Project X-Calibur (7 page)

11

130:11:48

“THIRTY-FIVE, THIRTY-SIX,
thirty-seven,” Malcolm grunted, doing push-ups next to his bed. Just watching him made me tired.

Darla got her own room, but Kwan, Tyler, Malcolm, and I were sharing. The room was easily large enough for the four of us, with a window that looked out on London spanning the entire far wall. Even though some of HQ was below ground, the part that contained our rooms was apparently several well-concealed stories above it. Outside, the hazy gray air made the city look like something from a Jack the Ripper horror movie.

Malcolm and I had two beds on one side of the room; Kwan and Tyler had beds on the other. Each had a futuristic steel nightstand, and above the headboards, two large flat-screen TVs had been fixed to the walls. Right now they were showing only that maddening countdown (as if the ones
permanently installed on our wrists
weren't enough).

“Hey Kwan—what are you doing?” I asked, noticing him alone in the corner, ear pressed to the wall.

“Shhh. Trying to hear what Darla's up to in her room.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “She's weird, that's all.”

Tyler kept pushing buttons on his phone, but his sigh told me he wasn't getting anywhere. “I just wish I could tell 'em about this end-of-the-world stuff,” he moaned. “I have a little sister. What if they can go someplace to hide, or—”

Malcolm stopped doing push-ups, either because he had reached a hundred or because Tyler had annoyed him. Probably both.

“We'd
all
like to tell our families about this,” he said, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. “But unless you were told something different than I was, we have to keep it a secret for now.”

“Why?”
Tyler pressed, his brow creased with worry. Kwan had stopped listening to the wall and flopped on his bed.

Malcolm shook his head and shrugged. “Pellinore has his reasons, that's why.”

“But what if we fail?” Tyler continued. “I don't want my family to die because they didn't even
know
they were in danger.”

After a moment of heavy silence, Malcolm stood up and stretched. “We're not
going
to fail. I don't know about you three, but I intend to kick serious alien butt.” He turned and headed toward the bathroom. “I'm taking a shower.”

After he was gone and we heard the water running, Kwan whispered, “What crawled up
his
butt?”

“He's definitely intense,” I muttered, then tilted my neck from side to side, trying to get rid of a cramp. “Man, that g-force test turned my spine into spaghetti.”

“You don't think there's going to be any
real
tests here, do you?” Tyler grimaced. “Like in school. Questions and answers?”

“Obviously we're going to be in fighter jets or something,” Kwan theorized. “Or maybe inside missiles that'll get fired at the aliens. Why else would we have to take a g-force test? Only pilots do that kind of stuff.”

He had a point. “But what good would it do to have us inside missiles? Wouldn't we just die when they exploded?” I made a little “poof” with my hands.

He deflated a bit. “Yeah. That would be bad. Unless . . . they need us inside the missiles to turn 'em on in the air?” His eyes grew wide as he sat bolt upright. “That would explain why they need kids! 'Cause we're small! No wonder Mr. P. said it was a need-to-know basis. If we knew we were going to die, we'd all get the heck outta here!” He snapped his fingers, convinced.

Tyler gulped. “Do I
have
to blow up inside a missile?”

I rolled my eyes. “We're not going to be inside missiles. Besides, if they had kids here just because of size, why would Tyler be here?” I held a hand out in front of Tyler as if I was showcasing a new car on a game show. “He's
not
small.”

Tyler's face brightened as if I had just saved him from certain death. “You're right!”

Kwan threw up his hands. “Whatever.”

We heard the shower water stop. Kwan glanced over his shoulder. “I bet hotshot in there knows something. Pellinore seems to really dig him,” he whispered.

I considered telling them what I had heard about Pellinore “grooming” Malcolm for X-Calibur, but decided against it. I didn't want them to think I was privy to any more information than they were.

“But Merlin picked
Ben,
” Tyler countered. “Isn't that just as important?”

I wasn't in the mood to get on the discussion of Merlin championing me again. “What we do know is that this whole project is called
X-Calibur,
right?” I said quickly.

“So?” Kwan asked.

“So, the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table was all about a super-powerful
sword
called Excalibur,” I explained, leaning closer like I was telling a story around a campfire. “At first, nobody could even use the sword because it was stuck inside a big stone. A bunch of people tried to pull it out, but nobody could.” I paused for dramatic effect, just like Dad used to do with me. “Until . . . Arthur came along.”

Tyler leaned closer. “Then what happened?”

“Arthur became king after that. And
leader
of the—”

I stopped when I spotted Malcolm standing in the bathroom doorway. He had changed into shorts and a T-shirt for bed, his wet hair combed back. For a moment I was struck by how much he looked like a young Pellinore.

“Leader of the what?” he asked.

“. . . the knights.” And that's when I spotted something on the wall under the window: a small control panel with buttons. I crossed the room.

“Any idea what this is?” I wondered, running a finger over the panel.

“Try pushing one of the buttons,” Kwan prodded, joining me.

“No way—” I began, but a hand reached between us and pushed one with no hesitation. It was Malcolm.

“No risk, no reward,” he said coolly, looking at me.
Challenging
me. I probably would have said something in return (something equally cool, I'm sure), but I was too busy gaping at the window. Instead of looking out at foggy London, we were now looking out at a dazzling beach. The sky was a vivid blue, and so was the ocean. In the distance, a group of dolphins was diving in and out of the water. The whisper of an ocean breeze and the relaxing
shu-sshhhh
of waves.

“Whoa,” Tyler gawked. “Is that real?”

“I don't think so.” I pressed another button that had a little “up” arrow on it, and the view changed again. This time it was a desert, the pristine sand stretching for miles.

“It looks so real,” Kwan gaped. “You sure the entire HQ didn't just teleport somewhere?”

“Of course not,” Malcolm snapped, then hit another button, bringing us back to the original view of London.

“
This
is the only real view. The others are probably just a relaxation technique. I bet you're going to need it, too.”

“How can you be sure the London view is real?” I challenged. “Maybe they're
all
fake.”

He sighed and jabbed a thumb at the glass. “I walk those streets every day, remember?”

Oh. Yeah.

“Well, at least we have something to look at now,” Kwan grumbled, then jumped onto his bed again so he could reach one of the large countdown clocks. “If you ask me, Mr. P. is cuckoo about these countdown clocks. I'm surprised he didn't have them installed on the insides of our eyelids, so we'd see them in our sleep.”

“I'm sure he considered it,” I muttered.

Malcolm got into bed. “Lights out,” he announced.

Kwan reeled as if punched. “No offense, bro—but who made you camp counselor?”

“You heard what Pellinore said. Tomorrow's going to be busy. It's either lights out in here or I'm going to ask for my own room. I intend to be at my best tomorrow.”

The three of us exchanged a look. He had a point. Five minutes later, we were all in our beds. Even with the curtains closed and the lights off, the two large countdown clocks bathed us in an unsettling red glow. My brain swirled with a million different thoughts. The next few days were going to be tough enough without being under a microscope because of my connection to Merlin.
Why
had Merlin chosen me, anyway? Why would
any
kids be chosen to defend the world?

I looked to my nightstand, where I had placed the framed photo I brought from home. Me, Mom, and Dad. Smiling. Like it was another lifetime. I turned my focus to the countdown clock on the opposite wall instead, watching the seconds as they ticked down. Forty-two seconds. Forty-one seconds . . . forty seconds . . .

When sleep finally came, I dreamed that I was standing in the atrium of HQ. But it was eerily deserted.

“Hello?” I called out, but the only answer was my voice echoing back to me a dozen times. Two doors slid open, startling me, revealing the hallway we had been in earlier. The ceiling lights were dark, the hallway shrouded in shadow.

As I walked to the mouth of the hall, the light nearest me suddenly started pulsing, beckoning me. I took a cautious step, and another light above me lit up, as if
guiding
me somewhere. I swallowed and looked back over my shoulder.

Just like that, I was suddenly outside, back in Texas, watching Denny's diner from the parking lot. It was a gorgeous day—clear sky, gentle breeze—and the diner was bursting at the seams, probably a Saturday afternoon. I could see guys from school in there—laughing, smiling, eating burgers and ice cream. Todd Byers, The Dorf, everyone.

And Mom, too. She was in her waitress uniform, bustling from table to table. My eyes widened when I saw her give a slice of apple pie to . . . Dad. He was seated with a bunch of the guys from the firehouse, all of them in their bulky gear and covered in soot. Mom and Dad glanced at the window and saw me. They gave a little wave, but just as I lifted my hand to wave back, the sky over the diner opened up in a flash of blinding white light. I shielded my eyes.

Then the diner exploded in a mass of flames and debris.

I woke up with a jolt, my chest heaving. I looked to the countdown clock on the wall, then the one on my wrist. I had only been asleep for
two minutes.

I gulped; it was going to be a long night.

12

121:02:57

I AWOKE TO THE SOUND
of someone knocking.

“Who is it?” Malcolm called out from the floor. I looked over the side of my bed. He was already awake, back to his push-ups. I groaned.
You've gotta be kidding me.

“I've got uniforms for you, knights. And breakfast,” came a voice from the hall.

Malcolm got to the door first (shocker, I know) and whipped it open to reveal a bespectacled, disheveled young tech. He had a large metal cart with four sets of clothing boxes sitting on top. Malcolm immediately grabbed a stack. I spotted my name on another one and did the same.

“There are pajamas and everyday wear, padded sparring outfits if you choose to work out in the gym, and flight training jumpsuits,” the tech explained. “All custom fitted to your exam measurements.”

So we
were
going to be flying something—but what? I prayed that Kwan wasn't right about us being stuffed into missiles.

Malcolm had finished changing into his training gear before the rest of us had even opened our boxes. The jumpsuit was impressive—gray with a silver shimmer, as if there was steel woven into the fabric, with a patch on the upper left: the bold letters “RTR” embossed in the middle of a solid black X.

Malcolm stood even taller in his new uniform. He turned to his nightstand and grabbed something from his top drawer. I couldn't see exactly what was clasped in his hand, but it looked like a tattered ribbon.

“When are we going to fly?” Malcolm asked the young tech as he rushed back to the doorway.

“I'm . . . not entirely sure,” the tech stammered. “My orders were to bring you the uniforms and breakfast, that's all.”

He opened two steel doors on the side of the cart. We were immediately hit by the smells of warm breakfast. My stomach went into a growling fit.

“Normally everyone eats breakfast in the cafeteria, but the schedule today will be too tight for that—” the tech began.

“The schedule you apparently know nothing about,” Malcolm cut him off.

“Dude, chill,” I murmured to Malcolm, and he turned to look at me.

“When the whole world is watching in five days,
you
can ‘chill,' all right?” he snapped.

I kept quiet after that. The ribbon he'd grabbed from his nightstand had wound him up, big time. He was gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white.

“What've you got in there?” Tyler asked the tech, pushing between the rest of us to get at the food inside the cart.

The tech brightened. On the matter of breakfast options, he had all the answers: “Pancakes and sausage, fruits, pastries, egg dishes with ham, cheese—”

“I'm a vegetarian. Nothing with meat, please,” Tyler interrupted.

“Vegetarian?”
Kwan scoffed. “But you wrestle alligators and crocodiles.”

“I wrestle them, I don't eat them,” Tyler replied matter-of-factly. “There's a difference.”

As the tech handed Tyler a heaping plate of pancakes, fresh fruit, and a piping hot bowl of oatmeal, I looked to my left and noticed Darla standing outside her room, watching us. Her clothing boxes were stacked at her feet, and she was eating an omelet with hash browns.

“Morning,” I said as I smiled to her. “Are the eggs good?”

She hesitated a moment, then mumbled “fine” and stepped back into her room. Small talk obviously wasn't her forte.
I guess that's what happens when you become good enough at video games to be a world champion,
I thought.

I turned to the tech. “One of everything you got, please. I'm starving.”

• • •

With our bellies full (me, Kwan, and Tyler had devoured enough to feed a family of sixteen, but Malcolm only had an apple, a banana, and skim milk), our official tour of headquarters began in a seemingly unending hallway. Even more intimidating than its length, the curved ceiling and walls seemed to gradually slope downward, leading deep below ground.

On my right, Darla's face looked pale as she stared down the length of the tunnel.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“Worry about
yourself,
” she snapped. She resumed staring down the tunnel like it was the entrance to a haunted house.

Next to me, Kwan gave me a nudge. “See? The chick has issues.”

“Prepare for movement, knights,” Merlin announced. He and Pellinore were standing at the front of the group.

Movement?
I braced myself, thinking we were about to drop through the floor again, but instead my feet almost slipped out from under me as the floor began to glide forward, like a giant conveyor belt.

“Sidewalk surfing,” Kwan grinned. “If only it moved faster.”

Pellinore raised an eyebrow and barked an order into the air. “Initiate passenger bond and accelerate, please.”

I felt a familiar magnetic pull in my feet and legs, and the floor suddenly
raced
forward with us fixed to it, soaring down the endless tunnel at sixty miles per hour as our hair blew everywhere. We approached the end of the main tunnel in about ten seconds, then made one dramatic turn after another. I cursed myself for eating so much earlier.

“Yee-ha!” Kwan shouted. Tyler had his eyes closed, and I think I actually heard him humming softly to himself, like he was trying to meditate. Darla didn't look pale anymore. She looked
green.
And Malcolm was taking the ride in stride, ribbon still clutched in his hand, a little smile on his face as the wind blew past him.

“Decelerate,” Pellinore ordered, and the moving floor slowly came to a stop. After a beep, we were no longer magnetized to the floor.

“
That
was one seriously sick ride,” Kwan gushed.

Tyler grimaced and touched his belly. “Yeah. Sick.”

We had stopped at an observation window that looked in on a massive room full of techs—dozens of men and women of various ages, all seated in front of holographic touch-screen monitors. Most of the displays focused on satellite images of muddy shapes and sinister-looking specks in outer space.

“This is where our techs monitor the aliens' movements—speed, trajectories, anything and everything that's pertinent,” Pellinore explained.

I decided to finally ask a question that had been on my mind for a while now. “Do you and Merlin work for the government? Is that what all this is?”

“Quite the opposite, Ben. The last thing we want is for the governments or armed forces of the world to get involved in this project. In fact, the less people know about us, or the coming threat, the better.”

“Why, sir?” Malcolm asked.

But instead of answering him, Pellinore looked up and said, “Next bay, please.”

There were no techs in this next room, just one large, ominous black box, a perfect ten-foot-square cube made of shiny black panels. Millions of little lights were blinking over every square inch of it.

“Wow,” I breathed. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it sure was impressive.

“You're looking at decades of work here, knights,” Pellinore said proudly, and he pressed a button on the wall. After the bay window slid up, we could hear something coming from inside the strange black box. Incredibly, it sounded like a miniature
war
was going on inside. There were the sounds of explosions and buildings crumbling, along with screeching cars and screams.

“What the heck?” Tyler murmured as the lights all over the box began to blink faster and faster.

Just as the cacophony reached its peak, the box suddenly stopped shaking. You could hear a pin drop, and I felt an overwhelming sense of dread; the sudden silence was the non-sound of everything
gone.
And then—

Ding.

A slip of paper appeared, sticking out of a slot in the box's side. Pellinore took a deep breath and grabbed it quickly. He had a look, then handed it to Merlin with a grim shake of his head.

“What's going on?” I asked. “What is this thing?”

“An alien invasion simulator,” Pellinore informed us. “Day after day, week after week, it runs war scenarios, analyzing what would happen to mankind if Earth was attacked. Specifically, the millions of possible outcomes that might occur once Earth's governments and armed forces get involved.”

Merlin was still looking at the slip of paper when he added, “The outcome for mankind is always the same.”

He held up the slip of paper. It had just one word on it: EXTINCT.