Michael Vey: Rise Of The Elgen Part 18

"By using them. Our powers are like muscles. They get stronger with use. And we need to eat right. We need to eat more bananas. More pota.s.sium."

"There are things with more pota.s.sium than bananas," Ostin said. "Spinach has nearly twice the pota.s.sium as bananas."

"The Elgen scientists would have known that," Ian said. "There must be something special about bananas."

"To begin with, they taste a lot better than spinach," McKenna said.

"Mitch.e.l.l," I said. "When do your parents get back?"

"Not until two weeks from tomorrow. They decided to stay an extra four days in Hawaii."

"By then we should be gone." I looked around at the group. "So, I guess that's that. I'll let you know as soon as I hear something. In the meantime I suggest we take Zeus's advice and prepare ourselves. Zeus, can you coach us?"

Zeus nodded. "I'm your man."

Later that afternoon a white, windowless appliance repair van pulled into Mitch.e.l.l's driveway. A husky man wearing a blue jumpsuit came to the door. "I'm here to check your washer," he said.

"What?" Mitch.e.l.l asked.

"You know why I'm here," he said.

"Oh right. Come in."

The man stepped inside, and Mitch.e.l.l shut the door behind him. I stepped forward. Zeus, Ian, and Jack stood by my side while Taylor and Ostin stood on the opposite side of the foyer.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

He looked at me apprehensively. "I've come for the computer."

"You can't have the computer," I said. "We need it. But we've copied the information to a hard drive."

"That will do," the man said. "Where is it?"

"Before we give it to you, we need you to sit down." I pointed to the upholstered chair we'd dragged from the den into the foyer.

The man looked at us suspiciously. "What is this about?"

"We're protecting ourselves," I said. "Now sit down."

His eyes darted back and forth between us. "I'm not sitting anywhere." He started toward the door.

Zeus shot a blue bolt of electricity to the door handle, the sound of which filled the room. The man jumped back. Zeus held up his hands and electricity arced between his fingers. "Try that again and I'll light you up like a Christmas tree."

The man glared at us.

"He's got two guns," Ian said. "One in a shoulder holster, the other on his ankle."

"Put your hands in the air, now," I said firmly.

Zeus stretched his hands forward. "You've got three seconds to comply, man. You go for the guns it's the last thing you'll ever do."

The man looked exasperated. "Look, guys, we're on the same side."

"Then you won't mind if we check your story," I said.

The man hesitated, then slowly raised his hands in the air. "Okay. Do it your way. Whatever you say." He sat in the chair. I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. "Don't move."

"You know he's got enough amps to make sure you never move again," Ostin said.

"We know what Michael can do," the man said. "Let's just get this over with. The longer I'm here the riskier."

"Jack, take his guns," I said.

Jack pulled the man's guns from the two holsters. "Nice," he said, examining the pieces. "A Glock and a Walther P99."

"I want those back," he said.

Taylor and Ostin walked over to the man. Taylor put her hands on his head while Ostin held out the list of questions he'd written.

"I want you to answer these questions in your mind," Ostin said. He began reading from the list we'd put together as a group, asking each question twice and pausing between each question until Taylor nodded for him to continue.

"Who sent you?"

"Why are you helping us?"

"Did you know we were going to be attacked at the safe house?"

"Did you really blow up the third car?"

"Are you going to help us get to Peru?"

"Are you allies with the Elgen?"

"Are you helping the Elgen?"

"How do you feel about the Elgen?"

"How do you feel about Dr. C. J. Hatch?"

When Ostin had finished reading his list, I looked over at Taylor. "What do you think?"

"I think he's on our side."

Mitch.e.l.l brought down the hard drive, and I handed it over to the man. "We've lived up to our side of the bargain. When do we go to Peru?"

"We'll call," he said. "There's a lot of preparation that needs to happen first."

"How long?"

"I don't know. Could be a few days, could be a few weeks."

"A few weeks?"

"This will take some planning. We need to get you as close as possible without them knowing. Be ready and wait for our call."

He put the hard drive in his bag and locked it. Jack returned the man's guns. He put them back in their holsters, then walked to the door. "Be ready."

He saluted me, opened the door, then walked out to his van.

The days we spent waiting for the phone call felt like an eternity. Ian, Zeus, McKenna, Abigail, and Grace didn't have to worry about being recognized in public, but we were pretty sure the Elgen were still lurking about, so they hid out as well. For the next week we mostly sat around the house playing cards and video games or watching television.

We also practiced our powers. My electricity had, as Ostin theorized, continued to increase. So had my magnetism. I was doing things that surprised me. After my first full day of practice, I pulled a bicycle over to me in Mitch.e.l.l's garage from more than twenty feet away and, even more difficult, opened the refrigerator door from the kitchen table. I have to admit that magnetism was way more fun than shocking people, because it looked like magic and no one got hurt. By carefully varying my power I was even able to levitate objects. I started moving everything I could and quickly learned my own limitations. Magnetism is not like in the superhero movies. I couldn't pull a car toward myself, because a car weighs more than I do. I just ended up pulling myself to the car.

I wasn't the only one practicing my powers. One day McKenna got hot enough that she burned through some carpet and got a lecture from Mitch.e.l.l, who was certain his parents would think he was smoking.

Taylor was practicing too. We were sitting around the pool when she showed me one of her new tricks.

"Are you still going to kiss me?" she asked.

I looked around, feeling a little confused. I couldn't remember what we were talking about or even offering her a kiss. "Sorry." I leaned forward and kissed her.

She laughed as she pulled away. "I'm sorry, but you said you wanted a demonstration."

"I wanted a demonstration of what?"

She c.o.c.ked her head to one side.

"Did you just reboot me?"

She nodded. "You asked me to. I'll remind you of what we were talking about. Watch." She turned to Wade, who was standing a few yards from us holding a piece of pizza in his hand. She put one hand to her temple. Wade paused midbite, then looked up with a dazed expression.

"Well?" Taylor said to him.

He looked at her with a blank gaze. "What?"

"Are you still going to give me that piece of pizza?"

He glanced around. "Oh, yeah. Sorry." He walked over and held out the piece to Taylor.

"You can keep it," she said. "I'm not hungry anymore."

"Thanks," he said, looking even more confused than before.

She turned to me and grinned. "See? That's the second time I've made him do that. You just don't remember the first time. And that's how I got you to kiss me. I've discovered that people are especially vulnerable to suggestion after I reboot them. The more confused they are, the more willing they are to believe others."

"That makes sense," I said. "Like, if you're lost, you'll trust a complete stranger to tell you where to go."

"Exactly. I'm also getting better at rebooting too. Watch this."

She focused on Mitch.e.l.l, who was standing next to Jack on the opposite side of the pool. Suddenly he put his hands to his temples and groaned. "Ow."

"I can fill their heads so they can't think at all. It gives them a little headache. I think if I did it really hard, I could make someone faint."

"That could come in handy," I said.

"I'm going to keep working on it."

"I've been working on something too," I said. "Want to see?"

"Yeah."

I held my hand out toward Mitch.e.l.l. My hand began shaking. Mitch.e.l.l started to walk sideways toward the edge of the pool, as if he was being dragged, which, incidentally, he was.

"Hey, what the . . ."

Then he fell into the water. He popped up to the surface, sputtering and flailing. "Who pushed me?" he shouted. "Who pushed me?"

Jack was laughing. "No one, you idiot."

Taylor burst out laughing. "You really just did that?"

I was grinning. "I locked onto his belt buckle. Cool, right?"

"Way cool."

"Kylee can do that," Zeus said.

I looked back, unaware that Zeus had been watching.

"She can climb metal walls too."

"Climb walls?"

"It's just timing. Like using suction cups. Lock onto the wall with magnets, then release one hand and the opposite leg at the same time and move them up, lock on and repeat."

"That would be cool," I said. "If I could find some metal walls."

While we practiced our powers, the nonelectrics did too. Jack did like a thousand push-ups a day, went on a strict diet of raw-egg-and-protein drinks, and practiced hand-to-hand combat and ultimate fighting techniques with Wade and Mitch.e.l.l, who seemed more like punching bags than opponents and every day sported fresh bruises.

Ostin researched. He dug through Grace's information like a gold miner at the mother lode. Within days he had pulled up everything the mainframe had on the Peruvian compound, including an early architectural drawing of the facility.

He spent most of his time looking for a way in. What made breaking into the compound especially difficult was that it was surrounded by a lot of land and ringed by tall electric fences. It was clear that the Elgen had built a large buffer around the facility to prevent unwanted guests.

When a week had pa.s.sed, I began to worry again about the voice, particularly because of all the information we had handed over. Could the man we had interrogated somehow have tricked Taylor? They knew about her powers; maybe they had been prepared to deceive us. Maybe they had technology we didn't know about. Eight days from the man's visit, my phone finally rang.