Zeke Bartholomew Read online

  “Wait…um…Stephanie!” I shouted. It felt silly continuing this ruse, considering the fate of the free-brained world was at stake. But enough people had already gotten in trouble because of me, and if I could keep Kyle out of it any more than he already was, I would do that.

  I ran after Sparrow, who’d already turned the corner.

  The wrong corner.

  I didn’t know the sewers well enough that if she got lost we could find our way back.

  Enough with the games. We didn’t have time for this.

  “Sparrow!” I cried out. I couldn’t see her. And the sound of feet splashing could have come from anywhere. Why couldn’t she just wait? What was it with all these spies and their lack of patience? They seriously needed to just lie down on a beach somewhere and read a trashy magazine or something.

  “Zeke!” a voice cried out. It was Kyle. He’d followed us into the sewers. Of course he had. Sparrow and I had been talking some secret mumbo jumbo about the world ending. Who wouldn’t be curious?

  “Kyle!” I called back. Just great. Ahead of me was Sparrow, running off into who-knows-where, and behind me was Kyle, who was surely confused beyond belief. Aside from that, we couldn’t have Kyle going out and telling the whole world about what he’d just heard. Not that anybody would believe him.

  Yes, um, I think there’s a massive global conspiracy involving a teeny-bopper band and brainwashing, and, um, my friend Zeke, who has pretty much never done anything more strenuous than roll the dice in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, is somehow involved in it.

  Yeah. I could see a cop taking that real seriously.

  Still, if my dad’s life was in danger, so was Kyle’s. Even if nobody sane believed him, there were some insane people out there clearly willing to do some horrific stuff to keep their secrets hidden. Sparrow had saved me because SNURP needed me. It was up to me to make sure Kyle returned safe and sound to his awkward, gangly self.

  Sparrow was strong, tough. She could take care of herself for the time being.

  I backtracked through the sewer toward Kyle.

  “Kyle!” I cried out again. I ran around the corner, smack-dab into Kyle. We both fell over onto the cobblestone.

  “Dude, what’s going on? Who is that girl, really?”

  “She’s my…aw, never mind. Come on, we need to go.”

  I grabbed Kyle’s arm and began to pull him in the direction of the exit. To my surprise, he yanked back.

  “Hold on, Zeke. I’ve known you for ten years, and I’ve never seen you like this. And I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me. So don’t start now. What the heck is going on, and who is that girl you keep calling Stephanie?”

  I turned to Kyle, a swell of guilt rising in me.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t want to lie to you. So don’t make me. Just please, Kyle, trust me on this and follow me. I’ll explain everything when I get a chance, but right now there’s no time.”

  “Is this some sort of freaky spy role-playing game?” Kyle said. He laughed and clapped his hands together like he’d just solved a puzzle. “I bet that’s it. She’s some girl you met online and you’re both pretending to be, what, MI6? CIA? FBI? Men in Black?”

  “Dude, like I said, I won’t lie to you…you’re right. We’re pretending to be CIA. And there’s a bomb we need to defuse, and if we don’t get out of here soon, our team is going to lose and then we have to drink a gallon of milk without puking.”

  “Aw, that sucks. I gotcha, man. Come on, let’s find your teammate. But, Zeke?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Next time, ask me to play too. Sounds like fun.”

  “I will. Now come on.”

  We ran through the sewers, water splashing up all around us, soaking my pants. I didn’t have time to think about how soggy and chilly I was. We needed to find Sparrow.

  Then I heard a sound.

  “Stop,” I said. Kyle halted in his tracks. I heard it again. It sounded like eek.

  It was Sparrow.

  “Sparr—I mean, Stephanie!” I shouted. I began to jog toward where I thought the sound was coming from. The light wasn’t very good down there, so I had to follow the shadows.

  We rounded several corners, doubled back twice, and then came upon Sparrow. She’d hit a dead end.

  “There you are,” I said. “Come on, we need to—”

  “Just lead me to the way out,” she said, her eyes steely and dangerous.

  “Wow, Stephanie doesn’t mess around,” Kyle said.

  “You have no idea,” I replied. “Okay, let’s all stick together. The exit is this way.”

  I’d memorized all our various routes, and after ten minutes of slogging through the muck I found the ladder that led back to the surface.

  “You first,” I said to Kyle.

  “Got it.”

  My friend clambered up the rusty ladder, pushed open the grate above, and disappeared. Sparrow went next. Once there was enough room, I went last.

  My heart was beating like a hummingbird. We had to figure out how to stop Le Carré. I trusted that Sparrow would know what to do once we’d all reconvened outside.

  Instead, what I saw once I climbed through the grate chilled me to the bone.

  Standing inside the shed was the massive, evil Ragnarok. In the crook of one massive arm he was holding both Kyle and Sparrow by their necks. They twitched in the grasp of his huge white gloves, the only thing keeping them from being burned alive by his molten skin. Kyle was petrified, his eyes bugging out of their sockets. Sparrow was struggling, but the huge monster’s arm was the size of her entire body.

  Ragnarok’s red, red eyes focused on me. He’d fixed his visor. Red streams of magma flowed through his custom tubing. For a moment, I marveled at the science of it all, the physiology. What a creature this…thing…was.

  And then Ragnarok spoke.

  “I have no use for this one,” the monster said, squeezing Kyle’s neck harder. My friend’s face was going blue.

  “He can’t breathe!” I screamed. “Let him go!”

  “I have no use for him,” Ragnarok said. “He will live. But you two parasites must die.”

  With that, Ragnarok threw Kyle to the ground. He didn’t move. Then the monster grabbed Sparrow by the neck. I ran at him and tried to rip at the magma tubing. I couldn’t even scratch it.

  “Let her go!” I yelled. “Take me! That’s what you all wanted, right? The codes? I have them!”

  The monster let loose a deep, bellowing laugh. His red face turned a shade of crimson. I could have sworn I saw a red tear drip down his cheek.

  “I know who you are, Zeke Bartholomew. I hope your friend thanks you for what you’ve gotten him into.”

  Ragnarok reached back, and his massive paw was suddenly around my neck. I struggled. He squeezed. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t draw air into my lungs. I was fading…and so was Sparrow.

  Spots appeared in front of my eyes. Then, just as I was about to lose consciousness, Ragnarok lifted us both off the ground and one at a time dropped us back into the dark, dank sewer.

  I landed on my back, pain shooting through my legs. Sparrow landed next to me. I heard a terrible thud. She screamed and held her arm. Her shoulder looked out of place, and she rolled on the ground, clutching it.

  I ignored the pain, gathered myself, and ran to the base of the ladder. I looked up.

  Ragnarok was holding Kyle again. My friend was still breathing. Something to be thankful for.

  But Ragnarok had removed the glove from his right hand. In that glowing appendage he held a small black orb. He squeezed it, opened his hand, and I saw that the orb was glowing a bright, shining red. Smoke cascaded from it.

  My eyes widened. He was holding a fire grenade.

  “Move!” I
yelled to Sparrow. Grabbing her around the waist, I threw us forward, just as the beast tossed the red, smoking grenade into the sewer.

  There was a huge explosion, and then everything went away.

  3:47 p.m.

  Four hours and thirteen minutes until everything goes kablooey and I’ll never get an iPad.

  I don’t know how long I was out for. It couldn’t have been too long, because when I came to I couldn’t breathe.

  My face was underwater. I lurched up, spat water out of my mouth, coughed, and snorted it out my nose. It was terribly dark, and I couldn’t make out much of anything except the acrid smell of smoke from the fire grenade. Ragnarok had been waiting for us.

  He’d needed to know where we were. He needed to know we weren’t coming after him.

  He had Kyle.

  I felt an awful pang in my gut when I realized that the sick, molten monster had taken my best friend. And my only hope was…

  Sparrow?

  “Sparrow!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  I couldn’t see her, couldn’t see anything, really, so I felt about in the dark. Feeling for something, anything, that would let me know where she was.

  “Sparrow!” I shouted again. “Where are you?”

  I tripped over a rock. A pile of them actually. I went down in a heap and bashed my elbow.

  I rolled over, holding it and rocking back and forth. I’d ruined everything. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have put my family and friends in danger. And now here I was, sitting alone in the bottom of a destroyed sewer system. My best friend was kidnapped, and the girl who’d saved my life had disappeared.

  Then I heard a noise.

  Eek.

  Eek.

  Kids in grade school used to call me that. It started one Halloween night. A kid named Steve Berg (Isabel Berg’s brother) had lost both of his front teeth. He tried to call me “Zeke,” but it came out “Eek.” That stuck for far, far too long.

  Eek.

  “I hear you, Sparrow! Where are you?”

  “Here,” came the voice.

  I followed the noise to where it seemed to be coming from.

  “Speak again!” I said. “I’ll follow your voice.”

  “I’m over here,” she said. There wasn’t much energy in her voice. I had to find Sparrow.

  I followed the voice for a minute before I came upon her. My heart sank.

  “Oh, no…Sparrow…”

  She was lying on the ground, cradling her arm. I remembered that sickening sound when she’d hit the floor. Noticing the angle she was holding it at, I could tell that her shoulder was definitely separated.

  But more worrisome was that her entire lower body was buried under rocks. Some big ones. I couldn’t even see her legs.

  “I tried to pick them up, get them off me,” she said lethargically, “but I couldn’t with this.” She gingerly moved her damaged wing.

  “Don’t move,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  I stepped forward and began to remove the rocks from Sparrow’s fallen body. Some of them were quite heavy, so I concentrated on the smaller ones first. I began to see clothes, skin. Her uniform was tattered and shredded. There was blood on her legs.

  “I’ll get you out of here,” I said. “I’m not leaving.”

  Once I’d taken the smaller rocks off of her, I started on the larger ones. I couldn’t move them on my own. There was a small crack of light that illuminated the hallway just enough for me to go scavenging. I found a sheared-off pipe and used it for leverage.

  I propped the pipe under the larger rocks, then pushed down, propelling the rocks off of Sparrow’s body. One at a time. I had to be careful. I didn’t want a rock to fall back on her.

  Once most of the rocks were gone, Sparrow was able to push a few of the smaller ones from her. Finally she was free. I knelt down and leaned in close.

  “Are you…okay?” I asked.

  Sparrow stood up. She wobbled for a moment, placing her good hand on my shoulder to steady herself.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should have known.”

  “Stop whining, you little baby,” Sparrow said. “Now, help me.”

  “Help you what?”

  “Get my shoulder back into place.”

  “Uh…how exactly do I do that?”

  “Just follow my instructions.”

  “Okay…”

  Sparrow cleaned off a space in the corridor, then lay herself flat on the dirty ground. She took several deep breaths, steadying herself. Then she clutched her elbow to her side and slowly began to raise her arm, almost like a bird’s wing. She gritted her teeth, small sounds escaping her lips.

  When her arm was at shoulder level, she said, “Now you come in.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Help me move my hand behind my head. Like I’m trying to scratch my neck.”

  I knelt down and gripped Sparrow’s hand and arm gently. My heart was beating fast. I slowly began to rotate her arm ninety degrees. When her hand got behind her head, she let out a small yelp. I nearly fell backward.

  “Come on, there’s no way this is more painful for you than for me.”

  “Yesterday I was forgetting to do my calc homework. Today I just got firebombed and I’m sitting in a pile of rubble playing orthopedist. Forgive me if I’m not a robot.”

  “Come on, C-3PO. Keep going.”

  I moved her arm until her hand was behind her head.

  “Okay, now what?”

  She replied, “Now pull my hand straight, in the direction of my other shoulder. Do it right, and it should pop the joint back into place.”

  “What if I do it wrong?”

  “Then you’ll probably shred every ligament in my shoulder.”

  “Great. No pressure.”

  Gently, I began to pull her hand. It was difficult, and her arm was already at an odd angle. Sparrow was sweating, biting her lip. It must have taken every ounce of effort not to scream.

  “Keep going,” she breathed.

  “It won’t go any farther,” I said.

  “Yes, it will. That’s the point. On the count of three, pull my hand as hard as you can.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “One,” she said.

  “Wait, let’s talk about this…”

  “Two,” she continued.

  “I’m not that strong.”

  “Three!”

  On “three” I yanked her hand. There was an awful popping sound, and Sparrow shrieked. She rolled onto her side as I lurched backward into a puddle.

  “I’m so sorry!” I said. “I didn’t know what I was doing! Are you okay?”

  Slowly Sparrow rolled over and got to her knees. She was still clutching her arm. Bracing herself on the wall, she stood up. Gently, she let go of her cradled arm. It hung limp at her side.

  Then she began to move it. Rotating, swiveling, raising. She was still clearly in pain, but…

  “The joint is back in place.”

  “Okay good, because I was this close to yakking,” I said.

  “The ligaments have been pulled and stretched, but it’s back.”

  “Good.”

  “Now we need to get the heck out of here, find Ragnarok and Le Carré, and stop SirEebro before it brainwashes every kid on the planet.”

  “So you’re okay?” I asked, amazed that someone who’d just been buried under hundreds of pounds of rubble could still be such a pain in the butt.

  “I’m fine,” she said. I pointed at her arm. “Not bad. Won’t need surgery. Long as I can take the pain, it won’t hold me back. And, yes, before you ask, I can take the pain.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” I said. “Okay, yes, I was.”
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  “Is there any way we could get back up through the entrance?”

  “No way,” I said. “Ragnarok blew the ladder to smithereens. No way we can climb back up.”

  “What about the other doors down here? Any chance we could get through them?”

  “Far as I know, they’re all locked. The only one that isn’t is…the GeekDen. Come on!”

  The GeekDen might have been far enough away from the blast that it might still be standing. I cautiously stepped through the destroyed brick and rubble, finding my way through the sewers to our hideout. The whole tunnel looked like a bomb had hit it. Ragnarok wasn’t kidding with those fire grenades. It was a miracle we were still alive.

  “It’s up there,” I said. “It’s right over…here. Oh, no.”

  The door to the GeekDen had been blown in. It was in three pieces. And inside, all of my gadgets, all of my hard work, it looked like someone had, well, thrown a fire grenade inside.

  “My stuff,” I said. I went around the bombed-out room, surveying the damage. There was not a single item that hadn’t been affected in the blast. My vegetable grinder-upper. Vaporized. I’d invented it as a kid when I didn’t want to shovel broccoli into my mouth. You simply inserted a vegetable into it, and it ground the produce into a powder so fine that it could be sprinkled on the rug undetected, for either a vacuum cleaner or family pet to Hoover up.

  My automatic textbook reader. For the days when my eyes were just too tired to read thousand-page textbooks. I invented the device to place on a given page, and a robotic voice would read the chapter to you. Saved me from getting Coke-bottle glasses by the age of eight.

  And my proudest invention, the HoloZeke. Using light refractions, mirrors, and video footage, once installed in my room it gave off the illusion that I was sitting at my desk, studying, when in fact I was elsewhere, likely in the GeekDen, inventing more amazing gadgets. I always left my bedroom door open a crack so that my dad could peek in, see the HoloZeke, and think I was studying. But in reality I was in another world.

  My world. And now that world was destroyed.

  “Everything I worked so hard on,” I said, surveying the destruction. I felt like someone had ripped out my heart, spat on it, and laughed at it. I turned to Sparrow. The look on her face was pure apathy.