Chapter 13 – The Secret Weapon
The next morning, Chandler picked us up at 5:00 a.m. like we had planned. He had the two cell phones configured so that one could be tracked by the other on the GPS app. Thank God for free software from the internet. We drove by Mr. Franklin’s house and parked about a block away. While Chandler and Faedra served as lookouts, I snuck up to Mr. Franklin’s car and attached the cell phone underneath the rear bumper with some of Chandler’s gel – that thing was never coming off. By 5:45 a.m., we were all back in our beds so that no one would get suspicious. We went to school just like we were expected to, and waited.
A couple of times throughout the day, Chandler checked to see if the tracking software was doing its job. From what he could tell, Mr. Franklin had driven across town and parked his car for several hours. Hopefully, that meant he had found Jared Spitznik.
The school day dragged on forever. By the time we got out for the day and re-grouped at Chandler’s truck, it was a big relief to be able to finally discuss our plans without whispering.
“So, has his car moved since the last time you checked?” Faedra asked.
“It appears he’s back at home,” Chandler replied.
“Okay, so now all we have to do is wait until tomorrow,” I said.
“About that,” Chandler continued, “I’ve been considering our plan, and we haven’t addressed what we’re going to do once we find Jared and his co-conspirators. They’ll likely outnumber us. We can’t call on the traditional authorities because of the other moles, and they also have more of the meteor that can essentially disable two of us.”
I secretly wished Chandler would quit saying ‘co-conspirators’ – especially considering Faedra’s comment the night before. It was beginning to make this whole thing sound like a plot to kill Caesar or something. I was personally leaning toward using ‘bad guys’ or something like that. But, considering the circumstances, I let it slide.
“Yeah... good point,” Faedra replied.
“Well... we have some of the meteor, too,” I said. “Couldn’t we leverage that somehow to even the odds?”
A saw a glint in Chandler’s eyes that told me I had just hit gold. I waited to see what great idea was about to spring out of his suped-up brain.
“Yeah... I might be able to come up with something, but we’re going to need to go back into Faedra’s house and retrieve the meteor fragment.”
“Okay, no problem. Since it doesn’t affect me, I can walk right in and get it. But then how are you going to get near it to work your magic?”
“My parents must have worked with dangerous stuff like that meteor all of the time – especially my mom. I know she had some sort of protective suit she wore sometimes when she was doing experiments. There’s a room in the back of the garage they never let me go in. Maybe they have something in there that we can use,” Faedra said.
“Great,” I replied. “Let’s get going.”
* * * * *
We drove over to Faedra’s house and parked in the front drive. Her mood had seemed to take a turn for the worse, and she sat in the truck looking depressed after I got out.
“You okay?” I asked, knowing she wasn’t but not knowing what else I could say.
“It’s just... it’s just so creepy without them here, not knowing where they are right now. I just want all of this to be over.”
“Agreed. And the sooner we get what we need here, the sooner we can get them back,” Chandler said.
His statement seemed to wake Faedra from her trance-like state. She shook her head from side to side like she was trying to wake herself up, and then replied, “Right, let’s go.”
Whatever hesitancy shed shown when we first arrived was gone now. She marched towards the garage with renewed purpose, and then opened the door and went inside. Chandler and I hurried to keep up. At the back of the garage was another door with a formidable-looking lock on it.
“This is it,” Faedra said.
“Well, since we don’t have the key, we should probably get a crowbar and try and pry it off...”
As he was speaking, Faedra took hold of the lock and began to pull. I could hear the sound of the wood giving way as the screws that held the latch in place began to come loose reluctantly.
“...or Faedra could just rip the lock off,” Chandler continued.
“You might want to look away in case any splinters come our way,” I interjected, turning away just in time to hear a loud popping sound and feeling some of the wood pieces from the door pepper my shoulder.
“Great,” Chandler said.
Faedra reached forward and pulled open the now lock-less door, reaching around the inside of the jamb and apparently feeling for a light switch. A lone fluorescent light flickered on and revealed the inside of the storage room.
We all stepped in to see what we could find. The room was as wide as the garage, about twenty feet in all I guessed, and about five feet deep. There were shelves all along the back side of the room on the right-hand side that were filled with all sorts of things in boxes and hanging from hooks. There was what looked like a small lab of some sort on the left-hand side containing equipment I didn’t recognize, but which apparently impressed Chandler.
“Cool! Your mom has a Blanders and Hous granulated spectrometer! Sweet!”
He walked up to the Blanders-and-whatever thingy and touched it like he had just discovered a T-Rex skeleton or something.
“Chandler, focus,” I said. “We’re here to get supplies that will help us rescue Faedra’s parents, not plan our next science project.”
“Yeah... right,” he said, sounding like a kid who had just been scolded for stealing a cookie before dinner.
“I think I found something over here,” Faedra said.
I looked over to the other side of the storage room and saw Faedra holding up what looked like a silver jumpsuit that she had pulled out of one of the boxes on a shelf.
“That might work,” Chandler said, crossing the room and picking up a second suit from the same box. “See if there’s a label or something to indicate what the suit is for.”
“Looks like this is it.” I turned the box a bit so I could read the label. “Special-issue lead-lined hazmat suit with goggles. Respirator not included. Only for protection from low-level radiation, non-particulate sources (see manual for exact specifications).”
Faedra reached back into the box and produced something that looked like the old aviator goggles I’d seen in the history books from World War I fighter pilot pictures. “I guess that would be these,” she said.
“Well, this could be what we’re looking for,” I offered.
“Yep. Only one way to find out,” Chandler said as he began putting on one of the suits. “I’m going to go inside to attempt to retrieve the piece of meteorite in your basement. If I don’t pass out, then we’ve found what we’re looking for.”
The suit had booties and gloves attached, as well as a hoodie that covered almost his entire head, leaving a small circle of his face revealed so that only his mouth, eyes, and nose were still exposed. He put the goggles on over the outside of the suit and looked up at Faedra and me.
“How do I look?” he asked.
Faedra and I both burst out laughing. Even though he had picked the smaller of the two suits, he still looked like a little kid dressed up in his dad’s work clothes. The suit’s excess material bunched up at the ends of his arms and legs.
“What?”
“You look cute,” Faedra replied.
It was good to hear her laugh. I loved that laugh.
“You’ll need something to put it in, won’t you?” I asked.
“Oh, right. Look for some sort of container. It should be very heavy for its size if it’s lead-lined,” Chandler instructed.
After a few minutes of poking around, we managed to find a lunch-box sized container that felt like it weighed fifty pounds even though it was empty.
“That’s probably what we need. Easy enough to test it once I put the meteorite inside of it,” Chandler said.
“I’m going with you, just in case you get weak like the last time,” I said.
“Good idea,” Faedra added.
* * * * *
The expedition back into Faedra’s house didn’t take long. Chandler didn’t experience any of the weakness he’d displayed before when he went into the basement. Even though I felt fine, I let him pick the meteor fragment up using the gloves, not wanting to touch it with my bare hands just in case there might be some other contaminant on it. It was the size of a tennis ball and fit inside of the container we’d brought with us nicely. The hardest part was lugging the container back up the stairs and outside.
By the time we were back outside, Faedra had put on the other suit and was waiting for us. She started walking slowly towards the container and didn’t appear to be experiencing any problems. She reached down and picked it up by the handle, and held it out in front of her – something she would never have been able to do before. It was something I couldn’t have done even without being affected by the meteor! I wondered briefly how her new super-strength had changed the way she thought of me. In the old days, before superpowers, most guys were stronger than girls. I didn’t know how I felt about the new situation, but I would need to sort through those feelings later. Right now, we had to prepare for a rescue operation.
“Now that we have this, what do we do next?” I asked. I saw the sparkle in Chandler’s eyes as he turned his gaze towards the garage.
“Now I get to use Mrs. Sutherland’s lab to analyze this bad boy and come up with a way to weaponize it!”
“Just don’t break anything,” Faedra instructed. “That stuff belongs to the government, and it’s probably really expensive?”
“Yeah, sure, your mom’s lab is in good hands,” Chandler responded while rubbing his hands together with a big smile on his face.
“What are we going to do while Chandler works on analyzing the meteor?” Faedra asked.
“We better get back home in time for supper, or Mom’s going to start calling and asking where we are.”
“Yeah, good point.”
Faedra and I had learned from reading her parents’ notes on Jared the Mole that tomorrow’s meeting wouldn’t occur until he left work, which was around 6 p.m. Before leaving Chandler, we all agreed to meet after school as usual, but then to go and follow Mr. Franklin to the meeting. So that my mom wouldn’t get suspicious, we were going to tell her that Chandler and I were working on a science project.
Our plan sounded so smooth when we discussed it. We thought we had everything figured out.
Boy, were we about to be surprised...