Chapter 4
My two younger brothers, Jerome and Nick, were driving up from Ohio State for Angie's graduation and, with their usual impeccable timing, arrived just before dinner. Angie picked at her food all throughout the meal; I could tell she was nervous about the healing coma. Toby ate more, but not as much as one would think, considering how big he was. He and I could be called out to fight a monster at any time, after all, and that's no fun if you've just pigged out on great home-cooked Chinese food.
As for me, well . . . if you asked me what it was we had, I'm sure I couldn't tell you. I couldn't get my mind off the shadowy figure I had seen in the woods. It couldn't really have been Lily, could it? I mean, I had pulled her lifeless body out of the surf myself, pushed some water out of her lungs, even tried giving her mouth-to-mouth, and she hadn't so much as flickered an eyelid. But if it wasn't Lily, who could it have been?
After dinner, Nick and Jerome were given cleanup duty, since they hadn't helped to cook. My mom took the baby upstairs to feed him a bottle and give him his bath. Everyone else gathered around the table once it had been cleared off, and my dad got out a deck of cards. He had been happy to discover during the meal that I had taught Toby to play horse, since he was an avid player himself. The two of them decided to partner up in a game against Joy and Angela.
"Going somewhere, Younger Brother?" Joy asked as I made my way to the back door.
"Just out for a walk."
"Older Brother thought he saw something out back earlier today," Angie explained. She tapped the deck to indicate that she didn't want to cut, and my dad began to deal. "Are you going to check it out?"
"I thought I might, yeah."
"Well, don't stay out too long," my father warned. "I'm sure you've had a long day."
"I won't."
I stepped out into the cool evening air. It was just starting to get dark out, but there was still plenty of light to see by. Plenty of light to let me investigate. "Wizzit," I said once I was out of earshot of the house, "what do you think about what I saw out here earlier?"
"Checking . . . ."
When I have my Prime belt on, Wizzit keeps track of pretty much everything I see, hear, and do. It doesn't really bother me, since he doesn't care about the vast majority of it, and I'm sure that some of the human interactions are like a foreign language to him anyway. And heck, if I ever do want some privacy, I'll just take off the belt. In this case, though, I really wanted his opinion on the figure I had spotted.
"Hmm. Definitely a human female," he said after a bit. "Behavior and movement patterns do not conclusively match any living person with whom I am acquainted. Do you have any idea who it might be?"
"Just a hunch."
"Hunches are good. What is your hunch?"
"I'd, uh, rather not say. I don't want to jinx it."
"All righty, then. I'll just scan the area for alien life forms, shall I?"
I snorted. I'm sure Wizzit thought he was being funny. He knew perfectly well that my idea of an alien life form did not match his. What he meant was that he was going to check whether there were any people nearby. "This might interest you," he said after a moment. "I have found a single human being near where you were earlier today. Definitely a female, no Enclave enhancements, but not anyone with whom I am acquainted."
"You mean, not any living person with whom you are acquainted?"
"Well, duh! What, do you want me to try to match her against a dead person? Has the zombie apocalypse finally come to pass?"
"You never know," I said, grinning to myself. "Where is she, Wizzit?"
"Keep moving straight ahead. You'll find her."
I went forward a couple dozen more yards before I finally caught sight of her. She was crouched under a tree, half-hidden in shade. I stopped short, my breath catching in my throat. It was unquestionably Lily. There was no mistaking that lustrous black hair, the lithe perfection of her figure, the icy, impassive beauty of her face.
"Hot diggity dog! Lily's back!" Wizzit exclaimed quite unnecessarily through the speakers in my belt. I guess his visual recognition software must have been set to check for the dead as well as the living. Or maybe he was just going by his own memory. "And . . . yes, it's really her. Reclassifying her as a living person results in a positive match from my sensors."
I felt as though I couldn't take my eyes from her, that if I looked away, or even blinked, then she would vanish. "I, uh, didn't think you'd be all that happy to see her," I finally managed to say. "She's an enemy, you know."
"Sure, but she's an interesting enemy. The ones you guys have been fighting lately have been boring." I couldn't argue with that.
Lily had spotted me by now, and she smoothly rose to her feet. "Lily, wait!" I called out, afraid that she might try to run away.
She didn't, though. She seemed to want me to see her, in fact. Stepping out into the full sunlight, she stood watching me for half a minute, and then she turned and began walking slowly into the woods. And then, after just a few steps, damned if she didn't glance over her shoulder at me in one of the most inviting "follow me" looks I had ever seen.
I felt my my heart begin to race. "Think it's safe to go after her? She obviously wants me to."
"Of course it isn't," Wizzit said. "But don't let that stop you."
Lily walked at a moderate pace through the trees, stopping occasionally and looking back as if to make certain that I was still behind her. I followed, sticking close enough to keep her in sight, but not close enough to be led into any kind of ambush. And then, as she stepped between a pair of trees just a couple of feet apart, she vanished.
"Stop!" Wizzit ordered. "Don't move. Don't go even one inch farther."
"Well, duh!" I said, freezing in mid-stride. "I'm not a Prime Violet any more, you know. I do recognize a teleport trap when I see one. Let me know when you've figured out where it is."
"Scanning . . . okay, it's right where you would expect, right by that pair of trees. Circle around and approach them from the other side so that I can see where it's set up to send you."
I stepped around cautiously, ready to freeze instantly if Wizzit detected another trap. Eventually I found myself staring at two tall, slender, slightly-glowing poles set up just behind the trees Lily had stepped through. Anything that went in between the poles would immediately be teleported to a preset location; that was the purpose of a teleport trap. Another step or two, and I could go wherever it was that Lily went.
I pointed myself at the console, trying to give Wizzit a good view of the coordinates displayed there. "So, where did she go?" I asked him.
"Hmm. Nowhere special. Just a spot a mile or so beneath the surface of Antarctica."
"Could you send me there?"
"I could, but then I most likely couldn't bring you back again."
"Really?" I asked. "Why not?
"Because I don't detect anything like an Enclave base there, which means that it's probably shielded from my scanning. And if it's shielded, then I would not be able to locate you to pull you out."
"Oh. So what do we do?"
"I wait and watch. You turn around and ask Lily what she wants."
Puzzled, I looked behind me. Lily was standing not two feet away, staring at me. I yelped in surprise, nearly jumping backwards into the teleport trap. She watched me impassively, completely unmoved by my outburst.
She must have teleported back here without my noticing, I realized. I moved closer and stood staring at her for probably a full minute, trying to sort out my feelings.
I thought I had mostly gotten over her death. Seeing her now, though, apparently alive and well, I felt almost overwhelmed by a surge of emotions that I thought I had buried. Sure, she was technically an enemy of ours, but underneath all the Enclave programming and mind control, there was a sweet, innocent kid that I had once met and really liked. And now it appeared th
at I was going to get another chance to set her free.
"What are you doing here, Lily?" I asked once I could trust myself to speak. She didn't say anything; she simply cocked her head to one side and stared at me, guileless as a child. "What is it you want? I know you want something."
It was as if she had been waiting for me to say that. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, she reached out and took hold of my hand. Her touch felt warm and alive; she was definitely not some reanimated corpse. She looked over at the teleport trap, then back at me.
Her meaning was clear. "You want me to go with you?"
In reply, she began tugging me forward, towards the space between the two trees. I went along with her for a step or two, but just as she was about to step through the trap (and take me with her), caution made me pull my hand free.
She looked straight at me as the trap teleported her away again. Her face was completely devoid of expression, as it often was, but it seemed to me that there was a hint of reproach in her dark eyes.
She reappeared in a flash of light not two minutes later. This time, she simply stepped forward and clasped her hands behind her back, presenting herself to me. A sheet of paper had been pinned to the breast of her black jumpsuit.
I tore off the sheet. It read: "If you are Trevor Chiao, please come with me. You will not be harmed. If you know where Trevor Chiao is, please bring him here and show him this note. If you cannot find Trevor Chiao, tear this sheet in half and give it to me."
I read through it twice to make sure I understood it. "Well, Wizzit," I said, "what do you think? Should I go or not?"
"It could be quite dangerous," he replied. "You would be teleporting straight into an Enclave base without backup or weapons and with no way to get home."
"I think I'll be safe enough. This is from JB Swift. It has to be; he's the only one at Enclave who knows I'm Prime Blue. I don't think he'd go to all this trouble just to lure me into a trap."
"Unless he decided to betray you to his masters."
"He promised he wouldn't do that."
"Sure, as long as you promised not to kill Lily, and it could be argued that you did just that."
"She's not dead, though." I frowned down at the paper in my hand. "I'm going with her."
"Of course you are." Wizzit managed to convey the impression that he knew all along that I was going to go. "Any last words?"
"Ha ha. Just let Mike know where I've gone." I took Lily's hand in mine, and together we stepped through the teleport trap.