Memory Maze

“They’re a couple of clams, these two,” the Connecticut field agent told Frobisher. “They admit to having a son, but his name isn’t Opus, and neither is theirs. They say he’s probably at a friend’s house, but they won’t give us any names so we can track the kid down. Like it’s no big deal that a twelve-year-old isn’t home from school that let out four hours ago. Some parents, huh?”

  “We’ll take it from here,” Frobisher told the man. He and Lee approached the Opuses, who were sitting on the living-room couch, looking tense and worried. Frobisher noted idly that the fabric of the couch and the color of the carpet clashed unhappily. Orange and green — or was it more like rust and seafoam? He shook himself. He had to get his head out of his renovations. The Vote Whisperer case was this close to being solved!

  “Listen, officer,” Ashton Opus spoke up. “We’ve been answering questions for hours, and we’re really tired. Why don’t you admit you’ve got the wrong people, and leave?”

  “Let me ask you a question maybe you haven’t heard yet,” Frobisher suggested. “Does your son have any connection to mind control or hypnotism?”

  The Opuses stared at him in shock and chagrin. What did the FBI know?

  Frobisher took out the screenshot of Jax from the Vote Whisperer video. “This is Jackson, isn’t it? The picture comes from a computer virus that we’ve identified as election tampering. I’m sure you know that’s a very serious charge.”

  Jax’s parents exchanged a look of desperation. It had been hard enough hiding from Elias Mako and Sentia. But what were they going to do next — go on the run from the FBI and the entire United States government? It was time to come clean. Jax was innocent! He had been blackmailed into recording that video!

  Ashton Opus spoke up. “This may sound crazy, but our lives are in danger because of our son’s special abilities. If we tell you everything, you have to guarantee you’ll protect us.”

  Frobisher sat forward. “You have my word. Where is Jackson right now?”

  “We think he’s with Axel Braintree,” Mr. Opus confessed.

  Lee wrote the name down. “And he is … ?”

  “A — friend of the family,” Mrs. Opus supplied. “He snuck out of the house when the first agents arrived. We believe he went to pick up Jax at the Quackenbush mansion.”

  Frobisher looked startled. “Avery Quackenbush?”

  “They were sort of working together,” Mr. Opus explained. “It’s a long story.”

  “I don’t want to alarm you, but we have word that Avery Quackenbush died this afternoon,” said Frobisher.

  Jax’s father snatched up the phone and dialed Braintree’s cell number. It rang three times and went to voice mail. “Axel, have you got Jax with you? Call us as soon as you get this! It’s an emergency!”

  “Give me the number,” ordered Lee. “The wireless carrier can track the phone’s GPS. We’ll find him.”

  Several very tense minutes passed before Lee got the report. She turned to the others. “Axel Braintree is heading south on I-95 toward New York City.”

  The poker was yellow-hot now, its tip glowing in the flames. Jax couldn’t take his eyes off it. As he stared, the overheated iron served as a focal point as his thoughts fell back into order.

  It had been Mako. Of course it had been Mako! Who else could reach out blindly from miles away, using nothing less than a dying billionaire as his instrument? How could Jax ever hope to escape this man?

  And now he had surrendered not only himself, but also a hostage — poor Felicity, whose only crime was being a snoop. Somehow he had to get her out of this.

  “Man, that poker’s heating up great,” Wilson remarked with relish.

  Jax ignored him, and tried to cast Felicity a comforting look. But the girl was too tense even to turn her head. Instead, his gaze found Kira. He noted how grim and nervous she was. Of all the hypnos at Sentia, Kira had always been the nicest. Surely she couldn’t feel proud to be a part of this.

  He spoke to her in a whisper. “Can’t you see how evil he is? How can you have anything to do with him? He’s power-mad.”

  She seemed torn. “I know he wants power. But only for good things — to end wars and make the world a better place.”

  “Oh, sure,” Jax retorted. “With him sitting on the throne. You want a world like that?”

  The door was flung wide, smashing against the wall. Into the parlor scrambled Axel Braintree, pink-faced, disheveled, his ponytail undone.

  “I’m taking Jax home!”

  Wilson stepped into his path, towering over the president of the Sandman’s Guild. “Beat it, old man.”

  In reply, Braintree turned blazing eyes on the big boy. Wilson barely had time to twist away and throw himself on the carpet to avoid being hypnotized on the spot.

  Mako got to his feet and looked down at Braintree. “So you finally have your chance to take me on. You’re out of your league, Axel. Go back to your pickpockets and hobos.”

  “Release my pickpockets and hobos, and I will,” Braintree replied bitterly. “You’ve been kidnapping them.”

  “Such a great loss to humanity,” the director said in mock sincerity.

  “They’re not perfect,” Braintree agreed. “But they’re working to be better, one day at a time. Can we say the same about you, Elias? You’re the worst backslider of all, and on the greatest scale. If you turned up at one of my meetings, I’d welcome you with open arms, because you need the Sandman’s Guild more than any of us.”

  “How dare you?”

  Their eyes locked, and the silent battle was on, an epic clash of mesmeric force that made the air virtually crackle between them. Everyone watched, transfixed. Two of the greatest living hypnotists engaged in single combat, two powerful minds wrestling for the upper hand.

  Braintree was a gifted mind-bender, but Jax knew he was no match for Mako, who combined great ability, wily creativity, and cutthroat ruthlessness. With effort, Jax tore his attention away from the confrontation and focused his eyes on Felicity. Slowly, her head turned, and she faced him. The PIP image came to him swiftly. She was under his control. All he had to do was command her. But how could he, without everybody hearing what he was up to? DeRon was still right beside him on the couch.

  All at once, he remembered something important: She reads lips.

  Without a sound, he mouthed his instructions, careful to form every syllable perfectly.

  Slowly and deliberately, she picked the crystal vase up from the side table and brought it down full force over DeRon’s head. DeRon dropped like a stone.

  “Hey!” Wilson was up, lunging for Jax, but Jax was no longer on the couch. He dropped to the floor, rolled once, and fished the hot poker from the fire. Brandishing it in the en garde style, he held it out, keeping Wilson at bay. Jax might have been the scrub of the Haywood Middle School fencing team, but the skills he’d learned were coming in handy.

  Ordering Felicity behind him, he grabbed Braintree’s arm, pulling him away from the confrontation with Mako. Both combatants came back to reality with twin roars of protest.

  “I was winning!” Braintree complained.

  Kira snatched up a hearth broom and tried to whack the poker out of Jax’s hand. Deftly, Jax twisted his wrist and thrust forward. The handle lifted from her grip, and the small broom went skittering across the floor. Coach Riley would have been proud.

  Under cover of the poker, the three ran out the door and slammed it behind them. Braintree looked up and down the hall, settling on a burly janitor who was mopping the floor. Still geared up from his battle with Mako, he hypnotized the man almost instantaneously and ordered him to the parlor door.

  “All the evil in the world is inside this room. Don’t let it out! Keep the door shut. Your very life depends on it!”

  The man clutched the knob and held on with intense determination.

  They fled, Jax in the lead, still holding the poker. He threw open the stairwell doors, and they started down, running full tilt.

  “Axel, I was
such an idiot —”

  “Apologize later!” Braintree cut him off, hair wild. “Right now, our priority is not dying, and that requires speed!”

  Felicity stumbled along, trembling and sobbing with every step.

  Hoping that some trace of a mesmeric link still existed between them, Jax panted, “You feel calm and relaxed, and you know that everything is going to be all right.”

  “What are you talking about, Jack Magnus?” she exploded in a fury. “Nothing is going to be all right! Weren’t you paying attention back there? I can’t believe I thought you were interesting! You’re not interesting — you’re completely insane!”

  As Jax gestured his innocence, the poker slipped from his hand and clattered past the first-floor landing, all the way to the basement level.

  “Leave it!” Braintree puffed. “That janitor won’t hold them forever!”

  But Jax started down the basement steps. “We might need a weapon.” He could see the poker at the bottom of the stairs, the tip still glowing. As he grabbed it, he was already on the way up again.

  That was when he heard the sound — a distant tapping.

  Who cares? So they’ve got an old boiler or something! Get out of there!

  He listened more closely. There was a rhythm to it.

  Boilers don’t have rhythm!

  “Are you writing an opera down there?” Braintree rasped from above.

  “Just a minute,” Jax called back. Three quick taps, three slower ones, followed by three more quick ones.

  That’s SOS in Morse code!

  “Axel, you’d better come down here.”

  “Why?”

  “I — I think I might have found your sandmen!”

  Braintree reacted immediately. He turned his eyes on Felicity, established a mesmeric link, and plopped his cell phone in her hand. “You will get out of here — fast! Run five blocks in any direction, and call your parents to come and get you. You will remember nothing of what you saw here today. You won’t even remember how you got to New York or who you were with. Now, go!”

  He watched her run out the door, and then dashed down the stairs to join Jax.

  “Where’s Felicity?” Jax demanded.

  “I sent her on with a suggestion,” Braintree replied. “She’ll call her parents. Now, where are my sandmen?”

  “That banging,” Jax whispered. “It’s SOS. Where’s it coming from?”

  They began to explore the basement, ears alert for any change in the volume of the tapping. A steel door led to the furnace. A room beyond that held hot-water tanks and a trash compacter.

  At one point, they seemed so close that Braintree called softly, “Evelyn — Ivan — Dennison —”

  But it turned out to be random knocking in the pipes.

  “Look!” Jax exclaimed abruptly. There, in the corner of a storage area, what appeared to be a square metal plate lay on the concrete floor. On closer inspection, they could see that a padlock secured a metal hasp at one side. “A trapdoor!” Jax exclaimed.

  Braintree dropped to his knees and knocked on the metal cover. “Is anybody there?”

  There was a babble of voices, faint but excited.

  “Hold on! We’re getting you out!” He began to tug at the trapdoor, hoping that the lock would give way. It didn’t budge.

  “Hurry!” Jax urged.

  “I’m a sandman, not a locksmith!”

  “Let me try.” Jax pressed the hot tip of the poker against the lock mechanism. After a long moment, there was a sizzling sound, followed by an acrid burning smell. The lock opened up and fell away.

  Braintree threw open the hatch and peered inside. Five faces stared up at him, the missing sandmen — Evelyn Lolis, Ivan Marcinko, Dennison Cho, and two others. They were pale and dirty, and perhaps a little thinner than he remembered them. But they were alive and well.

  One by one, the hostages climbed up out of their subbasement prison to be welcomed and embraced by their leader.

  “I’m so sorry this was done to you!” Braintree told them emotionally. “I’ll make it my life’s purpose to see that Mako pays for it!”

  “Let’s just get out of here,” said Lolis in an exhausted tone.

  They headed back toward the building’s exit, but Jax froze at the sound of running feet on the stairs above them. “Too late — they’re coming after us. We need to find another way out!”

  The group retreated into the furnace room.

  “There!” Jax pointed to a narrow rectangular casement window that opened onto a ground-level alley.

  They wasted no time. Jax climbed up on a wooden crate and shattered the glass with the poker, clearing away any shards that were left behind. Then he jumped down, and waved the hostages and Braintree ahead of him.

  It was a tight squeeze for the bigger sandmen, but soon they were all standing in the alley. At the end of the narrow lane, the bustle of Lexington Avenue beckoned.

  “Scatter,” ordered Braintree. As his rescued hypnotists ran for freedom, he couldn’t resist hissing, “And don’t forget to come to the next meeting!”

  Jax and Braintree brought up the rear. Just before joining the passing parade on the avenue, Jax hid the poker under his jacket. It was no longer burning hot, but he could still sense warmth coming from the tip. “Just in case,” he said.

  Braintree nodded.

  They didn’t flee. Instead, they tried to melt into the crowd, strolling along at the speed of the other pedestrians. Jax scanned faces, alert for any Sentia personnel. So far, so good. He risked a glance behind them.

  Wilson DeVries was on their tail, walking fast, gaining on them. In a single motion, Jax whipped out the poker, reached down, and sent it spinning along the sidewalk. It struck Wilson at ankle level, taking his feet right out from under him.

  Bull’s-eye, he thought with satisfaction. His celebration lasted exactly one second. Wilson went down with a yelp and, in the space his broad shoulders vacated, Jax could see another pursuer.

  Mako.

  The director’s dark eyes locked onto Jax and Braintree. He was too far away to be a hypnotic threat, but his expression was terrifying. Someone had dared to defy Elias Mako, and there would be consequences.

  As they watched, Mako stuck his head into the open window of a parked Audi. A moment later, the driver climbed out and stood passively on the sidewalk, watching as Mako got behind the wheel. The blue sedan pulled out into traffic.

  Braintree and Jax broke into a sprint, but it was obvious that they could never outrun a car. Mako weaved in and out of traffic in a determined attempt to catch up with them.

  “He’s not the only one who can bend a driver!” Braintree stepped out into the road and attempted to flag down a taxi. The cabbie, however, already had a fare, and veered away before a hypnotic link could be established. Undaunted, the old man peered in the front windshield of a Buick SUV. But that motorist was looking for an address, and had his eyes on the passing buildings, not the sandman in the middle of the avenue.

  Jax glanced over his shoulder. Mako was right there. When the light changed, the cars in front of him would move, and he would be upon them. Jax hopped onto the running board of the very next vehicle to come along — a full-size garbage truck, riding low and heavy, with its compactor mechanism locked.

  “Hey, mister —” And when the driver looked his way, Jax brought the full power of his Opus and Sparks bloodlines to bear on the hapless sanitation worker. Almost immediately, the PIP showed Jax on the outside of the cab, the Lexington storefronts passing slowly by. “Stop the truck,” he ordered. “You have two passengers.”

  He jumped down, bundled Braintree into the front seat, and climbed in after him. “Okay! Let’s roll!”

  The truck started again in a grinding of gears.

  The wail of sirens cut the air. Jax checked the side mirror. Police cars swarmed around the corner onto Sentia’s block.

  Jax saw a ray of hope. “We can go to the cops!”

  Braintree shook his head. ??
?The FBI was at your house this afternoon. They’ve traced the video virus to you. No cops.”

  In the mirror, the blue Audi heaved into view, Mako at the wheel.

  “He’s right behind us!” Braintree exclaimed nervously.

  “Faster!” Jax urged the driver.

  The man stepped on the gas. They could feel the engine revving beneath them, but the truck didn’t pick up much speed. At that, there was little room to maneuver on the crowded avenue.

  “Dump out the load!” Jax barked suddenly. “Now!”

  Obediently, the driver stomped on the brakes and pulled the lever to activate the mechanism. Hemmed in by traffic on both sides, Mako squealed to a halt behind the truck. With a hum of hydraulics, the payload began to rise. Mako could only sit and watch as the compactor door opened and a half ton of refuse came pouring down on the blue car, covering it to the roof.

  It would have taken a lot to get a smile out of Jax at that moment, but this succeeded. “That was awesome!”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” Braintree said grimly. “Keep driving.”

  But the spectacle of the trash-buried car created a major rubbernecking event. Pedestrians gawked. Drivers got out of their cars for a better view. Workers from a nearby construction site came out to watch. Lexington ground to a near standstill. A symphony of horns sounded. There was even a smattering of applause.

  The pile of trash shifted as the door of the Audi was thrust open and Elias Mako emerged, liberally decorated with garbage, crimson with rage. Brushing off all offers of assistance, he stormed over to the construction site and pushed his way through the gate.

  Following in the mirror, Jax frowned. “What’s he doing?”

  Two minutes later, he had his answer. An enormous demolition crane came rumbling up the truck ramp to the street level. As it turned onto the avenue, its caterpillar treads spraying dried clay, Jax spotted Mako standing on the running board, eyes locked on the operator. At the apex of the crane dangled a two-ton wrecking ball, huge, black, and menacing.

  By the time the pure lethal malice of Mako’s intentions became clear to Jax, it was already too late. The boom of the crane had been maneuvered directly above the garbage truck, the ball looming overhead.