Installment 15

            Seconds after the message appeared on the screen, it disappeared again. Pseudonym was gone, and no more IM’s came through.

            “He’s the one I’m being framed for,” I said quietly.

            Clara frowned. “So Travis is blaming you for what this Pseudonym guy did?”

            I held my forehead in my hands, trying to figure this out. “He hacked into Travis’ system, and tried to steal Back Door. For some reason or other it didn’t work.”

            This much was obvious. There was a missing piece, though.

            “Why frame me?” I asked, turning to Clara for an answer. She shook her head.

            “I don’t know. There’s no real reason. It seems like Travis is taking too much trouble for this framing business.”

            “Wait…” I started, thinking back. “Didn’t he tell Larson that I was just a cover up? A name so that the real name didn’t get out?”

            Clara stared at me. “You’re right. That’s why he didn’t try to capture you -- you’re better on the run. They can blame you, try to chase you down, and any further hacks would be chalked down to you still being at large.”

            “But why wouldn’t they call…call Pseudonym out on it? Why frame me?”

            Clara answered quickly. The answer was obvious.

            “Because Travis is trying to protect him.”

            Of course. Whether under orders or not, Travis had framed me in order to keep everyone in the dark about Pseudonym -- whoever he was. But why me in particular, and why would Travis want to protect Pseudonym?

            “He’s a potential enemy. Do we do what he says?”

            Clara bit her lip. “You mean…go to Base 21?”

            I nodded.

            “I think…” Clara began.

            But I never got to hear what she thought, because we discovered at that very moment that you can never be too careful -- a lesson we had yet to learn properly.

            “Okay, hands up.”

            Neither Clara or I turned around. Slowly and simultaneously, we lifted our hands into the air.

            “Don’t move.”

            I didn’t recognize the voice -- it wasn’t Travis or Larson. Someone new. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then I heard muttering that I couldn’t make out. It wasn’t being addressed to us.

            “Nathan,” Clara said in a soft whisper.

            “What?” I breathed back.

            “I think it’s time to try to get into another one of those folders.”

            I lowered my eyebrows, trying to figure out what that would do. Then it hit me.

            I reached down and clicked on another folder, one in the main center of things.

            Several things happened. First, the man behind us shouted, “Don’t move!” Then, a screen popped up requesting a level four password. But instead of typing double agent, I typed a random string of letters: sdklfjalskdfja. Then, I pressed Enter.

            “Don’t move!” the guy shouted again, taking a few steps toward us.

            Suddenly, a piercing alarm went off. At that moment, I whirled around, and so did Clara. In one swift, determined motion, Clara hurled her backpack at the man standing only about three feet away by this time.

            Surprised by the suddenness of the alarm, the man didn’t counter the backpack quickly enough, and all the gadgets accumulated in Clara Stone’s purple backpack clonked him squarely on the head. A look of pure shock crossed his face before he toppled over backward.

            “Oh!” Clara exclaimed, mortified, as her hands flew to her mouth. “Did I kill him?”

            I examined the man. He was dressed all in black, and he wore a small headset -- probably what he had been talking into. He didn’t look all that different from an average guy off the street, except for the headset and his pair of sunglasses.

            Wait a minute…those sunglasses looked familiar.

            I snatched them off the man’s closed eyes and tapped the side of the glasses.

            “He’s not dead,” I informed Clara. I blinked a few times. “Clara, this is another pair of your tracking sunglasses.

            Clara took her hands away from her mouth. “Really? You mean my parents had a pair of sunglasses…”

            “Owned by the enemy, yes,” I finished.

            “Operation 497,” Clara corrected.

            “Whatever you want,” I agreed.

            And with that, we crossed the room by unspoken consent, Clara glancing back at the fallen man briefly, grabbing her backpack as we passed. The alarms were still blaring, a loud, accusing sound.

            “If we’re lucky,” I told her, “No one else is here.”

            “And if we’re not,” Clara continued nervously, “There’s no way out.”

            “There has to be.”

            I made my way through the doorway. Clara followed cautiously, glancing about her. The next room was small, filled with boxes. A computer took up the corner, but this one was small and newer. It was unlike any design I had ever seen before, largely because the screen was built into the wall and I couldn’t see the inner workings. I assumed it was a touch screen. At the moment, however, its screen was red with the words CODE 6 displayed in white across it.

            “Let’s not look at this one,” I muttered as Clara and I passed it. There was another door, unmarked, but this one was closed. Without giving myself time to second guess my decision, I pulled it open and slipped through. Clara followed me.

            It was an elevator.

            Seriously, it was a pretty standard elevator. A lot like the kind you ride in a dentist or doctor’s office. Not that I’ve been to the dentist or doctor a whole lot, anyway. Mostly when I have, it’s either been to a demon dentist who enjoys inflicting pain by drilling holes in your teeth, or to sneak some information out of a doctor’s SD card stored in his pocket. But that’s beside the point.

            I pressed the only button available -- up.

            “The alarms are still going,” Clara whispered, sounding about as worried as I felt. I tried not to let it show.

            “No one else is here,” I assured her. “If there was, the guy wouldn’t have had to call for help on his wireless -- someone would’ve come already. He’s the only one here.”

            “Why?” Clara asked. Leave it to her to ask the questions while we’re still trying to escape.

             I didn’t know, but I did realize this. The bad guys were very well organized…and they definitely were not a part of the government, even if Travis and Larson did work for the government.

            Within a few seconds, the door opened again into an alleyway. I barely had time to recognize it as the one we had crossed in order to reach the library before I heard shouting.

            “There they are!”

            “Duck!” I shouted to Clara. We both threw ourselves down just as the sound of a gunshot split the air.

            “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” screamed a voice I identified as Larson.

            “Clara, get something out of your backpack now!”

            “What?”

            “Anything!”

            She unzipped it and rummaged around. Crouching on the ground, she was so close that I could feel her quick breathing. That was when they reached us. I thought about shouting, but I knew before I ever opened my mouth that it wouldn’t help. At the moment, I didn’t want to get caught by anyone. The bad guys wanted to frame me for a crime I didn’t commit, and the government was going along with that just fine. Everyone wanted me caught.

            No…that wasn’t true. Travis didn’t want me caught.

He had been right about the fact that we should have left.

            I couldn’t stand the idea that Travis was right.

            Two strong men grabbed both my arms and pinned them behind me. I kicked wildly behind me, and managed to land a blow in exactly the right spot. The guy doubled over, wheezing, as I tried to twist out of the grasp of the other one, but without the power and luck of the kick, I couldn’t pull out. But at least for a moment, one arm was free.

            During the chaos, Clara slipped something in my hand.

            I closed my fingers around it. Whatever it was, it was small and smooth and metal. It also had a button on it. I vaguely remembered spotting it before in the backpack, but never examining it closely among all the other shinier, more interesting objects in there.

            Suddenly a thought crossed my brain.

            What if it’s…

            No. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t do that, then I really would be guilty of something. Besides, how would Clara have an explosive in her backpack and we never noticed?

            But I could bluff it…

            “Stand back!” I yelled. The man had grasped both my arms now and was pressing them together. Another couple of guys had grabbed Clara. There seemed to be about seven of them, all dressed in black like the guy we had knocked out, all wearing the same earpiece, and all wearing those same sunglasses. Except for Larson, of course. He was still wearing his policeman’s uniform.

            “Stand back!” I repeated, shouting at the top of my lungs now to get their attention. “I have a bomb!”

            A murmur rippled through them.

            “You won’t kill yourself,” Larson said, somewhat nervously.

            “I’ve got it on a timer,” I said, trying to sound confident. “If you take me anywhere, then it’ll blow up that place. If you stay with me, it’ll kill you, too. If you leave me, I’ll disarm it and we all live happily ever after.”

            “And if I think you’re lying?”

            “Let go of me and I’ll prove I’m not.”

            Larson glanced at the guys holding on to me, then nodded. “Loosen up on him.”

            The men in black holding on to me let go, but just barely. If I made the slightest move, they would pounce on me again. I noticed they weren’t letting Clara get anywhere, but I decided not to push my luck. There was no point – I couldn’t go anywhere without her, and we weren’t about to escape by our muscle power.

            “Okay,” I began, wondering if I would really be able to talk us out of this. “This is a bomb, and it’s on a timer. I’m not going to tell you how long the timer is, but just know that it won’t be too long before it blows us all sky high. If you let us go, I’ll disarm it. If you don’t, we’re all going to die.”

            “That still doesn’t prove you’re not lying,” Larson pointed out.

            “Are you willing to take the chance? I’m assuming none of you are explosive experts?”

            Larson laughed. “These men are trained agents, Mr. Dalton. They know how to disarm bombs.”

            I swallowed. This put a kink into my plan.

            But to my surprise, Clara kicked the man holding her viciously in the shin. As he winced in shock, she dived across the few feet between us, dragging the other guy along with her. In one swift movement, before anyone could do anything, she grabbed the little metal box and pressed her thumb against the button. To keep her other hand free, she shoved the backpack at me.

            Clara displayed her hand and the box to everyone. “If you try to grab either of us, I’ll let go of the button, and it’ll go off.”

            Everyone simultaneously took a step backward. Larson glanced around angrily.

            “Listen, girl, give me – ”

            “You don’t want me to do that,” she said breathlessly. “If I let go, it’ll blow up.”

            “I don’t believe you,” Larson insisted, but his eyes darting back and forth between us told a different story.

            “My parents were agents,” Clara told him. “I took things out of their house, including this explosive. I didn’t think I would have to use it, but I will if I have to. I’ll do what I have to to find out who killed them.”

            “I didn’t kill your parents, Miss Stone,” Larson said, somewhat sarcastically.

            “Then who did?”

            Drew Larson didn’t answer. Instead, he glanced at his comrades.

            If he chose to take the risk and assume we were lying, we were sunk. But if he decided he didn’t want to risk his own skin…there were too many ifs. Our saving grace would probably be Larson’s own sense of self-preservation, as long as there wasn’t someone putting a lot of pressure on him from higher up.

            After several seconds, he smiled wryly. “Very well, then. Have it your way.”

            Clara and I looked at one another in astonishment. “We can go?”

            “No,” Larson said slowly. “You can go ahead and use your little explosive. We’re taking you whether you like it or not.”

            “I’ll let go and kill us all!”

            “No, you won’t. You don’t have the nerve.”

            “Then it’ll blow up and destroy your secret location!”

            “Not a chance. Do you think we hide out in clubhouses in the woods that can just be blown to smithereens by a firecracker?”

            He had a point. I shrugged at Clara, saying silently, It was a good try.

            But Clara hadn’t given up. I could see it in her eyes, even if Larson couldn’t.

            And I realized what she was planning only a fraction of a second before we did it.

            At the same time, we both took advantage of the fact that no one was holding on to us, and we sprinted back down the alley. There was an outlet, but I knew we would get caught. There was no point.

            They had started to follow, but we were both fast runners and had taken them by surprise – plus, I think they felt the same way I did. They were going to catch up eventually, so why worry? But as soon as there was about twenty feet between us and them, Clara whirled around, flung the little box toward them, grabbed my arm and shouted “Run!”

            I didn’t hesitate. We both sprinted out of there as fast as we could, rounding the corner and dashing as far away from that spot as we could in about three seconds.

            And behind me, I heard an ear-deafening explosion.

            I could feel the force of it, even from around the corner. It wasn’t big enough to break down concrete wall, which was why we were still running, but I knew that it had destroyed the alley. Not broken down the walls, but cracked them and the ground, surely. With the force of that explosion…

            “Clara,” I said, slowing down, “We killed them.”

            Clara’s face was white. “No, we didn’t. They survived. They had to. We just…”

            “Incapacitated them! Probably took out a leg or two!”

            “Don’t think about it! Please, Nathan, don’t think about it!”

            I swung the backpack up onto my shoulder, and we kept on running. We sprinted, dashing down the alleys, turning corners, getting lost and not thinking about it.

            I still don’t think about it.

I know that it was necessary, I know that it was self-defense. But I still can’t erase the memory from my mind. It’s impossible to forget that first moment that I was forced to seriously injure someone. Even though I didn’t throw the bomb, I knew that I hadn’t stopped her, and deep down, I had known what she was planning.

            We kept on running until finally I decided that we were good and lost enough. If we didn’t know where we were, they didn’t, and I didn’t think they would be coming after us for at least the rest of the day. We ran into a department store – basically a little mall. Here we could blend in with the crowd.

            We ducked into a store and slipped into the back corner where no one was shopping. Here, Clara sank to the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees.

            And, burying her head in her knees, she started sobbing.

            “I didn’t want to hurt them!” she moaned. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody!”

            I said nothing, but only leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes and feeling the wood, pleasantly cool against my skin. I agreed with her, but I couldn’t see how I could say so. I didn’t want her to see it. I had to be stronger than her – strong enough for both of us.

            But I couldn’t say anything.

            I let her cry.

            Then, suddenly, I heard a beeping from the backpack I still had over my shoulder.

            “What’s that?” I asked slowly, cautiously placing the backpack down onto the floor.

            Clara looked up, tears still rolling down her face. “My phone, I think,” she said shakily.

            I didn’t know she had a phone. I pulled it out. It was a silver smartphone. My first thought was that someone had somehow used it to track us.

            But no, that was ridiculous. They would have caught up to us already if we were being tracked that closely.

            I looked at the screen. “It’s a text message.”

            “From?” Clara asked.

            I looked up into her blue eyes.

            “Pseudonym,” I replied.

            Clara held her breath. “And?”

            I looked back down and read the message off the phone’s screen.

Base 21: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC

If you’re smart, and I know you are, you’ll be there.

     “Washington D.C.? Is that the address for Base 21?”

            I realized what the message meant, and I instantly knew we had a lot of trouble in store for the two of us.

            “We’re going to the White House, Clara.”

-Nathan T. Dalton