Hopefully we’ll also find some clue about where my mom is being kept. Despite two straight days of hacking and exploring Mr. Malone’s computer, Jeremy didn’t find even a hint about her. He’s convinced she’s not here, and I’m afraid I believe him.
“Do you have a better idea?” Jeremy snaps back. “Besides, I was ninety-five percent confident before you guys started messing with my head.” He ups his pace, looking like a cross between an earthworm and a yogi as he scoots across the hard ground.
We’re making our way through one of the undeveloped fields that surround the lab, the plants and weeds providing cover as we creep forward, dressed entirely in black. I have to admit, we blend into the night pretty well—certainly better than I thought we would when Jeremy laid out this leg of the plan—but I’m still not confident we won’t be discovered. With all the extra precautions Mr. Malone has taken to protect the lab, I can’t believe he left this area with nothing but an easily disabled perimeter alarm for protection. Especially if Jeremy’s right and there are access tunnels out here.
“I’m giving you ten more minutes,” Dante growls. “If we don’t find the tunnel by then—”
“What?” answers Jeremy. “What are you going to do? Walk up to the front door and blow the thing wide open?”
“If we have to,” Draven tells him grimly.
My mouth goes dry at the determination in his voice. One way or another, Draven is getting into that lab tonight, and I have a feeling he doesn’t give a damn whether or not he gets hurt or killed in the process. He’s willing to do anything, take any risk, to save someone he loves, and I can totally relate to that. I feel the same way about Mom and Rebel. But while he doesn’t seem to care much about his safety, I do. The thought of him getting hurt upsets me more than a little.
Closing my eyes, I send a quiet plea into the universe that we all get out of this alive.
“You won’t get two steps into the lab that way and you know it,” Jeremy says.
“Ask me if I give a crap.”
“Can you all just bloody well shut up and get moving?” Nitro says from his spot at the back of our wiggling, dysfunctional line. “It’s only a matter of time before something crawls up my pant leg, and I have to be honest, I’m not okay with that.”
“Don’t be such a—”
“Yes!” Jeremy crows in a loud whisper, cutting Draven off mid-insult. “Found it! Down there to the left. Do you see it?”
I narrow my eyes, trying to peer through the darkness at where Jeremy’s deliberately dim flashlight is pointing. “That round thing in the ground?” I ask, excitement thrumming through my blood.
“Yes! That’s an access grate!” Jeremy does a crazy little wriggle that I assume is his version of a victory dance. “I told you it was here. I told you we’d find it! I knew it! I just knew it!” Another wriggle. “Who’s the man? Who. Is. The. Man?”
It’s a rhetorical question, so nobody answers him. And we don’t interrupt his moment of victory either—he’s earned it.
“Nice job, nerd king,” Rebel says affectionately when Jeremy finally stops congratulating himself and we’re congregated around the grate. “Now what?”
“We rip the thing off its hinges and go in,” Dante says. He reaches for the grate, when Jeremy yells, “No! Don’t!”
We all freeze.
“What’s wrong?” Draven demands. “I thought this was what we were looking for.”
“It is.” Jeremy gets on his knees, pulls off his backpack, and starts rummaging around in it. “Just because it wasn’t on any of the security diagrams or property blueprints doesn’t mean it’s not protected. It’s an outside access point. It’s probably wired.”
“With explosives?” Nitro asks, eyes wide.
Jeremy rolls his eyes. “With security devices that alert the big guys with superpowers.”
He pulls a gadget from his backpack and aims it at the grate. The device lights up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. An intricate web of crisscrossing lines shimmers over the entire drain.
Lasers.
“What are we going to do?” asks Rebel. “We can’t get past that.”
Jeremy snorts. “Speak for yourself.”
He retrieves some other handheld machines, presses a sequence of buttons, then waits. He repeats this three times, then reaches for the original gadget and points it at the grate. This time it doesn’t so much as beep.
“Excellent!” Jeremy quickly shoves his equipment back into this backpack. “Let’s move.”
“What did you do?” Draven demands as Jeremy starts prying at the gate with a crowbar.
What doesn’t he have in that backpack?
He glances at us and shrugs. “I jammed the signal.”
“All that to jam a signal?” Nitro asks.
“It was a very complicated signal.” He keeps working with the crowbar, but the grate barely moves.
“This is taking too long,” Dante says. Suddenly, a huge gust of wind comes out of nowhere, knocking us onto our backs and slamming into the grate.