CHAPTER
35
At last Conrad got a proper glimpse at the inner workings of the bloodstone, thanks to Max. Max rummaged through the deepest reaches of the Knowledge Center and pulled an eyeball the size of a loaf of bread from a back shelf and dusted it off. Max explained to Conrad how he’d salvaged the eye from the carcass of a giant a few thousand years ago, and showed him how to strap it over his own eye and peek through it. When Conrad did so the eye granted unearthly vision and the secrets of the bloodstone appeared before him.
Conrad wasn’t surprised to confirm that the bloodstone was mainly comprised of beryllium and lanthanum. But an unidentifiable mystery component mixed in held the stone together and gave it the deep red color. For lack of a better word Conrad described the component as “intelligent.”
“It’s reactive!” Conrad explained to Max.
“I don’t get it.” Max lounged on a Ming dynasty chair and was amusing himself by throwing nasty-nuts into an old vase he’d placed on a table several feet away.
“Whatever is in the bloodstone, it’s adapting, changing right before my eyes.” Conrad quickly pulled together a few nearby materials and created a small explosion on the table.
This caught Max’s attention. “Whoa.”
“Watch!” Conrad pointed at the rock as it began to glow and suck the explosion toward it. “It’s absorbing the energy. It’s acting like a giant magnet, pulling the energy into its core and then holding it there like a battery.”
Max repeated Conrad’s experiment and created a similar result. “Awesome. Now what?”
Conrad bent over the rock, studying it further. “It’s adapting. Which means it’s trainable and … it’s learning.” Conrad remembered the rock around his father’s neck. “I’m willing to bet that you can program these to live off someone’s life force like a parasite.”
“How’d you do that?” Max was poking at the rock now with one of the instruments.
“I don’t know the how yet.” Conrad stood up and began to pace.
Max got up and paced too, like he was trying on a role for size. “I dunno what’s happening, but something is happening and it’s totally wild. So what are you going to do now?”
“I need to create a model that will allow me to extrapolate and predict future events.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t have a statistically relevant pool of data.” Conrad was talking more to himself than to Max. “I need to create search criteria that will isolate similar global events that match the pattern I have already identified. I’ll have to work my way through history—not all of history, just the last thousand years.…”
With great fervor Conrad began moving through the room, collecting information and bits of equipment. Obviously, his Direct Brain Interface was in perfect working order, but without access to the internet in Xanthia he was bereft of large online data pools. This was no longer a problem with the resources of the Knowledge Center at his fingertips.
The thoughtful and stationary aspect of this work suddenly discouraged Max. “Oookay.” He sat back down. “That sounds time-consuming.” His foot tapped back and forth impatiently. “Dude, I’m hungry. You hungry?”
“Mmm.” Conrad was giving Max only a small portion of his available attention.
“Well, I’m gonna get some grub. You want some too?”
“Mmmm.”
Max headed for the door.
“Oh, Max?” Conrad had suddenly snapped back to the moment at hand. “Can you find Piper? She’ll want to be part of this and she doesn’t know where I am.”
“Piper?” Max looked confused. “You mean the flyer?”
“That’s the one.”
Max pointed at Conrad and made a clicking noise. “You got it, big guy. Back in a flash.”
Conrad hardly noticed when Max returned.
“Piper wants to hang with AnnA. Apparently AnnA’s going to show her the singing caves,” Max reported. “She says she’ll catch you later.”
Conrad nodded and continued with his work.
After Max had eaten his food and then eaten Conrad’s food he began to rappel from the ceiling of the Knowledge Center. When that got boring he jumped from bookshelf to bookshelf without touching the floor. That got old too so he dressed up in a suit of armor from a fifteenth-century English castle and began attacking imaginary foes.
* * *
A day later Max had exhausted all possible variations of jumping, climbing, fighting, and juggling the many artifacts in the room. He lounged on a guillotine and made popping sounds with his mouth.
“Clu, clu, clu.” Max varied the volume, playing with the echo in the room.
Conrad was no longer aware of the passage of time. His days and nights were marked by only one thing: quantifying damage and assigning a numeric amount to each encounter. Every war, every disaster created surges in energy and those surges created patterns that were not accidental. There was a purpose to it all. There was a plan.…
He was learning that whoever was behind these events would be striking again soon—and in a big way. The pattern suggested that every few years there was one disaster or another. According to Conrad’s estimation the next one was due to be a big one, and it was imminent. He was getting closer to it—so close, until …
“Done!” Conrad completed what he was writing with a flourish and held up a piece of paper with six numbers on it.
Max jerked himself upright. Conrad hadn’t spoken in so long that he hung on his every word. “What’s that?”
“Those are the coordinates of the next disaster site,” Conrad said with certainty.
Once again Max was disappointed: Where and when exactly was the promised fun going to materialize? “I don’t get it.”
“Okay, listen—it’s simple. To predict the future you must understand the past and break down the pattern. Once you know the pattern you can predict the future. Get it? So I used the disaster sites I personally visited and found bloodstones at as markers to identify other similar events throughout history. From these I was able to create an algorithm based on location, frequency, and level of destruction. These numbers”—Conrad handed the piece of paper to Max—“are ninety-nine percent accurate.”
Max looked at the numbers on the page like they were dirty. “I can’t read this crap. And ninety-nine percent accurate of what?”
“These numbers are the coordinates of the location where the next major disaster will occur. And according to my calculations it’s going to happen in approximately twenty-four hours, give or take thirty minutes.” Conrad’s energy was electric. “They call them accidents but they’re not. Someone is making them happen and that someone is the same person who created the bloodstones and kidnapped my father. And this time I’ll be there and I’ll stop them once for all. And if I find whoever is behind it, I will find my father.”
Finally some action and excitement: Max was all in. “And I’ll come too, right? ’Cause we’re partners?”
“Where’s Piper?” Conrad suddenly remembered that he hadn’t seen her since the Celebration.
“I just talked to her again, like you told me.” Max shrugged. “She said she wants to go to the Celebration Center with AnnA and show the little ones how she can fly. She’s been flying around a lot.”
Conrad sighed. “I guess Piper deserves to finally stop hiding and fit in.”
“Whatever you need, I’m your guy,” Max offered. “And I know how to get in and out of Xanthia like no one’s business, and lemme tell you, that ain’t no small thing. So where are we going?”
“Here, give it to me.” Conrad took the paper back from Max and marched over to the globe. “They’re latitude and longitude.” He spun the globe, getting quickly to the point.
“Is it Mongolia? It’s so festive this time of year!” Max watched hopefully, as if he were waiting for a game show prize.
“No, it’s right … here.” Conrad’s finger came down in the middle of North America. Max crowded in close to
catch a glimpse.
“Oh, dude, that’s like—what is that? A river?”
“Yes, it is.” Conrad picked up on the disappointment in Max’s voice. “It’s the Colorado River, to be exact.”
Max slouched away. “I’ve seen that a million times. Yawn.”
“Well, the Colorado River is … it’s largely unpopulated. There’s a lot of wildlife.” Conrad was thinking out loud. “It’s also the largest source of drinking water in the region.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth everything clicked into place. “That’s it!”
Max looked up with the clear expectation that something exciting was about to happen. But all Conrad did was pick up the water purifier.
“Don’t you see?! They are going to attack the water source.” Galvanized into action, Conrad was quickly grasping the mechanics of the instrument. “And here’s the thing—we can stop it!”
For someone who hadn’t aged for the last several thousand years, Max looked tired. “Dude, this is taking way too long and nothing is happening.” Max flung himself on the floor of the Knowledge Center in a bored-attack pose that was accompanied by a pout. “Dude, I’m BORED. Like losing my mind, going crazy, ready to jump off a cliff for the heck of it, B-O-R-E-D. Listen, I’m gonna catch the next wave outta here.”
“No, you can’t.” Conrad turned quickly, holding parts of the water purifier in his hand. “Let me get this working and then we’ll go down to the Colorado River together. I can have it going by the morning, and think—if we get there and catch whoever it is that is doing this, we’ll solve the mystery! It’ll be fun!”
Max was swayed but was definitely at the end of his tether. He shrugged in a noncommittal way. “For sure?”
“Promise.”
* * *
True to his word, Conrad placed a working water purifer in Max’s hands at first light.
Max swished the wand about excitedly. It was a rather ordinary stick that forked at the end. The extraordinary thing about it was that it glowed bright blue from within, humming with incredible power.
“Dude, you rock! I never thought you’d fix it. How’d you do it?”
“It wasn’t actually broken.” Conrad had dark smudges of tiredness beneath his eyes. “It just needed a power source, and it would only accept a connection with a biological agent. After that it was simply a matter of targeting an organic source to provide power.”
“I totally didn’t understand a word you just said. Were you even speaking human?”
“Look.” Conrad turned his head to the side and pushed his hair out of the way, displaying the pronged metal device the size of a quarter that was stamped into his flesh behind his ear. Small lights on it flickered and jumped about.
“What the heck!” Max was enthralled.
“It’s my Direct Brain Interface. I connected the water purifer to my DBI and created a subprogram that captured my brain energy and routed it to the water purifier. Basically, as long as I am thinking, the purifier will have power.”
“Gnarly.” Max fingered the device, pulling on it.
“Hey, watch it!” Conrad stepped away. “It’s hardwired in.”
“You mean you can’t take it off? Not ever?”
“Not unless I want to blow my brain apart.”
“Whoa!” Max headed for the door. “Alright, let’s scram!”
Conrad collected his notes. “I’ll meet you down there.”
“I’m leaving in five.”
“I’ll be down in two.”
CHAPTER
36
Piper was too angry to fly straight. She bobbed up and down, suddenly slowing and then zipping ahead hotly. She was breathing in outraged gasps and her fingers twitched with angry flicks. Up ahead she spotted Conrad and her anger detonated at the sight of him.
“Conrad!” Piper called out loudly so anyone on the mountain could easily have heard her. Still Conrad didn’t turn around. “CONRAD!”
The fact that Conrad was obviously ignoring her only increased Piper’s fury. He’d been hiding from her for over a week now. This time she would not be denied. This time she would have his full attention.
Flying up behind him, Piper landed with a thud and grabbed his shoulder, swinging him around.
“Conrad, I was calling you!”
Piper gasped and stepped back—standing before her was not Conrad but someone entirely different, someone she had never met before. From behind she could have sworn he was Conrad’s exact twin, but now that she was looking at him face-to-face the differences were obvious.
“Oh! Sorry—”
“Good thing I don’t bruise—you’ve got a grip on you.” Max twitched any discomfort out of his shoulder and then put his hand out in greeting. “I’m Max.”
“Max? Oh. I’m Piper.”
“Oh yeah. You’re the flyer, right?”
Piper took a step away, suddenly unsure.
“Can you take me for a spin? You know, like in the air.”
Max’s exuberance and overly friendly manner took Piper off guard. “I have to go,” she said, hovering upward. “I need to find Conrad.”
“He’s where he always is.”
Piper was affronted. “And where exactly is that?” How did this Max know where Conrad had been all this time when she didn’t?
“The Knowledge Center. It’s down there.” Max pointed to the last chamber at the far end of the balcony.
“Uh, okay. Thanks.” Piper headed for the place he pointed out.
“Catch you later, fly girl,” Max called out after her.
Piper flew into the Knowledge Center, ignoring all the wonders inside and focusing her attention on Conrad, who was bending over a table. She barreled up behind him and slammed her hand on the table, causing him to jerk upright.
“What the—”
“You need to listen to me, Conrad.” Piper pointed her finger at him to further emphasize her point. “Do you have any idea what is going on here?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was just with AnnA, and do you know what she’s doing?”
Conrad had no idea. How could he? He shook his head.
“She’s giving away all of her stuff. Do you know why?” This time Piper didn’t wait for the answer. “Because it’s her twelfth birthday next week and she should be having her Celebration ceremony but she’s not. She’s not having it because she doesn’t have a gift. And if you don’t have a gift and you live in Xanthia, do you know what that means?” Bits of spittle escaped Piper’s mouth as she spoke. “It means that they kick you out. The elders, everyone, is going to force AnnA to leave. And not only that, but they’ll erase her memory and dump her in the outside world like a piece of trash.”
This was news to Conrad, and he let out a long breath in response. “Who told you this?”
“AnnA did. I forced her. She was so embarrassed she didn’t even want us to know. She was afraid we wouldn’t want to be her friend if we found out.” Piper waved her arms about passionately as she spoke. “No one wants to be her friend here, either. She told me that she is the only kid on the mountain who doesn’t have a father, and she’s too afraid to ask her mother about it. They treat her like an outcast. Which, of course, you wouldn’t know because all you do is run off and hide with that Max guy. Whoever he is.”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t been hiding. You’re the one who’s been too busy to see me!” Conrad placed a bag over his shoulders.
“Did you even hear what I said?”
“Yes, of course. But I have something really important to do. Can we talk about it later?”
“Later is too late!” Piper planted her feet. “They are going to erase her memory this afternoon.”
Conrad continued with his task.
“What is going on with you? This should be a no-brainer. AnnA is our friend and she needs our help—end of story.”
“Piper, what I’m working on could change everything. It could change the world.”
This
startled Piper. “How come I don’t know about this? What is it?”
Conrad pushed past her. “Maybe you’d know if you weren’t with AnnA all the time and too busy to see me.”
“What do you mean too busy? Says who?”
Conrad bristled, painfully aware that time was ticking away. “We’re going to have to talk about this later. I have to go now.”
Piper’s eyes drifted to the wall that Conrad had covered in notes and diagrams and charts. It towered over her, reaching to the ceiling—a massive array of mad scribbles next to pictures and dates and charts all arranged in some order that was impossible for Piper to decipher. The sheer monstrous mass of it took her breath away. “Conrad, what have you done?”
“Hey, dude!” Max suddenly appeared, slamming into the wall by the door. “You said two minutes. It’s been like four.” He looked at his watch. “Now four and a half. You comin’ or what?”
Conrad stood in the center of the chamber with Max behind him and Piper in front of him.
“Conrad,” Piper said quietly. “We’ve always done everything as a team—together. And I need your help. Right now.”
“What’s the holdup?” Max called, swinging himself from a hook like a monkey. “Stay or go, go or stay! Make the call, smart guy.”
“It’s likely that I won’t be able to do anything to help AnnA,” Conrad reasoned.
“You can try.” Piper’s voice fell to a searing whisper. “I don’t know what is happening here, Conrad, but something weird is going on. You have to stay with me!”
Piper’s words and the intensity of her voice stunned Conrad, shaking him from the adrenaline of the chase.
“DUDE!”
“Don’t make me choose!” Conrad begged Piper.
“I will. I am.” As Conrad hesitated Piper’s eyes burned into him. “Who is this Max? What is going on? How come he looks so much like you?”
“He looks like me?” Piper’s words stopped Conrad dead. His skin puckered into prickles like it had been blasted with a cold wind. “We look alike?”
“I was just outside and I actually thought Max was you.”