Project Chimera Read online

  Andy clapped his hands over his mouth. Charlie gasped and leaned closer to her mother, eyes wide.

  “Diana,” said Charlie’s father. His voice sounded shaky.

  “Charles!” cried Mrs. Wilde. “What’s happening? Where are you?”

  “Listen to me, Diana. Have you called the police?”

  “No, not yet—I just—”

  “Good. Don’t call them. Okay? If you don’t call them, I’ll be okay. I’ll be safe.”

  Diana frowned. “But—who? Where?”

  “I’ll be safe,” Mr. Wilde repeated. “And they’ll leave you alone. Okay? Don’t call the police.”

  “But Dad!” Charlie cried, unable to stop herself. “Where are you? When are you coming home?”

  “Charlie,” Mr. Wilde said, and she could hear the relief in his voice. “Thank God.” But he didn’t answer any of their questions. Instead he grunted like somebody was hurting him and said again, more urgently, “Diana, do you understand?”

  Mrs. Wilde held her hand up to keep Charlie from saying anything more. “Okay,” she said, frustration apparent in her voice. The expression on her face was full of anguish. “Where are you?” she repeated. “Hello?” But then she lowered the phone and looked at the kids. “They hung up.”

  “Call him back!” said Andy.

  “She can’t,” said Charlie. “It was private. They blocked the number.”

  Charlie’s mom sat in stunned silence for a second, then shook her head, as if trying to comprehend what was happening. “Come on, kids.” She got out and strode quickly to the door with Andy and Charlie right behind.

  The three weaved through the house, gasping and exclaiming as they looked at the destruction. Some of the furniture was overturned, stuff had been flung out of cupboards and drawers, even the TV in the living room was smashed. “I told you,” said Charlie, slipping in front of her mother and grabbing her hand. “Come with me. You’ve got to see this.” She headed to her father’s office.

  “Whoa,” said Andy, taking it in. He looked like he might start crying again.

  Mrs. Wilde stared at the disaster in the office. Her hand fluttered to her throat. “Oh my word,” she murmured. She took a few cautious steps toward the stacks of Talos Global boxes that had been torn apart, contents stolen. A few loose wires and cords lay across the desk and on the floor—the computer they’d been attached to was gone, too. She let a fearful breath escape. “Oh, Charles. Who did this?” She pushed her hair back, looking dazed, and puzzled over the mostly empty Talos Global boxes. “Who on earth would want . . . ?” she murmured, and then her eyes widened. “No. Could it be? After all these years?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Charlie.

  Mrs. Wilde slid one of the empty boxes aside. She didn’t seem to hear Charlie. Then she quickly moved the others, finding only a few remaining files of the dozens that had once been contained inside.

  Charlie looked at a sheet of paper that had slipped out of one of the folders and lay on the floor. It had her dad’s old company logo on it, like the paper she’d seen in the envelope she’d grabbed from the warehouse. Suddenly Charlie felt sick. She broke out in a cold sweat as she thought about the phone call. The soldiers. And the connection to Talos Global. What did her father have to do with those thugs? Where were they? And what were they doing to him now?

  Mrs. Wilde knelt and continued riffling through the remaining items. Then she stopped and stood up straight, turning to look wildly around the room. “Where . . . ?” she murmured, her face more frantic than Charlie had ever seen it before. Then Mrs. Wilde’s eyes alighted on the broken cell phone. She reached for it. It fell apart in her hand.

  “Mom!” said Andy, his anxiety level clear on his face. “What are you doing?”

  Instead of answering him Mrs. Wilde looked up. “Safe,” she murmured. “Yes. He said it right to me.” Her gaze landed on the closet, and she dashed over to it.

  “Mom,” Charlie said urgently. “What’s going on?”

  “Kids, please,” Mrs. Wilde replied, distracted. “Just give me a minute. I need to think this through.” She flung open the closet door and stepped inside, then dropped to the floor, where a safe was bolted down. It appeared untouched by the intruders. Mrs. Wilde muttered under her breath, focusing on the dial lock. “What’s the combination?”

  Charlie and Andy exchanged a confused glance, and Andy sidled over to his sister. She put her hand on his shoulder to offer some reassurance. It was all she could think to do.

  Momentarily halted, Mrs. Wilde turned and saw her children standing together, staring at her. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then she said, “I can’t explain now. You have to trust me.”

  “What are you looking for?” said Charlie.

  Mom looked from one child to the other and pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen onto her face. “I . . . You have to understand there’s something more going on here. It’s . . . This might be something your father warned me a long time ago could happen. And it never did, and thank goodness for that, but we sort of stopped expecting it.”

  Charlie and Andy grew even more confused. “What?” asked Andy, eyes widening. “Mom, you’re scaring me.”

  Mrs. Wilde’s expression was a mix of fear and concern. She got up and went to the children, gathering them around her to comfort them. And then she blew out a measured breath. “Look,” she said softly. “This is going to be difficult to understand. You heard your father—we can’t call the police. But he . . . he said . . . he said the word ‘safe’ in a weird way. And repeated it. And I remember that’s where he left . . . something. Back then. All right? Just sit here quietly with me while I figure this out, and don’t say a word about this to anyone—don’t text your friends or post anything online. Understand? And we stick together—we do everything together—until further notice.”

  The children stared at her, frightened by her mysterious manner.

  “Okay?” Mrs. Wilde prompted.

  “Okay,” said Charlie, and Andy echoed, “Okay.” Charlie put her phone away.

  Mrs. Wilde went back to the safe and began turning the dial to the left, then right, then left again. She tugged at the handle. It didn’t open. Undeterred, she spun the dial several times around, then tried another combination.

  Charlie pulled up her sweatshirt sleeve and glanced at the bracelet on her wrist. She clicked through a couple of screens. Of the five colorful animals represented, only the starfish was animated at the moment. The bracelet’s healing power was working fast after all the fighting Charlie had done just a short time earlier. Thanks to that ability, she hardly felt any pain anymore from the leopard man’s long sharp claws. As she watched her mother wrestle with the safe, trying more combinations, Charlie was reminded of how she’d yanked the door off the safe in the warehouse using the elephant-strength power of the device. But that animal wasn’t animated now.

  Mrs. Wilde sat back against the closet doorjamb and closed her eyes, rubbing her fingers on her temples, thinking deeply. She got up and looked at the underside of Charles’s desk, then searched through all of its drawers, one of which was overturned on the floor.

  “Now what are you doing?” asked Andy.

  “I’m looking for the combination for the safe. I really need to get in there.”

  Charlie swallowed hard. Should she tell her mother about the bracelet? About how she could open the safe if her strength ability kicked in? But her mom had told them to stay quiet, and she was intensely searching the room, and Charlie’s strength ability wasn’t activated, so it was useless to try to explain—at least right now when her mother seemed to be so focused on her task.

  “Why don’t you know the combination?” Andy asked his mother after a while.

  “Well, I should know it,” said their mother, sweat beading on her forehead now, “but your father resets it periodically. When we moved to this house, he told me where I could find it, but I’m afraid I was a little distracted with my new job at the time. A
nd . . . I can’t remember.”

  “Oh.” Andy looked troubled but kept quiet as Mrs. Wilde continued her search.

  “Do you want us to help you?” ventured Charlie.

  “I want you to keep quiet and not touch anything until I figure this out.” She gave an exasperated sigh, then looked at Charlie apologetically. “I’m sorry. Maybe you and Andy could look around the room for a spot that might be a good hiding place for a safe combination. Can you do that?”

  Andy nodded and obeyed, his eyes darting around the room, but the task seemed useless to Charlie. Instead, she tried to activate the bracelet again by thinking about her father and the break-in and all the events at the warehouse. But since she was relatively safe at the moment, the device didn’t detect a need for anything other than healing Charlie’s bruises and wounds. After a while she gave up on the bracelet and gazed once more at the Talos Global paper on the floor, thinking things through.

  Charlie’s mom’s weird searching and vague statements were startling, but in a strange way, something about her behavior also made sense after everything Charlie had just gone through. After all the crazy things she’d learned earlier. Her dad, who always called himself a lowly biologist, had been part of something far beyond anything the children had ever known or could have guessed until now. Did her mom have any clue who the “friend” was that called? Did she know that Mr. Wilde was somehow connected to soldiers who abducted him and were capable of attacking Charlie and Maria and kidnapping Mac?

  Charlie reached out her foot, grabbed the paper with the sole of her shoe, and pulled it along the floor toward her so she could read it. Her eyes went to a phrase she’d seen before. “‘Project Chimera,’” she whispered. The same words had been written on the outside of the warehouse envelope. Her bracelet was called the Chimera Mark Five. Did her father’s company make the devices? She broke out in a cold sweat. Did her father make them?

  Charlie’s mom looked sharply at her. “What did you say?” she demanded.

  Charlie gave her mom a fearful glance. Her heart rate began to speed up uncontrollably, though she hardly knew why—there was something in her mom’s voice that frightened her. She felt her fingers tingling, the device growing warmer on her arm. Her breath hitched. “I said, ‘Project Chimera.’” Her eyes widened. “Why? Do you know what that means?” She picked up the paper and handed it to her mother.

  Mrs. Wilde took it and studied it. She wiped her forehead on her sleeve and didn’t answer.

  Charlie quickly peeked at the bracelet and clicked through to the screen that would tell her which of her abilities had activated. The lizard and the elephant had pulsed to life alongside the starfish. A surge of hope mixed with her fear. Her strength had turned back on. But did she dare use it? How could she not, when her father’s safety was at stake?

  “Mom,” Charlie said slowly, looking up, “I know you’re trying to concentrate, but there’s something I really need to tell you—a lot of things, actually. But first . . .” She cringed, hardly daring to suggest what she was about to suggest, but knowing she couldn’t wait another second. “I can probably open that safe for you if you want me to.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Coming Clean

  “You . . . what?” asked Charlie’s mom, seeming to forget about Project Chimera for the moment. “Did you find out the combination?”

  “Not exactly,” Charlie hedged.

  “Well, I need it opened. If you think you can do it, be my guest.”

  Charlie decided not to mention that she would also be destroying the safe by opening it. She figured seeing her in action was probably the best way to start explaining the device to her mom. Mrs. Wilde moved out of the way, and Charlie sat down and grabbed on to the safe handle. Her sticky gecko fingertips ensured a tight grip. “Stand back,” she said. She put her feet against the edges of the box.

  Mrs. Wilde looked dubious. “I’m not so sure that’s the best way to go about it,” she said. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

  Charlie didn’t reply. Feeling the warmth from the bracelet, she took a deep breath, concentrated, and pulled until her knuckles turned white. At the same time she pushed her feet hard against the frame. The door to the safe groaned and shivered. It bent at the corners. Then, with a loud THUNK, Charlie flew backward. She hit the closet wall hard, safe door in hand, and felt the drywall collapse against her back. “Oof,” she said as all the breath was forced out of her. Pulling off safe doors was one of her least favorite things to do, she decided. She sat up carefully, little bits of drywall dust slipping down the back of her sweatshirt, and peered out of the closet.

  “Charlie!” Mrs. Wilde cried.

  Andy stared at his sister, incredulous. “What the—?” said Andy. “How—?”

  Mom hurried to Charlie’s side. “Are you okay? How in the world did you do that?”

  Charlie set down the door and peered inside the safe. It was half full of papers, envelopes, and some important-looking documents. “Welp,” she said, easing gingerly out of the way so her mother could look for whatever she needed, “it’s kind of a long story.”

  Mrs. Wilde recovered her wits and checked Charlie over. Then she sat down in front of the open safe while Charlie told her and Andy about the bracelet. She explained how she’d found a package among their moving boxes with her name on it. How the bracelet had gotten stuck on her arm and wouldn’t come off after the school bathroom incident, where she’d torn the sink right out of the wall. How she’d even saved a mother and child from a house fire using a variety of the five distinct animalistic powers the device had given her. “Sometimes the bracelet powers turn on when I don’t need them,” she explained, “but that can actually come in handy sometimes.”

  “Wait,” Charlie’s mom said. “Go back. You’re saying you are the one who saved that woman and her baby from the fire? I worked on them in the ER.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I can hardly . . . What on earth possessed you to go inside a burning house? Didn’t you see how dangerous it was? Charlie! I—I don’t even know what to say.” She looked around the torn-apart office, utterly perplexed and bewildered by the developments.

  “But I’m fine because of the healing powers,” Charlie argued. “Remember my leg after I got hurt in soccer tryouts? It healed completely—by morning. Plus, I have an obligation to help people. . . .” She trailed off, remembering her talk with Maria about that.

  “You’re a maniac,” said Andy, his voice filled with awe.

  Mrs. Wilde stared at Charlie for a long moment, like she still couldn’t believe what she was hearing and wasn’t sure how to respond. “This is so . . . shocking,” she murmured. “I don’t—I almost can’t fathom what you’re saying. But your leg and that fire rescue? And now the safe . . . ?” She shook her head, almost dazed, then turned to look at Charlie. “I can’t deny that those abilities seem beyond normal. I’m almost afraid to ask, but what else has happened?”

  “Yeah,” said Andy, like he couldn’t believe there might be more. “What else?”

  “Well,” said Charlie, “people are after the bracelet . . . and they might be the same people who kidnapped Dad.” Hesitantly Charlie trudged onward with the story, telling her mother and Andy about the three strange soldiers in full bodysuits who’d attacked her and Maria on their way home from school earlier that day. “And three different ones kidnapped Mac and brought him to an old abandoned warehouse. But he’s okay. We rescued him.”

  “You did WHAT?” cried Mrs. Wilde. “By yourselves?” All semblance of the steady, even-keeled doctor had flown out the window—their mom had uncorked.

  Charlie cringed but plowed forward because she knew she had to get to the most important part. “After we fought off the soldiers, we found some papers in the warehouse. They had Dad’s old work logo on them, like these.” She pointed to the paper she’d been looking at earlier. “And Dad’s name was on at least one of the papers, too.” Charlie ducked her head in preparation for her mother to explode again, but that didn’t h
appen.

  Diana Wilde stared long and hard at her daughter. Everything was so farfetched, so inconceivable. Charlie held her breath and waited for her mother to deny that any of this was possible. The last thing she expected was for her mother to actually believe it.

  “Project Chimera,” Mrs. Wilde murmured.

  Charlie looked up, searching her mother’s face. “That’s what was written on the folder we found. And this bracelet is called Chimera Mark Five—it says it on one of the screens.”

  Charlie’s mom put her hands up to her face, as if she were trying to pull her thoughts together. Then she expelled a deep breath, dropped her hands in her lap, and opened her eyes. She wore a new expression of resolve. “I really can’t believe this is happening,” she said.

  “Do you think she’s making it up?” Andy asked. He sounded like he wanted to believe Charlie but wasn’t sure that a grown-up might.

  “I’m not lying,” Charlie implored. “I promise. Look.” She held out her arm and shoved her sleeve up high, then clicked the bracelet and showed her mother the message scrolling in red letters, CHIMERA MARK FIVE . . . DEFENSE MODE INITIATED . . . KEY IN ACCESS CODE TO DEACTIVATE.

  Then she showed her the screen where the animated silver elephant, green lizard, and pink starfish pulsed.

  After a long moment Charlie’s mother placed a comforting hand on the girl’s wrist. “I believe you,” she said quietly. “It’s seems impossible, but because of the little bit I know about your father’s old job, I do. And since I believe you, I need to find what I was looking for now more than ever.” Quickly she began to flip through the items in the safe, shoving things aside that she didn’t need. Finally she discovered a small white envelope at the back. Charlie’s mom snatched it up and held it. Her first name was on it, written in Mr. Wilde’s familiar scrawl. “This is it,” she said. Her fingers shook as she ripped open the seal and pulled out a piece of paper.

  She unfolded it, and the kids moved to look over their mother’s shoulder so they could read it too. It was a printout, dated ten years ago.