“And what’s their interest in you?” the professor asked, playing along as if it was something he was used to doing.
“I’m an alien.” Alex let the professor see him turn his gaze on Bishop Ranch, taking in as much of the sprawl as he could. “My adoptive mother rescued me from here, from Laboratory Z. The day of the fire. Her name was An Chin and she and my father were the best people I ever knew.”
Something had made him tell the professor the whole crazy truth. He couldn’t say what, exactly, something that told Alex this man wouldn’t be surprised by it. Not at all.
“And I can prove it.”
“Prove that your parents were the best people you ever knew?”
“No, that you’re right. They really do walk among us and a war really is coming.”
With that, Alex extracted the slap bracelet he’d taken from his father’s wrist from the pocket of the still-stiff jeans he’d purchased at the Buy Two store. His feet felt much better squeezed into cheap sneakers his own size.
“Alien piece of jewelry?” the professor asked him.
“I guess you can call it that. But slap it on and you won’t be going anywhere for a while.”
“What do you—”
The professor’s words froze in his throat when Alex slapped the bracelet on his wrist. His features seized up and his eyes bulged with fear until Alex stripped the thing off him.
“Where did you get that?” the professor asked, wide-eyed as he rubbed his wrist as if it were someone else’s.
“From my father’s wrist after they killed him.”
“After who killed him?”
“Androids, cyborgs.”
“We call them drone things,” Sam chimed in.
The professor looked at her briefly before returning his focus to Alex, the fear still in his eyes. “You’re saying a cyborg murdered your parents.”
“‘Cyborgs,’ plural, yes. And we haven’t even gotten to the ash man yet, a kind of astral projection. I’m the one he’s after because I’ve got what he wants.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“That’s why we’re looking for whatever’s left of Laboratory Z,” Alex told him. “Because maybe the answer’s there.”
78
MR. WIZARD
THE PROFESSOR CLIMBED TO his feet, one knobby knee cracking and then the other. He held his ground on the grass-stained blanket as if to keep his distance, then suddenly reached down and plucked Alex’s untangled bill from his pot.
“Here,” he said, extending it with a trembling hand.
Alex didn’t take it. “What’s with the refund?”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
“Yes, I did; you didn’t answer it,” Alex said.
The professor suddenly looked like a man who badly wanted to be somewhere else. “You need to leave.”
“Tell me where we can find Laboratory Z and we will.”
The old man’s eyes sought him out, seeming to view him differently now, with an odd mixture of wonder and apprehension. “What makes you think I know?”
“The way you looked at me, the way you looked at that bracelet.”
The professor sat back down. Alex and Sam joined him on the blanket next to each other, with the older man centered across from them.
“I’ve been coming here every day for fifteen years,” he said, spooning a hand through his beard. “Around the last time I shaved. I don’t want to believe you. I want to believe you’re full of shit. I want to believe that bracelet’s something your tutor cooked up for a science fair project.”
Alex stuffed the crumpled dollar bill back into the tiny pot. “Do you think I’m full of shit?”
The professor shrugged. Sam realized the crown of his scalp was bald and he had a pointy, long nose with a pair of reading spectacles dangling on the tip. She thought he looked more like Mr. Wizard, the cartoon character who invariably rescued Tooter Turtle from all manner of mishap with a wave of his magic wand.
“I paid for an answer, Professor,” Alex told him.
“Then do yourself a favor and just accept another refund.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes, it is.” He ran his eyes from Alex to Sam before settling his gaze somewhere between them. “How much do you know?”
“I told you what we know. The short version. There’s more if you want to hear it, lots more.”
“I meant about Laboratory Z. Let’s start there.”
“I know about the explosion, the fire, and my mom rescuing me,” Alex said, swallowing hard as he tried to fit all the pieces of what he’d learned together. “I know there was some experiment going on there, something big. I know that had something to do with the fire and the lab’s destruction.”
“Then you know more than just about anyone alive, except for me and one other man.”
“You worked there,” Sam put forth, “didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, young lady. I had a particular area of expertise the lab was most interested in.”