"That went a lot differently than I imagined it would," I mumbled as I sat up. There had been those glorious seconds when Kayla was looking at me like I was a tall drink of water in the desert, but then the situation had flipped. Literally. I couldn't blame her for reacting that way, especially so soon after her incident with Wyatt, and I cursed myself for just standing there and smiling at her instead of trying to explain the situation.
The hallways cleared and I was wondering if I should wait around until the end of class and try with Kayla again when suddenly a man emerged from a classroom nearby. He walked toward me with a hungry look in his eye and a smile that was far more threatening than it was friendly. I heard footsteps approaching from behind, but before I could turn around, something sharp hit me in the neck and I started to feel dizzy. As the man came closer, I realized I recognized him.
"Mack?"
The man laughed. "Sure, kid."
It seemed like the laughter was echoing all around me. I made an effort to stand up, but instead I collapsed on the floor and lost consciousness.
*****
When I came to, the first thing I felt was the cold. My entire body was shivering from freezing, damp air that seemed to permeate my skin. I took in my surroundings. I was in some sort of small, dimly lit cave, and I could smell the ocean and hear the crash of waves nearby. The chamber had several openings, almost as if it was part of a system of tunnels. I looked down. I was strapped to a metal chair and I was still as ripped as a superhero, but all that muscle was useless against the strong cords that held me. I made a few more valiant attempts to free myself before I noticed someone come through one of the openings. The man I knew as Mack approached me and crouched down so that we were face to face.
"Exciting day, huh?"
"You could say that," I answered warily. In all honesty, I was starting to wonder if I was the subject of some weird experiment. I had woken up looking like Clark Kent, and then I had been kidnapped and was being held in a sea cave by the scary guy who had measured my windows.
He smiled ominously. "Frederick, I have been watching you for a very long time."
I gulped. "That explains the tingling feeling I always got on the back of my neck. Has that ever happened to you?"
He looked annoyed, but continued. "At first, I was trying to kill you."
I tried to suppress a shudder. "So, I'm guessing you don't actually work for a window company, because if you do, I'm going to give you guys a really awful review."
He rolled his eyes and kicked my chair. I didn't know if it was fatigue or nerves that was making me so chatty, but my instinct told me to stall for as long as possible.
"No," he spat. "My name is Boris Haugen-"
"I liked Mack better."
"-and I belong to the Jumerum, one of the most prestigious inurement organizations in Northern Europe."
"Let me guess. What you guys do is illegal."
"It depends on the country," he snarled. "Our ideals transcend the legalities of common governments."
Part of me was scared, but the other part of me was actually getting kind of bored with this self-righteous dude. "So, what does all this have to do with me? What did I do to upset you guys?"
"You were born," Boris growled.
I frowned. "Technically, I couldn't help that."
Boris waved his hand dismissively. "The Jumerum has been working to eliminate your family for the last decade."
"And by eliminate, you mean…?"
"Kill."
"That's what I thought. I just wanted to clarify."
"My efforts with you were exploratory at first, as we weren't certain of your identity, but even then, you were exceptionally hard to terminate. Things kept getting in the way, and your deductive powers and reflexes were beyond what I had expected."
I raised my eyebrows. "Deductive powers?"
"Yes," Boris replied bitterly. "Not many young men would have recognized the explosive potential of the chemicals I exchanged in your chemistry lab."
I opened my mouth, and then shut it. Things were starting to fall into place. The dart that came out of nowhere in the weight room and the pillar falling at the homecoming game must have been from this psycho guy, but I was still completely bewildered. Why was he trying to kill me and my family?
"But your preservation proved to be serendipitous," he continued. "We were under the impression that your father was dead until just recently, when we received information that convinced us otherwise. At that point, I shifted my efforts from trying to kill you to attempting to take you alive."
"Thanks, I really appreciate that."
"And now we come to the task at hand." He crouched down again and breathed in my face, which smelled strangely like syrup. "Where is your father?"
I looked him straight in the eye. "I haven't seen him for 10 years."
He backhanded me across my jaw, and I nearly blacked out. "Hey!" I yelled, feeling oddly defensive. "What's your problem? I have no idea where he is! He abandoned us 10 years ago and never showed his face again. Why is he so important to you?"
Boris sneered. "Please, Frederick. Don't play innocent. You know very well the magnitude of you and your father's position in your country."
My head what beginning to hurt. All of this was absurd. "No, I don't know," I said with growing frustration. "I don't know what you want with me, I don't know why I look this way, and I don't know where my dad is!"
Boris narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, but then he threw his head back and laughed.
"They have trained you very well," he commented, looking amused. He pulled a large knife from his belt. "But we'll see if you can keep this act up once I start cutting off your toes."
He walked slowly toward me with a maniacal gleam in his eyes. I desperately did not want to scream, but as he began to remove my shoes, the thought of that knife slicing into my feet became too much to bear. At the moment that I was opening my mouth to let loose a definitively unmanly squeal, there was a crashing sound and two people ran through one of the openings. The first one was a man who was dressed all in black with a mask covering his face, but the second one I recognized.
"Mom! Mom?"
I watched in awe as my mother, in her fancy business suit and heels, kicked the knife out of Boris's hand and proceeded to give him what appeared to be the fight of his life. She punched him in the face, then somersaulted over his back and jabbed him in the ribs on the other side. He kept swinging wildly at her, but she was too quick. Meanwhile, the masked guy quietly approached me, paused for a moment, and then began to cut away at my cords.
"What's going on? Who are you?"
All I got in response was a soft chuckle from under his mask. Finally, my mother knocked Boris out with a well placed kick to his head, and the mystery man finished freeing me from the chair. I stood up slowly, weak from being strapped to a chair for hours and overwhelmed at seeing my mother become some kind of kung fu master.
She straightened her jacket and headed toward me. "There will be more coming. We need to leave now." She took my hand and started walking, but I stayed planted. I had had enough.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Before we go anywhere, I need an explanation," I demanded.
My mom turned back, her eyes softening. "Frederick, we'll talk about it in a few minutes," then she lowered her voice, "but right now, we need to get out of here."
She headed out of the cave, and this time, I dutifully followed her. As agitated as I was about everything, when she used that tone of voice, I knew better than to defy her. The three of us emerged onto rocky cliffs where somehow, it was even colder. Giant ocean waves splashed against the rocks and sprayed us with frigid water. We came to a ledge and I saw a helicopter concealed in a large crevice. I didn't ask any questions. I just followed them in. At this point, I had stopped being shocked at every new development. The man in black operated the helicopter and lifted us into the air. I didn't know how he could see through that mask.
The helicopter was so loud that talking was impossible anyway, so I just contented myself with looking out the window. Mostly what I saw was sheer cliffs and ocean, but every once in a while I would see a small house or a narrow road. We headed inland and were flying towards a small, rocky mountain. As we got closer, I began to get nervous that we were going to run right into it, but then a large door opened near the top of it. The man landed us expertly inside of the opening, and the door closed behind us.
We got out of the helicopter and my mother led me into a tunnel and down a few flights of stairs until we finally got to a small chamber that almost looked like it could be a cozy apartment, except for the fact that it was housed deep within a mountain.
My mom turned on some additional lights and punched in a code on a keypad on the wall. Then she rushed toward me and hugged me tightly.
"I'm so glad we found you before it was too late," she exclaimed, her voice shaking with emotion.
"Yeah, me too. I was about to lose all my toes."
She pulled back and set her hands on my shoulders. "Let me look at you," she said, her eyes roving over my face and body. "There's a whole lot more of this than I expected," she said, squeezing my shoulders and arms, "but other than that, you look just like him."
"Him?" If this was her idea of an explanation, she was doing a really bad job.
"Me."
I turned to face the masked man. I had almost forgotten he was with us. He stepped up to me and removed his mask, and suddenly I was staring at my dad.