Sidekick (27 page)

Choden smiled.

“Seriously, she might hurt me.”

***

On the way to the prison, I struggled from sleep in a state of angry confusion.

I just couldn’t stay awake. I hadn’t realized the amount of shift work involved with crime fighting. It’s the little things you don’t think about.

As my thoughts cleared, old concerns began to mingle with new. I had missed my shift at The Pink Beaver. I had to imagine that, right now, a band of pirates—my name on their forked tongues—was wandering the streets with human-sized butterfly nets. But unless they found me, I couldn’t worry about it. Nor could I think about the four messages Mr. Pushkin had left on my voice mail. It’s funny. I really thought the whole rent situation would work itself out. Like, I would stumble across twelve hundred dollars—easy come, easy go in reverse. No such luck. Yet another problem to worry about tomorrow.

I shifted my cramped position in Queenie’s car. Bart was taking Choden and Ryder in his van—now tricked out with computer equipment. Choden no longer felt it safe to drive his jeep, so Bart had offered. It still bewildered me that both Bart and Queenie were on board with everything, but, then again, it wasn’t so different from my wanting to be Ryder’s apprentice. It was fun to be part of something. We truly had made our own little gang.

The new camaraderie actually made me feel safe enough to ask Queenie, “So, what do you think of Bart?”

She punched me in the nose…again.

It wasn’t hard, but it brought tears to my eyes.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“I have problems with intimacy.”

Maybe the bonding was still to come.

We pulled up to an abandoned gas station about a quarter mile from the prison. Bart was already there, so Queenie and I got out of her car and into his van.

Inside, Bart was sitting at a computer typing away, despite his injured finger, and Choden and Ryder were talking quietly. Everyone stopped as Queenie and I climbed in.

“Okay,” I said clapping my hands together. “Let’s get this Shakespearean tragedy started.”

“The Sultana is already inside the jail,” Bart said distractedly, face aglow with the light of the computer screen. “Her pass was used half an hour ago.”

“Should I start making the calls to the press?” I asked no one in particular. I had agreed to do it because I knew the most about my father’s company. “Or is it too soon?”

“I think there is more danger in not interceding quickly,” Choden said. “We don’t want your father to begin unnoticed.”

I rubbed my phone. “Okay dokey. I’m going to go outside. I don’t want to be distracted.

I hopped out of the van, shutting the door behind me.

The prison’s lights beamed in the distance. It looked calm enough. Maybe we had it all wrong. Maybe it was just a stockholder’s meeting to update everyone on the prisoners’ progress. I took a deep breath. Yeah, and maybe my father hadn’t developed a chemical weapon and then let my mother swallow it.

I dialled a number on my phone quickly, before I changed my mind.

Pierce.

I doubted he wanted to hear from me, but I owed him. If there was going to be some big story tonight, I wanted him to have first crack at it. A part of me was terrified at the thought of putting him in more danger, but I had already made enough decisions for him. He was a big boy…such a big boy…and I was through trying to control him.

The phone rang four times.

With each ring, my stomach clenched harder.

“Bremy.”

“Hey!” I said, sounding way too excited.

“Bremy, if you’re calling to apologize, you don’t have to. I just want to forget the whole thing.”

“Oh no, I wasn’t calling to apologize.”

He paused a moment before saying, “Wow. I keep telling myself that I’m going to stop acting like a fool, and then I hear your voice, and I’m right back at it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said slapping my forehead. “I am sorry…so sorry. And I want to explain. I—”

“Stop. Please. Look I get it. You were doing a favor for your father. This is a nasty business, and maybe you let yourself feel something when you shouldn’t have. You weren’t supposed to get close to me, but you did. We have an undeniable chemistry, something bigger than the both of us, and now you’re unsure about everything. I get it.”

“That’s not it.”

“God! Please somebody stop me!” Pierce shouted. “I’m hanging up now.”

“No don’t! Look, I’m calling to make amends. The story about my father,” I said quickly. “Don’t kill it.”

Silence.

“Look Pierce, something is going on tonight at the prison. I’m not sure—”

“I know.”

“Wait, you know?”

“Sure, all the press has been notified. It’s some big surprise announcement. We’re supposed to set up outside. My cameraman is already there.”

I looked back at the prison. Sure enough, by the front gate, media vans with satellites on their roofs were pulling into the parking lot.

“I was going to leave in fifteen, twenty minutes,” he said. “Bremy? Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” I said, me and my sense of dread were both still there.

“Pierce, don’t come to the prison tonight.”

“What? You just said…are you trying to set me up again?”

“I know what I just said, but listen to me. Don’t come to the prison tonight.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think there maybe something wrong with my father’s chip. It could be dangerous.”

“Bremy, you sound scared. Where are you?”

“At the prison.”

“I’m coming.”

“No!”

He hung up. I swore quietly and got back into the van.

“What is happening?” Ryder asked.

“The media are already here. My father called them.”

Everyone was silent for a moment.

“Maybe it’s not a bad thing,” Bart said. “Maybe it’s a regular press conference.”

“On a Sunday night at nine p.m.?” I asked.

“Yeah, I don’t like it either,” Bart replied, rocking in his chair.

“What do we do?” I asked turning to Choden and Ryder. Again, they shared one of their secret looks.

Ryder started to get up.

Choden placed a hand on her arm. Pure frustration and anger flickered over her face, but she sat back down. I guess she had trouble standing up to her father too.

“Somebody has to go in,” I said. “Right?”

Nobody said anything.

“We need to find out what’s going on,” I said more firmly. “So somebody has to go in…and I guess that’s me.”

Choden stepped forward. “I will go with you.”

“Me too,” added Queenie. I looked over at her while subconsciously rubbing my nose.

“No, you stay here with me,” Bart chipped in. “Look, I’ve got to work the computers. I can open the prison’s electronic doors for Choden and Bremy, but if things go wrong…if for whatever reason her father flips the kill switch…then I’ll need help evacuating the lemming reporters.”

Queenie turned to look at me. “Why would your father do that?”

That question just kept going round and round. “I don’t know, but it’s what we’re all thinking, right?”

Everybody communicated their agreement with silence.

“Bart’s right. You stay here Queenie. You do look authoritative,” I said, fully appreciating her outfit. She wore dominatrix gear complete with leather bustier, pencil skirt, and whip. On her head, she sported Marlon Brando’s hat from
The Wild One
.

“I’ll know if your father flips the switch,” Bart said. “The signal it sends out to the brain chip has a particular signature, but if that happens, you guys don’t want to be anywhere near that prison.”

“I get it,” I said.

“Do you? Because we’re talking about killing machines, body-ripping, heart-eating, rage robots. It would be the equivalent to a zombie apocalypse. The kind guys like me dream about. Although it’s less attractive now that it’s a real possibility,” Bart said thoughtfully, as though he had never truly considered the downside of a zombie apocalypse. Then he looked up. “Do you guys hear that?”

We all moved to the van’s panel window. A helicopter was landing inside the prison compound.

“Daddy’s home,” Queenie said eerily.

“Well…that’s good, right?” I moved away from the window. “My father’s not stupid. He won’t flip the switch while he’s in the prison.”

“He has to be there in order to flip it,” Bart said.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. The kill switch has a password, which I doubt he would give to anyone else, and the signal to activate the chips has to be within a mile range. But they do have interesting plans in the future for a remote satellite signal—”

“Bart!” I snapped. “Focus.”

“You wouldn’t understand it anyway,” he said sulkily.

“Just tell us how to get in.”

Bart launched into a description of the inner workings of the penitentiary, and by the time he was done, I found myself almost wanting to go fight a heart-eating rage robot just to get out of the lecture. Almost.

Choden and I were suited up and ready to go when Ryder called me over to her. She sat slightly reclined…still elegant, still covered in bandages.

“It’s important to show strength on your face,” she said.

“How do I look?” I asked.

“Terrified.”

“Don’t worry. I’m doing this,” I said, not sure how to put what I was feeling into words. “I’m all dressed. I have Bart’s radio earpiece in place, and soon, I’m going to open that door and walk out. So I’m doing this, but…”

“Yes?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I can do this.”

Ryder smiled.

“I’m not ready. I’m not trained,” I said unable to stop my voice from speeding up. “I didn’t even pass the test.”

Ryder raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“The test! You know your
so you think you’re ready to be a superhero
test?”

“Oh yes,
the
test,” she said with mock sagacity.

“Yes,
the
test.”

A strange look came over her face. “I haven’t passed that particular test either.”

I felt my eyes widen. “What?”

“I have never known what to do with that flasher. I put you in to witness a novel approach.”

“What?”

“Yes…it’s true. I get close, but then, he manipulates the meaning of my name, and—”

“The meaning of your name?” I had to think about that for a second. “Ryder? You mean like,
Ride her
Cowgirl? Ha!”

Ryder’s face didn’t move.

“But that doesn’t even make sense, unless—”

“Yes, he refers to his…member in the feminine,” Ryder finished quickly.

“Oh my God! That’s hilarious! That’s—”

“Enough.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said quickly. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that I’m not prepared. My suit, while awesome, isn’t even bulletproof!”

“My suit is not bulletproof.”

“What!”

She straightened slightly in her chair. “That’s a rumor…a convenient rumor.”

I shook my head. “You’re blowing my mind right now.”

Ryder dismissed my astonishment with a wave of her hand. “Now Bremy, you have never listened to me before—”

I chuckled. “Well,
never
is a bit extreme—”

“Listen to me now,” she said sitting up in her chair.

I shut my mouth.

“I am hard on you because this work is dangerous,” she said. I studied her bandaged face. If she was in pain, I couldn’t see it through all the steeliness. “It is difficult for me to accept help. I can take chances for myself, but I do not like to take chances for others. I have…made mistakes.”

I immediately wondered if she included what happened to Pierce’s parents in those mistakes, but there wasn’t time for that. “I’m a big girl,” I said, feeling like a five year old.

“Yes,” she said. “And you can beat your father.”

“How?”

“By doing what you do best.”

“Sure…yeah,” I replied nodding vigorously. “And what is it that I do best again?”

She suddenly gripped my hands.

“Get in the way.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Getting into the prison wasn’t too difficult.

Choden and I had to climb a sixteen-foot fence, but the guards, who normally would have picked us off like wood ducks at a carnival, were nowhere to be seen.

Skeleton crew indeed.

Also, the collapsible razor-wire normally coiled around the top of the fence was conspicuously missing. I guess that was thanks to the routine maintenance Bart had mentioned.

Nope, tonight, this prison wasn’t working very hard to keep people in
or
out.

We stayed in contact with Bart through the earpiece he had given me, and once we got to the outer cellblock door he opened it for us remotely. We were headed for the core of the prison to the command center, smack dab in the middle of central population. Bart referred to it as the eagle’s nest because it was a pentagonal-shaped room suspended over the main cellblock. He theorized it was the best spot for my father to set up shop as he would be in range of all the prisoners, and it was an easily defensible position.

The plan was for Bart to open the doors for us throughout the prison until we got to the first manually locked gate. He explained that prisons were never fully computerized, mainly so geeks like him couldn’t hack the system and let all the baddies go. Once we got to that door, we were on our own.

It didn’t take us long to get to that door.

Actually, we were now standing a few feet back and around a corner. So far we hadn’t run into a single guard, but I had a feeling that was about to change. Somebody had to have let my father through, and if the prisoners were getting out, somebody would have to open it again.

Choden motioned for me to crouch down and scoot forward to the edge of the corner where the hallways met

“What’s happening?” Bart crackled in my ear. “Is there a guard?”

“Be quiet,” I whispered. “We’re checking now.”

“Wait. I don’t need you,” Bart said quickly. “I’ve got cameras to hack.”

I ignored him and peeked around the corner. Yup, and there he was, the bearded lady dressed in a 1950s floral housedress, holding an automatic rifle taller than he was.

“There’s a circus guy in a dress with an automatic rifle right in front of you guys!” Bart crackled again in my ear.