Eden's Escape Read online

“All right,” Eden said. “So I’ll help you. Give you a genie’s expertise, so you can maximize the results. How’s that?”

  Brightly shook his head, thinking. “Not good enough.”

  Eden sighed. “Well then what?”

  “I’m thinkin’, if I’ve got such a powerful tool in my hands, why limit myself to three wishes?”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because that’s the rule.”

  Brightly, Jane, and Dr. Evans all leaned forward.

  “The rule?” Brightly asked.

  “Yep. Rule number one. Every person has a lifetime limit of three wishes. And don’t even think about trying to wish for more wishes. Trust me, you wouldn’t be the first. It doesn’t work.”

  Brightly pondered that as the others took notes. “But what if I were to—”

  “Wish for that rule to change? Can’t do that. The rules don’t change for anyone.”

  Stupid mortal. He thought because he had a big company with fancy facilities, he could outsmart the lamp. Think again, she thought with satisfaction.

  “Are there other rules?” Jane asked.

  “Yeah. Rule number two: You can’t change anything from the past. All wishes have to be for the present or the future. And rule number three: Wording counts. You only get what you ask for.”

  Brightly’s eyes were on Jane’s tablet.

  “What are you looking at on there?” Eden asked.

  But again, they ignored her question.

  “Where do you live?” Brightly asked.

  Eden paused. There was no way she was telling them about New York, or Pepper.

  “Where do you live, Eden?”

  “Venezuela.”

  As soon as she said it, Jane’s expression went sour. She nudged Brightly, and he glanced at the screen of her tablet.

  “You’re lyin’,” he snarled.

  Abruptly, Eden understood. “Is this a lie-detector test?”

  He stood up and pointed at her. “Don’t you lie to me! I hate it when people lie to me!”

  “David, calm down,” said Jane.

  “You know I hate it when people lie to me!” Brightly’s face had gone red, and the volume of his voice was rising.

  Eden screamed as her arms slammed down to the armrests again. The magnetic force had reactivated. He must have used his tablet to make it happen.

  “David,” Jane said. Her voice was even and controlled.

  “This little genie is a liar!”

  “Sit down.” Jane waited until he did, then turned and stared into his eyes. “Are you ready to focus?”

  Grudgingly, Brightly nodded.

  Eden was mystified. Jane had spoken to him like a parent would speak to a child—and he’d listened!

  Brightly took a deep breath. “Eden. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner we’ll be done with this test. But in order to get through it, you’ve got to tell us the truth.”

  Jane nodded encouragingly.

  But Eden was done with being treated like a science experiment. “If you want me to be truthful, you have to do the same!” she said. “Have you got me hooked up to some kind of…polygraph machine?”

  Brightly paused. “Not exactly,” he said in his slow, drawn-out drawl.

  “Not exactly? What does that mean?”

  “We’re developin’ a new sorta polygraph. This one’s far more comprehensive than the ones from before. It measures your deceit by assessin’ speech patterns and tonalities in the voice—so there’s no need to gauge anything on the body.” Now, behind the giant lenses of his glasses, his eyes danced with excitement. “We call it the Brightly Veritas.”

  Eden shook her head fiercely. “Forget it. I’m done.”

  “But—”

  “Unless you bring me the lamp.”

  Brightly fell silent.

  “Until you bring me the lamp, I won’t talk.”

  Brightly turned to Jane, who shrugged. The Veritas must have shown that she wasn’t bluffing.

  “All right,” Brightly said. He broke into a toothy grin. “Why not! Jane, Patrick, let’s go.”

  “Go where?” Eden asked. “You said you’d bring it here.”

  “Oh! Well, we actually can’t bring it here—not at the moment.” Brightly grinned. “But we can bring you to it.”

  Brightly and Jane led Eden down a broad hallway with white walls and fluorescent lights until they reached a large door that Patrick pushed open. On the other side was a room completely unlike the one they’d been in.

  It was wide, deep, and almost completely dark. Across it stretched two long lab tables with black tops. The only light was a purple glow emanating from a small source that seemed to hover above the farthest table. A man in a lab coat stood by it.

  “This way,” Brightly said. Eden followed him toward the purple light, with Jane and Dr. Evans trailing behind them. Along the way, she checked out the tables. They were covered with brand-new, expensive-looking equipment: Bunsen burners, glass beakers, graduated cylinders, and thermometers. She even spotted a few black rectangular devices that she was pretty sure were lasers, based on what she’d learned from Xavier.

  It appeared that they’d brought her to a fully decked-out physics lab. But why would the lamp be here?

  As Brightly and Eden approached the glowing purple thing, the man in the lab coat looked alarmed. She could see now that it was Jean Luc, the man who’d taken the lamp away.

  “Don’t worry,” Brightly said. “Eden insists on seeing her mother ship, but we won’t interrupt your work.”

  His work? Eden wondered as they reached the table. What kind of work was he doing?

  Now that they were close, she could see that the glowing purple thing was inside a spherical cage. The cage was made of black metal bars that wrapped around the purple glow in a spiral pattern. It sat on a platform that rose about a foot above the lab table’s surface.

  When Eden peered more closely, she saw that inside the cage, within the midst of the purple glow, was the solid gold oil lamp she’d called home until two weeks ago.

  “Eden,” Brightly said. “Your lamp.”

  “What’s that purple light around it?”

  “Nothing to be concerned about,” Brightly said. “Just an ionic plasma shield.”

  “A what?”

  “A plasma shield,” he said proudly. “The plasma forms a protective barrier around the lamp, clinging to it with the aid of a double electric field.”

  “Like a force field?” Eden asked incredulously.

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “But I thought those were only in stories!”

  “Strange, I used to think the same thing about genies,” Brightly said. His lips curled into a smirk. “When you’re on the cuttin’ edge of technology research, lots of things exist that the rest of the world would still call make-believe.”

  Eden had learned about plasma and its properties in Xavier’s physics lessons. It was one of the four forms of matter, along with solids, liquids, and gases. Of the four, it was the most abundant form in the universe; but on Earth, it generally existed only in labs.

  “But why?” Eden demanded.

  Brightly was gazing absorbedly at the plasma-encased lamp. “It’s a little precaution we took. We don’t want any external interference while we’re investigatin’.”

  Eden’s breath grew shallow. Would her request for reentry work with plasma blocking the spout? Xavier and Goldie might not be able to see or hear through the telescope.

  Still, she had to try.

  “Request for reentry!” she cried desperately. “I need to go back!”

  She squeezed her eyes closed, willing it to work. She longed to be back in New York, right by Pepper’s side.

  But when she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. She was still in the lab. The plasma shield still covered the lamp. Brightly was staring at her in delighted fascination, and Jane was tapping on her tablet like mad.

  “What in the world was that?” Brightly hooted. “Some kinda special genie tric
k? Guess it didn’t work this time!”

  Eden gritted her teeth. On to the next option. She shot her hand toward the lamp, right between the cage’s bars.

  “I wouldn’t—” Brightly said.

  But it was too late. As she tried to grab the lamp, pain electrified her. It shot from her fingertips through her whole body, lighting her bones on fire. She howled in anguish.

  Suddenly, something Xavier had once said popped into her mind: that the surface of the sun was a prime example of plasma. That meant this shield was the same temperature as the sun’s surface.

  Eden had no doubt that if she were mortal, it would have melted her hand off.

  “Jane, make a note of that,” Brightly said. He was interested in Eden’s agony, but unconcerned by it. “Even when subject experiences pain of a very high degree, she suffers no damage to her body.”

  Tears rolled down Eden’s cheeks. The excruciating pain was fading, but the sense of hopelessness replacing it was even worse.

  Brightly rubbed his hands together. “Well, that was exciting! But now, please join me as we return to the examination.”

  He took Eden’s elbow roughly and pulled her away from the lab table.

  “Wait!” Eden racked her brain for a solution. She’d do absolutely anything to stay out of that chair.

  “You want to try again?” Brightly asked. He crossed his arms and looked at her amusedly. “Be my guest.”

  “What are those?” she asked, pointing to four cylinders lined up against the wall behind Brightly and the others. They were approximately three feet tall, covered in silver, and topped with a stripe of green. On top of the green section were spouts.

  Brightly sighed, but didn’t turn around. “Eden, I know there are lots of interesting things in the lab, but let’s not—”

  “Just there, against the wall,” she said. As they all turned to see what she was referring to, she took hold of an object she’d been eying on the table next to her.

  “Those are oxygen tanks,” Brightly said.

  “Oh, good.” As she said it, she swept up the black rectangle she’d wrapped her fingers around, aimed it toward the tanks, and squeezed. When she did, a purple laser shot out.

  One of the tanks exploded with a loud crack and ignited. The flames danced outward and set the other tanks off too, causing three more earsplitting explosions in rapid succession, and a whole lot of fire in their wake.

  Meanwhile, Brightly started to shriek—but not because of the fire. He was doubled over, gripping his leg a few inches above the knee. It seemed his thigh had been in the path of Eden’s laser, and the beam had given it a nasty burn.

  Patrick rushed to help Brightly, while Jane and the lab technicians scrambled to grab fire extinguishers. But Eden was already aiming the laser at the wall on the opposite side of the lab table. She swooped it in a wide circular motion. Running forward, she kicked the section of wall a few times inside the jagged circle she’d cut. It detached from the material around it and fell out into the space beyond.

  Dropping the laser, she jumped through the hole.

  The fall was much farther than she’d expected. As she flew through the night sky, her legs kicked under her in expectation of the ground that wouldn’t come.

  Finally, it did. She landed hard on her knees, feeling the crunch of her impact on the pavement. Fortunately, the power of her genie bracelet ensured that her limbs remained unharmed.

  Brimming with adrenaline, she started to run. She didn’t even look back to see if the lab had survived; all that mattered was that she had.

  Pepper sat on her stool by the window and stared out at 44th Street. Lazy raindrops dripped down the glass pane, blurring the lit-up street outside. She hadn’t moved for hours.

  After Eden’s disappearance, she’d made a quick exit from Tra La La Karaoke. She told her friends it was Eden’s bedtime, and stole away before they noticed that the girl was already gone.

  Rather than hailing a cab or taking the subway, she’d decided to walk. With every step, she’d anticipated Eden’s return. Her little genie was sure to come back with a good story.

  Once Eden was back, either Xavier or Goldie would arrive for the post-granting assessment. Pepper couldn’t wait to see one of the masters in the flesh. Maybe, she thought, they could all duck into a diner together and have a late-night New York dinner while they caught up on the past few centuries.

  She’d walked the whole way home—from the East Village, through Gramercy Park, then up Broadway, crossing through Koreatown and gazing up fondly at the Empire State Building where she and Eden had first met. By the time she hit Times Square, with its giant blinking billboards, a misty rain was beginning to fall. When she finally reached her apartment building, her dress was soaked and her hair had frizzed up into a ball of wild, wet curls.

  And Eden was still gone.

  Another hour had passed since then, but Pepper was still alone. She sat in her darkened apartment, nails bitten to the quick, worry festering like acid in her stomach.

  It had been too long.

  During Pepper’s genie career, only her granting with Shakespeare had taken more than an hour. (Two hours and thirteen minutes, to be exact.) Most grantings were over in ten minutes. It was astonishing how quickly mortals barreled through their wishes.

  Once upon a time, Pepper had received a comprehensive education in the lamp, just like Eden and every other resident genie. Thinking back to Goldie’s Lamp History lessons, Pepper remembered learning about the longest granting on record. In 1022 BC, a genie named Shadow had been summoned to a region that would now be called Uganda. Her wisher had promptly fainted with shock—not an unusual reaction for mortals. But while most wishers were revived quickly, this one hadn’t come to for hours.

  Of course, when he did wake up, he whizzed through his wishes without any further ado. Shadow was back in the lamp in a snap, with a total granting time of three hours and ten minutes.

  Eden had been summoned at 8:15 P.M. According to the clock on Pepper’s cell phone, it was now 11:07. Already, this granting had lasted for nearly as long as Shadow’s.

  Pepper wished she had a telescope like the one the masters used, so she could watch Eden’s granting for herself. With a pang of anxiety, she hoped the wisher wasn’t being rude or pushy. Though—knowing Eden—it was more likely that the genie was the one causing trouble.

  She curled her toes around the rung at the bottom of her stool. If anything were amiss, she reasoned, the masters would send her a message to let her know what was going on. Still, that didn’t ease her apprehension.

  Looking after Eden was the only thing Xavier and Goldie had asked of her since she’d retired—and, thus, the most important task of her immortal life. For Pepper, to be chosen for this role was both a shock and a great honor. Unlike some of the alumni, she had never been a mother. But she imagined that parents must have to shoulder this vast sense of dread any time they didn’t know where their children were.

  She had no more fingernails left to bite, so Pepper chewed on a cuticle. Why on Earth wasn’t Eden back?

  She couldn’t bear it one moment longer. She hopped off the stool, went to her bedside table, and tore a piece of parchment paper off the roll she kept in the drawer. She sat on the bed and held the paper in front of her face.

  “Goldie, Xavier? It’s me. I was thinking…Eden’s been on this granting for an awfully long time. Could you fill me in on how it’s going?” She forced herself to smile, pretending she was playing a role onstage. “I’m sure everything’s fine. Just wanted to make sure. Anyway. Let me know.” She rolled up the paper and gave it a squeeze.

  But the paper didn’t go anywhere.

  She frowned and squeezed it again. Still nothing.

  Pepper swallowed. Her pulse was starting to pound. Before Eden came to Earth, she rarely exchanged messages with the masters. But in the past two weeks, updates had flown back and forth between them as easily as mortals’ e-mails. Every other time, Pepper had squeezed the p
archment paper just like this. Every other time, it had worked.

  She closed her eyes and hoped. She mustered all the positive energy she possibly could, believed with her whole heart that this time it would work, and gave the paper one more squeeze.

  But it remained in her hand. By now it was crushed and crumpled, but it clearly wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Oh no,” Pepper said out loud. “This is bad. This is very bad.”

  She crept back over to the stool. With a trembling hand, she set the parchment paper on the windowsill. The messaging system between the masters and alumni was one of the lamp’s most basic magical powers. But that magic didn’t seem to be working. What was going on?

  She turned her eyes, filling fast with tears, to the brown leather backpack hanging from the coatrack. Inside it were Eden’s passport and all her money. Eden’s cell phone sat on the tiny kitchen counter, plugged into the charger. She was always forgetting to bring it with her, but it never mattered; Pepper was always by her side. Until now.

  She wiped away a tear and took in a ragged breath. Then she picked up her own cell phone.

  Somewhere among their instructions about looking after Eden, Xavier and Goldie had told her who to contact in case of an emergency they couldn’t help with. At the time, Pepper couldn’t imagine what sort of scenario that could possibly be.

  She took a deep breath and opened her e-mails. She’d ignored several urgent calls to action that Bola had blasted out to all the Loyals (even less-active ones like herself) when Eden was in San Diego. Pepper had decided long ago to stay out of the struggle between the Loyals and the Electric as best she could, so it had been centuries since she’d communicated with their fierce (and, let’s face it, frightening) leader. But it was Bola whom the masters had said to call in case of an emergency. Bola didn’t know that Eden was on Earth, so Pepper would have to explain everything, they’d told her.

  Pepper sighed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, she told herself. She pressed the phone number on Bola’s e-mail.

  “Yes?” The phone didn’t even ring before Bola’s sharp British accent hissed across the line. “Yes? Who is this?”