I lay on the bed for a few minutes after he left. I knew I wouldn’t be alone for long.
It was probably a good idea bordering on a great one, while I still had a little privacy, to figure a way out of Camp Echo.
I gave myself a little pep talk.
“Okay, okay, the main thing is don’t panic. This isn’t so bad. You’ve been in worse situations. Fighting against a sword that can’t be beaten. Battling sixteen million unkillable demons in the middle of the desert. Falling from thirty thousand feet without even a freakin’ parachute. This is nothing. This is cake. Held hostage by ruthless secret agents. Separated from civilization by hundreds of miles of hostile, unfamiliar terrain. A tracking device implanted in your skull. And a bomb that literally blows your brains out with a touch of a button . . . Is that it? Is that the best they got?”
I sat on the edge for a minute or two, holding my head in my hands, rocking back and forth, as if to restore equilibrium to my flip-flopping thoughts.
“What is the mission? What must be done? That’s what Samuel would say. What’s the thing-that-must-be-done? Samuel, where are you? You’re going after the wrong guys. Jourdain just wanted to burn down my house, take all my money, and kill me—these Company guys really want to mess with me.
“Forget about him; forget about Samuel. Samuel isn’t here. Abby isn’t here. Ashley’s here. What are they going to do to Ashley? Kill her. But why would they kill her? Because she knows. She knows the plan and she’ll rat them out to Abby. But Ashley’s not dead yet. If she was, Nueve would have told me. He’d enjoy telling me.
“So Ashley’s alive. I can’t escape without Ashley. But I can’t escape anyway. He’ll just track me down. Well, I’ll have take that chance . . . Maybe if I get a head start on them. . . The transmitter is tiny, the size of an eraser; its range can’t be that great. With a good head start maybe . . . maybe . . .
“So I’ve got to get Ashley. Then we’ve got to get out of this valley. Then we’ve got to get out of Canada. Then we’ve got to get . . .”
Where?
Where in the whole world could I hide from them? Where would be safe?
“I’ve got to find Sam. He put the thing in my head; he’ll know how to get it out.”
I pushed myself off the bed and swayed, holding my arms out from my sides like a tightrope walker for balance. Dr. Mingus must have drained half my blood the day before. What did OIPEP plan to do with my blood? They had taken it before to fight the demons, but they had the Seal now—why would they need my blood to fight demons they could control with Solomon’s ring?
“Something else,” I muttered, closing my eyes, but that made the dizziness worse, so I opened them again. “Not demons. Something really evil. Mingus is a genetic engineer. . . . Cloning! They’re cloning Kropp to make a . . . make a what? A clone army? Army of the Kropp clones? Man, that’s sick.”
Sick . . . and senseless. The power of my blood didn’t make me invincible. It wasn’t like holy armor or anything.
Thinking of armor reminded me of the Knights of the Sacred Order. I never saw one of them in armor, but I did see a suit of it in a closet once, at a little Hansel and Gretel type house in Pennsylvania, where the mother of one of the knights lived. I wasted a few seconds trying to remember her name. I could see her face in my mind’s eye, and the house set back in the woods. The house was close to a state park whose name I also couldn’t remember near a little town not far from Harrisburg . . .
He flew into Harrisburg two nights ago, where he rented a car and drove to a tiny hamlet called Suedberg.
Jourdain Garmot went to Suedberg, where the knight named Windimar had lived. Why? What was he looking for?
The last knightly quest . . . for the Thirteenth Skull.
So the Skull must have been connected somehow to the Knights of the Sacred Order. Maybe it was something they kept hidden, like the Sword. Maybe destroying my father’s house wasn’t about revenge . . . mayb e Jourdain was there looking for the Skull and then set the house on fire to destroy the evidence.
I was losing focus. Jourdain Garmot and the Thirteenth Skull didn’t matter now. Medcon had planted the story of my death before I even came to Camp Echo, so Jourdain Garmot thought I was dead.
Maybe if I started moving something would come to me. The plan. The-thing-that-must-be-done. Take a step. Then the next step. Don’t think about the 779th step. Just the first one.
I stumbled into the bathroom. That was like fifteen steps already.
Time for an inventory. Shower curtain and those little rings holding it to the rod. The rod? I gave it a shake. Aluminum, too flimsy. A bar of soap. A travel-sized plastic bottle of dandruff shampoo. Why had they given me dandruff shampoo? Was I flaky? I turned to the mirror and was shocked by my reflection. My face was no longer the familiar oval shape I’d had since childhood. I had lost nearly forty pounds since I stole Excalibur from beneath my father’s desk. My face was thin and angular, which made my eyes seem very large on either side of my nose, now slightly crooked after being broken by Delivery Dude. I was so shocked by my appearance I forgot to hunt for dandruff. I looked like a vampire—only I was the opposite of a vampire: vampires drink other people’s blood to give themselves life; I gave my blood to others to give them life.
I opened the medicine cabinet. No razors or other sharp objects, not even a pair of tweezers. A toothbrush, but it was plastic and the end was blunt—I’d have to sharpen it somehow and, even if I had a way to do it, I didn’t have the time.
I decided to brush my teeth. God knew when I’d have another opportunity and, besides, brushing your teeth is one of those normal, mundane things that really center you.
A glob of toothpaste fell from my mouth onto the bandage around my hand and I rinsed it off without thinking.
I grabbed a towel and dabbed off the extra water, but the bandage still felt moist. I could feel my heartbeat in the palm. Maybe I should take it off and wash the wound with some soap. The last thing I needed was an infection.
I’d unwrapped about half of it—Mingus had really wound me up with a lot—when I got an idea. It was a tiny germ of an idea, so I stood there at the sink, not moving, until the idea grew a little, then a little more, until it was not so little and germy anymore.
Grabbing the shampoo from the stall, I unscrewed the cap, emptied the contents into the sink, and then I rinsed it out a couple of times. I sidestepped to the toilet, but couldn’t make myself go. That’s what pressure does to you, like when you’re at a ballpark or movie theater, trying to go while five guys stand in line behind you, waiting for you to finish already!
Water. Lots of water and hopefully enough time for it to work through my system. I ducked my head under the tap and drank until I lost count of the swallows. I wondered why I was bothering to count them. I left the empty shampoo bottle on the back of the toilet and went to the closet in the main room. I dressed in a fresh jumpsuit, and then took the empty wooden hanger and snapped it in two across my knee. I tossed the piece with the hook onto the closet floor, sat on the bed, and pulled the rest of the gauze from my hand. How much time until they came for me? Ten minutes? Five? Two? And how much wrap? Too short and I wouldn’t be able to position it. Too long and I wouldn’t be able to tighten it.
I tore off an arm’s length of the gauze, using my teeth to get the tear started, twirled it until it was firm and ropelike, then tied the two ends together to make a loop. I dropped the loop over my head. Might be a little too big, but there was no time to mess with it. I pried the knot open just enough to slip the broken piece of wood through. After I tightened the knot around the wood, I yanked on the loop to test it.
I went back to the bathroom and grabbed the empty shampoo bottle. An imaginary clock ticked loudly inside my head as I tried to force myself to go. The shampoo bottle had a very small opening, maybe the size of a quarter, and I couldn’t let loose full stream, but thank God my aim was true. I screwed the cap back on. It was one of those flip top numbers: you pressed down on one edge, exposing the little rectangular hole for the liquid to pass through. It wouldn’t have the power or distribution of an aerosol and I’d have just one shot at it. Samuel had told me once that if something was necessary, it was possible. He’d better be right.
I heard the stomp of boots on the steps outside.
Time’s up, Kropp. Step-by-step now. Step-by-step.
I ducked into the main room, grabbed my socks from the closet shelf, and plopped on the bed.
The electronic tings answered fingers punching keys on the pad by the door.
Step: Pull on right sock.
Step: Stuff bottle into sock.
The pop! of the lock snapping open.
Step: Left sock.
Doorknob turning.
Step: Jam hanger and rope into left sock.
The door flew open. A blast of freezing air rushed in.
I had jumped from the bed and was shaking my left leg to make the pants fall over the big bulge in my sock when the two goons from the day before—in my mind, I called them Thing 1 and Thing 2—filled the doorway.
“Up already?” Thing 1 rumbled.
“My first lobotomy,” I said. “I’m pretty excited.”