* * *
“They should have been back by now,” Tom said as he glanced at his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes.
“They might be stuck in traffic,” Reed suggested as he looked up and sent the pulley back across the room with a wave of his finger.
“How can you just sit there?” Manny snapped as he halted his pacing and rounded on him. “We have no idea where the girls are and now Danny, Shay, and Dimitri could be missing too!”
Reed pushed himself up in his seat. He had been stretched out on an old bench-style car seat that was his contribution to their clubhouse furnishings. For an instant he felt anger flare up inside him at Manny’s tone, but it quickly faded when he saw the frightened look on his friend’s face. Manny and Amanda had only been dating each other for a few months but he really cared about her. The fact that she had been taken right under his nose was eating him up inside.
“I’m worried about them, too,” Reed said quietly.
Manny’s body seemed to deflate and he dropped down onto the seat next to him.
“I know,” Manny said. “I’m just going out of my mind with worry. We need to do something.”
“We can always go the police,” Reed offered.
Manny snorted. “Yeah, right! Like anyone’s going to believe that a bunch of strangers with guns are coming after us because we have super powers.”
Reed glanced up and moved the pulley across the room again. “Oh, I’m sure we can come up with some way to convince them. But that’s not the real problem.”
Tom came over to where they were, turned a folding chair around and straddled it to sit facing them. “We could make them believe us,” he agreed, “at least the part about us having powers, but then what’s to stop the government from locking us up like a bunch of lab rats?”
While they were waiting for Danny, Dimitri, and Shay, Tom and the others had spent a lot of time talking about the mysterious strangers. They had decided that it could not be a coincidence that the strangers knew them by name and that their group seemed to be their target. They had even discussed going to the authorities, but had decided against that course when Reed, who had an instinctive distrust of authority, pointed out the possible consequences.
“Hey guys,” Reed said as an unsettling idea occurred to him, “this might sound a little weird, but what if it’s the government that’s been coming after us.”
“You’re right, that is weird,” Tom said.
“No, think about it. A bunch of uptight suits show up around town, driving black cars with tinted windows, and start pulling guns and demanding that we go with them. They somehow know each of us by name and the obvious connection between us is that we’ve all got these powers. Doesn’t that sound like some kind of Men in Black stuff to you?”
Tom and Manny looked at him.
Before either of them could think of anything to say they heard a car horn blowing outside the clubhouse and a frantic banging on one of the roll-up doors.
“Hey guys, it’s us! Open up!” they heard Danny’s voice yelling for them.
The group of them sprang up and raced to the door and raised it. Danny was standing on the other side looking pale as a sheet. Right behind him they saw a black sedan with tinted windows.
“You led them here!” Manny accused him.
Before Danny could respond Reed raised both hands toward the sedan. The car immediately began backing away, tires squealing. Danny jumped at Reed and knocked his hands down.
“No! Shay and Dimitri are in the car! We took it from a bunch of them after they forced us off the road.” He looked back over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was around. “We need to get it inside before anyone sees it.”
Danny led the others aside and motioned the car forward. The black car rolled into the building and stopped. Tom quickly pulled the door down and moved to the driver’s side as Shay got out.
“We agreed never to drive here during the day,” Tom scolded her as she hurried to the back car door. “Somebody could have seen you.”
Shay pulled open the rear door and caught Dimitri’s limp form as he started to tumble out.
“We didn’t have a choice,” she explained. “They shot Dimitri with some kind of tranquilizer gun and we had to get him out of there. His car was stuck so we took theirs instead. Oof! He’s heavier than he looks. Help me get him to the couch.”
Tom scooped up his friend’s limp body and carried him to the seat where Reed had been sitting. Dimitri was so tall that his heels ended up resting on the floor when they laid him down. Once they had him on the couch Tom rolled him up onto his side.
“I felt something when I was carrying him,” Tom explained as he ran his hands along Dimitri’s back. A moment later he came up with a small object that looked like a high-tech dart. He turned it over in his hand briefly then handed it to Shay.
“It kind of looks like the tranquilizer darts they use on animals,” She said as she examined it. Then she reached to her waistband and pulled out the gun she had picked up. She examined it for a few moments before she found the release button and pulled the ammunition clip free. Six darts identical to the one Tom had found were still loaded into the clip.
“They tried those on me, too,” Tom said. “They pack quite a punch. It’s like being smothered with a wet blanket.”
A hard look entered Shay’s eyes then as she imagined her sister being hit with one of those things and she slapped the clip back into the gun.
“Tell me everything you told Danny about Paige and Magda,” Shay said.
Tom spent the next several minutes filling Shay in on everything that had happened when they went searching for the girls. He told her about Amanda’s disappearance as well, plus everything he and the others had been talking about while they waited for them to return from Shay’s school.
“Do you really think those guys might be government agents?” Shay asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “At first I thought Reed was just coming up with wild theories, but the more I think about it the less bizarre it seems.”
Shay nodded. She had been thinking the same thing. Raising the tranquilizer gun she extended her arm and sighted along the top of the barrel.
“Whoever they are,” Shay said in a hard voice, “when we find them we’re not pulling any punches. We’re getting my sister and all of our friends back.”
“Hey guys!” Reed called out from across the room. They turned around to see him emerge from the black car with something in his hand and an anxious look on his face. He had been poking around under the dashboard. The thing in his hand was a short silver cylinder with some wires sticking out of one end.
“We’ve got a problem,” Reed said as he held up the device. “I found this wired into the fuse panel.”
“What is it?” Tom asked as he and Shay walked over to him.
Reed handed it to Tom. “I think it’s a kind of transmitter that lets you track a car’s location.”
“Like a LoJack?” Tom asked.
“Exactly,” Reed said. “It’s disconnected now, but if anybody pinged this thing in the last few minutes they know exactly where we are.”
“Don’t worry, we’re safe,” Danny said from the back of the room. He turned around on the old bar stool he was sitting on to face them. He and Manny had been huddled before one of the computer monitors set up on the workbench.
“I sensed the tracker as soon as we got in the car so I sent an overload charge into it. Trust me, it doesn’t work anymore.” The others looked relieved. “But you guys should come see this,” he said as he turned back toward the monitor screen.
Tom and the others moved to the back of the room and peered over his shoulders at the screen.
“I did a search on the plate numbers we got from the car of the guys who attacked Tom and Reed and the guys who attacked us,” Danny explained.
“Wait,” Tom said, sounding confused. “Are you telling me this is a different car?”
> “It’s got different plates,” Danny said. He tapped a key and split the screen into two windows. Each window displayed the New York State DMV logo at the top. Beneath each logo a license plate number was displayed with the corresponding information on the car’s registration. Although they were different numbers both screens showed the same registration address.
“Twelve thirty-four Lake Street, Oswego,” Tom read.
“Oswego? That’s way upstate, near the Canadian border” Shay said.
Danny nodded. “Yeah, only there is no such address,” he said in a frustrated tone. “Lake Street is real, but there is no twelve thirty-four.”
“Twelve thirty-four?” Shay said. “Oh, I get it—one, two, three, four. Real cute.”
“Wait a minute,” Tom said suddenly. “If they have two identical cars, there might be more. So we don’t really know how many men they have looking for us,” Tom said as the implications set in. “For all we know they could have a dozen cars out there, or more.”
“Three,” Danny said. He typed at the keyboard briefly and brought up a list of car VIN numbers. “At least that all of the cars registered to this address. They’re all the same make, model and year.” He resumed typing. “That’s not all. A search for the property owner came up with this guy.” The screen changed to show the picture of a very unremarkable looking man; soft oval face, weak chin, mousy brown hair, muddy brown eyes—the type of face you would overlook in a crowd. The name on the screen read, John Smith.
Tom studied the face. “That’s not one of the guys who attacked us,” he said after a moment.
“And he’s not one of the guys who came after us either,” Danny said. “Actually, I’d have been surprised if he was since he doesn’t exist. At least, there’s nothing I can find on him anywhere on the Internet. No social security number, no birth certificate, no bank records, he’s never even filed taxes.”
Tom frowned. “Reed’s idea about these guys being with the government is starting to sound more and more likely.”
“And if that’s true,” Manny said, “who do we go to for help?” He hammered the workbench with his fist. “We need to be able to find these guys but there’s no way to trace them!”
“Actually, there might be,” Danny said. He stood up and pointed at the car. “Reed, you said that the keyboard in their car reminded you of the remote terminals in a police cruiser. If what’s in their car is the same kind of thing, I can use the car terminal to link to their database.”
Danny started toward the sedan when Tom grabbed his arm. “Wait. Won’t they be able to trace that back here to us?”
“They can try,” Danny said, smiling, “but I’ve never had any trouble blocking an incoming tap.
Tom let go and Danny walked around to the driver’s door and got in. The others pulled open the passenger door to watch. He placed one hand on the terminal and closed his eyes. After a moment his eyebrows shot up.
“Wow, they have some really heavy duty firewalls,” he said. “It’s going to take a little time to get around them.”
“Another dead end,” Manny grumbled.
“Not really,” Danny said. “I was able to get this.” He opened his eyes and looked at the terminal as the screen glowed on. They saw an overhead view of someplace on the Earth. The view was from too high an altitude for them to make out any details, but they could see the regular pattern of roads and clusters of small structures that looked like houses. In the upper left corner of the screen was a group of very large buildings.
“I think I know that place,” Shay said, pointing to the group of large buildings. For a moment she struggled to place the image, then it dawned on her. “Wait a minute, isn’t that the mall? It is! That’s Roosevelt Field!”
Danny nodded. “I was able to track the origin of their signal to this area. It’s not coming from the mall itself but from somewhere nearby.” The image on the screen expanded as the magnification clicked through several different levels.
“And that’s the Cradle of Aviation Museum,” Manny said as the image grew. “They took us there in middle school.”
“The place we’re looking for is right around there,” Danny said. The image was large enough now for them to make out individual cars and even people. The museum Manny had pointed out was near the bottom edge of the screen. Then the image clicked through one last level of magnification. All they saw now was a group of separate buildings, each of which took up an entire block. After a moment a blinking dot appeared on the center building.
“The signal traces back to this building,” Danny said.
Tom was frowning at the image. “What are we looking at?”
“That’s Mitchell Field,” Shay answered as she studied the screen. “Years ago that entire area was owned by the government. Roosevelt Field, where the mall is, was an airport, and Mitchell Field was an Air Force base. Those look like some of the old hangars or maybe warehouses.”
“I told you the government was behind it!” Reed said.
“But that was more than fifty years ago,” Shay said, sounding a little unsure. “The government closed down everything and sold that land to developers sometime in the early sixties.”
“Then how do you explain the signal coming from there?”
“I can’t,” Shay admitted. “But if that’s where they’re holding Paige and the others we’ll find out what’s going on.” She studied the screen for several moments then turned to Danny. “I can’t make out any details on the front of the building from this angle. Is there any way you can get a different shot of it so we know which one we’re looking for?”
“I can do better than that,” Danny said. A moment later the image changed to a map drawing of the area with street names and building addresses overlaid on the diagram. In typical, unimaginative government fashion, the streets and buildings were all designated by letters.
“According to the map, the signal is coming from…building G on Avenue N.”