“Disappear how?” asked Nick.
Just then, the bowlers ahead of them left. Petula put up her hand. “I’ve had it with these questions!” Instead of choosing a ball, she marched down the lane toward the pins.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to do that,” called Mitch—but of course that had never stopped her before.
Petula bent over the pins and started knocking them down by hand, leaving a seven-ten split. Then she called back, “Hit reset!”
Nick hit the button. Petula scooted back as the pin-setter jaw came down, nearly chomping her. Once the new pins were set, she knocked down all but three and ordered another reset. Nick exchanged a glance with Caitlin, and pressed the button again.
Petula knocked down the second and third row of pins and, after the next reset, kicked them all over.
As soon as the last pin fell, to Nick’s amazement, the far end of the lane began to sink, becoming a ramp into some dark, unknown place.
“Whoa,” said Nick.
“Good going, Petula!” Mitch called.
“I don’t believe it,” said Caitlin. “No, seriously, I don’t. How could she have known all this?”
“Because,” said Mitch, standing up, “she’s smarter than any of you give her credit for.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “I guess so.”
None of the other bowlers seemed to notice the lane turning into an access ramp, or the kids walking down it. By now Nick knew the Accelerati well enough not to question it. It didn’t surprise him that the secret society had a way of disappearing right before everyone’s eyes.
Smoke and mirrors, he thought, practically applied. That was what Jorgenson had said to him on the day Danny caught the first meteorite.
Well, now it was time for Nick to apply some of his own sleight of hand and make the harp disappear. That is, if they could find it.
It was no secret that Caitlin and Petula did not like each other. For Caitlin it had nothing to do with the fact that Petula had a stalkerlike crush on Nick. It had to do with things like the voodoo doll Petula had made of Caitlin in third grade (which hadn’t worked) and the stink-bomb shampoo she had given Caitlin in fourth grade (which had).
Caitlin had been nursing a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture kind of feeling since the moment she arrived at Nick’s house—but these days that was nothing new. Lately, the more appropriate question would be “What’s not wrong with this picture?” Still, Caitlin had to admit that Petula had promised to get them into the Accelerati lair, and she did—so maybe Caitlin had misjudged her.
As for Mitch, he was proud that his girlfriend had, for once, done something helpful. And Nick? Well, his mind was already leaping ahead toward the harp.
The four of them went down the ramp to a dim hallway beneath the pin setter. About a dozen yards in, they came to an elaborately sculpted bronze double door.
“Rodin’s Gates of Hell,” said Caitlin, who knew her art. “But a different version. Interesting.”
The bronze doors opened into what appeared to be a broom closet, but the room seemed to expand like an accordion with every step they took until they were in an absurdly grand, cathedral-like space, with windows that looked out over the snowcapped Himalayas—a nearly perfect three-dimensional projection.
Petula was right about something else, too: the place wasn’t teaming with Accelerati. It was practically deserted.
But practically isn’t completely. At the far end of the hall, two men in pastel suits were in the midst of a heated debate about time dilation. As soon as they saw the kids, they strode purposefully toward them.
“I got this,” said Nick. He pulled the narc-in-the-box from his belt and started turning the crank. Mercifully, it did not play “Pop Goes the Weasel.” But it did require several full turns for it to generate a sleep-inducing charge.
“Who let you in here?” asked one of the approaching men.
“Look away,” Nick warned his friends. Then the clown’s head on a spring popped out. The two agents gasped and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Nick pushed the puppet back down and latched the box again. “The harp is here. I can feel it.”
“Can you feel us a map?” asked Caitlin. “And maybe some keys to get us through locked doors?”
Beyond the Great Hall there was a marble rotunda with corridors going off in all directions, like the spokes of a wheel. A stately bronze statue of a man holding a lightbulb stood in the center. Thomas Edison. The statue seemed to be pointing down one hallway. Nick could have taken that as a sign, but he doubted that a statue of Edison, Tesla’s archrival, would give him any assistance whatsoever.
Then a short, plump man in a pale lavender suit entered the rotunda from one of the other corridors. He stopped short when he saw them. Nick recognized him as a member of the team that had tried to clear out his attic.
Nick held up the fan.
“The harp. Where is it?” Nick demanded.
The man hesitated.
“Don’t make me use this!”
The man, who had seen what the fan could do, pointed down one of the hallways with a shaky finger.
Nick dispatched him with the narc-in-the-box, and they went down the hall until they got to a door labeled RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.
The room was empty except for a crate in the middle already marked with a shipping label.
“New Jersey?” said Mitch, reading the label. “Why would they send the harp to New Jersey?”
“We don’t know it’s the harp yet.” Nick unlatched a side of the crate and pulled it open. The harp was indeed inside, secured by some sort of magnetic restraint, which seemed extremely complicated, except for the switch labeled OFF. Nick turned it off, and the harp was free for the taking. It seemed so easy, Nick half expected an Indiana Jones kind of booby trap—like poison-tipped arrows shooting from the wall—but nothing happened.
“Don’t pluck the strings!” Petula warned. “We don’t know what they do.”
“It has no strings,” said Mitch.
Caitlin leaned toward it. “No—look closely.”
Nick did so and still couldn’t see any strings, but as soon as he started to shift his eyes away, he saw them. Not so much strings, but lines cutting vertically through space—invisible in a direct line of sight.
With Caitlin checking that the coast was clear, Nick and Mitch carried the harp out into the hallway and toward the statue of Edison—but there were six passageways converging on the rotunda, increasing the chances that they would be spotted. Sure enough, a group of men and women in pastel suits were coming down a hallway to the left.
Various shouts of “They’ve got the harp!” “Stop them!” and “Call security!” erupted.
“I got this one,” Mitch said. He put down his end of the harp and planted his feet apart like a police officer about to take out a perp. He aimed the bellows and pumped the handles together, expelling a single blast of air down the corridor.
Within the confines of the hallway, it didn’t create a mini-tornado; instead, it turned the passage into a wind tunnel. The multicolored gaggle was blown off their feet and so far back down the seemingly endless hall that they ceased to be a concern.
Nick considered the six entrances and couldn’t remember the way to go. He couldn’t even remember which way they had just come.
Caitlin read the look on his face and said, “It’s this way, to the right of where Edison’s pointing.”
But the Accelerati were now alerted to their presence, and three more agents ran toward them from that hallway.
Petula took the initiative this time. “Fingers in your ears,” she ordered. “Earwax-deep!”
Even with their ears plugged, they could still hear the horrific sound of the clarinet as Petula began to play. For Nick it was definitely the most unpleasant auditory experience of his life. Like steroid-infused nails on a chalkboard. Like microphone feedback injected directly into his brain. It made him weak in the knees—but with his fingers in his ea
rs, and the bell of the instrument aimed down the hall and not at him, he and the others were able to withstand it. The approaching Accelerati were not so lucky. They were hit with the full force of Petula’s soul-searing solo just as they entered the rotunda. They fell to the ground, clutching their heads in agony.
Nick grabbed the harp again, and Caitlin, who was closest, took the other end. They moved as quickly as they could. But as they reached the Great Hall, Nick realized they were one person short.
“Where’s Mitch?”
Mitch hadn’t come for the harp. He had a much more personal agenda. While Vince was powered by a long-life battery, and Nick was powered by his growing connection to Tesla’s machine, Mitch was driven by something else entirely.
It had begun as a furious desire for vengeance when his father was wrongly imprisoned. Back then Mitch had no idea who to take vengeance on. When he learned it was the Accelerati who had used his father and tossed him away, his first wish was for all of them to suffer for the suffering they had caused his family. But Mitch’s need for revenge had evolved. It was more important, he realized, to clear his father’s name. And to make sure he received adequate compensation for the year of his life lost to prison. Seven hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of compensation, perhaps.
In the rotunda, while the other kids were focused on the harp, the clarinet-smacked Accelerati were scrambling away like the cowards they were. Mitch grabbed one of them before he could escape, and pushed him hard around a corner.
Mitch was not the biggest kid, but he did have the inertia of a few extra pounds. That, coupled with the keen focus of intense purpose, made him a force to be reckoned with.
Before the man could protest, Mitch shoved the tip of the bellows into his mouth, and the guy’s eyes went wide.
“I’ll bet you can guess what this does,” he said. “Let’s just say, a single pump and you’ll blow up like a parade balloon. But since you’re not made of rubber, you’ll probably just go pop.”
“Gwat goo oo gwant?” the man said, his words garbled by the large nozzle in his mouth.
“Where’s the money?” Mitch asked. “The seven hundred and fifty million you guys framed my father for!”
The man shook his head “Gign’t grame him…”
Mitch tightened his grip on the bellows handle. He wasn’t bluffing, and the man knew it.
“Ro-kay, Ro-kay, I’ll grell oo!” the man slurred.
“Then go ahead and tell me,” Mitch said. “You’ve got three seconds.”
“Brandon Gunther’s alligator!” the terrified Accelerati member said. “Grinthon! Grinthon! Brandon Gunther’s alligator.” Then he knocked the bellows from his mouth and scrambled away, escaping down the hallway.
“Wait! What does that mean?” Mitch called after him.
What he’d said made no sense and that infuriated Mitch, so he pumped the bellows at him as he ran, but the wind just blew him farther down the hallway, aiding his escape.
Mitch would have gone after him, but Nick arrived and grabbed his arm.
“What are you doing? We’ve gotta get out of here!”
“Grinthon!” Mitch screamed. “Brandon Gunther’s alligator!”
Nick looked at him like he was crazy, and now Mitch was wondering if maybe he was.
In the Great Hall, the few Accelerati who were present on a Sunday morning—and still had the nerve to face the enemy—made their stand. There were about ten of them. Nick didn’t recognize a single face. How many Accelerati are there, in how many cities? he wondered; all living normal lives, like Petula had said, while secretly devoting their brainpower to the secret society. How could he ever hope to defeat a force so large and unseen? Well, if he could defeat the ones he could see in front of him right now, that would be enough for today.
A few of them raised weapons, and though Nick didn’t know what those weapons did, he knew they would be “elegant,” as Jorgenson was so fond of saying. The technology might artistically turn them inside out, or make them grow a third arm that would strangle them, or maybe convert them at a molecular level into a precious metal that the Accelerati could sell at a huge profit. In any case, the weapons would leave Nick and his friends elegantly dead.
“Force field!” Nick shouted.
Caitlin must have practiced at home, because she knew exactly what to do.
“Stay close!” she said, and she began cranking the handle on the flour sifter for all she was worth.
Nick suspected that if it were attached to a source of electricity it could create a truly impressive field. Hand-cranked, it created a barrier just large enough to protect the four of them. One of the men fired, and the bullet—or whatever came out—hit the force field and ricocheted, shattering one of holographic windows and ruining the illusion that they were in the Himalayas.
Nick’s crew pushed forward together, toward the door, but as they did, Caitlin tripped over one of the coffee mugs dropped by the first two agents. It was just a slight stumble, but it was enough to jar her hand from the sifter crank, and the force field failed. With no time to think, Nick grabbed the fan and turned it on full blast.
The Accelerati reacted immediately, racing away before the cold front could hit them. Only one remained, and all he did was turn around—which seemed odd, until Nick saw that he wore the strangest thing on his back: a curved body-size shield that looked oddly like a tortoise shell. It was as if the Accelerati, in their underground lair, were turning themselves into mutant turtles of the ninja variety. Nick didn’t want to even consider what that was all about.
He kept the fan aimed at the tortoise shell so the Accelerati on the other side wouldn’t turn around.
“Go!” Nick shouted to the others, and they carried the harp through the doorway. As soon as they were in the clear, Nick hurried after them, slammed The Gates of Hell, and aimed the fan at the doors, icing the hinges so the doors couldn’t open.
“Well, it’s happened,” Caitlin said, looking at Rodin’s massive bronze doors. “Hell has finally frozen over.”
The lack of a sizable force of Accelerati in their Colorado Springs facility had nothing to do with it being Sunday. In fact, Sunday was usually a day when their subterranean mecca thrived with activity. There were experiments, research, theoretical discussions, and, of course, Sunday brunch—which always featured a buffet of genetically modified species of unique flavor, which would eventually find their way into the global food supply.
One reason so few Accelerati were in their headquarters that day was due to the electromagnetic trouble that was growing beyond anyone’s ability to ignore it. Even the world’s most skilled deniers could no longer keep their heads in the sand.
The Accelerati were monitoring the exponential growth of static, magnetic anomalies, misdirected birds, and unplanned electrocutions. They had been secretly called upon by the Federal Aviation Administration to troubleshoot the navigational nightmare that had grounded the world’s aircraft. This was more of a challenge than usual, because in other cases when the Accelerati were called in to solve a problem, they were the ones who had created the problem in the first place—and already knew the solution, making themselves appear more than just brilliant, but almost magical.
But, as Dr. Alan Jorgenson once pointed out to Nick Slate, there was no magic involved, only scientific illusion. Smoke and mirrors, practically applied.
On that Sunday, some of the Accelerati were gathered in government think tanks, trying to puzzle their way out of the problem. Others were in the field, monitoring the levels of magnetic and electrical disturbances. Still others were negotiating for hiding spots in the deepest levels of NORAD, which was packing in high-level hiders trying to escape yet another end of the world.
This was the state of things when Harley Grabowski drove Petula, Nick, Mitch, and Caitlin back to Nick’s house with the harp, no questions asked. Clearly the instrument was low on the list of contraband his vehicle had hauled.
In the open back of the pickup, it w
as hard to ignore the skies above, which were billowing with strange purple clouds that didn’t have anything to do with rain. The clouds strobed with deep flashes, and occasionally lightning shot out—but the sound the bolts made was nothing like thunder. It was more like the hiss of a thousand snakes.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Caitlin said as the snapping and hissing from the sky grew louder.
But Nick was still too focused on the task at hand. “We have the harp—let’s deal with one thing at a time.”
“You can’t ignore what’s happening, Nick. Look at the sky!”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
At that moment Mitch said something they had known for weeks but hadn’t wanted to say out loud. It was a simple statement of fact. “This is because of us,” he said. “All of it.”
But Nick knew what he really meant. This was because of him. Nick was the one who had opened this world-changing Pandora’s box. Well, how was he supposed to know? How could he possibly have foreseen what would come from a simple garage sale? “Just because it’s worse than we thought, that doesn’t mean the machine can’t fix it. That’s what it’s for!” Nick said. “We have to complete the machine.”
“What if we can’t?” Caitlin asked.
He wanted to lash out at her. She had to stop making him think.
He looked up to the sky, if only to avoid Caitlin’s gaze, which at the moment seemed all-seeing.
What he saw above was enough to shake him to his core.
There were still a few patches of blue sky through the building veil of smoky clouds, and now, through one of those patches, he caught sight of the orbiting asteroid. An object fifty miles wide might sound huge, but it wasn’t by cosmic proportions. In daylight it could barely be seen from Earth—it was just a tiny gray dot in the sky. But now that dot was emitting menacing spiderlike sparks. That’s when the truth finally hit home.
He was too late.
Yes, he had caused this; yes, he was also meant to fix it; and yes, the machine was the solution…but the machine wasn’t finished.