The Truth of the Matter Read online

  But then, strangely, the twilight seemed to reverse itself. It became easier to see the trail in front of me. I realized the forest around me was growing thinner, the trees sparser. We were entering a clearing—that’s why there was more light.

  We stepped out of a cluster of tall pines—and I stopped, staring, my lips parted in surprise. I heard my two captors stop behind me as well. The drone—Milton Two—stopped flying and hovered in midair next to my head.

  We were standing at the edge of what had once been—I don’t know what—an enormous building maybe— maybe a compound made up of a lot of buildings. Whatever it had been, it was all in ruins now. Long barracks stood dark and empty, their windows shattered, the last glass in their frames jagged, broken. Taller structures rose and then fell away in a shambles. Columns stood free here and there. Rooms stood roofless, the doors torn away to reveal the interior. All around, the forest was moving back in to reclaim the space. Vines twisted down the broken walls. New young trees sprang up, breaking through old tiles and floorboards.

  Even as I stood staring at it, the ruins faded into the deepening dusk. The first tendrils of a forest mist curled along the ground, coiled around the structures, giving the place an eerie, ghostly atmosphere.

  “Keep moving,” said Dodger Jim. He prodded me roughly in the back with his gun. He was still angry about that shot to the head.

  I walked forward, the mist parting before my feet.

  “What is this place?” I said.

  “It used to be a psychiatric facility,” Waterman answered. “They built it out here to keep the inmates away from the locals. Now it’s empty—except for us.”

  The ruined, misty buildings surrounded me as I went on. I looked around, half expecting to see people—or other creatures—darting here and there between the structures. Sometimes I thought I caught a movement at the corner of my eye, but when I turned, there was nothing. It was—or at least I thought it was—only my imagination.

  “Over here,” said Waterman.

  Now he came around in front of me again. He knew I was no danger to him anymore. With that drone following my every move, ready to blast me if I tried anything—and with Dodger Jim eager for the chance to get some payback for that strike to the head—I didn’t stand a chance.

  Waterman led the way confidently through the maze of broken, vine-covered walls. We moved toward the center of the compound. Up ahead, I made out what looked like the remains of a tower, a cylinder rising black against the surrounding darkness. As we got closer, I saw that its brick walls were crawling with ivy. It had no roof. The cylinder just ended in broken jags about ten feet above my head. Down below, where the door had been, there was now just an uneven opening.

  Waterman stepped through that opening, disappearing inside.

  I hesitated. I had the feeling that once I went into this place, I would never come out again.

  Once more, Dodger Jim prodded me with the barrel of his gun.

  “Move it,” he said.

  I glanced back at him. He grinned at me, his eyes shining in the dark. He was waiting for me to strike at him. Ready this time. Milton Two hovered in the air just above me like a deadly hummingbird, its single eye trained on me.

  “Yeah,” said Dodger Jim. “You have something to say?”

  What could I do? I shook my head. I turned and stepped through the door into the tower.

  There was nothing inside. Just an empty circular room with brick walls and a concrete floor. There was a winding stair leading upward, but it ended abruptly on a broken step, going nowhere.

  Waterman waited for me to enter—then we both waited for Dodger Jim. When we were all inside, Waterman approached the wall. He began to move his hand over the bricks. He kept his fingers spread, the palm held out as he traced a complex pattern in the air, difficult to follow. It reminded me of a party magician making hocus-pocus passes over a handkerchief before making a rabbit appear.

  But there was no rabbit. Instead, I heard a low buzzing noise. The wall began to open under Waterman’s hand.

  There was a door hidden in the wall. A rectangle of bricks was sliding aside in a controlled electronic motion. Then, with a metallic thunk, it stopped. The door stood opened into blackness.

  Waterman gestured to the opening.

  “Go on.”

  I moved to the black rectangle and peered in. From here, I could make out a narrow platform in front of a shadowy flight of metal stairs.

  One more time, I looked up at Waterman. I searched his eyes, trying to guess who he was, what he wanted, whose side he was on. There was nothing there. His expression was sardonic and distant and impossible to read. He held his hand out and waited.

  I stepped into the opening, onto the platform, then onto the stairs. I started down.

  It was not a long descent, just an ordinary single flight into a deep cellar. A very dim security lamp was burning yellow at the bottom, giving just enough light for me to make my way.

  I reached the bottom. The narrow flight opened out here into a small semicircular anteroom. There was no other entry or exit besides the stairs. Nothing but a blank metal wall.

  The next moment, Waterman was down the stairs as well, standing next to me. Once again, he reached out and moved his palm over the face of the wall. He made the same pattern. I tried to follow it. I thought it might come in handy later if I ever got a chance to escape. I watched his hand make out a series of diagonals, then a series of straight lines—a square maybe?—then another diagonal. It was too complicated to remember. Again, when he was finished, there was a buzzing, grinding noise.

  A door swung open and bright light flooded out.

  After the forest twilight and the descent, the light hurt my eyes. I squinted against it, holding up my hand for protection. Meanwhile, a voice reached me from inside the brightness. It was a voice I recognized.

  It said, “Charlie West is an extremely dangerous young man.”

  Startled, I glanced at Waterman. “Rose!”

  It was Detective Rose, the policeman who had arrested me for the murder of Alex Hauser.

  When Waterman didn’t answer, I stepped quickly through the doorway into the light. There he was: Rose. His face was on a monitor on the wall in front of me, hanging above my head.

  I remembered the guy only too well. He was a short, trim, round-faced black man with flat features and a thin mustache. It was his eyes you remembered mostly. Smart, cold eyes that always seemed to be calculating, thinking, considering. You looked in those eyes and you knew: he was a man with a purpose. Unfortunately, that purpose was to hunt me down, to bring me to what he thought was justice. He had believed I was innocent at first, and when he’d decided I was guilty, he’d never forgiven me for fooling him. He was embarrassed by the fact that I had escaped from prison too, escaped from him. He would never give up hunting me. He would never rest until he caught me.

  “He’s trained in karate.” Rose went on speaking on the monitor. “And by all accounts, he’s extremely skilled. Civilians should not approach him, even if they’re armed. I can’t emphasize this enough. This man is vicious. He’s already been convicted of one murder, and now we have every reason to believe he’s committed a second.”

  “What?” I said.

  I was so taken aback that I didn’t even notice my new surroundings. I just went on staring at the television monitor as Detective Rose’s face was replaced by a snapshot of Mr. Sherman, my old history teacher. Recently, I had discovered that it was Sherman who had recruited me to join the Homelanders. He was the one who had killed Alex Hauser when Alex tried to leave the organization. Then he had framed me for the murder in order to make me angry at American injustice so I would sign on with him and his Islamo-fascist allies to attack the country.

  I knew that Sherman was in trouble with the Homelanders. Their leader, a man who called himself Prince, felt that when Sherman had recruited me, he had brought a traitor into the ranks. Sherman had tried to capture me at gunpoint in order to prove hims
elf to Prince. I had knocked him out—knocked him out, yes, but I hadn’t killed him. He was alive the last time I saw him.

  Apparently, he was not alive anymore.

  “The gruesome remains of the history teacher were found in an abandoned house at the outskirts of the little city,” a newswoman’s voice was saying. Sherman’s face faded out and was replaced by a picture of the old haunted McKenzie mansion where I had hidden out the last time I was home. Was it only a couple of weeks ago? The newswoman went on, “Police say Sherman was tortured before he was killed.”

  The images disappeared as the monitor went blank.

  “That was on the news about forty-five minutes ago.”

  I looked down at the voice. I saw I was in a long, low-ceilinged cellar of a room with white plaster walls and a couple of doors leading off into other rooms. The fluorescent lighting gave the room a bright, cold, sterile feeling. The place was packed with equipment. There were workstations along the walls with laptops set up on them. There were several monitors hanging up high on the walls. Each monitor had pictures broken up into several little squares, as if it was bringing in several video feeds at once. Each laptop had readouts working on the screen. I was too dazed and confused to take it all in.

  “They’re warning people that he could be heading for Manhattan. They seem to be hot on his trail.”

  The guy who was speaking was a young man, American of Asian descent. He was trim with a squarish head, a strangely cheerful face—it seemed strange under the circumstances anyway. He was dressed in a shirt and tie, but no jacket. He was sitting at one of the workstations, one of the laptops. He was holding a small rectangular object in one hand. At first, I thought it was an iPhone.

  “This is Milton One,” said Waterman with his ironic drawl. “The inventor and operator of Milton Two.”

  Milton One held up the iPhone-thing and waggled it around. I could see a video readout on it. The little gadget was the control for the security drone upstairs.

  “Sorry to blast you, kid,” he said merrily. “But it sure was fun. I’ve been dying to try this thing out under battle conditions.”

  With that reminder, the pain of the burn on my wrist came back to me. I rubbed the spot.

  “Glad to be of service,” I muttered.

  Now, hearing the conversation, a woman came into the room, entering a step through the doorway to my right. She was spindly and crow-faced with black hair streaked with gray, pulled back tight. She had hard brown eyes empty of emotion. She had a nasty scowl plastered on her face.

  “Get ready,” Waterman told her.

  She nodded once and disappeared through the doorway again without a word.

  Now Waterman turned his attention back to me. “You heard Rose, Charlie. The police are saying you killed Sherman now.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said angrily. I was frustrated by the injustice of it. I couldn’t remember Alex dying. Until I got the truth out of Sherman, I sometimes worried I might really have killed him. But I did remember what happened with Sherman. “He was alive when I left him, I swear it. The Homelanders must have found him. They must’ve punished him for letting me get away. I can’t believe Detective Rose is blaming that on me too.”

  Waterman answered with a slight sniff. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “We’re going to find out all about that,” he said. “We’re both going to find out all about everything.”

  That didn’t sound good. I felt a nauseating gout of fear as I wondered what was coming next.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  Without answering, Waterman walked across the room to an empty spot on the wall underneath one of the monitors and in between two of the workstations. Once more, he moved his palm over the space. Once more, I tried to follow the movement, the pattern of diagonals and straight lines. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t place it.

  Once more, as he finished, there was the hum of a motor. A door that had been invisible swung open. A light came on automatically within the next room.

  Waterman gestured to the opening.

  “Welcome to the Panic Room,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Panic Room

  I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. No way I wanted to go through that door, to go into that place. But I was surrounded. There was no getting out of it.

  I walked into the Panic Room.

  It was a small, square, stark space. Looked like a prison cell. Four white walls, a metal chest against one wall, a cot against another, a metal toilet, a metal sink, a metal chair in the center of the floor.

  I didn’t like the metal chair especially. Just the sight of it sent a new pulse of fear through me. It reminded me of how all this had started. I’d gone to bed one night and awakened strapped to a metal chair just like that one. Two Homelander goons had been torturing me. There were so many memories I wished I could get back, but that was one memory I wished I could get rid of forever.

  Waterman and Dodger Jim came into the room behind me. Dodger Jim made a motion with his hand, and the electric door swung shut, becoming an invisible part of the wall again. I felt light-headed in the small space, helpless to stop what was happening.

  Waterman stood to my right. Dodger Jim was to my left, holding the gun on me.

  “This is the way it is, Charlie,” Waterman said. There was no tone, no emotion to his voice at all now. “We’re going to handcuff you to that chair . . .”

  The fear flared higher. “Why? What for? Who are you people?” I said.

  “Shut up,” said Dodger Jim.

  “Either you can just sit down and let us do it, or we can do it by force,” said Waterman. “Whichever you choose, the result is going to be the same.”

  I took a deep breath. I nodded, as if I agreed with him. And the fact was: I knew he was probably right. But I didn’t care whether he was right or not. There was just no way on this planet I was going to let them handcuff me to that chair without a fight. Once I was there, it was over. Once they had me cuffed, I had no chance at all.

  “Look,” I said, “if you have something to ask me, why don’t you just ask? I have nothing to hide.”

  “We have to be sure,” said Waterman. “Get in the chair, Charlie.”

  I put my hands up as if to surrender. “Okay,” I said.

  Then I pivoted, fast, and sent a snapping roundhouse kick at Dodger Jim’s gun hand.

  The gun went flying—and then Waterman was on me. He was big, fast, tough—and a real fighter. I tried to chop at his throat, but he blocked it hard and got my arm in a lock. He got his foot behind me and, as he hit me in the chest with his hand, his foot came swinging back and swept my feet out from under me.

  I flew backward, landing hard on the floor. I gave a loud “Oof!” as the wind rushed out of me. In the next instant, Waterman was on top of me, his hand clutching my throat, squeezing off the airway. I couldn’t breathe. The world went watery in front of my eyes.

  The next thing I knew, Waterman and Dodger Jim were dragging me to my feet. They hurled me into the chair, hard. Dodger Jim punched me in the jaw. It felt like getting hit by a brick.

  My head flew back, and my mind seemed to fall away from the world like falling down a well.

  “Knock it off,” I heard Waterman say from a distance.

  “I told him what would happen if he tried me again,” said Dodger Jim.

  My head slumped forward. I was only half-conscious as they held my arms against the arms of the metal chair and snapped the handcuffs around my wrists.

  The two men stood back, breathing hard. I looked up at them from the chair, helpless.

  Dodger Jim shook his head angrily, rubbing the spot on his wrist where I’d kicked him. “You’re a tough little monkey, kid,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”

  The door in the wall buzzed and opened. The crow-faced woman came in. My eyes went wide in terror as I saw she was carrying a syringe.

  That woke me up. I jolted back in the c
hair as if there was some chance of getting away from her. I struggled against the handcuffs, trying uselessly to get free.

  Waterman stood in front of me. “Listen to me, Charlie,” he said. “Listen. You have to listen. We’re not your enemies, so help me.”

  It was a long moment before I could still my panic and stop trying to break through the handcuffs.

  “We have to do this,” Waterman said. “We have no choice. The Homelanders are close. Very close. They’ve hacked some of our files. We don’t know how many. We don’t know how much they know. But they know about me. They’ve been watching me for weeks. It’s only a matter of time before they find this place and strike and try to kill us all. We want to help you, but we have to be sure you’re still on our side and there’s only one way to do that. You’ve been out of touch for too long. You might have gone over. The loss of memory . . . everything . . . it might all be a fake, or there might be permanent damage that makes you a liability. We just can’t trust you until we know for sure.”

  “Who are you?” I said hoarsely. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

  “We’re the good guys, Charlie. If liberty is better than slavery, like you said—if the people who work for liberty are the good guys—then we’re the good guys, though we can’t always be as good as we might like. The Islamo-fascists don’t believe in freedom at all, Charlie, believe me. They want everyone to think the same thing, to do what they’re told. They hate our country, our liberty, our Constitution. Our whole way of life. And the Americans who’ve joined them, who’ve kidded themselves into thinking they’re no worse than us, that one philosophy is no better than another, are self-hating fools. They’re your enemies, Charlie.”

  “If you’re on my side, why are you doing this to me?” I shouted at him, struggling against the handcuffs again.

  “I’m sorry, but we have to be sure where you stand,” Waterman said. He nodded at the crow-faced woman with the syringe. She stepped toward the chair as I struggled to get away from her.

  “The Homelanders are going to attack this country, Charlie,” Waterman said. “They’re going to hit us soon, hard, and from the inside. The people in this bunker are some of the only people left who can stop them. If they get to us, then we’ve got no chance. We can’t risk the possibility that you’re their agent.”