Jude Watson: A King's Ransom

The place was freezing. Enormous maps spanned the walls. A news ticker scrolled headlines near the ceiling. A bank of clocks ticked in unison, telling time in different parts of the world to the thousandth of a second. Brushed-steel cabinets lined the walls near empty computer workstations, their black, webbed chairs gathering dust.

The platform reached the chamber floor with a dull thump. Casper grabbed a chair. “Make yourself at home.”

Atticus sank into the chair, sending up a small cloud of wispy dust. His throat was dry. He had to swallow twice before he could eke out a sound. “What am I supposed to do?”

Cheyenne pulled a handkerchief from her bag and dusted off two seats. The twins sat. “Tell us what you know.”

“About what?” Atticus asked.

Cheyenne glanced at her brother, rolling her eyes. “The genius thinks he’s too smart for us nincompoops.”

“About being a Guardian!” Casper exploded, lunging forward.

Atticus screamed. His leg dug reflexively into the floor, propelling the chair backward. He crashed against a computer table, the impact knocking the wind out of him.

Casper cracked up. “Brave kid.”

“I suggest cutting to the chase,” Cheyenne said, looking brightly around the room. “No one can hear you in here. No one knows where you are. You will not leave until you answer. And you will not live if you don’t.”

“I don’t know anything!” Atticus insisted. “I told you! My mom was dying. She said I was a Guardian. She said we were enemies of you guys. The Vespers. She said you were after some secret. It was all in fragments – I can barely remember.”

Casper grinned. He stood slowly and sauntered to the wall. There, he opened a cabinet door. “Maybe we can change that,” he said.

Inside were a series of long knives. Casper pulled one out, a thin blade that made a high-pitched shhhhink.

Atticus felt the blood rush from his head. For a moment he could see only white spots. The room around him seemed to shrink, its frigid temperature warming, the walls rushing in, everything decaying into a tiny trap… .

His brain flashed an image of the tiny room at the airport. A men’s room. A tiny can.

Germ Away.

“I know! I mean, I don’t know!” he blurted, words propelling through his mouth before he could think. “That is, in actuality, I don’t know the information. In my head. But I have it. All of it. That’s how we Guardians do it. Even though we’re, like, nerds and geniuses, all we know is the inscription.”

Casper cocked his head. “The what?”

“Encryption!” Atticus said.

Slow down. Think.

Casper came closer, casually sliding the blade along his fingernail and shaving off a thin slice as if it were butter. “Go on… .”

“It … it’s a precaution,” he said. “To avoid hypnosis. And torture. And truth serums. We just know the key sequence, that’s all. So we can decrypt it.”

Casper flung the blade’s tip forward, sending a fingernail into Atticus’s face. “What. Exactly. Is it. That you decrypt? ”

“It’s all in my flash drive!” Atticus said.

Cheyenne looked dismayed. “The one I smashed under my foot at the airport?”

“No!” Atticus shot back. “Another one. Hidden on my key chain.”

Casper’s face darkened. He lifted the blade carefully over his head. Then, with gritted teeth, he hurled the knife at Atticus.

Atticus screamed and ducked. The blade tore through the fabric of the seat and impaled itself into the table behind.

“That’s for making me have to go and get that stupid key chain,” Casper said. “I threw it in the trash can outside. It was ruining the hang of my pants.”

As he left, Cheyenne walked over to the bank of clocks. She stopped near one that said EASTERN STANDARD TIME, US, which read 7:02 A.M.

“This is Boston time, set precisely by the atomic clock,” she said. “All your little friends are waking up and getting ready for school. In a half hour, at seven thirty-two, they will be running for the school bus. And you, halfway across the world, will have decrypted your flash drive and given us all your supposed information.”

Atticus was shaking too hard to agree.

A half hour?

Even if he could make contact – with anyone – a half hour was not enough time. “I – I – m-m -”

“Chill out,” Cheyenne said. “You’re among friends.”

“ I may need more time ,” Atticus blurted out. “I need to … write code.”

“It’s a fast computer,” Cheyenne drawled.

“But I’m a human,” Atticus said. “Not even Mark Zuckerberg can code that fast!”

Cheyenne walked to the table where the knife was lodged. She yanked it out and held it toward the light. “Well, then … epic fail.”