d watched the kids take their turn at the podium from the auditorium’s front row for most of the morning without incident when something peculiar happened.

  She checked her clipboard. “Allison, sweetie, you’re next.”

  Allison took a tentative step toward the podium, so scared that her eyes looked like they were going to jump out of her head and find another skull to live in.

  Harley lingered at the podium, rubbing his back against the lectern like a grizzly bear scratching against a tree. His stocky frame had given way to lean muscle during the last few weeks, and his head hung low, pushed forward by the weight of massively hunched shoulders. Nobody knew quite what to do about the changes, so nobody did anything at all.

  Allison twirled her long black braids nervously between her thumb and forefinger, inching forward before Harley decided she was too close.

  He swatted the air between them, and she ran from the stage screaming.

  Miss Burnside stood up and wagged her plump finger at him, but he ignored her and kept right on scratching. “Stop that!” she demanded.

  He growled back at her in a register deeper than she thought possible, his eyes bulging and veins popping.

  “Alright, that’s enough. Detention!” she ordered, but he ignored her.

  “Detention,” she repeated, her voice crackling with uncertainty.

  Harley stopped scratching long enough to glare back at her. He bounced down from the podium and stomped toward her.

  She held her ground, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.

  At the last second, Harley backed down. He snatched the detention slip from her outstretched hand and skulked out of the auditorium.

  * * *

  “Has he ever done that before?” Mr. Sorbet asked.

  Miss Burnside searched his face for the slightest hint of irony but found none. “Are you serious, Roger?”

  A few of the other teachers, who were pretending not to listen, drifted over.

  “Now that you mention it,” Mr. Sorbet said, “something happened during my music class yesterday, though I didn’t think much of it at the time.”