“Very carefully, I’d say,” Tegan mused, “seeing that it’s closed to the public.”
Aari gently punched her arm, then looked at Josh. “What do we do if we find it?”
“
If
you retrieve it, bring it directly to me,” the scientist said, energy easing back into him at the prospect of holding his old friend’s work after all these years. “I’ll have to test it and design a delivery mechanism so it can be deployed.”
Tegan clapped softly. “Where would we deploy it?”
“That,” Aari said, “is where Jag and the others come in.”
J
ag parked the pickup on the side of a road at a point he presumed to be the center of Ransom, Kansas. Though he knew from additional research that the town was small, it seemed even more so in reality. There were supposedly three hundred residents living in a hundred-and-thirty homes but it was hard to credit even that modest figure from what could be seen in their immediate vicinity. He, Kody and Mariah walked swiftly up and down the streets searching for any site that could possibly house the nanomites.
The town was quiet with only a few homes still showing lights. Mariah jogged ahead of the guys, scanning each house.
Jag looked at his phone. “Nearly midnight,” he told the others.
“Man, it’s really quiet here,” Kody said as they walked past a tired-looking brick building, the town’s hospital.
“Well, yeah. Small town, plus it’s a work day tomorrow. Try to stay out of sight—though I don’t think people usually walk around this late at night here.”
Mariah returned within a few minutes. “I’m not seeing anything that could be a potential base. It’s mostly residential.”
“Let’s check out the other streets, then,” Jag suggested. “Kody, you scanning?”
“I am, but I’m not picking up anything except snoring or television chatter,” Kody said, “and I don’t see anything in the sky.”
“Keep trying.”
They roamed the town, genuinely amazed at how tiny it was—Jag estimated that it only covered seven square blocks—and noticed that most of the streets proudly bore names of states: Kansas, Delaware, Kentucky and Rhode Island.
Surely we’ll be able to pin down the nanomites’ base here,
Jag thought.
“Duck!” Kody hissed. “Someone’s looking out of a window!”
Jag dove behind a bush, Mariah doing the same a few yards away. They remained hidden until they heard Kody signal they were clear to prowl the streets again. Jag checked the time once more and saw that it was a few minutes into the new day. He tilted his head back to look up at the sky, worried.
I hope we didn’t miss them leaving . . .
There was a short whistle from Kody, who was standing at an intersection a block away. Jag and Mariah loped over to him. He pointed into the distance. “Right there,” he said, voice soft. “The whole swarm. I can only just see it. It’s heading away from us.”
“Where did they take off from?” Jag asked, straining to get a sight of the nanomites.
“I’m not sure. I was just scanning the sky and I saw them already in flight. It looks like they may have emerged somewhere from the east side of town. Or it might have been south.”
“Shoot,” Mariah spat. “Do you still see it?”
“It’s kind of floating in and out of my—ah, nope. There it goes. Lost it.”
“That’s fine,” Jag said. “They’ll return here.”
Kody scowled. “Hopefully. What now?”
“Let’s think. The crop failure began not too long ago. If these nanomites are being launched from locations all across the country, they would need secure bases, places where no one can find them. Why would they use a small town with mostly residential buildings? No family in their right mind would willingly let their home be used.”
“It would be easier to just rent or buy a house and set up the base there,” Mariah said.
Jag snapped around and grabbed her arms, shaking her. “Yes! Exactly! Come on, let’s get back to the truck—we need to call Aari.” He turned and ran through the streets to his grandfather’s pickup, not waiting for the others to get inside before dialing Aari’s number.
Aari’s voice came on the other end. “Jag, I was just about to call you! Are Mariah and Kody with you?”
“Yeah,” Jag answered. “You’re on speaker, by the way. We can all hear you.”
“Great. So this is a long story but the short version is that we think there may be a way to stop the nanomites.”
The pickup truck resonated with cheers before Mariah shushed them and looked out of the window to make sure no one had heard them.
“One small detail about the material we’ll need to stop them, though. It’s inside an old airplane. And the plane’s at the bottom of a lake. In Nevada.”
There was dead silence after that, then Kody shrugged and said, “Frankly, I think we’ve dealt with worse.”
“That’s true,” Jag agreed. “What’s the plan?”
“Marshall, Tegan and I will drive to Nevada to retrieve the anti-nanomite from the lake. We’ve already picked up the diving gear. I’m actually really excited about it.”
“I’ll bet you are. You can finally put that diver certification of yours to good use.”
There was a smile in Aari’s voice as he spoke. “Yeah. Marshall’s an expert diver, apparently. He hasn’t gotten his gear yet, though. Dunno why. Anyway, what’s up with you guys?”
“We’re at the place where the nanomites are being deployed from,” Mariah said. “It’s a small town.”
“Is that confirmed?”
“Yeah, Kody saw them leave. The problem is, we don’t know which house is being used as their base.”
“You sure they’re launched from a house?”
“It’s all they have here, except for a few farms at the edge of the town. And a hospital.”
“Alright. How can I help?”
Jag flicked his fingers on his armrest. “We need you to check the realtor sites for Ransom—that’s the name of the town. See if you can find any houses that were sold or listed for rent within the last six months. Maybe twelve months, but I doubt it.”
“The house wouldn’t be rented,” Aari said. “It would make more sense to buy it. Whoever is setting off the nanomites would probably have done some modifications to the interior of the house to use it as a base. They wouldn’t want a landlord showing up to check on them, and they would have wanted to put in some heavy-duty security systems as well. I think we can safely rule out renting.”
“Good point. Think you can find what we need?”
“Sure thing. I’ll get back to you in a bit.”
The call ended and Jag put his phone in the cup holder. “We’ll just wait, I guess,” he said.
They passed the time by mulling over the notion that the others might have found a way to bring an end to the nanomites’ reign of devastation. As elated as Jag was, he wished they’d made this discovery earlier. His grandmother was in the hospital as a result of the shock from the Sanchez farm losing its crops. Though he never told the others, when he’d first received the news that she’d been hospitalized, he felt as if a stake had been plunged into his chest.
As children, Jag and his siblings were often at the Sanchez farm during summer when their parents’ work would take them away for weeks at a time. He had many fond memories of the time he’d spent with his grandparents. His grandfather showed the siblings the ropes behind running the farm, and his grandmother would bake and sing for them. One incident that Jag would always keep in his heart took place when he was six years old.
A fierce storm had been brewing outside during the night. While the entire household slept through the tempest, Jag remained awake, frightened by the roar of the wind, the claps of deafening thunder and the groaning of tree branches just outside his window. At one point, the thunder was so loud it sounded as if it was right over the ranch. Jag had let out a terrified cry and, in his haste to run to his grandparents’ room, got his legs tangled in the covers and fell.
His grandmother was by his side in what felt like an instant, lovingly helping him up and guiding him to the kitchen. She poured him a glass of warm milk and made him sit on her lap by the large living room window to watch the storm. He was frightened at first, but then she began singing a quiet lullaby. Her soothing voice eventually eased his mind and he fell asleep to the sights and sound of that powerful storm. Since that day, not only had he ceased to be afraid of storms, but the trepidation he’d felt was transformed into a sense of wonder for nature’s powerful forces.
Jag was jarred out of his memory by his phone ringing. Scooping it up, he answered the call. “Got anything?” he asked.
“Yes,” Aari said. “There are two houses that were sold in the last few months.”
“Where are they?” Mariah asked.
When Aari gave them the address to both homes, Jag’s hopes fell. “No, that’s not it. I remember walking by those roads. They’re in the north end of town. Kody said he was sure the nanomites came from the southeast.”
“I’m not seeing any sales from there. Nothing rented, either.”
“Check again.”
“I did, and I’ve checked other realtor websites. There’s nothing except for the two houses I mentioned.”
Jag was tempted to hurl his phone out of the car. “Could it have been a private sale, then?”
“It’s possible, but that means it won’t be listed online. We won’t know.”
“There has to be a way, Aari.”
Aari sighed loudly on the other end of the line. “I don’t know, man.” The sound of typing came from the phone’s speakers. “Actually, hold on. I can check the town’s utility company’s database to see if there’s been any changes in account ownership for billing.”
Kody’s eyes narrowed. “They’d put a record online for anyone to see?”
“Eh, not exactly, but given the situation we’re in . . . Leave me to it. I’ll call again if I find anything. Might take a while, though.”
Jag put the phone back into the cup holder. “I have a funny feeling El Hacker is at it again. First that recalled video game last year, now this. Hope he doesn’t get into trouble.”
Mariah grinned mischievously. “He must have picked up more tricks with all that free time he had while we weren’t hanging out.”
It was nearly three-thirty in the morning when Aari rang them back. “I may have found what you’re looking for. It’s in the southeast quadrant, too. Turns out there were three homes sold, not two. There was a change of utility accounts but nothing for that location on any realtor database. It must have been a private sale just like you said, Jag.” He recited the address and Mariah wrote it down on a small piece of paper.
“You are magnificent, El Hacker,” Kody cooed.
“Shut that pie hole of yours, Captain Knucklehead.”
“How rude. But as you wish,
Colonel Dweeb
.”
“Dweeb? You better watch it, Lieutenant Lint-Licker.”
“Or what, Sergeant Smart—”
“That’s enough,” Mariah cut in, giggling.
“Great job, Aari,” Jag added.
Aari laughed. “What? For the insults? I could have done way better but it’s late and I’m really tired.”
Mariah blew a raspberry. “No, you dunce. For finding the house. We’ll go check it out.”
“Yeah, no problem. Good luck, guys. And be safe.”
“Thanks.” Jag smiled as he hung up and typed the address into his phone.
The trip to the southeast corner of town took only a few minutes. Jag let the pickup roll to a stop a few houses away from the address Aari had given them. They got out and stealthily made their way over to an old, pale blue building. It was the last house on the street, at the very edge of town, and surrounded by a new, high-privacy fence with a securely padlocked gate.
Kody reported that he could hear nothing from within the property. Jag peered through the gate and the other two joined him, doing the best they could to remain unseen by any watchers inside.
Kody informed them that the place was wired with cameras. “They’re really small, like a Wrigley’s gum pack, but they’re there. Surveillance cameras the size of spy cams.”
Jag felt fierce satisfaction. “We’re in the right place, then.”
“Well done, fellas,” Mariah commended. “Good teamwork.”
“That garage beside the house looks pretty darn new,” Kody said, keeping his voice down. “Why would they get a completely new garage and fence but do nothing to the house?”
“Better question is, why is there a chimney sticking out of the roof of the garage?” Mariah asked. She was right. A slim, cylindrical steel chimney poked out from the back of the small building.
“The rain cap looks funny,” Kody stated, pointing at the odd-shaped cone at the top of the chimney. He moved back from the fence. “My Spidey senses are tingling.”
“Same.” Jag scratched under his jaw. “Should we wait in the truck to see if the swarm comes back?”
“It’s nice and cool out here,” Mariah said, then walked across the street and plopped down on a patch of grass under a tree. “I vote we sit and wait.”
The boys sat down beside her. Jag picked up a twig and poked it at the ground. “You know, I thought we’d be sleepy by now.”
Mariah stretched out one leg with the other tucked under it. “It’s hard to be tired when we’re so close to finding the thing we’ve been looking for.”
An hour later, Jag saw Kody sit up, back straight as an arrow. “I see them,” he said.
Jag and Mariah crept over to the gate, again keeping out of sight, and peered through while Kody kept his eyes on the swarm. “Yeah, they’re definitely heading this way,” he confirmed. “They’ll be here in a few seconds.”
Try as they might, Jag and Mariah couldn’t see a thing so Kody narrated what he observed. The nanomites came to a microsecond halt over the garage, then plunged downward in a thin streak into the chimney. Kody nearly yelled out in delight. “We’ve got it!” He held out both his hands and his friends slapped them gleefully.
“Should we try going in?” Mariah asked.
“No,” Jag answered. “They probably have more security inside. We should head back to the farm and talk with the others before doing anything.”
Kody put his arms around them both as the friends walked back to the truck. “Let’s celebrate this excellently successful and sleepless night with an early breakfast!”
A
ari gazed out at the sparkling blue waters of Lake Mead from behind his sunglasses. A soft breeze caressed his face. His fatigue had dissipated the moment Marshall drove into Overton, Nevada half an hour earlier. Impatience and zeal now seized him; he could hardly wait to dive into the depths of the manmade lake in search of Dr. Branson’s canister, which hopefully held the key to preventing a global catastrophe. It didn’t hurt that he would be seeing a B-29 Superfortress that had sunk many decades ago, either.