Chapters 19 through 22

Chapter Nineteen: Em Butts in on Ramona’s Rescue Attempt

Em had been watching the other girl this whole time, and while he didn’t know what was going on, he thought it would be prudent to ask. So, as Ramona was heading for the door, he called to her, “Where are you going?”

Ramona stopped. In her preparations, she had frankly forgotten that the alien was there. “I’m just going out,” she said, not wanting to lose time by trying to explain what she was up to.

Em didn’t buy it. But he had a tactic for getting information. “What should I tell Sheila when she comes home?”

“I’m going to see Sheila at the library first, so I’ll just tell her myself,” Ramona told him. She had, in fact, a note all set for Sheila, which told her the location to go to, in case her rescue plan didn’t work out so well. Before the alien could ask any more questions and delay her further, she took her leave of the apartment and started to walk to the library. She was about halfway there when she noticed she was being followed, and by a little kid in a hoodie, no less.

The kid had almost caught up with her when Sheila realized that it wasn’t a kid at all, but the alien, dressed in second-hand clothes. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and noticed that he had covered his face with foundation. It didn’t quite make him look human, but if you weren’t looking closely, you might not think too much of it.

Ramona didn‘t stop walking, nor did she let the alien know she was on to him as she said, “Look, kiddo, I don’t need any company, so just run home to your mom or whatever.”

“Ramona, it’s me!” the alien said. Ramona just rolled her eyes.

“Why are you even here? Shouldn’t your thing be fixed by now?” She wondered how much they could talk about this in public.

“The fuel is all set, but it will take a couple of days for it to be ready for use,” the alien told her, apparently not concerned about anyone overhearing at all.

“Where have I heard that before?” Ramona thought. “Okay, fine, you’re bored. But what I’m doing is probably not something you want to get involved in.”

“Why not?” Em asked. For being so much smaller than she was, Ramona noted, he was certainly keeping up with her pretty well.

“Well, for one thing, I don’t even know what all is going to happen,” Ramona told him honestly.

“Then you might need help,” the alien told her.

Ramona rolled her eyes again. “Do you really have nothing better to do?”

“Not right now, no,” the alien replied.

By that time they were at the library. “Look, just stay out here and try to be inconspicuous, okay? I’ll be right out.” She wasn’t sure why she added that last part, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

Inside the library, it was pretty busy, but Ramona spotted Sheila right away. She was at the end of the circulation desk closest to the door, a good sign in Ramona’s opinion. Just then, Sheila looked up and saw Ramona. “Hey there,” she said quietly (it was a library, after all).

Ramona went right up to the desk, “Hey, I need the car again, is that okay?”

Sheila frowned. “What’s the weather like?”

“It’s nice, everything’s melting,” Ramona assured her.

“Well, sure, then. I mean, it’s your car,” Sheila replied.

“Great,” Ramona said, then took the note she had written earlier out of her pocket. “Look, if I’m not back at the apartment by, like, ten o’clock or so, follow the instructions here. But don’t bother reading it until then, okay?”

“Okay…” Sheila told her, but she didn’t look too sure about it.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be back before then,” Ramona told her. And she left before Sheila could say anything more.

She quickly picked out her car among the others in the parking lot, and made her way over to it, clicking the ‘unlock’ button her keys. In her haste, she completely forgot about her alien tag-along, and was thus extremely shocked when he burst past her and into the car as soon as she opened the driver side door.

“Now wait just a minute,” she started, still holding the door, but then thought better of it, and climbed inside herself. She placed her bag on the back seat, then sat down and buckled up instinctively, even though she wasn’t planning on driving until she got the alien out and back on his way to the apartment. “Look, I don’t care how bored you are, or whatever your motivation here, you’re not coming along. I can drop you off back at the apartment, or you can walk, it’s your choice.”

“But what if something happens to you?” the alien asked her. He set himself up in the passenger side seat and was even buckled in, making Ramona wonder if Sheila had driven him someplace before or if he had just picked it up from watching too much TV.

“That’s not your concern,” Ramona told him.

“But I am concerned,” Em replied, “And what about Sheila? What’ll she say?”

For a moment, Ramona remembered the concerned look on Sheila’s face. But she simply told the alien, “Sheila and I are roommates first and anything else to each other second. And besides, I suppose you think your coming along will be oh so helpful to me, right? Well, who’s to say you’re not going to slow me down even more than you already have?”

“But what if I can help?” Em said. He was determined not to let Ramona go on his own, even though he knew she didn’t like him very much. “And aren’t we losing valuable time just sitting here arguing like this?”

That was a very good point, Ramona had to concede. “Fine, but only because it’s going to take long enough to get there, and I don’t want to waste any more time. So just stay quiet.” She pulled out her GPS and put in the coordinates she had gotten from the internet and started on the drive to (she hoped) Conway’s location.

The actual location was not accessible by road, as Ramona learned when she reached a large field a good distance from any town. She was rather surprised to find such a place still existed, but had a suspicion that the speck in the distance, which her GPS told her was where she needed to go, had something to do with it. She pulled her car up on the grass and continued to drive, though it was slower than going on a paved, or even a plain dirt road. But finally the reached the speck, which turned out to be a large, rectangular building. It had the appearance of having windows and doors, without actually having anything of the kind.

Ramona parked her car a little ways away from the building. “Looks like this is the place,” she said to the alien, and unbuckled her seat belt. Em followed suit. She took her bag from the back and quickly double checked its contents. Then she got out of the car and waited for the alien to do the same before she clicked the ‘lock’ button on her keys. She stood in front of the building, wondering once again just what it was that Conway was involved in. And just what was this building, anyway? Who builds a huge building out in the middle of nowhere? There weren’t even any trees for miles, what was up with that?

As the questions swirled in her head without finding answers, she turned to the alien. “Come on,” she said, “Let’s find a way in.”

Chapter Twenty: A Daring Rescue is Harder Than it Looks

The main problem with trying to find an entrance on the large, rectangular building was that there appeared to be a number of them, but each one turned out to be a fake. Ramona and Em circled the building countless times (at least, Ramona didn’t bother counting), but to no avail.

“There has to be a way in,” Ramona said, mostly thinking out loud, though Em took it as her talking to him, “Because Conway (or just his phone) is in there.” While Ramona started around the building again, Em just stood, staring at it.

“Wait,” he called to Ramona, right before she turned a corner. “What if this is just a front?”

“Hm?” Ramona stopped, “I thought this was the back.”

“No, I mean, this building is so big and so obvious. Too obvious, right?”

“Right…” Ramona was starting to get what he was getting at. “So the real… whatever this building is for… must not actually be here at all?” It had made sense before she started saying it, but once she voiced her idea, it didn’t sound right. “But Conway (or just his phone) has to be in there somewhere,” she told the alien, but she checked her GPS again just in case. Sure enough, it still pointed to the building as the location of Conway or just his phone.

“Okay, but what if there’s an entrance into the building, only it’s not part of the actual building?”

“Like in Fallout 3?” Ramona asked.

“I was thinking more like in The Matrix,” Em replied.

“Just how much TV have you been watching?” Ramona asked, looking at him askance.

Em just shrugged, and started to search the ground for a clue of some sort. Ramona soon joined him, and together they found a patch of ground that looked like it had been disturbed recently, mostly likely (Ramona thought) by Conway. Ramona pulled at it, and the a piece of the ground came up, just like a carpet, revealing a hidden door underneath. “Whoa…” Ramona said quietly. The locks had also been tampered with already, so they were able to open it without any trouble. Inside the door was a staircase, followed by a long corridor. Ramona and Em entered the hidden entrance, but once the door was closed, they were surrounded by darkness. Ramona fished around in her bag and pulled out a flashlight. It was a small one, though, and so it cast light on only a small portion of the stairs and corridor at a time.

“This is really creepy,” Ramona commented. Em nodded, but she didn’t see him because he was in the dark part of the corridor not illuminated by the flashlight. They stayed close to each other as they made their way through the corridor and to another staircase. At the top of the staircase was a door, and inside that door, they entered the building itself, or so Ramona assumed.

She was surprised at how much like a high school hallway it seemed, minus the lockers. But in the darkness, the hallway took on a sinister tone, and so Ramona sang softly to bolster herself (and by extension, the alien). “Super trooper lights are gonna find me, so I won’t feel blue, like I always do, ‘cause somewhere in the crowd there’s you.” Em didn’t question her singing, since he assumed she was doing that to make it easier for them to stay together.

As he and Ramona walked through, she followed the instructions of her GPS, which lead her deeper and deeper into the building. They passed various doors and windows, covered with blinds, keep the contents of the rooms a secret. The two would-be rescuers came at last to the end of the hallway. “Conway should be on the other side of this…” Ramona swept the flashlight across what looked like a dead end. “door? Ugh, not again.”

Em started to poke and prod at the walls, based on their previous experience with the hidden entrance. But Ramona swept over the end of the hall again, where there should have been a door of some sort. It almost looked like the end itself didn’t match up with the walls next to it, and sure enough, she found a kind of slot in the side of the wall. It was just about the size of a credit card, so she took her wallet from her tote bag and pulled out her CDH card from work. To her surprise, the wall at the end of the hall started to move to the side. “I can’t believe that worked,” she commented out loud.

“Me either,” Em added, and the two of them went through the space the wall left behind.

Suddenly they weren’t in a high school any more. The room they had entered was cold and metallic, lit by lights lining the edges of the ceiling. It wasn’t much light, but it was more than the light Ramona’s flashlight gave off. She flicked it off and stowed it back in her bag. The room was also much bigger than the hallway they had come from. “What is this place?” Ramona wondered aloud. There didn’t appear to be anything in it, but Ramona knew that Conway should be there. “Let’s keep moving,” she told Em, and they went across the room to an entryway. The next room was much more interesting, as there was some kind of strange machinery set up in the center. “What in the world?”

The machine looked almost like a very large crockpot set up on a pedestal made of computery interfaces, covered with buttons and touchpads and blinking lights. Wires were coming out of the top of the crockpot, and the whole room hummed with the sound of processes being processed. What it was meant to do, Ramona couldn’t even guess.

But Em had an idea. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Probably not,” Ramona said. “Do they even have crockpots where you come from?”

Before Em could reply, they heard a male voice. “Hello? Is someone out there?”

Ramona didn’t recognize the voice, and she couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, either. “Who’s said that? Where are you?” And then, before the voice could reply, she added, “Is someone named Conway Rivers with you?”

“Ramona?!” Conway’s voice suddenly came out very clear, “What are you doing here?”

“Conway!“ Ramona’s spirits lifted, until what he had actually said sank in. “What am I-? What are you doing here?” she asked right back, “What is going on here? What is this place?”

“Those are all legitimate questions,” another voice, a female voice, said, “But first, it’s imperative that you help us get out of here before… well, just as soon as possible.”

“We’ll do our best,” Ramona replied, hoping that she would actually be able to help. Though she had high hopes at the start (or rather, the bravura that comes from not knowing what’s up ahead), the further in she got, the less sure she was of what she was doing.

“Um, how many of you are there, out of curiosity?” the first voice asked.

“Just me and the- er, I mean, a friend,” Ramona replied. She had assumed that Conway and the voices could see her, but this didn’t seem to be the case. “Where are you guys, anyway?”

“We’re just a couple of rooms away,” the first voice told her. “But we’re being held in cells with digital locks and-”

“Digital locks?” Ramona asked, slightly incredulous. Her mental image was one of her digital kitchen timer set in an old-fashioned jail cell’s door.

“Well, it’s more complicated than that,” the first voice continued, “But the jist of it is, we need you to disable the locks so we can escape.”

“Are the locks related to this weird crockpot thing?” Ramona asked. Em was already circling the computerized pedestal, watching it for any information it might give them.

There was silence for a few minutes, and Ramona was starting to wonder whether or not anyone was going to answer her. But then the first voice spoke again. “The master computer is in a room off of the adjacent room. All you have to do is log on and unlock the cells. Once we‘re free, we‘ll meet you in there.”

“Okay,” Ramona said. She and Em walked around the crockpot pedestaled thing and went through the door on the other side of the room. The next room was not nearly as big as the previous room, but it was still bigger than the high school hallway they had walk through earlier. It was lined with rows of doors, so Ramona just tried opening the first one. The door opened, to her surprise, but there appeared to be nothing but dodgeballs in the room.

“Not this one,” Em commented.

“Right,” Ramona agreed, shutting the door again. She was rather surprised that none of the doors were locked, as she tried room after room. At last she opened a door and saw a wall made entirely of TV screens, like a room for watching security cameras. She realized that was probably exactly what it was. She was about to close the door again when she saw a desk in front of the televisions with a keyboard and mouse on it. “This must be the place,” she said, and sat down at the desk. She moved the mouse and all the screens sprang to life, showing the log-in screen from Windows Vista. That was when it hit her that she didn’t know the password and thus couldn’t log on. She was about to go back to the other room when she had a thought. “Conway, guys? Can you hear me in here?” There wasn’t any answer.

“What’s wrong?” Em asked. He had been letting Ramona call the shots, but was getting tired of her nonexpositional style.

“I can’t log on without a password, so I’m going to go back and ask them what I should do,” she told him as she got up from the desk.

“You could try swordfish,” Em suggested.

“Yeah, yeah, the password is always swordfish,” Ramona groaned, but she gave it a try. It didn’t work. But then she tried “not_swordfish.” Which worked. “Ugh, I can’t believe it!” she groaned again. As she waited for the computer to finish logging in, she wondered, yet again, what was going on. What was this place? What kind of dork built a place like this and captured people and made his password something as lame as “not_swordfish?”

The computer’s desktop showed up, and a number of processes and programs began to load automatically. Ramona and Em watched for one that looked like it would open electronic cells. When one opened called “System Security Standby,” Ramona had a hunch that that was the one she needed. Fiddling around with the menu options, she was able to bring up a page on locks, and fortunately for her, only one was for “holding cells.” “All right, here we go,” she said, and hit the “unlock” button on the screen. A window popped up suddenly asking for confirmation. “Yes, yes, confirm already,” she grumbled, as she often did at her own computer, and hit the “yes” button. Somewhere in the building there was a quiet kind of click, or perhaps it was just Ramona’s own wishful thinking.

“And now we wait,” Em said.

“This is all too weird,” Ramona commented, “There’d better be a pretty good explanation for all of this. And I do mean all.” She made a fist and shook it in a slightly threatening manner, though not at the alien. Just in general.

Before too long they heard voices coming toward them, the same ones they had heard before. As the voices got closer, Ramona and Em could make out what was being said.

“What do you think?”

“No, that sounds good.”

“There really isn’t an alternative.”

“Should we really, you know…” That was Conway. Ramona was tempted to just go out and see him, but waited to hear more of what the others were talking about.

“Well, we have to tell her something,” the first voice said.

“We’re already here,” the female voice pointed out, “You’d better go in first, Conway.”

Ramona swiveled the desk chair around to face the door, and the moment that she saw the slightest hint of Conway, she was up and out of her seat. Despite all her misgivings about what was going on and her own part in it, the original driving force behind her being there was still going strong: the desire to see Conway safe and sound. And while they were no doubt not out of the woods by a long shot, just seeing him was enough to reassure her. She practically launched herself at him and held him tight, just to prove that it was indeed him.

“Oh, Conway, you’re all right!” she gasped. Conway returned her embrace, and, overwhelmed with relief from the thought that he spent the majority of the afternoon feeling, that he might never see her again, he brought her lips to his.

While Ramona and Conway were making out, Em took it upon himself to find out who the owners of the other two voices were. Standing a short distance away, watching Ramona and Conway with nearly identical bemused expressions were a man and a woman. The man was rather lanky, with chestnut brown hair that defied taming. The woman, on the other hand, had her blonde hair held back in a ponytail. She wore a pair of square-framed glasses. Since they were distracted, Em sidled up to them and positioned himself so that he was facing the same direction they were, hoping this would help keep his cover, though he doubted he could keep it for that long, if what he thought was happening was really happening.

“So, that thing out there,” Em said, as a way to break the ice, and hopefully also get the information he wanted.

“Hm?” The man and woman looked down.

“Oh, you must be the ‘friend’ she mentioned,” the woman said.

“Yes,” Em said simply. “By the way, what is a crockpot?”

The woman was spared answering by the end of Conway and Ramona’s kiss. As the two pulled apart, looking at each other lovingly, Ramona once again asked, “All right, now what exactly is going on here?”

“Well, it’s kind of complicated,” Conway told her, “So, uh, first, this is my friend Steve Lininger,” he gestured to the man, who waved to her.

“Hey,” Steve said.

“Uh, hi,” Ramona said back.

“And I’m Marissa Bryant,” the woman said, coming over to shake Ramona’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you at long last, Ramona.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too, um, for the first time,” Ramona said, a little taken aback, especially by Marissa’s last words. “At long last?”

Steve snirked. “Oh, just this guy,” he indicated Conway, “spent the whole time we were captured too busy moaning about how he was never going to see you again to do anything useful.”

Conway and Ramona both flushed a little. Conway coughed to cover it, and said, “Well, you know…” but Ramona gave him another hug, then was rapidly back to business.

“As nice as it is to meet you two,” Ramona said, “I think I deserve some answers here.”

“Well, which question do you want answered first?” Steve asked.

Before Ramona could tell him, Marissa cut in, “You can get your answers later,” she told Ramona, “but first, we have to finish what we came here to do.” She sat down at the computer desk and pulled up a program. Steve and Conway joined her at the desk, watching as she typed away.

“Which is?” Ramona asked, also joining them at the desk. “Does it have to do with the crockpot?”

“It’s not a crockpot,” Steve told her, “It’s a weather controlling device.”

“That’s why it snowed yesterday,” Conway added.

“Not just the snow,” Steve said, “But the weather for the past month has all been directly due to that weather device.”

“I knew it!” Em exclaimed, and everyone turned to look at him. He quickly looked away.

“Ah, this is Em, he’s a friend of my roommate,” Ramona explained straight off, “and he wouldn’t let me go without him, but he was helpful a couple of times, so I guess that’s okay.”

“Thanks,” Em told her.

“Got it,” Marissa said abruptly. “Steve, the flash drive.” She held out her hand.

“Right, right, it’s here,” Steve said, digging in his pants pocket. “Got it!” He handed her the stick, and Marissa placed it in a slot in the wall. An Autoplay window appeared on the computer screen, and Marissa chose the autorun.exe function. A progress window appeared on the screen.

“Once the kill code is fully downloaded, the weather controller will be out of commission for good,” Marissa said.

“While I’m all for people not playing god,” Ramona said, “is this all really necessary? I mean, the weather was being controlled for a month, right? But except for the past week, I hadn’t noticed at all. And I bet a lot of people didn’t even notice until at least yesterday.”

“It was a gradual process,” Steve explained, “A test here and there. But then he got too bold. If Marissa hadn’t been tracking…” Steve trailed off when Marissa glared at him.

“This isn’t the place,” she told him. “Besides, we need to get out of here before he gets back. The file will start running on its own, and I’ve locked the screen to keep him from tampering with it in case he gets back before it finishes.”

Ramona wondered just who this ‘he’ person was, but waited to ask later.

“Marissa’s right,” Conway said, his eyes on Ramona, “We need to get out of here while we still can.”

Marissa rolled her eyes, and got up from the desk. The five of them left the room with the computers and walked past all the doors. When they entered the room with the weather controller, Ramona asked, “Wouldn’t it be better to destroy the actual machine?”

“Already tried that,” Steve replied, “He just rebuilt it, so this time we’re nerfing his system.” But as they passed, he kicked the pedestal, for good measure.

Chapter Twenty One: The Answers to Ramona’s Questions Revealed, Kind Of

Back in the high school-like hallways, Ramona pulled out her small flashlight again. Marissa and Steve also pulled out flashlights, giving them more light than the last time she went through here.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Ramona said as they made their way along, “But who exactly is the guy who did all this?” She wanted to ask more questions than just that, but figured she’d better start small, as her other attempts at asking more than one question at a time had yet to yield any actual answers.

Marissa and Steve looked at each other. “It might be better if you didn’t know that just yet,” Steve said. “Just know that it’s not anyone you know, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“Actually that hadn’t occurred to me,” Ramona said honestly. As far as she knew, she didn’t know anyone capable of creating a working weather controller, or even anyone who would think of making something like that. Not that she knew of, anyway. “Can you at least tell me why did he used a high school for his base?”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that, too,” Conway added.

“Not a clue,” Steve replied.

“Maybe to throw people off the trail?” Marissa suggested.

“Maybe,” Steve agreed.

All of a sudden, the lights came on in the hallway. Ramona and the others blinked in the sudden brightness, before noticing a man standing in the entrance to the stairway.

“Well, well,” the man said. He struck Ramona as looking an awful lot like Nikola Tesla, as played by David Bowie in The Prestige. “So you had another ace up your sleeve after all, Steve Lininger.” But he was smiling as he said it, a smile that sent chills up Ramona’s spine.

“It’s too late, Harloch,” Marissa said, “The Kill Code is uploading as we speak.”

“Did you really think I would make it so easy?” Harloch said, and then he pushed a button on the wall. The doors in the hallway suddenly opened, revealing some very basic looking robots.

“What the?” Before Ramona could so much as speak, the robots had latched onto all of them. Harloch pressed another button and Ramona felt her brain go all fuzzy, and then everything went black.

When she came to, she was sitting in a nondescript room. The carpeting was beige and the walls were off-white. There wasn’t any furniture, which left plenty of room for herself and the others. There didn’t appear to be any door, but she was getting used to that by now. As she looked around the room, she saw that Conway was already awake, though the others were still asleep.

“Ramona, I’m so sorry,” Conway told her when he saw she was awake. “I never should have got you involved in this.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ramona told him, “I mean, I came on my own accord, even though I had no idea what I was getting into.” Now that she said it, and thought about it in hindsight, it did seem like a pretty stupid plan. But she had been in the throws of adrenaline at the time, and too worried about what might have happened to think clearly.

The others began to rouse. “Where are we?” Em asked.

“The holding cells,” Steve replied.

“Ugh, not again,” Marissa groaned.

Ramona hadn‘t noticed, though, and continued to reassure Conway. “In fact, I probably wouldn’t have known you were involved with anything if I hadn’t called you right then, so really,

“Yeah, dumbass,” Marissa commented, “that’s the whole reason we got captured in the first place.”

“Huh?” Ramona looked over at where Marissa was sitting.

“Because of your stupid call, and the fact that he wouldn’t just let it go to voice mail,” she went on, glaring at both Ramona and Conway at once, “Harloch got wind of our position.”

“No, I think he always knew we were there,” Steve said, “I don’t know why, but he treats this like a game. Just like how he let us get ‘rescued.’”

“It did all seem awfully easy,” Ramona commented. She was starting to put the pieces together, although they were still pretty vague pieces.

“But what about the Kill Code?” Marissa asked, “Surely that did something?”

“We can hope,” Steve said, “But I’m really not that optimistic right now.”

“Well, since we seem to be stuck here for the time being, how about finally telling me what exactly is going on here?” Ramona suggested.

“We really should focus on getting out of here,” Marissa said, standing up. But no one else got up.

“Like we were doing earlier?” Steve said, “And the only thing we found was that intercom?”

“So now we know what not to do,” Marissa said, “And we can keep trying.”

Ramona sighed, wondering when she was going to get the answers she so desperately wanted. She needn’t have wondered.

“Marissa, Ramona deserves to know why we’re here,” Conway said, looking more serious than Ramona was used to seeing him.

Marissa glared at him, “Don’t you talk to me about who deserves what. You’re most of the reason we’re stuck in here.”

“No, I was the one who called-” Ramona began, but Marissa cut her off.

“It’s not about the phonecall! This jerk wasn’t even supposed to be here at all!”

“That’s enough, Marissa,” Steve told her, “We’re never going to get out of here if you don’t calm down.”

But Marissa was too wound up and continued on her diatribe. “This was supposed to be a special mission for Steve and me, and this guy just decides to butt in because Steve spilled the beans!”

“Mission? Like secret agents?” Ramona asked, unable to hide the awe in her voice, but completely missing Conway’s audible “Hey…” to Marissa.

“Exactly like secret agents,” Marissa said.

“Not really,” Steve and Conway both said at the same time. Marissa glared at them.

“It’s not like we work for some secret agency or anything,” Steve explained.

“Saaam,” Marissa whined, but he continued on regardless.

“A couple of weeks ago Marissa noticed these anomalies in the weather, so we did some research and… well, long story short, we found out about this place and Harloch. So we put together a plan to put a stop to his nefarious scheme.”

“What nefarious scheme?” Ramona asked.

“It has something to do with extorting money from governments, I think,” Conway chipped in.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve continued, “Anyway, we put together a plan to get in here and shut down his system for good-”

“Wait, so this is the first time you’ve been here?” Em interrupted.

“Yeah,” Steve replied, “What about it?”

“Well, you made it sound like you’ve been here before when you were talking earlier,” Em pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Ramona added. “So how’d you know you needed a kill code to take that guy out?”

“By finding out what others have already done, and building off of that, of course,” Marissa told them. “We were on our way out here when Steve just had to have lunch at the Chicken Shack before we left, and that’s where-”

“For the last time, it’s not called the Chicken Shack!” Conway said, getting exasperated.

“Oh, like Wings ‘n’ Things is a less lame name?”

“That’s where Conway works,” Ramona explained to Em while Conway and Marissa bickered.

Steve jumped in, “Anyway, I ended up telling Conway about our mission, and he wanted to come along-”

“And like a dumbass he agreed,” Marissa finished. Steve pulled her aside to a corner of the room.

“Marissa, we’ve been over this already, he’s my friend, and he means well,” he told her quietly.

“Yeah, well, he’s been nothing but The Load this whole entire mission,” Marissa retorted, “And I for one and sick and tired of this whole thing getting more complicated than it needs to be.”

“I really think we need to face the facts,” Steve said, “There was no way this was going to work out for us…”

While the two of them talked privately, Ramona, Conway and Em waited. Finally, Ramona whispered to Conway, “Do you think they know we can hear them?”

“I don’t think so,” Conway whispered back. “I’m really sorry about all this,” he said again.

“Well, I’d be lying if I said this was no big deal, but,” she wasn’t sure where she was going to go with that phrase, so she changed the subject. “So, you know that guy Steve?”

“Yeah, we went to high school together,” Conway said, “Plus he comes to the restaurant all the time.”

“Really? He sure doesn’t look it,” Ramona commented, “Guy’s a total noodle.”

“Yeah, I know,” Conway said, a bit derisively.

“Uh, guys, we can totally hear you over here,” Steve said.

“Well, we were just trying to cover up what you guys where saying,” Ramona said, “’Cause we could totally hear you two over there.”

“You don’t have to be obnoxious about it,” Marissa said, glaring at Ramona. Ramona was getting sick of this girl and her glares.

“You want obnoxious?” she said, then called at Steve, “Noodle!”

Marissa called back, but at Conway, “Load!” The two girls glared daggers at each other, waiting for the other to make a verbal move.

“What’s that even mean?” Conway asked Steve.

Steve shrugged, “It’s from some website or something.”

It was at that exact point that there was a sudden rumble, and then a perfectly circular piece of the wall fell out and onto the floor.

“What in the what?” Ramona and Marissa said at the same time, breaking their staring contest to see what had just happened. All five of them went to examine the hole, which had become a makeshift window, showing the starry sky. Immediately outside was a large cherry picker with a middle-aged man wearing a suit standing inside it.

“Don’t just stand there, get inside,” he told them, and they were quick to comply. As the cherry picker lowered them to the ground, the man reprimanded the five of them. “I know you kids want to help,” the man said, “But you really need to leave this kind of thing to the professionals who are, might I add, already on the case.”

“Don’t worry, sir, we’ve learned our lesson,” Steve answered, and the others nodded in the background. When being rescued against the odds, it was best not to ask questions.

Once they were back on the ground, the man turned to leave, but then turned back to them. “I take it you can make your own way back?”

“Yeah, we parked about a mile down the road,” Steve said.

“And my car’s right over there,” Ramona added, pointing to the other side of the building.

“All right,” the man said, “But remember what I said. It doesn’t help anyone when the public try to take matters into their own hands.” And then he just walked off.

“Well, I guess we should head back home,” Steve said. “It was great to meet you, Ramona, although I wish it had been under better circumstances.”

“Yeah, same here,” Ramona said, giving a little wave.

“You coming with us, Conway?” Steve asked.

“You’re more than welcome to ride back with me,” Ramona pointed out.

“Yeah, I’m going back with Ramona,” Conway told the other two.

“That’s cool,” Steve said, “Catch you later, ‘k?”

“See ya,” Marissa said, and she and Steve started walking in the opposite direction of that the man was going.

“Huh,” Em said, “That was very strange.”

“It was,” Ramona agreed. But it was over now, and she was more than ready to go home. “Come on,” she said to both Conway and Em, and they walked around the building to her where she had parked her car. To all of their surprise, Sheila was standing by it, holding Ramona’s tote bag.

Chapter Twenty Two: In Which I am Party to a Rescue

Ramona had told me not to worry until ten o’clock, but obviously with instructions like that, how could I not worry? I kept the note she had given me in my pocket and waited for an opportune time to sneak a peek at it, which unfortunately for me did not come until my shift was over anyway, what with the after school crowds arriving. That kept me plenty busy checking out books, collecting fines, and the like. But the moment I was off the clock, I took Ramona’s note out of my pocket.

The note told me that she had gone to “possibly rescue” someone, and gave me the location she would be at, if she hadn’t come back by the time I was reading the note. This couldn’t be good, I just knew it. I didn’t bother going home, but signed up to use one of the computers to find out where Ramona had gone.

I put the coordinates she had written down into GoogleMaps, but I didn’t recognize the location, so I took it to the reference desk. I didn’t know the librarian on duty very well (she must be one of the ones that usually works in the evening), but her nametag read “Pamela.” “What can you tell me about this location?” I asked her, handing her a print-out of the map.

Pam looked at the map and narrowed her eyes. “Give me a minute,” she replied, and went into the back room. After a moment, she came back out and said to me quietly, “You work here, right?”

“At the circulation desk, yeah,” I replied.

“Okay, come back here,” Pam said, and I followed her into the back. The head reference librarian, Helen Grier, was still at her desk in her office. Once I was in front of the desk, Pam left to go help other patrons.

“You were asking about this location?” Ms. Grier said. I nodded. “Would you mind tell me why you want to know?” There was something in her manner that made me want to tell her, even though I knew I technically didn’t have to. Not to mention my apprehension about what Ramona was up to.”

“Well, you see, a friend of mine left me this note saying she went there to rescue someone, and that sounded like bad news right there, but I don’t really know what is at that location.”

“I see,” Ms. Grier said, looking down at the map. “Your friend may be in some serious trouble.”

“Oh, I knew it,” I said, though not triumphantly as I might have in any other situation. I would much rather have been wrong about my hunch here.

“The less you know about this, the better,” she told me, “But I know someone who might be able to help you. If you could wait outside, please.”

I did as she asked and left her office, shutting the door behind me. While I waited, I couldn’t help wondering just what Ramona had gotten herself into. The less I knew, the better it would be for me? What was up with that? And who would have thought Ramona would have been so reckless as to rush into something like this just like that? I wondered who she could possibly needed to rescue that badly that she would take it upon herself to just go and do it. But the answer hit me almost before I finished thinking of the question: her boyfriend. When I realized that, I was hit by equal measures of two opposite feelings: that Ramona was wasting her time, and that it must be love in this case.

Then I started to think about just what “serious trouble” might mean. Did that go all the way up to death? Would Ramona get hurt? Dismembered? I shivered when I thought of that, and tried to push that out of my mind. But the strange thing about that is the more you try not to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it. At last, Ms. Grier came out of her office.

“He should be here soon,” she told me. I wondered whether I would get an answer if I asked who “he” was, but before I could actually ask, a middle-aged man dressed in a suit walked up to us.

“I understand you need my services?” he said to me.

“That’s right,” Ms. Grier replied for me. Then she said to me, “Mr. Hemmacher will take care of everything. Go with him.”

“Right,” I replied, still feeling a little ill-at-ease from worrying about Ramona, plus all my thoughts of dismemberment. I followed Mr. Hemmacher out of the library, and he lead me to a black van, much like the kind seen in investigative TV shows. He opened the passenger side door for me, and I got in while he went to the driver side and got in. The back of the van was closed off, so I didn’t know what was in the back, and I suddenly began to question what I was doing. Here I was, being just as reckless as Ramona, going off with a man in a suit that I knew nothing about. But I knew Ms. Grier, and while we weren’t best friends or anything, I knew that she wouldn’t send me off to my hypothetical doom.

“Can you really help my friend?” I asked Mr. Hemmacher.

“We will see,” he told me, and started the van.

It took a little under two hours to get to the location on the map, but it felt like longer, especially once we got off the road. During the drive, Mr. Hemmacher occasionally made a comment that didn’t seem to be directed to me, and I noticed he was wearing an earpiece. Everything he said made no sense to me, like he was speaking in code, which was probably deliberate. I was torn between wanting to find out everything about what was going on here: who was Mr. Hemmacher and did he work for some kind of organization that provided the van, what was in the back of the van (I imagined there must be some kind of surveillance equipment back there), and why was that location such bad news? But I also remembered Ms. Grier’s words and thus wanted to keep myself as much in the dark as possible, so that when this whole thing was over and Ramona and I were back at the apartment, I could pretend that this escapade had just been a crazy dream, a flight of fancy I had while bored at work. But there was one thing I was curious about.

“Excuse me, but why do I need to come along?” I asked Mr. Hemmacher about halfway through our trip, “I really don’t think I’ll be of much use.”

“For identification, mostly,” he told me, and that was all he said on the subject. I didn’t ask any more, either, not wanting to dwell on the kind of identification I might be called on to do. Instead, I worried about how long it was taking to get to where we were going. But at last we arrived at our destination, a large, rectangular building in the exact middle of a field. I saw Ramona’s car parked a short distance from the building, and couldn’t help myself from exclaiming, “That’s her car!”

“Mm hmm,” Mr. Hemmacher, “All right, we’re in position.” He turned to me. “Your friend should be all right. Would you like to watch her rescue, or?”

“I, uh, I think I’ll just wait by the car,” I said. And so I got out of the van and watched as Mr. Hemmacher walked to the other side of the building, where there was some kind of heavy equipment doing something. I couldn’t really see from this side, and I figured that it would be better not to know about it. And so I waited, leaning against Ramona’s car and watching what I could see of the machinery do its thing. It was all strangely quiet, so quiet that I almost didn’t notice when a bag suddenly appeared at my feet.

“What the?” I picked up the bag and looked inside. I recognized a few of Ramona’s things inside, and decided it must belong to her. But where had it come from? Did ninjas do it, I wondered vaguely. I wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest to find that this was the case. And why didn’t Ramona have it with her? Although Mr. Hemmacher had said Ramona was (probably) okay, I couldn’t help worrying all over again.

Luck was on my side, as I didn’t have to worry for too much longer. Mr. Hemmacher came over from the other side of the building. He didn’t look any different, still carrying himself in the same serious manner, but he came over and told me, “Mission accomplished. Your friend will be over in just a moment.”

“She’s all right?!” I cried happily. “Oh, thank you so much!”

“You’ll probably want to drive home with her,” Mr. Hemmacher said, and then he drove away. Just a few moments after he was gone, I saw Ramona come around the corner of the building, followed by Conway and, I was quite surprised to see, Em. The three of them stopped when they saw me, but I was too relieved to care. I ran over and hugged Ramona right there.

“I’m so glad you’re safe!” I told her.

“Yeah, me, too,” Ramona said, sounding confused. “But what are you doing here?”

“I had to come for identification purposes,” I explained, then said to Em, “What are you doing here, Em? I thought you-” I stopped when I remembered Conway was there (and I was glad to see that Em was utilizing the disguise clothes I had put together for him).

“I couldn’t let Ramona go alone,” Em told me.

“Identification purposes?” Ramona asked.

“We should probably get going,” Conway pointed out.

“Right, right,” Ramona said, then she turned to me, “Um, my keys are in that bag, so if you could hand it over…”

“Oh, yeah!” I said, and gave her the tote bag.

“I didn’t even realize I didn’t have it with me until I saw you with it,” Ramona said, fishing around in her bag. She pulled out her keys and unlocked the car.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, “Do you want me to drive?”

“Actually, yeah, that would be great,” Ramona said. She tossed the keys to me, and I took them, even though I had my own copy of her car key. “It’s gonna be a long drive.”

There was a little discussion about who should sit where, but no one wanted to stick around any longer, so we were able to settle in quickly. In the end, Ramona and Conway sat in the back, with Em in the front seat. Once we were on the road and driving away, Ramona and Conway both fell asleep in the back seat, so I felt free to pump Em for information. While I had wanted to know as little as possible before, now I at least wanted to know a couple of things.

“So,” I started, not sure how to phrase what I wanted to know, “Was there any… y’know, threat of imminent death going on in that place?”

“Not that I could tell,” Em replied, “But we were placed in a ‘holding cell,’ so we might have been held for death. I don’t really know.”

“Captured?” I kept my voice as even as I could. “By whom?”

“Well, apparently that building is the lair of a villain with a weather controlling device,” Em said.

“Villain? Weather controlling device?” This was sounding like something out of a Mickey Spillane novel.

And so Em told me the whole story (or his version, anyway) of how Ramona had gone to that large, rectangular building with him in tow, made their way in and rescued Conway and his friends far too easily, been confronted by the villain (named Harloch), captured by robots (“Robots?!” I exclaimed. “Yes, robots,” Em replied) and then knocked out and placed in the holding cell. “Which is where we were just rescued from ourselves,” he finished.

“Well I know that part,” I said, and explained what I could of my involvement. “But one thing I don’t get,” I said to Em, “When you guys were in the cell, why didn’t you just take everyone to the extra dimension and get out that way?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Em said, “Besides, I didn’t think of it.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t know you went along with Ramona, otherwise I would have figured that’s what you would do, and wouldn’t have bothered those guys to come out and rescue you.”

It was about at this point that we both realized that Conway was no longer asleep, and was in fact trying to get a better look at Em in the front seat. And then he noticed that we noticed.

“How long have you been listening?” I asked him.

He didn‘t answer my question, but instead said, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but that guy’s not normal, is he?” to me.

“Er, uh,” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. On the one hand, I wasn’t sure if we should bring Conway into the ring of people who know about Em being an alien (not that it was much of a ring, consisting as it did of myself, Ramona, and Em), but on the other hand, my brain wasn’t coming up with that good of an excuse, either.

But Em was more on the ball than I was. “You’re right, I’m not,” he said to Conway.

“Um, Em…” I started, but Em knew what I was about to say.

“Sheila, we’ve just been on an adventure together. Even though we didn’t interact that much, I think that that qualifies him. Besides,” he added wiping off what remained of the foundation on his face, “it’s not like this was the greatest disguise, anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” I conceded. “All right.”

“So what’s up with you?” Conway asked Em directly.

“Well, if you haven’t guessed already, I’m an alien,” Em said proudly, lowering the hoodie’s hood. “And not just the type from a foreign country, either. The type from outer space,” he added.

“Yeah, I was guessing that,” Conway said, “Either that or an esper or time traveler.”

“Esper?” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Isn’t that some kind of snake?”

“No, it’s someone who can use ESP,” Conway explained.

“Oh, I see,” I said, wondering when that term came into vogue, anyway. “Well, now that you know about him, you have to swear to keep it under your hat, capisce?”

“You can count on me,” Conway replied.

“Good,” I said, although I realized that it would all be moot in a few days, since Em was bound to be gone by then.

After that, Conway began to pepper Em with questions about himself, being an alien, and other things. He seemed to understand the answers better than I did, or was better at faking it than I was. Or maybe I was good at faking it, too, and just didn’t know it because I knew that I was faking it. But I didn’t think that was the case.

“This has been a weird couple of days,” Conway commented at one point.

“It’s been a weird week for me,” I said, “A little over a week, in fact.”

“Above five days for me,” Ramona chipped in, having woken up by then.

It was pretty late by the time we got back into town. We dropped Conway off at his apartment building and then drove home ourselves.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed,” I said, once we were back in the apartment. It had been a long enough day, and I swear I was asleep before I hit the sheets.