Mystics 3-Book Collection (27 page)

“But they
know
,” said the other man,
as he made his way towards the front door. His fingers twitched at
his sides. “It’ll never work. It’s over. It’s all over. They’re
going to send me to the Nexus—I’m as good as dead.”

Zoey’s breath caught in her throat—she
recognized that whiney high-pitched voice.

“Zoey? What’s wrong?” said Tristan. “You
look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

The two men turned around. The sickly,
sweaty man glowered at Zoey. He looked crazy and violent. He
hesitated, fidgeting like he was about to pounce, but at the same
time he looked as if he was restraining himself with great effort.
And then the man in the coat pushed him out the door, and they
disappeared.

Zoey jumped out of the chair. “That’s him! I
recognize his voice. That’s the guy who
stole
the codes—the
same guy that attacked me when I was eavesdropping on him and Mrs.
Dupont. He’s working with the Alphas.
He’s
one of the
traitors!”

Simon dropped his cup. “Oh man—and he’s been
sitting here all this time. What do we do now?”

Tristan got to his feet. “If the traitors
are still here, then maybe we still have time to stop them before
they attack headquarters. We have to tell someone.”

“Most of the agents have gone to London,”
said Simon, looking pale. “The retired agents have probably gone
home already. There’s no one left but us. Oh, this is really bad,
isn’t it?”

Zoey looked at them both. She was
excited—and frightened. “Then it’s
our
job to stop
them.”

Without waiting another second, Zoey ran
towards the door.

“Zoey, wait!” Tristan called out to her as
she disappeared through the front door and sprinted across the
grounds.

Icy rain slapped her face as she tore
through the grounds. She could just make out the nervous man’s
shape hurrying through the rain and gray mist toward the hive. She
thought about shooting her boomerang at him, but her visibility was
too poor. There was no sign of the man in the black coat.

The man vanished into the hive. She would be
there in just a few more yards. For a whiney type of man, he was
surprisingly fast—he was running like his life depended on it.

She was soaking wet when she pulled open the
front doors and ran after him down the main hall. She stopped in
front of a large silver oval mirror with the inscription,
United
Kingdom
at the top. A silver mist lingered inside it for a
second and then shifted and vanished—the mirror had just been used.
The man was gone. She was too late.

Simon and Tristan came up beside her.

“He just mirror-ported,” she said,
breathlessly. “If we go now, we might still catch him in time to
stop him.”

“
He
? So where’s the other guy in the
long coat?” asked Simon looking around. “We didn’t see anyone
outside.”

Zoey shrugged. “I don’t know. I lost him. He
didn’t use the mirror-port, though.”

“So
where
is he then?” Tristan
clenched his jaw. “He’s still here somewhere—”

“OUT!” bellowed a voice.

The three of them turned to see a very angry
Mrs. Andrews. She marched up to them, pointing her long finger. Her
face was twisted in fury.

“Look at the state of you. You’re soaking
wet! Dripping dirt all over my clean floors! Out! All of you! Get
out!”

Zoey was not intimidated, “Mrs. Andrews, did
you see a man here, moments ago? He just used the
mirror-ports.”

Mrs. Andrews pursed her lips, her anger
diminishing slightly. “Of course I did. I work the main desk, don’t
I? I
see
everything. Why do you ask?”

“Do you know who he was?” asked Zoey.

“Agent Sylvester Stokes, a mighty good
agent. He’s always so polite to me. He said he was off to lend
Agent Barnes a hand on something
very
important. He also
dirtied my floors. What business is it of yours, anyway? Shouldn’t
you kids be at home?”

Zoey looked at Tristan and Simon and said in
a low voice. “He’s going after the interloper. We have to warn
Agent Barnes.”

Mrs. Andrews crossed her arms. “What are you
three conspiring about? You have the look of mischief—don’t think I
haven’t seen that look before. You kids—always getting yourselves
into trouble!”

“We could try to get a message to him
somehow,” said Tristan, ignoring Mrs. Andrews who was leaning
closer to hear what they were saying. “Maybe we could try to
contact London from here first?”

Zoey shook her head. “No, it’ll take too
long to explain, and we’re wasting precious time. We’ll have to
stop him ourselves,” she said with a flutter of excitement.

“What?” Simon nearly spit out his tongue.
“Are you serious? You mean—the three of us—going after the double
agent on our own? Of course we are, how stupid of me. Hang on while
I go fetch my spy gear from my secret spy car.”

Zoey turned to Mrs. Andrews, who was still
eyeballing as if she was one of their supervisors.

“Agent Stokes is the traitor, and he’s going
after Agent Barnes. He’ll probably try to kill him to get the
interloper.”

Zoey waited for Mrs. Andrews to close her
mouth and then continued.

“You have to get a message to management and
to the other agencies right away, Mrs. Andrews. Tell them what I’ve
just told you. And please hurry up before it’s too late.”

Mrs. Andrews frowned. “These are
very
serious accusations, Zoey St. John. You can destroy a man’s career
by saying things like that. Are you
sure
he’s the one?”

“We are,” said Zoey, Tristan, and Simon
together.

“There has to be some mistake,” started Mrs.
Andrews, “it
can’t
be Agent Stokes—he was always so
well-mannered—so nice to me. He even brought me flowers once.”

“It
is
him. Do you want Agent Barnes’
blood on your hands?” said Zoey dryly. Her voice rose as she
started to lose her patience. “Well, do you?”

“No.”

“—because that’s what he’s planning on doing
if we don’t warn them in time. Please, get the message to
management. Tell them that
I
recognized the traitor. If you
don’t believe us, then do it for Agent Barnes.”

Mrs. Andrews nodded. The color had drained
from her face.

“All right then. It doesn’t hurt to transmit
a message, even if you might be mistaken.” She hurried off towards
the front desk.

Zoey exhaled and turned to her friends. “You
guys ready?”

“Yes,” answered Tristan.

“No,” said Simon.

There was a moment of silence. “Okay, but
let’s hurry. Do you have weapons on you?”

Tristan smiled and pulled his S9 slingshot
from his back jean’s pocket.

“Never leave home without it,” he said and
then shoved it back.

Simon searched his pockets like someone who
was fighting against their own clothes. He pulled out his slingshot
triumphantly. “Got it! Thought I’d lost it. Whew.”

Zoey stepped towards the control panel,
lifted her fingers, and paused.

“Uh, guys—where’s headquarters anyway? Am I
supposed to type just
Headquarters
?”

“I don’t know,” said Tristan.

Simon shrugged. “I know it’s in
Knightsbridge, London—but I’m not sure if you’re supposed to
type—”

BANG!

Someone screamed.

Zoey turned to see Mrs. Andrews collapse.
Her head hit the floor with an echoing
thud
, and then she
was motionless.

The man in the black wool coat stepped over
her casually, and pointed a very large gun at them.

“I hate kids,” he said in a deep voice.
“—and I hate the ones that don’t mind their business even more! I
didn’t want to have to do that to poor Mrs. Andrews, but
you
made me do it. I couldn’t let her blab all of our plans now, could
I?”

Zoey stared at Mrs. Andrews’s body. The
gun’s blast still rang in her ears, and she felt dizzy and sick to
her stomach. She never really liked the woman, but she didn’t
deserve to die. “You—you killed her,” her voice wavered. “You
didn’t have to kill her.”

“No,
you
killed her,” he said, aiming
the gun at Zoey.

“You should have kept your big mouth shut,
Drifter
. Now, look what you made me do. Her death’s on
you.”

Tristan stood protectively in front of Zoey.
“What do you want?”

As the man got closer, Zoey saw that he had
one milky white eye and that the other was blue. He was over six
feet tall, broad shouldered, and under his coat he wore an
expensive black, tailored suit. He looked like a villain from a
James Bond movie.

“I don’t want to have to add child murderer
to my list,” continued the man. “But I will if you make me. I can’t
let you ruin our plans, you miserable little brats. Not when we’re
so close.”

He held out his free hand. “Your DSM’s.
Now.”

“Oh no, not again,” whined Simon. He pulled
out his metal compact and held it out reluctantly. “Are you going
to give it back?”

“You won’t need it back,” said the man.

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Simon
tried to pull his DSM back, but the man scooped it up swiftly. He
then grabbed Zoey’s and Tristan’s DSM’s and pocketed them in the
folds on his long coat. When he was done, he pointed the gun
towards the stairway.

“Move. Down to the basement level.”

The three of them obeyed and walked over to
the staircase.

Poor Mrs. Andrews was dead. Zoey couldn’t
get that awful scream out of her head. The image of her body
sprawled on ground, twisted and bent unnaturally haunted her. If
she hadn’t told her about the traitor, she’d still be alive. The
man in the suit was going to pay for what he had done, that was a
promise.

Every minute that passed endangered not just
Agent Barnes’ life, but the fate of the entire agency. They had to
get past the man with the gun—but how? She was positive he would
shoot them in a heartbeat if he had too. They were all armed, but
their weapons weren’t faster than an automatic handgun.

They slowed when they reached the bottom of
the stairs and arrived at a set of large metal double doors. The
sign over the doors read:

WARNING!

Hostiles inside, proceed with extreme
caution

“Inside,” ordered the man.

She had always wanted to visit the basement
area, but she hadn’t imagined it with a gun in her back.

Tristan gave Zoey a worried look, opened the
doors, and stepped inside. The others followed.

Zoey wasn’t sure what she had expected to
see, but this was not what she had anticipated.

The room was enormous, the size of an entire
floor at the hive. In the middle of the room was a series of desks
and tables with chairs. Glass compartments that looked like
individual prisons lined both sides of the chamber. And inside each
compartment was a mystic.

Over a hundred mystics of every race and
size stared at them with loathing through the glass. Zoey saw a
winged human woman with snakes for her hair, a small single black
cat with red eyes, and a hairy ghoulish creature the size of a
grizzly bear with a human face that looked neither female nor male.
There was a moving rock with human legs, a twelve-inch girl with
purple pigtails in a pink ball gown, a pile of steaming green blobs
with hundreds of staring yellow eyes, and many other mystics she
had never seen before.

The cells on the left side had metal doors.
The small square openings in the doors were large enough to get a
glimpse of the dangerous looking mystics lurking within. The words,
Maximum-Security Holding Cell
were written in black above
each compartment.

Zoey could almost feel the evil seeping out
through the glass cells like a cold sweat, chilling her as she
passed.

The cells on the right side were mostly made
of Plexiglas, and the mystics that occupied them seemed a little
more docile. But she was sure that if they escaped, they wouldn’t
be so friendly—especially not to the people who had put them
there.

What she saw next made her heart ache—that
beautiful fire stallion she had seen on her very first day at the
hive was locked away in one of the compartments. Its sad eyes met
Zoey’s, and she felt tears sting her eyes.
Disturbing the
Peace
was written on the small screen next to its cage. Horses
didn’t belong in cages.

As they walked further inside, Zoey noticed
that a flashing sign on the side of their jails identified the
crimes that had been committed by each mystic.
Illegal Border
Crossing
was written beside an enormous spider with the head of
a snake. It startled Zoey when it suddenly threw itself against the
glass with a loud boom

“Keep walking.” The man pressed the gun
against her back.

Zoey released her breath and kept moving.
She spotted a large Krakenite and felt her heart race.
Caution –
High intensity Voltage,
was written on its compartment. It
would get zapped if it tried anything.

They were all locked up in these
compartments. The mystics couldn’t touch them. They were safe.

Their immediate danger was the man with the
gun.

To her surprise, three booths were crammed
with fairies. Their ugly faces were wrinkled in hatred. They flew
into the glass of their cages like a giant swarm of angry bees.
They hit the glass with their fists. Some stood back and spit at
the glass, while others made obscene gestures with their hands.
Zoey suspected that these were the same fairies that they had
caught. She was relieved that they were all trapped behind the
glass.

They came to a cubical where an elderly man
was writing in a large ledger. With his pinstriped shirt and
navy-blue tie, he looked like a two hundred year old accountant.
Above his cubical was another large flashing screen, which
read: