He looked at me, then Gervaso, then back at me. “I don’t understand.”
Jack said, “If it wasn’t for you, they wouldn’t be getting ready to execute Tara, Torstyn, and Quentin.”
Welch looked as if Jack had just slugged him in the stomach. “What?”
Gervaso said, “Hatch found out that the three of them helped you escape, and he has them locked up. He originally put Quentin in Cell 25. After that Quentin was locked in the monkey cage in the city square, where he’ll stay for the rest of his life. Tara and Torstyn are scheduled for the rat bowl.”
Welch’s head dropped into his hands. When he looked up, his eyes were fierce. “I didn’t know. I had no way of knowing.”
“You do now,” Zeus said. “Still want to run away?”
I glared at Zeus. “Not helpful, man.”
Welch took a deep breath, then said, “What do you need from me?”
“We need your help rescuing them,” I said. I purposely didn’t tell him about the Joule.
“Then I’m with you.”
Gervaso glanced at Taylor for confirmation. Taylor nodded in the affirmative. “We’ll fly out early tomorrow morning,” Gervaso said. “We leave here at oh-five-hundred hours. We’ll fly to Sydney, then Fiji.”
“You have a plane, then?”
“We have a jet.”
Welch nodded. “Good.”
“From Fiji we’ve arranged to stow away on one of the supply boats. We’ll free Quentin first, then the others.”
“Be aware that the Elgen have spies all around Fiji. Are you sure you can trust everyone on the boat?”
“We can trust the captain,” Gervaso said. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“All right. I’ll help however I can.”
Gervaso glanced at Taylor, and she nodded again. I was glad that Welch was telling the truth. It would be good to have someone on our side who knew everything about our enemy. It was still hard to believe that a month ago he was the enemy.
“All right, then,” Gervaso said. “We leave first thing in the morning. Try to get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”
Again, I didn’t sleep well. I had dreams. Nightmares. To make it worse Ostin was snoring like a chain saw. At two in the morning I got up and walked out into the hall. To my surprise Taylor was standing there in the dark.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“I heard you say you were coming out.”
“I didn’t say I was coming out.”
“You thought it. Loudly.”
“You could hear me?”
She nodded. “I think it has to do with how electric you’ve become. Do you want to go for a walk?”
I shook my head. “Not really. I’m exhausted. It’s bizarre. I can’t sleep but I’m exhausted.”
“I know what you mean. Do you want to hang out for a while?”
“Yes.”
We sat down on the floor outside my door, and I lay my head back on her shoulder.
“You’re afraid,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Me too.” She ran her hand over my cheek. “Do you think we’ll ever come back?”
I didn’t answer. At least not vocally.
After a moment she said softly, sadly, “Yeah. Me too.” She took a deep breath. “You know, part of me doesn’t care anymore.”
I looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“When my father was shot and I thought he might die, I was freaked out, but I realized that part of me was happy for him. All I could think of was how lucky he was that he didn’t have to worry anymore about the Elgen or Hatch . . . or the end of the free world.”
I closed my eyes.
After a minute she said, “Me too.”
“You too what?” I asked.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
I sighed. “Sometimes I think you’re the only reason I want to keep living.”
“Maybe love is really the only reason we have to live.”
“That’s profound,” I said.
“Maybe,” Taylor said.
The two of us fell asleep in the hall.
* * *
I woke to some Chinese guy dragging his luggage over my foot as he walked by us. He didn’t bother to say “excuse me” or whatever they say in Chinese; he just ran his bag over me like I was carpet lice. I made a lightning ball, then caught myself and threw it against the wall in front of me instead of at him.
I could see from the glowing curtained window at the far end of the corridor that the sun was beginning to rise. We would be leaving soon.
Taylor was lying on her side next to me. I leaned over and kissed her, then whispered into her ear, “We need to get ready.”
She lightly groaned. Then her eyes fluttered open. “Is it time to go?”
“Soon,” I said.
“Just hold me a little longer.”
I lay back down and pulled her head onto my chest, and she quickly fell back asleep. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Actually, I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel every second of her next to me. What I had said in the night was true. If something happened to her, I didn’t know if I would be able to go on.
As I looked at her sleeping, I said softly, “I love you.” I gently slid my hand up her neck under her hair. “I would die for you.”
Taylor sighed a little. Then she said in a half-asleep voice, “What?”
I pulled her in close. “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
“Hey, Michael,” Ostin said. He was in his underwear, looking at me from out our door. “You awake?”
“I am now,” I said, taking a second to remember where I was.
“I thought you had left me. We just got a call from Gervaso. We’ve got forty minutes to eat and go.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Ostin nodded and disappeared back into our room.
I kissed Taylor on the forehead. “It’s time to wake up.”
“Do we have to?”
“This time we do.”
She groaned, then slowly pushed herself up. I sat up, stood, and then helped her up.
“What time is it?” Taylor asked.
“I don’t know. Ostin says we’ve got forty minutes. Or we did a couple of minutes ago.”
“Okay.” She leaned in and we kissed; then she stepped back. She looked like she might fall over. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”
She walked to her room and knocked on the door. McKenna opened it. “Good morning,” she said. “I was about to come looking for you.” She waved to me. “Hi, Michael.”
“Morning.”
I turned and pushed open my door and went inside to shower.
* * *
Almost a half hour later Taylor and I walked into the dining room. Gervaso was sitting at a table near the door with Jack, Abi, and Cassy. He waved us over.
“Hey, Tay,” Jack said. “Mike.”
“Hey,” Taylor said.
Cassy was smiling at me. “Good morning, Michael. Do you go by Michael or Mike?”
“Michael. I’m only Mike to Jack.”
“My man,” Jack said, sounding like Denzel Washington. “I got privileges.”
“Michael it is,” Cassy said. “I think it’s cuter, anyway.” She laughed sweetly.
Taylor shot me a look.
“I’d like to talk with you sometime. I have a lot of questions,” Cassy said.
“I’m sure there’ll be a lot of time to talk on the flight,” I said.
“Almost nine hours,” Gervaso said.
Jack groaned. “It’s really that far?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well, we’ll definitely have time to talk,” I said.
“Speaking of time,” Gervaso said, “we need to leave in eight minutes, so eat fast.”
“Sorry,” Taylor said, glancing at Cassy. “We slept in. Together.”
Cassy bit her lower lip but said nothing. The tension between them was palpable.
“We’ll
just grab a sweet roll or something,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“There will be food on the plane too,” Gervaso said.
“Great,” I said. “Has Ostin come up yet?”
“He’s back in the corner with McKenna,” Jack said, pointing.
“Thanks. Come on, Taylor.”
We walked over and grabbed plates.
“Didn’t I tell you she liked you?” Taylor said.
“She’s just being friendly,” I said.
“Very.” She turned and walked away.
I grabbed a cherry Danish, a hard-boiled egg, some toast, and a glass of orange juice, and carried it over to where Taylor had gone, next to Ostin and McKenna. Taylor looked embarrassed.
“Ostin said he found you guys sleeping in the hall,” McKenna said.
“It was quieter than sleeping next to Ostin,” I replied.
“I talk in my sleep?” Ostin said.
“No, you snore. Like a chain saw.”
He turned to McKenna. “I don’t snore.”
“Uh, yeah, you do,” I said.
“Why are you making these cruel accusations?”
“Because I had to sleep in the hall,” I said. “And I got run over by some Chinese dude in a psychedelic green jacket. You definitely snore. If you don’t believe me, we can prove it scientifically.”
“How would you do that?”
“Easy. We could record you.”
“What, with a phone recorder?”
“No, I was thinking more of a Richter scale.”
McKenna and Taylor both laughed.
“It’s okay,” McKenna said. “Real men snore.”
Ostin smiled. Then he said to me, “Hey, you should try your Danish baked with butter. The way your mother used to make them.”
“I would if I had an oven.”
McKenna’s eyebrows rose. “Excuse me, but what am I?”
“Sorry, but I don’t usually think of you as an oven.”
“Give it to me.”
I put a pat of butter on top of my pastry and then pushed the plate to McKenna. She put her hand on it. Within seconds the butter was bubbling and the Danish was slightly toasted. She stopped and pushed the plate back to me. “There you go. Be careful, it’s hot.”
“Thank you.”
I had only taken a few bites of my Danish when Jack walked up to our table. “Gervaso says it’s time to head down.”
I downed my orange juice in one gulp, then grabbed a napkin and my sweet roll, and we all walked out to the elevator. Taylor and I stopped on our floor and grabbed our bags, then went down to the lobby. Ian and Gervaso were standing near the hotel’s front doors.
“That’s everyone but Welch,” Gervaso said.
“He’s waiting for us outside,” Ian said. “He’s reading a newspaper.”
“All right, let’s go.”
After we were in our vans, Welch casually put down his newspaper and walked over to our vehicle and got in. I didn’t think that he was being overly cautious. If I had Hatch and his whole army after me, I’d be careful too.
The drive from the hotel to the airport took about a half hour. We set what little luggage we had near the back of the plane, then boarded.
Scott closed the cockpit door, and within fifteen minutes we were in the air. I think that’s the best part of a private jet. There’s not a lot of sitting around. And you don’t have to bring your seat up for takeoff.
Once the plane had settled on a cruising altitude, Gervaso stood up in the aisle at the front of the plane. He steadied himself by holding on to the seats on each side.
“Listen up, all. The flight to Sydney is almost nine hours, so you’ve got some time to relax. You all look pretty tired, so I suggest that you rest now and we’ll talk a few hours before we land. There are some important things we need to go over.”
“Sounds good to me,” Taylor said softly. “At least the resting part.”
We reclined our seats, and she laid her head against me to sleep. We were headed to the monster’s lair.
We ended up taking the long way to Sydney, Australia. Usually pilots look for the shortest route between two dots, but in this case that would have basically taken us through a hurricane.
An hour into the flight our pilots informed us that there was a category-five tropical cyclone (which Ostin explained meant there were winds of above one hundred thirty miles per hour) in the area of the Marshall Islands, which were about a thousand miles from Tuvalu and close enough to Sydney that all air traffic had been delayed or rerouted.
We ended up flying from Taipei to Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste—a country I’d never even heard of. Ostin, of course, had not only heard of the country but knew more about it than any normal non-Timorese wanted to know.
He informed us that Timor had been a Portuguese colony since 1520 except when, during World War II, the nation was invaded and conquered by the Japanese, but Timor was returned to Portugal after the war. Thirty years later it declared its independence from Portugal. Nine days after that it was attacked and conquered by Indonesia, which made it part of their country. Kind of like Tuvalu, which was open to attack from the Elgen after they declared their independence from England. Maybe sometimes it’s better to just live with the devil you know.
We didn’t do anything in Dili. We didn’t even get off the plane. It was raining hard, and we waited on the runway while the ground crews refueled our jet, and then we took off again.
From Dili we flew south over Darwin, Australia, then overland to the Australian east coast and Sydney. Once we were over Australia, Ostin began vomiting facts about the country.
“Did you know that Australia was England’s penal colony? It’s basically where they dumped all the people they didn’t want. That’s why modern Australians call people from England ‘POME.’”
“What’s a ‘POME’?” Jack asked.
“It’s something that rhymes,” Tessa said.
“Not ‘po-em,’” Ostin said. “POME. It stands for ‘Prisoner of Mother England.’” Ostin continued without taking a breath. “There are more than one million wild camels in the Australian outback. And even Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.”
“That’s not true,” Tanner said.
“Completely true,” Ostin replied. “Before humans arrived, there were nine-foot-tall kangaroos.”
“Now he’s just making things up,” Tessa said.
“Australians have three times more sheep than people. And wombat poop is the shape of a cube.”
“What’s a wombat?” Abigail asked.
“Something that poops cubes,” Jack said.
“A wombat is a plant-eating marsupial that looks like a badger with shorter legs.”
“Is it dangerous?” Tessa asked.
“Does it sound dangerous?” Zeus said.
“No.”
Ostin nodded. “They have been known to charge humans and bowl them over.”
“Oh, that sounds scary,” Tessa said, rolling her eyes. “Getting run over by a short-legged, cube-pooping badger.”
“Yeah? Well, there are plenty of things in Australia to be really scared of,” Ostin said defensively. “Australia is famous for having a lot of things that can kill you. It has more species of venomous snakes than any other country, including one of the most venomous of all land snakes, the inland taipan. One bite has enough venom to kill a hundred people.”
“How do they know it can kill one hundred people?” Tessa asked.
Tanner joined in. “Is that, like, exactly one hundred? Because maybe it’s really like ninety-seven people. Or what if it’s a hundred huge people versus one hundred little people? The whole ‘exactly one hundred people’ thing sounds suspicious.”
“Didn’t we already have a snake conversation in Peru?” Taylor asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “But this is a new country.”
“Is the taipan as dangerous as the black mamba?” Nichelle asked.
“Yes.”
&n
bsp; “But it’s not as cool.”
Ostin’s brow furrowed. “Why do you say that?”
“Who doesn’t like to say ‘black . . . mammmmbaaaa’?”
Everyone laughed except for Ostin, who was trying to analyze her point. He eventually gave up and continued. “Just so you know, the black mamba isn’t necessarily black. The inside of its mouth is.”
“Good, that way I’ll know it’s dangerous after it bites me,” Tanner said.
“What is the most poisonous snake in the world?” Tessa asked.
“Snakes aren’t poisonous; they’re venomous. Poison is something you eat.”
“I wouldn’t eat it,” Tessa said.
“If you eat poison, you die,” Jack said.
“I know,” Ostin said.
Jack pressed his point. “But you just said poison is something you eat.”
“It is.”
“But no one would eat it,” Tessa said. “That’s the point.”
“Poison is something you eat,” Ostin said. “Venom is something you inject.”
“Again,” Tessa said. “I wouldn’t inject it.”
“You’re talking in circles,” Zeus said.
“What is the most venomous snake in the world?” Jack asked.
“The Belcher’s sea snake is number one. But it’s not the most dangerous snake in the world.”
“What does that mean?”
“Only about twenty-five percent of Belchers carry venom, and those that do don’t really like to bite. But if it does, and it’s venomous, you’re toast. One bite can kill a thousand people.”
“That doesn’t make it more dangerous,” Zeus said. “What does it matter if it can kill a thousand people or one? Either way you’re dead.”
“He’s got a point,” Nichelle said.
“I never said it was more dangerous. You asked which snake was most venomous.”
“He’s got a point too,” Nichelle said.
“The point is,” Zeus continued, “it doesn’t matter if the entire universe implodes on itself or you swallow a grenade, either way you’re dead.”
“Who would swallow a grenade?” Tessa asked.
“A grenade would never fit down your throat,” Nichelle said.
Tessa nodded. “It wouldn’t even fit into your mouth.”
“That’s not the point,” Zeus said.