When I was fourteen, Mom called another special training session at Aunt Cindi’s house and again gave me the device that would tell the system I had done all of my assigned running. There were more former members of the Four network in attendance than I had ever seen in one place. Even during warm-ups, it was obvious that they’d all been doing intensive combat training, as there wasn’t an extra pound of fat to split among them.
The participants divided themselves up by their former Four houses. This was clearly going to be a competition. I frowned when I saw Mom and Dad standing, just the two of them, to represent Bethany House, while the other six houses participating had many more people. Gethsemane house had Uncle Cameron, his brother Andrew, and six others, all of whom were in top shape. They seemed to be the clear favorite.
There were three rounds of competition: The first was the average time of each team through the obstacle course; the second was the score on the stun gun range; and the last was combat using fighting sticks. The children of the participants were allowed to watch, and I could see Austin seated with many of the other children around him - like he was holding court. My cousins were all there, too, while I was stuck watching from a tree through binoculars.
Friendly bets on the outcome were tossed around, but Mom and Dad still stood off to the side, speaking quietly, despite some teasing from Uncle Cameron. The teasing got worse when Mom lined up for the obstacle course with a full-length fighting stick.
“You’re not allowed to trip other teams,” Uncle Cameron said.
“I know,” Mom replied.
“Then why carry something that will slow you down?”
“You designed the course, Cameron. You figure it out.”
I watched as the other teams travelled the course. There were mud pits to swing over, monkey bars over water and the like. They had all seen the course ahead of time and they all attacked it as individuals, until they reached the final obstacle: a wall four meters tall. The fastest member of each team would reach it, and then stand there, waiting for a teammate to catch up. Each team would then build a human pyramid to get one member atop the wall. Once one member was on top, the rest would be boosted up as helping hands reached down to haul them over. When a team was down to just one person on the ground, a team member would be dangled from above by the wrists and used as a human rope for the last person to climb.
When it was time for Mom and Dad, they attacked the course the same way they do everything: as a team. Mom was slowed down by carrying a stick, until she used it to vault over the mud pits, saving Dad the time it would take for the rope to stop swinging. She threw it like a javelin to the other side of the monkey bars, while she and Dad quickly swung across.
I expected them to be stopped for good at the wall. At four meters high, there was no way for just two people to get over it. There was some chuckling from the other teams, until Dad held the pole for Mom to shimmy up. When she reached the top, she did something I wouldn’t have thought possible. Using the wall for support, she somehow got on top of the pole. Then, standing on just one foot, she hopped off and grabbed the top of the wall. Dad threw the pole up to her and climbed it like a rope, while she held it from above.
The shooting gallery was another lesson in teamwork. The targets were mini-drones and the entire team was allowed to shoot at once. All the other teams shot as individuals, with the drones swerving to avoid the shots. Dad told Mom to call out which drone she was targeting. When her shot missed, the drone would swerve directly into Dad’s shot, fired a split second later, as he predicted which direction it would go as it tried to dodge.
Firmly in first place, Mom and Dad didn’t have to fight in the first round, nor did Gethsemane House, which was in second place. I watched each team intently as the other four teams squared off, making mental notes. Matches of three-on-three or four-on-four weren’t nearly as easy to predict and call out the moves in advance as they were in single combat. There was a randomness to the action that made me worry that Dad’s abilities wouldn’t be as effective as usual.
Soon it was down to just Bethany House versus Uncle Cameron and Gethsemane. Mom and Dad walked to the center of the ring.
“I assume you read all of the rules,” Uncle Cameron said.
“We did,” Mom replied. “Which rule, in particular?”
“The one that says this is a team competition, house against house. The fact that you only have two members isn’t our problem.”
Aunt Cindi had fought with Mount Carmel House. She stood up.
“Cameron, I know you’re mad that Bethany has won every time, but you can’t be serious. Eight against two?” she said.
Mom and Dad switched positions so that they were back-to-back.
“Okay, Gethsemane. Bring the house,” Dad replied.
Uncle Cameron positioned his team so there would be four members attacking, with four in reserve. They looked like a pack of wolves, surrounding a deer, so what happened next surprised everyone. Mom attacked first, and kept on attacking. She hit the man in front of her, and the woman to his right, and even two of the people standing in reserve. As fierce as she was, it was Dad who was more amazing. Without ever turning around, he kept his back to hers. He moved, and ducked, and rolled without ever looking at her, all while keeping the wolves off her back.
At first, the action looked like another example of teamwork, but the strategy actually centered on allowing Mom to fight as an individual, while Dad read her moves just like he was reading the moves of their opponents. As I continued to watch, I realized there was even more going on, and that even Mom didn’t know it was happening. Dad wasn’t just reading Mom’s moves … he was secretly directing them by manipulating the position of everyone in the ring. The randomness of the earlier fights disappeared before my eyes, and I watched Dad form the fight into a pattern that he controlled.
What struck me the most was that Mom never took a single hit. Dad purposely took them all. Whether this was to free Mom up for counterstrikes, or if he simply wanted to protect her, I don’t know. What was clear to me was that self-sacrifice was just another part of Dad’s game plan.
******
Hal proposes that he create a diversion in the front yard while we leave through the back. Both doors are surely being watched, but he hopes that enough eyes will be drawn to him to give us a chance.
“I don’t like this,” I say.
“Me either,” Zera says. “A washed man is walking straight into armed Temple Guard.”
“That, too,” I say, “but what I mean is that I think the main group is waiting for us in the back. I can’t explain it. There’s just something about the way that tracking drone is flying. It’s just a hunch.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Austin says.
“My family has always favored direct assaults,” Zera adds.
We watch Hal walk down the front steps and towards the street.
“If we were going out the back, they’d be expecting us in about thirty seconds,” I say.
“Then I’ll open the back door,” Chelsea says.
She doesn’t even get the screen door open, before stun gun hits start pelting the back of the house. From the sound of it, every window is broken.
Hal turns at the sound, but takes only two steps towards the house before he’s stunned in the back.
“Give them ten seconds to wonder if they’ve messed up,” I say.
We burst through the door. One of the Guards must have thought they had the wrong house, because he steps out from behind a tree and gets shot in the chest by Zera. Austin shoots another as he comes from behind the neighbor’s house. I shoot at the tracking drone that has descended to within twenty meters of us, but it dodges the shot.
I tell Austin and Zera to follow me, as I run straight across the street and into the house of the elderly atheists, then straight out their back door, but the drone finds us again a just half block later. I shoot at it twice more.
“Don’t bother. They’re too fast,” Zera says.
“You try,” I say.
She takes three shots, all of which miss by a meter.
When they see they’re being targeted, their rotors turn more slowly on the side they plan to go. I can hear the difference. It must speed up the turn.
“See?” she says.
“One more,” I say.
Zera takes a bead on the drone and I hear the rotors on the left slow down. I shoot a split second after her, and the drone twists straight into my shot, then crashes.
She looks at me with her jaw open.
“Don’t question it … just run,” Austin says.
Without a tracking drone on us, our human pursuers quickly lose our trail. We don’t have time to be evasive. We run straight for the tube station and locate the maintenance bays.
“Once they’ve covered the passenger terminals, they’ll look here next,” I say. “Who’s driving?”
“You are!” Austin and Zera say together.
“There are only two relevant controls,” I say. “The speed control stick in my left hand and the switches to open branch lines in my right hand.”
I pull up a display of the cars in the area.
“The tubes are full,” Austin says. “There’s a car every twenty meters, riding the slip steams.”
“How long is this car?” I ask.
“Ten meters.”
“That gives me five meters on each side.”
“Jocie, for all we know, Dad attempted this in the middle of the night when there were only a few cars in the area,” Austin says.
“How will you synchronize to their speed?” Zera asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, and hit the loading sequence to put the car into position.
We hear the docking clamps unlock with a clunk, then the whole section of tube moves to align us with the branch line door behind us.
“You might want to hold onto something,” I say, as I hit the button to open the doors and place us in the branch line stream. The acceleration is immediate.
“We’re not going to make it!” Zera says. “We’re going to hit a car in the mainline when we reach the junction.
If I open the switch early, it will kick them forward a couple of meters.
“Where’s the door?” Austin yells.
It looks like we’re heading straight into a dead end. I force my eyes back to the display. Watching the tunnel ahead is useless. The cars moving on the display are like a swarm of gnats circling over a pond near sunset. All seems random, but there’s actually an elegant design to how they move.
I hit the switch and we enter the mainline tube just two meters behind a large passenger car. A proximity alarm starts screaming.
Hal rigged an audible proximity alarm. How thoughtful.
The passenger car speeds up and I slow down.
“Behind us!” Zera yells.
There’s a cargo car bearing down on us, so I adjust our speed until I’m equidistant between the two cars. The passenger car in front abruptly disappears down a branch line and the door closes behind it, leaving a nice gap in front of me, so I speed up.
“Two cars are entering at the next junction to fill this gap,” Austin says.
My only chance is the small space between them.
I accelerate.
A large private car appears out of nowhere into the line in front of us, then another behind us. The one behind starts to close the distance, to ride the slip stream.
“We’re going to get crushed between them,” Austin says.
At the last moment, I open a switch that sends us down a different line.
“Where are we?” Ausin asks.
“Halfway to Pennsylvania,” Zera says.
I widen the field of view on the display.
Wrong way. We need to turn around.
I see a large loop that will take us all the way across New York State, then down into Ohio. For the next twenty minutes, I continue the dance, slipping in between cars, in and out of various branch lines, with Austin and Zera yelling out dangers well after I’ve seen them and adjusted. When we’re halfway across Ohio, I see the branches I need.
“Just ten more switches,” I say.
“Good,” Zera says. “Even you can’t keep this up forever.”
“Jocie, where are we going?” Austin asks.
“West Virginia.”
“The only way to get to the proper line from here would require a double switch,” he says.
“What does that mean?” Zera asks.
Austin points to the map.
“See this point that looks like an intersection? It isn’t. The only way to cross is to open the first switch, then the second almost simultaneously. It’s like riding a hover bike through an intersection packed with buses going in the other direction - blindfolded.”
Now Zera points to the map.
“All we need to do is make a wider loop here and here, and come around,” Zera says.
“That will miss the stop we want. Don’t distract me,” I say.
When I open the first switch, we’re looking at the side of a large cargo car. Zera and Austin scream.
If I open the second switch even a fraction too early, it will slow that car down and we’ll collide. Don’t panic…
I close my eyes.
Now.
We miss the cargo car by less than a meter, but the proximity alarm does little more than chirp, because we’re only behind it for a fraction of a second before exiting through the second switch.
“There now,” I say. “This line carries very little traffic and we should be at our station in just a minute.”
I look at the reflection in the window and see that Austin and Zera are holding each other, but let go awkwardly, as I speak.
“Why?” Austin asks.
“Because I knew I could,” I say. “It’s just a puzzle, after all.”
Have I always known I could do things like that? Have I been holding it back? Why?
“You almost broke us into a billion puzzle pieces!” Zera says.
“Shall we go around and do it again?” I ask.
“No!” they say together.
“Suit yourselves. We’re here anyway. Welcome to the cargo station in Romney, West Virginia.” “Why here?” Zera asks.
“Because Mom and Dad never came here, and the cargo station is unmanned because it only gets one car per week.”
We spend some time learning how Hal disconnected the safety features, then reconnect them and send the car back to Parkersburg.
“Let’s never do that again,” Austin says when the car is gone.
“I’m glad to hear you say that. Mom and Dad used the hover line between Gore and Wardensville a lot when they were at Bethany House, so we should avoid it. We’ll need to catch a bus to Rio and walk over the mountains from there.”
“Over the mountains?” Zera asks. “Where are we going?”
“We need to talk to an old friend of the family,” I say.
“Capon Springs?” Austin asks, and I smile.