Harken

15 The Vault

No one was around when the scents of cooking woke me up, my arms touched by noon sunlight that streamed through the tall windows. I stumbled down the stairs in the direction of the rattling pots and pans.

Thad was in front of the giant metal stovetop, warming slices of apples on one side and pancakes in the other. Beside him on the counter was the jar filled with the strange doughy mix.

“Like apricots?” he asked me in a rush. I nodded.

“Good,” he said. He pointed to the jar of mix. “These are pancakes. He didn’t forget that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

He flipped one of the pancakes over onto a plate and slid it across the island counter to Callista. She was perched on one of the stools, holding a glossy guitar that she’d found somewhere, attempting to tune it. She glanced at me and gave a cynical half-smile.

“Obviously,” she said with disgust, “whoever owns this house is a habitual instrument abuser. This thing is vastly out of tune.”

“Maybe it’s just for looks?” I suggested.

“Leave it to the uber wealthy to keep such a wonderful device just for looks,” Callista murmured. I was relieved that she appeared to have forgotten—or at least was trying to ignore—our late-night meeting.

Callista strummed the guitar, smiling when she was satisfied. She started with chords again and Thad picked up on it, singing a hoarse rendition of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” from Poison. I knew that band well because my mom still had an old record of theirs, and sometimes on weekends she’d break it out. I had been born with no vocal talent whatsoever, but the feeling of the three of us together—just like I did back home with Mom and Alli —was far too inviting to resist.

After we’d eaten our fill, Thad dumped the remainder onto our newly-ordained trash plate.

“So in the words of our dear friend Callista,” he said, “what’s the plan, Michael?”

We all knew why this decision fell on me—I’d naturally been pushed forward as the leader ever since the truth had come out about whom I’d been. I drank my water down until the glass was empty and left me with no remaining excuse to keep from talking.

“We go to the bank,” I said. “That’s the next obvious step.”

I still had the paper in my pocket, so I pulled it out and spread it onto the island countertop. We all slid closer to look, my finger underscoring the address.

“I was thinking about this last night,” Thad said. “I know it’s a long shot, but if we get you to the Blade,” he tapped my shoulder, “and you actually have it, won’t the Guardians be afraid enough to back off from us?”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to be hopeful. “Then again, the last time I had it was the first time they killed me. So we might have some fighting to do after all.”

We all knew that we’d be no match for what the Guardians could throw at us. I wasn’t even sure how much more time Anon could buy for us. But it wasn’t like there was another way.

“How are we gonna get there?” Callista asked.

“Same way we get everywhere,” I replied.

“Think that’s a good idea?” she said. “Isn’t that downtown? Where will we land? It’d seem a bit suspicious in the middle of the day.”

“You’re right…” I admitted. That would certainly be a problem, as mundane as it seemed. I scratched the side of my face as I tried to think of a solution, surprised to feel stubble growing since I hadn’t shaved for half a week.

While Callista and I were debating our options, Thad had been searching for a garbage can to dump our trash plate into. I heard a sound of surprise from Thad when he opened a door.

“I’ve found a way to get there!” he called to us, standing right outside the kitchen. Callista and I jumped to our feet, scurrying to him. Since we’d gotten to the house I’d thought that door led to a closet, so I hadn’t opened it. But behind it was a garage.

To call it a garage would have made anyone I knew back home fall over in disbelief. There were no bins of junk, no ripped cardboard boxes on wooden shelves, no bicycles hanging by hooks from the ceiling. When Thad reached around the corner and flipped a switch, suddenly the polished concrete floor glimmered as the place became illuminated by intense ceiling lights. These same lights shone upon five polished things sitting in a row.

My heart nearly stopped beating when I saw the fourth.

The magnificence of this mansion, every piece of expensive furniture it housed, I would have eagerly thrown away for the device before me now. I’d glanced over the black Bentley Coupe, the silver Maserati Gran Turismo, and even the white Audi R8—locking on the single piece of flaming red glory behind them.

A Shelby GT500. The most glorious car the world had ever been graced with; the car no road deserved to feel trample its gravel. My BMW would have melted in jealousy at the sight. Its wheels were the blackest of black, windows tinted, the sweeping red angles of the hood and side and door like a carefully crafted ship. The silver cobra on its front whispered seductively at my heart. If I’d had my camera, I could have photographed its two front lights, and likely would have been able to read nothing but eternal bliss behind their pupils.

Did it matter that I couldn’t remember what its V8 engine could do, or what its lack of a white racing stripe meant, or that the other cars were far more expensive? Did it matter that I’d seen more than my fair share of nice vehicles when working with wealthy clients? I was still captivated by this piece of machinery.

Callista punched me in the shoulder, finally breaking in to my thoughts.

“I take it you’re going to marry the red one?” she snapped. I heard Thad laughing at me from the corner.

“You’re just better at hiding your admiration for this god-machine,” I told him. I approached the car with caution, hands out until I’d touched its warm metal. Callista tilted her head at me in surrender as I ran my fingers over its hull.

“Well good,” Thad called. “Maybe your admiration will make you a safer driver.”

The shadow of something came flying across the room from Thad, and I yelped and grabbed it out of the air before it could dent the Shelby. I was about to hurl obscenities at him, before I realized that I was holding a ring of keys.

I looked from them to Thad in alarm but no words would come out, because I saw that he was standing next to a row of key hooks on the wall. He was already heading for the Audi with another key in his hand. I turned my head and saw that Callista had climbed into the passenger seat of my new car.

“Let’s go!” she demanded.

The speed at which I got to the door could have won marathons. I tore it open and dove into the chair before I had fully realized I was even moving. The black leather formed into my back, a button on the side adjusting the seat to be just right, the slam of the door snapping like a battle tank’s hatch. I turned the ignition and the engine sound sent a thrill to my heart.

The garage door opened behind me, letting sunlight stream in. It felt like the first time I’d seen the outside world in ages. With shaking knees I pushed on the gas to ease us out, and suddenly I was going down a driveway, passing trees and a yard, then out an open gate, then facing the runway of a road before me. I pressed the brake a bit too quickly, not accustomed to its taunt control.

Thad was at the end of the street already, waiting impatiently for us to follow. We sat in the center of a beautiful lane, trees overhanging the street and everything blissful.

Not for long. I switched gears and pressed the pedal, and we shot off.

Riding in the Shelby was like traveling by road submarine. The world outside was entirely blocked out by the tinted windows and the thick metal as we dashed across the Beverly Hills, following the car ahead. Had Thad punched the address into his GPS? I certainly didn’t know where we were going, so I hoped he had. I just knew that I was driving a Shelby GT500. When a person is driving a Shelby GT500, it doesn’t really matter where they are headed, because anywhere they end up becomes a landmark.

“I think I’ll name her Ophelia,” I said over the hum of the engine.

“Who?” Callista whirled to me in alarm.

“This car,” I said, rubbing its dash. “This wonderful car. This piece of dreams.”

I’d never felt more thrilled to irritate a person before. Callista grabbed the radio dial and spun it up so high that it suffocated my voice. But I was too far on top of the world now for anything to dampen my spirits. So I flicked the volume up even more than she had put it, feeling the bass beat against the walls and the chairs and my foot as it pressed the pedal.

I glanced at Callista, whose lips were pressed tightly together, and when she looked at me she pushed them even tighter, though I could tell her disgust was mostly faked. She was biting her tongue to keep from making fun of me.

Soon I was forced to slow the car down as Thad took an exit in front of us, and we began to venture down the streets into the heart of Los Angeles. There never really was a “good time” for traffic in LA: the only times it really let up was between 2 and 4 AM, and then only if there wasn’t late-night construction. It was midday so the lunch hour traffic was out, and I had to dodge my unfamiliar car around blocks and up busy streets as Thad weaved in and out of the lanes insubordinately. People would stare at my car when we stopped at a light but luckily none of them could see me inside. I was horrible at being covert. In fact, flying might have brought less attention. We hadn’t thought this one out well.

Finally, I saw the massive bank building: a towering behemoth of crystal black windows that reflected the city, straight and tall without so much as a single curve to interrupt its sharpness. The only things that broke the black were two clear, revolving doors at the bottom, people going in and out in a constant stream. And far at the top of the building was a red sign that said, in blocky letters: VERSTONE BANK.

Thad swept his car around the corner and onto the side street. I parked behind him, forcing myself to turn the key but hesitant to get out. I came around the front where Callista was waiting with a raised eyebrow.

“She’ll still be here when we get back,” Callista growled.

“Are you jealous of a car getting my attention?” I asked. She refused to acknowledge me.

Thad gestured between us at the building, which now rose so high in the air that I had to bend backwards just to see its top. I’d probably passed by this building hundreds of times while driving downtown—it was just one of those bank skyscrapers so common in the city that nobody’d look twice.

“I think Callista and I should stay out here,” Thad suggested. “It might be suspicious for a bunch of teenagers to walk in and ask for a bank box. We don’t know what’s in it yet. And besides…”

He spread his hands over both our cars. “We don’t have quarters to pay the parking meter.”

“Well that decides it,” Callista said, hopping onto the hood of my Shelby. “I can face ruthless murderers who control the world, but please not a parking cop.”

I rubbed my hands together nervously, trying to think of any flaws in Thad’s logic but finding none. So I turned and left them for the sidewalk, pushing my hands into my pockets to try to still some of the nervous tension that had begun to creep up again.

I’d been through this before, those minutes preceding some event that would reveal terrible secrets or answer some of the million questions that faced me. I still couldn’t calm myself though, as I turned the corner amidst lines of cars that rolled down the hectic streets, pedestrians babbling to one another, crossing signals whistling to let the blind know it was safe to go. I looked back to Callista and Thad but they were already out of sight, so I pressed on through the revolving doors of the bank.

The squeak of my shoes made me feel all the more noticeable. The inside of the bank sprawled on like a train station, with counters below windows of inch-thick Plexiglas plates, people standing in lines to make deposits or withdrawals or open accounts. They babbled incessantly as the ceiling speakers struggled to fight back with cheap saxophone music.

My back was hit by the revolving door.

“Excuse me!” a brawny woman barked, her two children in tow. I came to my senses and pulled my hand out of my pocket, taking the letter and looking at the access code that Anon had given me. There were two numbers, actually: one, a 16-character, and the other a 4-digit PIN code. I approached the back of the line and waited.

I was easily distracted so the line seemed to move quickly. All the people around me were simply going about their own business, hardly any of them even paying me a glance. I saw rows of pictures going around the upper wall, showing the long line of Verstone CEOs and board members. In my boredom, I picked out which ones had been stealing from the company, two that were having affairs and one who might have been a murderer. I hopped from one Glimpse to the next—it was like a game.

The teller coughed loudly at me and I realized it was my turn. I stepped up.

“I—I have a deposit box here,” I said.

“We use electronic access codes here,” she told me through the speaker. “Do you have yours?”

I nodded and punched the long password string into the box. She checked it with her computer, then told me to go wait at a side door. I stood there for a few minutes until I heard it click, and she ushered me in.

“You’ll need your PIN to open it,” she informed me, all business. The hallway was tiled, fancy marble on the walls covered by more richly framed portraits. As we walked, we started to pass wooden booths with thick red cloths hanging from poles covering their entrances. There were numbers over the booths, and when we came to the one marked “43”, the woman stopped.

“When you’re done, press the call button and the guard will retrieve your box,” she said. She held the red cloth open for me insistently, so I slipped under.

I heard her high heels clicking against the floor as she left. I was now in a boxy room, identical to the others I’d seen on my way up. Harsh lights glared from the ceiling and scrubbed the place clean of any sense of uniqueness. A simple leather stool sat in front of a counter. I heard the teller open a door far away, a few seconds of outside babble, then silence when it clicked shut.

In the center of the counter was a small safe deposit box, lonely and out of place in the grandeur of the room. It was black and metal, the lid sealed by a digital keypad on its top. I stepped closer, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the cloth had fallen into place. It didn’t seem secure enough, not as my expectancy rose, hands gripping the box. It took great effort for me to lift it even an inch.

There was no reason for me to waste time, so I set the paper next to me on the counter and carefully typed the PIN. The box took a few seconds to register and I thought for a moment I’d punched it in wrong, until there came a single beep marking my success. Something inside clicked. I lifted the lid.

Yet another white envelope with my name was resting on top, so I took it out first. I didn’t have a chance to open it though, because there were more things beneath it that distracted me. I fished around in the box, pulling out two blocks of paper, stiff like tall notepads. It wasn’t until I had them all in the light that I realized they were bound stacks of cash.

I nearly gasped. They were all hundred dollar notes bound together in their center by a strip of yellow paper, each stack marked as “$10000”. There were two of them. I’d never seen so much money all at once, even at my hourly rate. This type of money would have changed our lives back home…free air-conditioning in abundance…a new car.

I cautiously reached into the box again with my right hand, unable to let my other release its clutches on the money. I didn’t find anything else but a bumpy base, until I realized that it didn’t feel right and I had peer inside again. At the bottom of the safe deposit was another box.

I unwillingly let go of the money to grab this new contraption, grunting at its weight and struggling to set it on the counter without making too much noise. Even the tiny click of its edge touching the countertop echoed in the booth, though luckily the heavy cloth wouldn’t let the noise escape.

It was one of the most unusual devices I’d ever seen. It was no thicker than two inches but long and rectangular, like the case that my mom kept her old china silverware in. There was no place for a lock though the lid was stuck tight, every part appearing to be made of something like brass.

The most unusual part, though, was the top of the lid. It was embellished in a strange metalworking, the design swirling up and down intricately with lines and curves that whirled into shapes at the corners. In the center of the box’s lid was an upraised piece, with two circles side-by-side, embedded in the metal and bulging out unusually.

I licked my lips. This was something different. I’d learned, however, that Anon tended to do things in an order, so I reached for the abandoned envelope and tore it, pulling the paper out.

To Mr. Asher,

This will be my final correspondence for some time. I must be brief.

This money is to aid you in survival. The bills are untraceable and will provide for your food and basic needs. Do not feel inclined to repay this to me: this is a portion of funds that you left in my care before your passing.

You also asked me to keep one other thing for you. It is the box. Only you can open it.

Do well. Don’t trust anyone.

ANON

It was so very brief in comparison to all his previous letters—almost a letdown when I got to the end. I’d wished for a few more answers…but then again this was Anon.

So I set the paper and the money aside and moved for the box. Shouldn’t Anon have at least given me some instructions on how to get it open? I searched all around it but couldn’t find a hole for a key. In fact there didn’t even seem to be any edge where the lid would part: the entire thing all one piece of uninterrupted metal.

I ran my fingers around its sides, trying to find a button. Instead, as my fingertips crawled the top’s design, I accidentally hit an edge of one of the corners. At first I was frightened that it’d broken off, then I saw that I’d actual hit a hidden lever, which had turned down like a switch.

Nothing happened. So with haste, I searched the other corners, finding that the matching pieces there also moved, shifting all three remaining levers until they faced the center.

I heard a mechanical clicking like tiny gears being forced into motion, feeling a gentle vibrating movement inside the box’s metal shell. Then, like twin doors, the protruding circular pieces started to split apart at their centers, opening like eyelids until they exposed what was beneath.

It was a pair of glass orbs filled with clear liquid, still unsteady from when I’d moved the box. Floating inside them was what appeared to be two human eyeballs.

There was one in each orb, both staring straight ahead with no socket or muscle around them: blank, expressionless gazes missing their frame of a face. It was almost grotesque, until I convinced myself they weren’t actually human eyes…or were they? I couldn’t tell for sure. If they weren’t authentic, they were at least realistic.

I stretched over the countertop so I could see the eyes clearer. Their irises were both green with wide-open pupils, almost like a cat’s in the dark, staying straight even when I tilted the box forward at me so their gaze met mine. Was that all I was supposed to see? Maybe the box didn’t open after all.

I found myself falling into my usual habit, and without even thinking I’d gone beyond the gaze of the eyes and spotted a Glimpse. Immediately, I withdrew with fright.

That was odd, these eyes shouldn’t have shown anything at all. But it’d certainly been there, inviting me in.

So I did it again. I leaned the box forward, studying the gaze, trying to read what was behind it just because that was the only success I’d found so far. I saw a Glimpse, that was certain. But there was nothing there. It was like the eyes were open and surprised and caught in their exposing second, yet didn’t have any emotion or secret to tell.

Suddenly, the pupils narrowed.

I jumped, dropping the box at their unexpected movement. The pupils had squeezed inwards into thin slits like a lizard’s gaze. The box slammed back onto the counter with a crash. In my surprise, it’d felt like the fake eyes had leapt straight from their metal sockets, entering my mind and then slithering back all in the same second.

It was violating, like hands crawling up and down my skin, squeezing and touching me and giving me shivers with their coldness. It was like I’d had something pulled straight through my gaze, and I realized that the eyes I’d been trying to read had sucked in my Glimpse instead.

As if in confirmation of this, the box gave another click, an invisible seal glowing light orange around the parameter before cooling back into its regular gray. Some type of Guardian lock that worked through reading eyes? An alignment in the box that only allowed it to open at my Glimpse?

I shook the feeling away from me in shivers, hesitant hands reaching forward to remove the lid. It slipped off like the top of a gift box, revealing a tiny space lined with rich, black velvet inside. In the center was a single piece of thin paper.

I lifted the forlorn page out gingerly; it looked so fragile that I was afraid even a gentle blow from the ceiling A/C would make it tear. It wasn’t folded, the writing revealed on the opposite side as I flipped it over and set it flat on the counter.

It was mostly blank. The only part with marking was in the center, black hand-written ink that’d long soaked into the page. At the top was a set of numbers and decimals with two letters: coordinates. Below these was a simple note, written in scratchy cursive so harsh that it’d torn the page in parts:

IT IS HIDDEN IN THE CHURCH.

Their simplicity only made the words all the more severe. What I held in my hands was a treasure map already solved, directions that I had left for myself in some other life. It sank in that the last person to touch this page had been me, decades before, when I’d first been certain that I was going to die.

Was it going to be that simple? I couldn’t shake the feelings of uneasiness, some foreboding now that I had these instructions. Did I even understand what it would mean for me to find the Blade, how much of a chain reaction that would set off?

I placed the lid back and it sealed itself immediately. I turned to the cash. All this time I’d been trying to avoid looking at it. I peeled a stack of the bills from the block, stuffing them into my pockets: I could always come back if I needed more. Then I locked everything up and pushed the buzzer for the guard.

Even the heat of the day felt colder and more tinged with anticipation as I walked through the bank’s doors again. I rolled the paper up nervously as I turned the corner, seeing Callista and Thad still sitting on the cars. They both slid down to their feet.

“Anything?” Callista asked. I didn’t reply, nodding toward the Shelby. They understood, climbing in with Thad in the back seat and Callista beside me, no one speaking until the doors were sealed.

I handed Thad the paper and let him unroll it.

“The Blade is there?” he said after reading it.

“I’d think so,” I replied. “I can’t think of anything else that I’d have kept exact coordinates of.”

While I was saying this, Callista had reached forward and taken the GPS off its mount on the front window, switching it on and clicking its screen with her fingers. Thad and I must have figured out what she was doing at the same time because both of us fell into a hush as she typed. The GPS mulled for a few seconds, then the screen changed to show a path.

“Ten minutes away,” Callista said. “Twenty in traffic.”

“That close?” Thad said with uncertainty. “Why would you hide it out in the open somewhere?”

“Maybe because nobody’d think to look in the open?” I replied, pulling the car keys out of my pocket and slipping them in to the ignition. Thad slid out and walked over to his car, leaving Callista and I again as the engine growled to a start.

It just didn’t feel right to make light conversation anymore, as I made a U-turn and got back onto the main street. Our tension had risen to an almost unbearable level, leaving both our eyes locked ahead but mine still distracted enough to nearly miss turns and red lights.

I wondered why I’d fallen into such a state. It took half the trip for me to realize why: We were actually about to find what all of this had been leading to, what had started this entire fiasco decades before we were even born.

The GPS announced that we’d reached our destination far before I’d expected it to, and its voice caused me to whirl around in my seat.

“Do you see a church?” I asked, but Callista was already searching for it herself. There wasn’t a church in sight: we were in the thickest part of downtown, surrounded by cars parked against the street and pedestrians wandering through the restaurants and shops.

I hit the brakes at an abrupt red light, still searching for anything that might resemble an old church. Nothing. No steeple, no bell tower, and no giant doors—everything here was modern.

I turned the corner with Thad’s car still tagging close behind, going around the block again and stopping carefully where the GPS directed. I pulled onto the side of the road and parked.

“I still don’t see a church,” I said nervously. Callista grabbed the GPS again, confirming that it had been programmed correctly. She looked out her window.

“It should be there,” she pointed.

I strained my eyes looking, but it was no use. No church was on that street.