Zeke Bartholomew Read online

  “Let’s take a look around,” I said.

  “Will do,” said Sparrow.

  I walked around the left side of the café; Sparrow took the right. I eyeballed the people sitting down, trying to see if they looked shady, if maybe they were working on some top-secret project having to do with world domination.

  “Hey, kid, stop staring. You’re creeping me out.”

  I snapped out of it, realizing I’d been staring at one guy’s computer while he perused what looked to be an online dating site.

  “Everyone does it these days. Get a life. Go away.”

  I obliged Mr. Hard Luck in Love and kept walking.

  I walked around back. More tables, more coffee, more people. There was nothing here.

  I knelt down and started to look underneath the tables, trying to see if there were any secret buttons, strange panels, or floorboards that could be pried up.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  I stood up. “Yes?”

  One of the baristas stood over me. He was a youngish guy with hideous chin hair that looked like the result of a particularly gruesome weed whacker experiment and enough facial rings and piercings to make getting through an airport metal detector a daylong activity.

  “Some of the patrons have been complaining that you seem to be, um, peeping at them. Their words, not mine. I’m going to have to ask you to stop or to leave.”

  “I’ll stop,” I said. “Sorry. I’m looking for my dad, who’s supposed to be meeting me here. He’s late again as usual.”

  I put on my best “poor me” face and the enemy of all metal detectors backed off.

  “Oh, hey, listen, no problem. Take your time. Hope your dad gets here soon.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wiping an imaginary tear from my cheek.

  Once he was gone, I did another lap and headed over to meet Sparrow. I couldn’t find her. I went around to the right side of the café and saw her standing in front of an elevator door.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” I asked.

  “Ever seen an elevator in a coffee shop before?” she said.

  “No, but it could lead to a storage room.”

  “No, the storage room is in the back. I saw one of these scary-looking bearded people bringing bags of beans from there. And there’s a delivery door in the back as well. There’s no reason for this to be here.”

  I scratched my lip. She was right. There was something down there. But it still didn’t fully add up. I just didn’t picture Ragnarok—in his flame-retardant suit and jetpack, carrying my friend Kyle—waltzing into a coffee shop and calmly pressing the Down button.

  “There’s got to be another entrance,” I said. “Something that leads below. Just not in the shop. I was stupid. It’s below us, but the real entrance wouldn’t be so public. It’d be somewhere hidden. Somewhere in the thick of things. Somewhere…”

  Suddenly I turned around and sprinted outside.

  “Zeke!” Sparrow yelled, chasing after me. “Where are you going?”

  I didn’t have time to explain. She was a faster runner than me anyway, so I knew she’d keep up.

  I zoomed through the parking lot, waited until traffic parted, and ran across two highway lanes until I reached the thick forest on the other side. Only twenty yards in and you could barely see the cars, and they sure couldn’t see me. Another twenty yards and you wouldn’t even know civilization was on the other side.

  I stopped to catch my breath. My heart was pounding, and not just because I wasn’t in very good shape.

  “Zeke,” Sparrow said, pulling up next to me. Naturally she was totally cool while I was practically bent over, panting. “What are we doing?”

  “Hold on.”

  I looked around. For something. Anything. If I didn’t find it soon, that Stefan Holt report would become a reality and something very, very bad would happen, even worse than the time I’d studied for an entire day’s worth of wrong tests.

  Then I found it. Not by sight, but by smell.

  “You smell that?” I asked.

  “Smell what?” Sparrow replied.

  “A faint odor. Hydrogen peroxide. Just a trace.”

  Sparrow took a whiff of the air. “I smell something. What makes you think it’s a lead?”

  I turned to her. “Ragnarok was wearing a jetpack. Jetpacks, or their first iterations, were invented by the Germans during World War Two. In nineteen fifty-nine, two American scientists attempted to harness the technology. They realized that the best fuel to use for jetpack propulsion was—”

  “Hydrogen peroxide,” Sparrow replied.

  “A hydrogen peroxide–based substance, yes. Ragnarok was here,” I said. “He landed somewhere around here. Let’s follow the scent.”

  We spent ten minutes trying to triangulate the location of the hydrogen peroxide smell. Not too easy, considering there was a faint breeze that made pinpointing it darn near impossible. Then I heard…

  “Zeke!” It was Sparrow. I jogged over to where she was standing. And I saw why she’d called me over.

  The smell was strong, but more important was a circular patch of grass on the ground, about four feet in diameter.

  It was completely singed.

  “He landed here,” Sparrow said.

  I knelt down. There were matted imprints in the grass, a large boot print. It was definitely him.

  We followed the boot prints until they stopped…right before a massive oak tree.

  I walked up to the tree. Inspected it. It was huge, with branches filled with leafy green leaves spindling out in all different directions.

  “This one,” Sparrow said. “Notice anything?”

  I looked closer. At the very base of the branch was a very faint demarcation line.

  “This branch has been sawed off and then put back on,” I said.

  “Or,” Sparrow said, “it’s not a branch at all.”

  “Heck, it works in the movies. Here goes nothing.”

  I reached forward, took the branch with both of my hands, and pulled.

  The branch rotated in my hands. Smoothly, like it was on gears.

  I nearly fell back. It continued to rotate even though I’d let go of my grip.

  And as the branch turned, a panel in the wood slid open, revealing a shiny, gleaming metallic pod.

  I heaved a breath, realizing I’d forgotten to exhale for nearly a minute. Sparrow turned to me, and I said, “Let’s go save the world.”

  7:09 p.m.

  Fifty-one minutes until some guy with a funny accent in his name destroys everything. And is his first name really Le? His parents must have wanted him to get made fun of more than mine.

  We walked into the capsule, and the moment our feet crossed the threshold, the fake wooden door whooshed shut and suddenly we were hurtling downward at a speed far faster than any normal elevator.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

  “For once in your life can you go thirty seconds without threatening to puke?”

  “Um, not today.”

  “Fine.”

  Sparrow looked around the capsule while I did my best to keep my lunch where lunches are supposed to stay.

  “I don’t see a camera,” she said.

  “Me either,” I replied.

  “That’s not a good thing. It means somebody definitely knows we’re coming. And wherever we’re going, we’re going there fast, which means when we get there, we’re going to have a welcoming party.”

  “Okay, so what do we do?”

  “Go over by the wall,” she said.

  “Okay.” I did as she told me.

  “Now give me a boost.”

  “Okay. Um, what?”

&nb
sp; “I can push out one of these ceiling panels,” she said, pointing. “We need to get on top of the elevator.”

  “Um…why?”

  “If there are no cameras, they know that whoever is in this elevator isn’t supposed to be here. But since there are no cameras, they don’t know who we are. We need to get out of sight. Now, boost me up.”

  I knelt down, cupped my hands, and held strong as Sparrow put her boot into the hold. On the count of three, I lifted her with all of my meager might until she was able to reach the ceiling.

  She slipped her finger inside her uniform and pulled out a small file. Using it, she began to unscrew a ceiling panel. As she was doing so, the elevator began to slow down. We were nearing the bottom.

  “Hurry,” I whispered.

  “Going as fast as I can.”

  One screw came out. Then a second. Then a third. One left. The elevator was slowing down even more.

  “Done!” she said as the fourth and final screw fell to the floor. There was a loud scraping sound as Sparrow pushed the ceiling panel away, revealing hundreds of feet of empty blackness above us.

  “Push me up.”

  I did, and she clambered through the hole and into the elevator shaft. Then she leaned back down, the wind whipping her hair about her. She leaned over and stuck her hand down.

  “Grab it, and I’ll pull you up.”

  I reached up and took her hand, and she began to pull. I could hear her grunting in pain, the shoulder she’d separated not making things any easier.

  “Stop!” I shouted, letting go of her hand and falling back to the floor.

  “What are you doing, Zeke? We’re almost there!”

  I bent down and picked up something from the floor. The fourth screw that she’d loosened from the ceiling panel.

  “Don’t need anyone finding this,” I said. She smiled.

  “Now, come on.”

  I gripped her hand, and at the same time she pulled, I reached up and was able to get my other hand through the hole and onto the top of the elevator. She pulled, I pushed, and soon I was sitting next to Sparrow on top of the elevator as we descended through the darkness.

  I looked up. I couldn’t even see the entrance we’d come through. No wonder Le Carré’s headquarters couldn’t be found. It was thousands of feet below the ground. That’s what the mobile military antenna across the street was for. There was no way he could get the necessary reception down here, no way he could broadcast with SirEebro without a mechanism on the surface to do it.

  I helped Sparrow replace the ceiling panel, and we sat and waited as the elevator continued on its downward path. There was a small grate through which I could peek down and see the inside of the empty elevator.

  “Odds are they’ll just inspect the elevator and leave. Then we can go about finding and destroying SirEebro,” I said.

  Sparrow nodded.

  The elevator slowed down, slowed down, and finally came to a grinding halt. I did the quick math. I estimated that we were at least a mile below ground. Unfathomable.

  “A quick check,” I mumbled, “and then—”

  Suddenly the air erupted in huge thunderbolts. We covered our ears as sparks and smoke blew up in the elevator right below us. Red beams of light blinded me. The shock waves sent us both tumbling off the top of the elevator. I was able to grab a cable to hold on to, preventing myself from falling over the side to my death. I couldn’t see Sparrow but couldn’t risk calling out to her. Not that she could have heard me anyway. It was like the Fourth of July times a thousand less than five feet away from us.

  Finally the explosions stopped. I was afraid to breathe.

  Quick inspection, my butt. They opened fire without even waiting for the doors to open. I’d been five feet from being Swiss Zeke.

  “All clear,” said a male voice from below us.

  “Elevator is secure,” a female voice said.

  “Must have been an electronics malfunction. Send a repair team.”

  That’s odd, I thought. Those voices sounded strangely familiar…

  I could hear footsteps in the elevator, which went away after a few seconds. When it appeared that we were alone again, I hoisted myself back on top of the elevator, trembling like a little bird. Sparrow was above me, clutching a cable. She slid back down and joined me on the elevator top. We both looked down.

  “Wow,” I said. “I think they even shot up all the dust particles in there.”

  “What were those things they were firing?” Sparrow asked.

  “It didn’t sound like gunfire,” I said. “And those beams were some sort of laser rifle. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it before.”

  “Let’s admire their handiwork later,” Sparrow said. “Coast is clear. No time to waste. Let’s move.”

  She began to remove the ceiling panel again, but I grabbed her arm.

  “Are you nuts? There could be a hundred guards just inside waiting for us. We go down there, I’m half the kid I used to be.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Sparrow asked.

  I pointed across from us to an open air vent.

  “There,” I said. “We make like tunnel rats.”

  She looked below, then looked at the burned-to-smithereens elevator below us. My option seemed like the choice least likely to get us pureed.

  “Okay. You first.”

  “So ladylike,” I said. “Come on.”

  There was no way I could squeeze through the vent with my backpack strapped across me, so I tied it to my ankle. I slid across the top of the elevator and barely pulled myself through the air vent. I could feel the fat on my love handles squeaking as I shimmied through the vent. The backpack slid behind me, thankfully not making much of a sound.

  “Maybe cut down on the waffles for breakfast,” Sparrow said.

  “Right. Because I balance my diet based on how many evil air ducts I’m going to have to crawl through on a given day.”

  I kept going. There were noises below us, but I couldn’t make anything out. Still, something stuck in the back of my mind. I recognized those voices back in the elevator. The man and woman who’d blown it to kingdom come. I had no idea how or why, but something told me I knew who was down there with Le Carré. Nevertheless, I had to find Kyle.

  We came to a T-junction, splitting off to the left and the right. Both trails curved off, preventing us from seeing where they led.

  “You go left, I’ll go right,” Sparrow said. “But neither of us does anything without letting the other know what’s down there. We meet back at this junction in five minutes.”

  “You got it,” I said, trying to sound brave, but in truth ready to soil my underwear at the prospect of skulking around a secret, guarded underground lair without Sparrow. Still, she was right. It was the only way to know for sure; a few wrong turns and we would run out of time.

  I began to shimmy left while Sparrow went right. I crawled along the corridor, nothing but metal surrounding me on all sides. My backpack was still attached to my ankle, and I pulled it along with me as I moved.

  I could still hear voices below me, and my breath caught in my throat every time my fat made a noise that might give away my position.

  After about fifty yards, I came to the end of my line. The vent was sealed off by an air duct. I shimmied to the very end and saw that the vent was about fifteen feet off the floor. What I saw below me made me nearly cry out.

  It was Kyle.

  He was sitting in a cell, beams of red light crisscrossing the entrance. His head was in his hands, and he was nibbling on his fingernails. A common Kyle trait when he was nervous.

  I could see spots of blood on his hands. He’d chewed through his nails and was now eating his cuticles. Gross.

  Every few seconds Kyle would raise his head u
p to look at something outside his cell that I couldn’t see. He looked tired, scared, hopeless. I wanted to reach out to him, to let him know that Zeke Bartholomew was here to save the day.

  Actually, I’m not so sure that would have made him feel any better.

  I waited until a little while had gone by without any movement from Kyle—which meant he wasn’t being watched at the moment—and then reached into my pocket and took out that last screw Sparrow had dropped in the elevator. I aimed carefully and tossed it into Kyle’s cell.

  It pinged at his feet, startling Kyle, who leaped up.

  “Sit back down!” a voice outside the cell shouted. Kyle did as the voice ordered.

  But then he reached down and picked up the screw. Turned it over in his fingers. Then, slowly, he looked up. And based on the totally incredulous look in his eyes, I knew he saw me.

  Kyle’s jaw dropped.

  I waved at him. Because, well, I didn’t know what else to do.

  I motioned for him to stay put. Kyle’s mouth flapped open and closed. I couldn’t rescue him right now. The air duct was too high for him to climb up to, and there was no sense in my dropping down into a guarded cell.

  So, as much as I hated to do it, I mouthed to Kyle, I’ll be back.

  His eyes basically said, You’ve got to be kidding me. Get down here and get me out of here! And his mouth let loose a silent barrage of obscenities that I’m pretty sure he hadn’t learned from Mrs. Hooverville, our English teacher. I don’t even think the majority of them were in English.

  Hopefully he’d understand in a little while.

  I tentatively turned around, trying to make as little noise as possible, and began the shimmy back to the T-junction to meet Sparrow.

  A few minutes later I arrived back just in time to see her coming around the bend. She met me in the middle.

  “Did you find anything?” she whispered.

  “I found Kyle. They’re holding him in a cell at the other end of that tunnel. Some sort of infrared laser gate, same color of red as those beams inside the elevator. I can’t get him out from here. We’re going to have to find another way. What did you find?”

  “I think I found another way,” Sparrow said. “That tunnel leads to a generator room. I didn’t see anyone inside. We can go from there.”