Project X-Calibur (4 page)

6

137:46:02

THE SOUNDS
of the city exploded in my eardrums.

“Welcome to London,” the kid said, letting go of my hand. Teleporting was getting easier to handle, but I still swayed as I fought off the dizziness.

We were standing in the mouth of an alley, looking out onto a grim gray sky and a cramped London street. Cars crawled down two narrow lanes as they passed us; a black cab stopped suddenly for a businessman in a long coat. Behind them, skinny brick houses stood squished together, their tightly packed storefronts advertising everything from souvenirs to fish-and-chips to discounted night tours through haunted London (“For a Jolly Good Fright!”). People were everywhere, talking in British accents. My hand tightened around the handles of Dad's duffel bag. When everyone around you suddenly sounds nothing like you do, it's a little weird.

“Follow me,” the kid instructed. “We're already late.”

Buildings crowded in on either side of us, the bricks stained and cracked, the ground littered with garbage. There was an angry hiss as I sidestepped a street cat foraging for food.

“Here we are.” The kid sighed happily as we arrived at a battered door covered in graffiti.

“
This
is the Royal Academy of Science? Not very royal-looking.”

“That was just a ruse for the parents. This is Headquarters.” The kid looked left and right (as if anyone else would want to come down this stink-hole alley) and pressed a finger against a nearby brick. A perfect line of small light beams shot out from the doorway, concealing us behind projections of shimmering brick walls.

“A hologram or something?” I croaked. “I thought that kind of stuff was only in movies.”

The kid rolled his eyes. Another brick next to the door spun around to reveal an electronic scanner.

“This is a dental scanner,” he explained. “An intruder would need all my teeth, in formation no less, to gain access. The walls have been fortified against teleportation, in case anyone managed to get their hands on this.” He flashed the device in his palm.

He bent down and put his mouth to the scanner, grinning like someone was taking his picture. A red ray of light panned from right to left, and with a quick
beep-beep
the light turned green. “Hold on,” he warned.

I shot him a wary glance. “For wha—”

We suddenly plummeted downward, our feet somehow glued to the square slab under us as we plunged deep below ground. We jolted sideways through a dark tunnel before ascending again—all in less than two seconds—and then we lurched to a stop.

I wobbled, trying hopelessly to catch my balance. I could feel a pull from beneath me, and a tingling throughout my feet and legs that somehow held me in place.

The kid smiled. “The metal is magnetized to bond with the mercury in human blood. Very revolutionary.” He gave a satisfied nod.

There was a beep, and suddenly the pull was gone. He and I stepped away, and the slab whisked back down into the darkness. I gulped at the sight before me. We had arrived in the center of a huge, circular room lined with doors. The walls—solid steel, reinforced with millions of bolts all arranged in crisscross “X”s—were maybe fifty feet high, and the floor, made up of marble tiles, was so shiny it looked wet.

On the ground, people carrying clipboards scuttled hurriedly from door to door. Their lab coats all had three letters stitched over the chest pockets: “RTR.” From what I could overhear, most had English accents, and nobody was anywhere
near
my age, but they didn't seem surprised at all to see us here.

I looked up. There were three levels of doors, some twenty and thirty feet up, but with no stairs anywhere. On the
ceiling,
huge red numbers were counting down, like a giant digital timer: 137 hours, 32 minutes, 12 seconds . . . 11 seconds . . . 10 seconds . . .

I nudged the kid. “What is that?”

“The time left until the aliens arrive,” he said.

I tensed. A hundred and thirty-seven hours didn't seem like much when it could mean the end of the world. A pretty woman walked by, her hair up in a neat bun. On her way past us, she gave the kid a warm smile. “Good to have you back, sir.”

A grown woman, calling an eight-year-old “sir.”

He shook her hand. “Fabulous to
be
back,” he said brightly. “Where are the trainees?”

“Medical.” She gave me a nod as she passed, but I was more interested in her clipboard. At first it looked pretty standard, until I realized the single piece of paper on it was a paper-thin computer screen. And I mean
paper
thin. Two words at the top of the screen sent my pulse racing: PROJECT X-CALIBUR.

The kid led me across the lobby to a spot just in front of the doors. “Stay close,” he instructed, and the floor panel we were standing on suddenly
rose up. That's
how the people here got to the second and third levels of doors.

Problem was, I was so caught off guard that I windmilled and dropped my duffel bag. It toppled over the side, landed on another floor panel, and triggered it to
also
rise up. The bag kept rolling, only to hit
another
floor panel—up and down, in a circle, all around the atrium, until it finally came to a rest.

Tell me this isn't happening.

From where I stood at the third-level doors, I could see the workers below startled by the sudden chaos. One poor guy hung on the edge of a rising column, legs flailing, before finally pulling himself up to safety. They all turned to glare up at me.

“Sorry,” I winced with an apologetic little wave. I turned to the kid. “Haven't you ever heard of regular elevators?” I hissed.

He shrugged. “Live and learn.” He pushed open the door in front of us.

I looked in and saw an Asian kid with spiky hair. He stood shirtless, his legs bent and his arms out as he swayed side to side.
Was he surfing?
But there was no board, or much of anything else, around him except for a few chairs and a couple of white curtain dividers.

I hesitated. This place was a little nuts.

“There are only friends here, Benjamin. No enemies,” the kid who brought me here coaxed.

I took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

“See you soon!” Suddenly, the kid was gone, and the door was replaced by wall.

When the Asian kid saw me, he stopped “surfing” and jogged over.

“What up? I'm Kwan!” He looked my age, lean, but not skinny, and really tan. He was about my height, but he was definitely more athletic than me.

“You don't have an accent,” I noted.

“I'm Korean American. Emphasis on
American.
” He stood tall, chest out.

“No, I mean you don't have an English accent.”

“So what's your name?” The words came rapid-fire. This kid had energy to spare.

“Ben. Ben Stone.” I held out a hand, and Kwan shook it with both of his.

“Where ya from, Ben Stone?”

“Texas—” I barely answered before Kwan shouted over his shoulder. “Hey, Big Guy, another American! Texas this time!”

Another kid stepped out from behind one of the white curtains. He was also my age, with a puffy baby face and a buzz cut, but he was at least a foot taller than me and Kwan, and big. Not muscular, just bulky, like a hairless bear.

“Tyler's from Florida,” Kwan chirped. “Check this out—he wrestles
gators.
”

“And crocs. Don't forget the crocs,” Tyler said with a calm smile. Even though he was a foot taller than me, his presence was somehow less in-your-face than Kwan's.

“But no croc or gator is a match for you, right?” Kwan slapped Tyler on the back. Hard. He had guts, that's for sure.

Tyler paid him little mind. “The tourists pay to see me win,” he shrugged. “I give them what they want.”

“What's your deal, anyway?” Kwan asked me.

I was lost. “My deal?”

“Yeah. What do you
do
? Like, I've won more surfing championships than anybody else on the planet under eighteen years old. I've been on the cover of
Sports Illustrated Kids
twice. And you already know what he does.” He nodded toward Tyler. “Ten million hits on YouTube!”

Kwan snapped his fingers on both hands and pointed at me. “So what do you do again?”

“Well, I go to school,” I fidgeted. “And I work on cars sometimes.”

They stared back at me.

“Mostly oil changes. I charge fifteen to twenty dollars, depending on the car.” I was kinda proud of that last part.

“So you
race
the cars?” Kwan prodded.

“No. I don't have a driver's license.”

“Hmm,” Kwan managed. Tyler frowned like someone had just farted.

“Benjamin?” Another door appeared at the other end of the room, and a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat stuck her head in. She looked dignified and well put together, but her eyes were narrowed and her mouth was puckered up like she had tasted something sour. “Are you ready for your physical?” she asked, and I realized that her puckered expression had nothing to do with me; she looked like that all the time.

I nervously glanced at Kwan. He grinned. “Don't sweat it, Earnhardt. We already did it. Piece of cake.”

“Earnhardt? I told you—I don't race cars.”

Kwan's grin just got bigger. “Whatever.”

Sourpuss handed me gray shorts and a matching tank top with RTR printed on the front. “Put these on and meet me inside,” she instructed.

After changing behind the white curtains, I left Kwan and Tyler and walked into the next room. It was much larger than the changing area, and everything was steel and glass. In the back corner, another kid my age was running on a treadmill. While he wore the same gray shorts and tank top as me, he was four or five inches taller and looked like a quarterback or something. He had a wide jaw, and his hair was cut short and neat.

Kwan was a champion surfer, Tyler was apparently a Florida tourist attraction and internet sensation, and this kid looked like he would grow up to be a movie hero. What the heck was
I
doing here?

“Step here, please.” Sourpuss pointed me to a round piece of metal on the floor, raised about three inches. I took a deep breath and stood on it.

“Begin physical,” she said flatly, and a cylinder of light rose up around me, until I was standing inside a shimmering green tube. Images began blinking along its surface: readings, measurements, scans of my skeleton and veins. Then it all winked out of existence, the light tube gone. A holographic data report appeared in its place, hovering a few feet in front of me. It had my name at the top, along with a bunch of data: height, weight, blood type, and dozens more things that meant nothing to me.

“You can step off now.” Sourpuss looked through the report.

“I don't have to . . . run?” I nodded toward the other kid. He was really going at it now like his life depended on it. I spotted his name at the top of the report hovering next to him: MALCOLM GUNN.

“No. Pellinore ordered additional pre-testing on Malcolm.” She lowered her voice. “I think he's grooming him for X-Calibur. But you didn't hear it from me.”

Excalibur?
The sword used by none other than King Arthur?

The door suddenly opened and the kid who'd brought me here stuck his head in. “We need the trainees in the atrium, ASAP. How's he look?” His eyes met mine for a moment.

“His cholesterol and glucose levels are a tad high,” Sourpuss said. “He eats too much junk food.”

“But not a deal-breaker?” the kid said hopefully.

She nodded disinterestedly. “Not a deal-breaker.”

Malcolm had gotten off his treadmill and was walking past us, head high.

“Hey,” I said, but he kept going out the door, like he had more important places to be.

“How's
he
look?” the kid whispered.

“Stellar. Head to toe,” Sourpuss replied. The kid's shoulders seemed to sag a bit.

Two minutes later, I was in my old clothes, in the middle of the round atrium again. Kwan and Tyler stood to the side of me. Kwan now wore flip-flops, bright red and orange swim trunks, and a shirt that said “Heaven Is a Fifty-Foot Wave.” Malcolm was on the other side of me, dressed in a crisp white shirt and cargo pants, along with military-style black boots. He'd been running like a maniac just minutes ago, but he looked completely unfazed.

Another trainee—a girl—was also here, standing a few feet away from the rest of us. She was a couple of inches shorter than me, and stocky, built like a fire hydrant. Her hair was all one length, to her shoulders, and hastily pushed back behind her ears. Her skin was pale like most everyone else here, and she was wearing gray leggings, sneakers, and a faded yellow shirt with a peeling Pac-Man logo. She saw me looking at her, so I smiled, but she crinkled her nose and looked straight forward again.

“Darla Dill,” Kwan whispered. “From Seattle. One of the best video game players in the world.”

“Really?” I turned to him. “How do you know?”

“Tyler and I met her already. Plus, she was on the cover of
Video Game Monthly
last month. And
eleven months
in a row before that.”

Wow. I really had to start reading more.

“But her last name totally suits her,” Kwan added. “She has the personality of a pickle.”

Across the atrium, a single door opened. The lab workers had gathered behind us, and my mysterious eight-year-old friend joined the group. There was a second or two where nothing happened, and then . . . a man appeared. He was a tall, middle-aged guy wearing a dark, pin-striped suit that looked like it cost more than my mom made in a year. He had thick black hair, slightly wavy, and he was clean-shaven, with a strong jaw and eyes that narrowed with purpose. More than anything, though, I was struck by the way he carried himself. Everything about him oozed confidence as he walked toward us. There was little doubt he was in charge here.