Alexander's Army

  I sighed in relief.

  By now, one of the creatures had swum to meet me, matching its tentacles to my finger shapes. It had a mauve underbelly and tiny pink eyes no bigger than beads. As it mirrored the movements of my fingers, the cut in my neck began to itch. A squiggle of light emerged from a slit between the creature’s eyes and ran through the membrane into my palm, producing more of a tickle than a shock. I pulled my hand away. The creature sparkled like a tube of glitter. It made a high-pitched squeak, then kicked its tentacles and floated off to join the others.

  I turned to face the Bulldog, a slew of angry questions forming in my head. Despite the Mleptra’s healing efforts, I just wanted to punch a hole in the tank and haul Freya out. “How did she survive? I saw Chantelle zap her. I buried the crow. How did she even get in here?”

  He swiveled his chair and stared at the tank like a modern-day Victor Frankenstein. All he needed was a fluffy white cat and he’d have been the image of the perfect villain. He blinked the eye that was still watering. “The ray stunned her, nothing more. Chantelle and Mulrooney were under orders to isolate Freya and restrain her if an opportunity arose. By taking your bicycle ride to the cliffs, you made it easy for us.”

  “And after that?”

  “After that?” He tilted his head.

  I tried to reply but felt suddenly dizzy and had to steady myself against the table edge. “Chantelle followed me to the graveyard, didn’t she? She must have dug Freya up. That’s so … gross. Why didn’t she just tell me she planned to bring her here?”

  “Because you would have challenged it. You had already indicated to Klimt that you would not betray the girl to us. You had also seen her killed — or so you thought. Chantelle could not run the risk that you would alter your reality and compromise her orders if she objected to your wishes. So she used her wits and let you take the body. A risky maneuver that fortunately paid off. Klimt had calculated a recovery window of fifty minutes before Freya came around. Chantelle guessed, correctly, that you wouldn’t hang around the graveyard for long.”

  So that’s why I’d seen her check her watch.

  “You’re sweating, Michael. Why don’t you sit down?”

  I shook my head. Under the circumstances, not a smart thing to do. My brain seemed to be swelling like something filmed by time-lapse photography. “I still don’t get it. I was at the grave for twenty minutes. Freya was in the ground for most of that. How come she didn’t suffocate?”

  “Because she was already dead,” said a voice.

  Klimt had entered the room. He walked over and picked up the file. He examined the top sheet, then enclosed the whole thing inside a thin brown folder. “You are forgetting the lessons of your last case, Michael. Death is merely another state of being — another change of track. Humans, like Freya, who die but do not make the change become tied to this plane in what we call a transcendental paradox. Undead is the popular term, I believe.”

  I turned and squinted at the tank again. Freya’s eyes had closed, their lids like the skin of rotting peaches. Her once-wild hair, though buoyant in the fluid, looked like paper strips flying off a fan. She was so pale and yellow, more lab specimen than human girl. She reminded me, horribly, of a dead frog I’d seen in a jar at school. Mr. Greenway, our biology teacher, had described the frog as inert. That’s how Freya looked to me: inert. “Can she die? Properly, I mean?” I rested my hand on the tank again. Mleptra clustered to the point of contact, blinking like a row of fairy lights. They seemed agitated, as if they were arguing among themselves. More and more lights fired into my palm.

  “There are procedures,” Klimt said, implying it was true.

  “How? How can you kill someone if —? Oh …” I reeled again.

  “Michael?” Klimt had noticed how unsteady I was.

  I fell back against the tank, spreading my arms out wide like a cross. The room turned into a wavy dreamscape. Behind me I could hear the Mleptra squeaking, their bodies frantically changing color.

  The Bulldog was sitting forward in his chair. He had a hand to his face as if he was fiddling with a contact lens. “Klimt, why are the creatures so active?”

  Before Klimt could answer, another figure swept into the room. He was wearing a white laboratory coat and a pair of glasses with dark-brown rims. He was tall and gawky, as thin as a test tube. And though he had no army boots on his feet, and his sandy-colored hair was combed in an old-fashioned wave to one side, my mind became fixed on the wild idea that this was the man I’d seen in the rain.

  “Preeve, what’s the meaning of this?” growled the Bulldog.

  “Sir, the tank,” the man jabbered.

  “What about it?”

  “The Mleptral interface. It’s off the scale.”

  Klimt hurried around the desk and moved me aside. He put his hand on the tank, managing to dent the membrane slightly. His palm turned mauve, radiating ripples of color through the fluid. The Mleptra gathered to him like bees.

  Meanwhile, my focus was still on Preeve. With a croak in my voice, I said, “Don’t let him near her!” Near her! Near her! The urge to repeat the last two words beat like a jungle drum in my head. I pointed at the scientist. His body shape blurred around the edges. My gaze homed in on his face and neck.

  Preeve looked baffled. He shied away from me and went to join Klimt.

  I heard the android say, “The Mleptra have detected another source of the corvine virus.”

  “Where?” said Preeve.

  “Outside the tank.” Klimt swept around, scanning me with his purple eyes.

  “Fake!” I rasped. “Fake! Fake!” I felt lighter in my bones, as if I could fly. And suddenly I did. A rush of dark energy took me past Klimt. My feet were off the floor as I thumped into Preeve. He screamed as his hair became locked in my fingers. My eyes swiveled painfully, taking in half the room in one glance. In the tank, I saw Freya transform into a crow and dig her beak into one of the Mleptra, splitting it and spilling blue fluid from the gash. I saw the Bulldog rising from his chair. His eyes were different colors. One gray, one green. I had a feeling that might be important, but only Preeve seemed to matter right then. I was opening my mouth to sink my teeth into the welcoming flesh of his scrawny neck when I felt a jolt of pressure in my shoulder and everything went black.

  When I woke, I was on my back, firmly strapped to a hospital bed.

  Someone was stretching my eyes open and shining a pencil beam of light into them. “He’s coming around. Call me if he goes into relapse.” The fuzzy image of a bearded man pulled away.

  Then Klimt was standing over me, twiddling a black feather in his hands.

  “Hello, Michael,” he said. “I trust you slept well. I think we need to talk.”

  “What’s happening? Why am I here?” I lugged at the straps but couldn’t move anything except my head, hands, and feet. I was in the same small room they’d kept me in after my accident with the car. One window, a nightstand, a TV, a clock. The same picture of a fishing boat on the wall.

  “Do not waste energy struggling,” Klimt said. “The clamps are made from high-tensile titanium. It would take immense strength to break them.”

  I struggled with them anyway, till Klimt held me steady. “Why did you fail to inform me that Freya had infected you?”

  “I didn’t know,” I said, trying to shake him off. “I thought she’d just scratched me. Let me go.” I looked at the clock. It was almost five. Five. I must have been zonked all day. “Mom’s going to come and visit any minute. If she sees me like this —”

  “Your mother is not coming,” he said. “Earlier today, I informed her we had detected a viral inflammation in the lining of your brain, something akin to meningitis. I did not have to remind her that such conditions can be highly contagious. Naturally, she does not wish to risk your sister catching it. She sends her regards.”

  “You lied to Mom!”

  “And what should I have told her?” he said, his German accent crisp and sharp. “That you have ac
quired the capability of physically transforming into a bird and might tear your family apart if the urge to kill should become overwhelming? You are a danger to them now, possibly more than Freya ever was.”

  “Liar.” I pulled at the straps again.

  He reached into his jacket and took out a small tablet computer. “These are human cells, developing normally.” He showed me a movie of a thin layer of cells stretching and expanding in a petri dish, the same sort of squidgy shapes I’d seen under a microscope when Mr. Greenway had swabbed Ryan Garvey’s big mouth and smeared the results all over a slide. “And this was you four hours ago.” He tapped an icon. A similar movie played. The cell shapes looked identical apart from a busy cell at the center, which pushed against its neighbor and squeezed inside it. The invaded cell billowed, turned black, and then ruptured.

  I turned my head away from it. “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because it would be dangerous not to.”

  And that was Klimt in a sentence; I never really knew what was truth and what was fiction. “Am I …?” I hardly dared say it. “Like Freya now?”

  “No.” He put the tablet away. “Keep still, please.”

  “Why? What are you —? Hey!”

  He pressed my head sideways against the pillow and lifted the tape on a cotton pad stuck to my neck.

  “Ow!”

  “Good. This is improving. We have sterilized the wound and treated the infection. As far as we can tell, the virus is receding. We will know more tomorrow.”

  He pressed the pad back and released his grip.

  I snapped at him like a foaming dog.

  Needless to say, he wasn’t impressed. “You are being restrained for your own safety, Michael. Physical exertion will not improve your position.”

  “That man, the one shining lights in my eyes, who was he?” But it came to me before he could spin me a line. “It was Liam Nolan, wasn’t it?”

  Liam Nolan had been my father’s doctor, something I’d only recently discovered. He had been at the heart of my last mission. For a while, I’d suspected him of being involved in the accident his stepdaughter, Rafferty, had died in. But when Freya had suffered a heart attack, it was Liam Nolan who’d rushed her to the hospital. So I had a lot to thank him for. But to see him here, connected to UNICORNE, was beginning to raise my doubts again. I didn’t want to admit it, but 10 percent of my brain still didn’t quite trust him.

  “Dr. Nolan assists us occasionally,” said Klimt.

  “He knew Dad, didn’t he?”

  The purple eyes narrowed. So frustrating. How many times had I wished I could read those artificial irises? “Many people knew your father, Michael.”

  “How much did Liam know about the missions?”

  “That is not your concern.”

  “Anything to do with Dad is my concern.”

  He leaned forward, giving off an air of slight menace. “Dr. Nolan assists us in a medical capacity. He does not become involved in UNICORNE protocol. He helped to stabilize you this morning. He is a good doctor. I recommend him.”

  “Did he treat Freya? I saw her change.”

  “We have specialists like Preeve who deal with cases like Freya. You were the stimulus for her reversion, by the way. The virus, feeding back to itself. Once you were removed, the Mleptra regained control. Freya is stable but in a critical condition. If she flips again, it may be permanent. Then we would have to terminate her.”

  I gulped and laid my head to one side.

  “Your concern for Freya’s welfare is touching, Michael, but we must concentrate now on our plans for you.”

  “What plans?”

  He closed the window blinds a little to shield my eyes from a ray of late sun. “Why did you attack Preeve?”

  I blinked at the wall. “I’m thirsty. Can I have a drink of water?”

  He went to the cooler and filled a plastic cup. As he returned to the bed, he pressed a button and the straps drew back, freeing me.

  “A show of trust,” he said. “Sit up if you can.”

  I was stiff, but I managed it. I took the water and drank it in one gulp.

  “Preeve,” he reminded me.

  “Did I infect him?”

  “No. We stopped you just in time. You were attempting to tear out his throat. Why?”

  “There was someone outside my house last night. A man in a lab coat. I thought it could have been Preeve.”

  He took the empty cup and crushed it. “Dedicated UNICORNE operatives do not have a mainland existence. They stay on the craft where they are given whatever comforts they need. Preeve is such a type. Why would you imagine he was at your house?”

  So I told him about the man in the rain. The streetlight exploding. The strange drawing in the comic.

  Like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, he removed the comic from his jacket. He tapped the drawing of the faceless soldier. “You are certain no one else could have drawn this? Josie, perhaps — to tease you?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t show her the comic. Why would she draw a soldier, anyway?”

  “Why, indeed,” he mused. “Why would anyone leave a signature like this?” He put the magazine away. “Very well. We must assume that the entity Chantelle and Mulrooney encountered at the store has some connection to the man you saw and that he knows of, or senses, your involvement with Freya. Did he see you?”

  “I don’t think so. I was standing back from the window.”

  “Good. Then we go ahead with your mission.”

  “What?”

  “You have forgotten what you are doing here, Michael. Your loyalty has been brought into question. You were strictly forbidden to speak about UNICORNE — and yet, you did. Fortunately, we have been able to blame your outbursts on the trauma of your accident. But what will fool your mother and Josie will not fool me. This is your last opportunity to prove your worth. If you want to have a chance of locating your father and, hopefully, of saving Freya, you will do as I instruct you and you will do it well. Are we clear?”

  I nodded. What choice did I have? This was ten times worse than the principal’s office. At school, I’d get detention for breaking the rules; for the same kind of misdemeanors here, I could end up in a sack at the bottom of the ocean. “What do I have to do?”

  “Tomorrow, Mulrooney will drive you to the comic store. Look around. Observe. Buy a comic or two. Report anything unusual to Mulrooney or Chantelle.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now.”

  “Should I ask about the picture of Freya?”

  He mused on this for a moment or two. “Take another copy of the comic to the counter. It would be reasonable to ask why there is no story. Find out who drew the cover if you can.”

  Hah. No pressure, then? Maybe, for fun, on the way to the store, I could learn to swallow fire and tame a runaway lion? “What if he’s there, the man in the rain?”

  “Leave the store without fuss and report to Chantelle. Do not engage him. That is an order.”

  “What if the ghost interferes?”

  “There is no ghost,” he said. “There is a temporal force at work in the store, but not of the haunting kind. Ghosts never travel from their primary location, and they rarely draw pictures.”

  “Then … who did?”

  “The man in the rain. He controlled the pencil and drew the soldier.”

  “How? He was thirty feet away.”

  He sighed and checked his watch. “Always, you disappoint me, Michael. Have you forgotten the kind of mysteries we investigate? The man has telekinetic abilities. He moved the pencil by the power of thought. He drew the soldier with his mind.”

  “Okay, I’m going to drop you here.” Mulrooney eased the car into a parking slot and killed the engine. The mall was busy for ten on a midweek morning. Three-quarters of the parking lot was already full. “You know where it is,” he said, “the store?”

  “Through there.” I pointed to a diagonal break between the Comfi-Foot Shoe Store and Pe
ts-We-Like. “Where will you be?”

  “Around,” he said. “Close.” He took out his phone and tapped the screen. “Don’t get out yet. I need to set the frequency on my Where’s Michael? app.”

  “Your what?”

  “Tattoo,” he reminded me.

  Oh, yeah. The UNICORNE tracking device. Using one foot, I pushed down my sock. There it was, the rearing black unicorn with the e in its tail, hiding the microchip under my skin. Pets-We-Like would have been impressed.

  A green light blinked on Mulrooney’s phone. He plugged in an earpiece. “Okay. You’re clear what you have to do?”

  “Go in, be interested in comics.”

  “No random stuff, okay? We don’t want a repeat of what happened on the cliffs.”

  No. Thanks for reminding me of that.

  “How’s your neck this morning?”

  “Fine,” I mumbled. The crow “virus” had been neutralized, according to Klimt, the cotton pad replaced by a simple bandage. To make sure nothing drew attention to it, Klimt had also made me wear a scarf borrowed straight out of Chantelle’s wardrobe. I couldn’t believe I was going on a mission dressed in a French girl’s scarf. So embarrassing.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” Mulrooney said. “Remember. Anything weird, you get right out of there.”

  I nodded silently and opened the door. It was cold in the open. Or maybe it was just the chill in my bones bringing my temperature down five degrees. Welcome to the world of espionage, Michael. I zipped up my jacket and headed for the mall.

  The street on which The Fourth Enchantment stood was little more than a service road, filled mainly by paneled doors and loading bays for the bigger mall outlets. There were two other shops, one on either side of the comic store: a bookseller’s held together by dust, and a small jeweler’s with a grille in its window. It was the sort of street you wouldn’t want to walk down unless you needed to mug someone or cut through to the bus depot opposite. A stray dog was urinating against a lamppost. Pigeons were fighting over half a baguette that had fallen out of an overfilled trash can. Water was dripping from a bent gutter. It was a wonder anything survived along here, never mind a business.