Oracle--Mutant Wood Read online

  His head still bent, Mr. Coy arrived in front of Lionel.

  “And what do you have to say for yourself, scumbag?” Lionel mocked. “Are you still loyal to Lye?”

  “That depends,” Mr. Coy calmly replied, still avoiding eye-contact. Lionel and the twins were shocked.

  “What did you say?!” Lionel threatened.

  Mr. Coy finally looked up and said, staring squarely at Lionel, “Has Lye ever—Ben Coy?” Lionel’s eyes bulged when he recognized the imposter, but before he could make a move, Mr. Coy punched him in the face. Lionel collided into the Foxx twins, and the three of them fell to the ground. Mr. Coy took off.

  With a black eye and a bloody nose, Lionel yelled, “After him!”

  Mr. Coy leapt over the railing and onto the ground floor, hoping his pursuers would lose track of him among the junk piles and various vehicles that crowded the lowest level. He slipped out of his suit and tied each arm to the raised forks of a parked forklift, making it look like he was making his escape by holding on and hanging between them. Then he jammed the lift’s gears and sent it on a ghost ride, hoping the decoy would buy him some time.

  Mr. Coy ran in the opposite direction. The entire facility was on alert, red alarms gonging every other second and bathing the place in splashes of red light. Although there were plenty of spots to hide, Mr. Coy knew he needed to get out of the room and fast. Off to the side, he saw a dump truck unloading a bunch of refuse into a kind of garbage chute. Mr. Coy ran over there, hid until the truck was through, and then jumped onto the chute. Like riding a playground slide, he glided down the slick track, using his arms and legs to slow his descent. When he neared the end, he came to a stop and hopped out.

  He was in a junkyard of sorts. It was a sorry sight, the place where things go when they break down or burn up. Rusted refrigerators, jacked up automobiles, scrap metal, engines, computer hardware, tangled wires, even a Humvee—each in need of a quick fix or a long overhaul. Mr. Coy was in the market for a new set of wheels, something small and swift. Off to the left, between a truck with a cracked windshield and a van with a flat tire, he saw a four-wheeler. He ran to it. The service tag said it was in for minor body damage, but the key was in the ignition. Mr. Coy shrugged and climbed on, then turned the key and peeled out.

  Meanwhile, in the chaos a few floors above, the runaway forklift had been seized. A mixture of personnel swarmed the vehicle. It didn’t take long for them to realize they had been tricked.

  “Find him!” Lionel announced, tearing Coy’s white suit in half, which seemed to require all his strength. “He knows too much. Bring him to me—dead or alive, I don’t care!”

  “But sir,” Aloysius countered, “only Lye approves of executions.”

  “Lye put me in charge,” Lionel snarled. “Now find him!”

  But Mr. Coy was on the move. He was speeding up and down the halls, taking whatever path would lead him up another floor, closer to the ground. He could see guards spilling into some of the halls, with more and more sirens sounding.

  Despite the urgent situation, Mr. Coy came to something that made him stop. He had reached the end of another hallway, arriving in a circular hub where several other hallways met, and was startled by what he discovered in the center of the room. There was a glass tank, full of water, with a man inside. To Coy’s horror, that man was Jaret. Attached to his face was a corded mask, supplying him with a limited amount of oxygen that was keeping him in this comatose state. The prisoner was in bad shape, clothed in nothing but spandex shorts and looking very pale in his liquid cell. A constant stream of air bubbles rose from the bottom of the tank, causing Jaret to bob up and down as if in a lava lamp.

  The tank had been roped off, purposely placed in the center of the hub for display purposes. A placard at the base of the tank read, “The fate of all rebels.” A scare tactic to instill allegiance in his minions, it was a typical teaching tool for Lye, who was battling more and more dissension these days.

  Mr. Coy grabbed one of the rope stands and starting whaling on the tank. After a few hits, a crack appeared, accompanied by a fine mist. He directed all the anger of the night at the glass until he broke through, warm water gushing out. He was soaked but didn’t care, reaching in and pulling out his dazed friend. Coy removed the oxygen mask, and Jaret took his first deep breath in days.

  “Ben?” Jaret asked, his eyes out of focus and mind in a fog.

  “Rise and shine, captain,” Coy replied, setting Jaret on the four-wheeler.

  “How are my girls?” Jaret said with concern, color returning to his face. “How are Pauline and Ana?” Just then, a round of bullets shattered the rest of the tank’s glass, fired from a squadron coming up one of the hallways.

  “Probably a lot better off than we are right now,” Coy answered, sitting in front of Jaret and speeding away. “Any idea how to get out of this place?”

  “Uh…” Jaret stuttered, trying to figure out where they were. “Turn right.” Coy obeyed. “Now go full speed ahead.”

  “Into that wall?” Coy wondered.

  “Don’t worry,” Jaret reassured him, “they’re double doors disguised as a wall.”

  “Okay…” said Coy warily, increasing their speed.

  Then, just before impact, Jaret added, “At least I think they are.”

  “What?!”

  The captain was correct. Like something out of Coy Manor, the swinging doors parted down the middle, allowing the four-wheeler to pass through with ease. A short, dirt ramp immediately ensued, which they followed up to a small meadow on ground level.

  “Looks like we’re not in the clear yet,” Jaret observed, eyeing the numerous guards that were popping up like gophers—some on foot, others on wheels, and still more in the air. Mr. Coy sped off.

  “Where are you going?” Jaret asked.

  “I know a rock that will get us off this island,” Coy responded, glancing up at the sky, which was showing the first signs of morning.

  “A rock?” Jaret gulped.

  “Don’t worry,” Coy said, “it’s a special rock.”

  “Okay,” Jaret said, unconvinced.

  Then, with both honesty and playfulness, Coy smiled, “At least I think it is.”

  The nimble four-wheeler cut through the thick forest like a hare, keeping ahead of the troops. The fugitives became nervous whenever there was a clearing, giving their enemies a chance for an aerial attack. When they came to an open stretch full of hot springs, Mr. Coy weaved in and out of the giant puddles like obstacles on a driving test. The helicopters fired, causing the pools to erupt like geysers and sending up walls of water.

  “Yee-haw!” Mr. Coy shouted, surviving the assault and reaching the relative safety of another wooded area.

  Soon, the vegetation grew sparse until it stopped, and the ground became pebbled until it was nothing but rocks. The pair ditched the four-wheeler and set off across the stones, which was difficult for the barefoot Jaret. In the dim light of the approaching sunrise, Mr. Coy could see the rugged archway through which he had come. He scanned the horizon; the timing needed to be perfect.

  The two had just entered the cleft in the rock when a blinding light burst upon them—not the desired sunlight but instead a dreaded spotlight. One of the helicopters had found them from above. In a matter of seconds, dozens of vehicles poured out of the forest, guards jumping out and trekking across the rocky terrain toward their escapees.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Coy muttered at the eastern sky. He knew the sun was on the verge of peeking above the ocean. If this was going to work, then he needed only another minute or two.

  Suddenly, a special jeep arrived, driving across the rocks and stopping front and center. A guard opened the passenger door. Mr. Coy and Jaret were expecting Lionel to step out, but instead they saw Lye. He jammed his spirally-twisted cane into the rocks, his black robes and white hair blowing in the gentle sea breeze.

  “There’s nowhere to go, boys,” the evil lord told them over a loud speaker
. Jaret glanced behind, close enough to the edge to see the waves crashing. “I’m sorry it has to end this way,” then he added, “Well, not really,” followed by an evil cackle.

  “Wait,” Mr. Coy hollered back, struck with an idea on how to stall. “Don’t we get any last words?”

  “What?!” Lye barked.

  “Surely you believe in proper execution etiquette,” Jaret chimed in.

  With a look of total annoyance, Lye sighed and shifted his weight to one side, saying, “Oh alright,” then adding, “but don’t even think about using your obnoxious ‘Ever Ben Coy’ catchphrase again…so overused.”

  “Dang,” Coy mumbled to himself. Then, coming up with an alternative, he cleared his throat. Then he cleared his throat again. And again.

  “Hurry up!” Lye ordered.

  Mr. Coy swallowed and started to sing a familiar song, whose opening sentence was most appropriate, given the situation: “Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light…”

  “Enough!” Lye cried. “Open fire!”

  But the American anthem’s first line had bought them just enough time. The sun had risen, bathing the site in light. Coy and Cooper vanished, right before an onslaught of explosives rained down on the arched rock, blowing it to bits.

  Lye raised his gnarled hand to halt the attack. When the dust and smoke cleared, he hurried to inspect the scene but found no remains of the bandits.

  “Impossible!” he marveled.

  Just then, the driver of the jeep interjected, “My lord,” eager to share some news.

  “Yes?” Lye hissed, understandably peeved. “What is it?”

  “I’ve just received word of some unusual activity at Stonehenge,” the driver reported, his cell phone still in hand. “Three individuals were seen trespassing there just hours ago. An eyewitness claims they disappeared out of thin air. Our undercover agent there has reviewed the surveillance video and identified them as Coy, his daughter, and the Cooper girl.”

  Lye’s ugly eyes began to widen. His focus returned to the spot where Coy and Cooper had been standing—in a rock…an archway…which had looked a lot like…“No! A trilithon!” He had been unaware of its existence on his island. This was not the first time he had witnessed someone travel by trilithon.

  “Well played, Neo,” Lye growled. “Now it’s my turn.”

  CHAPTER 13

  THE NEOLITHIC TRAVELER

  Nika purposely went the long way on the trek back to town from the trilithon site. She had been pleasantly surprised when Ret chose not to return aboveground, hoping his decision had something to do with an interest in her. So she walked extra slow and utilized the time to ask Ret questions—you know, the personal kind.

  But Ret had a few of his own questions to ask—the scientific kind.

  “Why does everything here look so different?” he wondered of Nika, striding up to a tree when they stopped to rest.

  “I think everything looks fine the way it is,” Nika proudly replied.

  “I mean, so do I, of course,” Ret said apologetically. “I’m just wondering why it looks the way it does.”

  “Well, why do you look the way you do?” Nika returned.

  That gave Ret an idea. He already knew why he looked different: the medical tests that he underwent when the Coopers first found him revealed he had a few more elements in his system than the normal human being—a finding that would be confirmed a few years later when Lye told Ret he had uranium in his blood. Ret thought perhaps the living things in this subterranean world looked different for a similar reason.

  Ret held out his arm. He focused on the waves of light that were bouncing off his skin and then manipulated them as a microscope would, allowing him to zoom in on some of his cells. As he watched them, he noticed the presence of foreign substances that were causing the cells to behave in an unnatural way—the culprit of his unnatural appearance. Then he examined a portion of the tree’s bark and observed a similar situation among its own cells. Could it be that this land had also been infiltrated by some kind of strange material?

  “Things didn’t always look like this,” Nika said, appearing at Ret’s side and slowly leaning towards him until their shoulders touched. “That’s what I’ve been told, anyway. The elders in the village say their predecessors spoke of a season when everything started to change but never changed back.” She caringly put her palm on the tree trunk. “It bothers them, but us of the younger generations? Not so much. We don’t know any different—really, we don’t know different.”

  “What do you mean?” Ret queried.

  “Everyone is different, Ret,” Nika said, holding his hand as they stood side by side. “Even back in the world where we came from, everyone is different from each other—some more than others, some less. Differences are largely shunned there; most people try to hide them in order to ‘fit in’ and be ‘normal.’ The truth is, being different is normal. We understand this here, and we still love each other—usually for our differences, sometimes because of them, and occasionally in spite of them. Some differences we can change and should; others we can’t and shouldn’t. Sometimes our differences are for us; sometimes they’re for others. In the end, differences can either tear us apart or bind us together. Here, we choose to love.”

  “Me, too,” Ret told her. Nika turned and stared at Ret longingly with her big, searching eyes. After a few seconds, he began to feel uncomfortable. “Well, that was a nice break,” he said nervously. “We’d better be on our way.” He paced away. Nika smiled.

  As the day wore on, Nika probed deeper and deeper with her questions. Whenever the conversation was becoming a little too serious, Ret tried to change the subject.

  “So…you never told me the source of your light down here,” he reminded her.

  Without an answer to give him, Nika said playfully, “You know what, Mr. Scientist? How about you tell me?”

  “Okay,” Ret shrugged. He shut his eyes tightly and turned to face the light source, then switched his sight into energy mode and did something he never would have done with his natural vision: opened his eyes and stared directly into the bright light. This time bending the beams of light like a telescope, Ret followed the rays to their origin.

  “Looks like the source is a large deposit of molten rock,” Ret spoke while staring.

  “What?” Nika gasped.

  “Apparently, this land is a giant air pocket in the earth’s crust,” Ret spoke his observations. “We live at the top—upside-down, which makes sense since the rock, though at the bottom, appears to be above us. So I’m willing to bet that during the day, when this part of the earth is facing the real sun, the rock heats up, causing it to shine very brightly. Then at night, the rock cools but is still hot enough to give off a gleam like the real moon. I even see smaller deposits, which explains why there are ‘stars’ here.”

  “Wow,” Nika said with a flirtatious wink. “I’m impressed—very impressed.” Ret blushed and quickened his pace.

  The more that Ret played hard to get (as Nika assumed he was doing), the more she was attracted to him. But, unfortunately for her, the more time Ret spent with Nika, the more he thought of someone else: Paige. The two women were strangely similar, as Ret observed—partly in appearance but mostly in deportment: height and hair, eye color and skin tone, even the same sense of humor and penchant for deep discussion—to say nothing of each girl’s infatuation with Ret. In fact, he had mentally mistaken Nika for Paige a few times already. And yet, despite their uncanny commonalities, one big difference overshadowed them all: simply put, Nika was not Paige. It was Paige who had always accompanied Ret on his adventures; Paige who had helped Ret collect the wind element. And so without her, something was missing. There was a void that no one else could quite fill. Yes, no matter how closely a replica, Nika could never and would never replace Paige.

  With that in mind, Ret was not sure how to navigate his acquaintanceship with the amative Topramenov heiress. If this was going to be his home from now on, did that
mean he would never see Paige again, making Nika the most likely runner-up? He knew Nika’s feelings were fragile, and he didn’t want to come off as insincere, but was he only drawn to her because she reminded him of Paige? It was all so confusing.

  By the time they made it back to town, Ret was physically exhausted and mentally overwhelmed. Hiking to and from the trilithon on zero hours of sleep was one thing. Then add to that the lingering guilt for judging the townsfolk, the uncertainty of taking up residence in this mutant municipality, the stress of trying to rewire his brain to first accept people instead of critique them, the pressure to befriend Nika without giving her the wrong impression…not to mention a constant numbing sensation coming from the palm of his right hand.

  * * * * *

  “Wakey, wakey!” Nika sang the next morning as she barged into the barn where Ret had spent the night. “Time to get up, sleepyhead!” She knelt down at this side and picked bits of hay out of his hair as he rubbed his eyes back into consciousness. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Starved,” Ret said.

  “Perfect!” Nika cheered. “Then let’s go!”

  Nika led Ret to a quaint little diner in the town square where they enjoyed brunch together. Apparently, word had spread overnight of Ret’s decision to stick around, earning him a gracious “Welcome!” every few minutes, much to Nika’s satisfaction. She was very proud of Ret’s friendship, which she hoped was blossoming into something more.

  “I’ll meet you back here in a little bit,” Nika told Ret as they returned to the square after their meal. “I told Ms. Montgomery I’d help weed her garden this afternoon. If you need anything, just let someone know.”

  “Okay,” Ret replied.

  “Don’t get in too much trouble while I’m gone, handsome!” Nika called back as she hurried away, then blew Ret a kiss.

  Ret stood in the square for several moments, unsure if he should catch the kiss or what. A man walked by, pulling two horses, and said, “Welcome.” A pair of girls were seen carrying a batch of eggs; they waved and giggled. A tumbleweed blew by.