4~

Four levels below, in a computer lab in the Electronic Level, a programmer was preparing to leave his station.

"I'll be back," the programmer told his fellow co-worker, who was manning her own station, nearby. "I'm gong make sure we have enough supplies."

"I hear you," she said, absently, while she applied herself to the complexities of an algorithm. "I already hear how Admin chewed the Head Office's head off for another early request for motherboards."

The programmer sauntered past cubicles in the office and, finally ducked into the nearest supply room, and locked the door.

Stepping away from the door to prevent eavesdropping, he pulled out the cell phone that he has set to alert him to calls by vibrating, and answered in low tones.

"Hello? Yes, I found all the bugs I could find in the program. I was going to test it during the next Power-Down cycle-What? Now? But, I can't be sure that it will do what you-Okay...for them. It'll take a few minutes to slip it past all the fire walls, but I'm going to run it, now."

The programmer turned off his phone, tilted his head back, sadly, and gave the sigh of a man who had made a desperate deal with a pagan devil.


The two Questoids keeping watch on Marcie stood unmoving across the room, staring at her with stoic expressions. If it was meant to unnerve her, it failed, only making her exceedingly bored, all things considered.

"Y'know, guys, I knew your prototype. Strong, fast...stupid. I was his first target. He's retired, now, but if you want, I can take you to him."

The room's door slid aside, and because of her head restraint, Marcie couldn't turn her head to see who was coming in, but she frowned in fear at who was expected, that dangerous creep, Jonny. If his troubling reputation with the girls he met were to be believed, then she expected a rough time to be had with him, and that was before he set to work doing whatever his father sent him to do.

"Joanie, didn't your father ever tell you that it's not nice to stand up a lady?"

She could hear footsteps...too many for one person.

She strained her neck to turn just enough to see the almost back-lit silhouettes of a small group of scientists filing into the room. One approached her guards, while the other two flanked her with silent purpose.

"Excuse us, but we're from Quest Children's Research, and we're developing a new kind of candy," the smallest of the three researchers explained. "Would you two be so kind as to pop one of these in your mouths? We're testing to see how strong they are, before they go to market."

Since both were duty-programmed to do whatever was required to serve the interests of Dr. Quest, the machines took one of the small spheres offered, with one of them thinking to ask, "What are these?"

"Jawbreakers," the smallish scientist told him. "Give 'em a bite."

They placed the confectionery into their dry mouths, maneuvered the candy onto their molars, and crushed them, releasing superconductive fluid and the waiting thunderbolt of the LEMP capsules.

A lightning storm exploded in their skulls, with their brains, in close proximity to the discharge, having their delicate components destroyed. They collapsed with heavy thuds, soon after.

"Make a note," Jason said to the two scientists behind a stunned Marcie "Too tart."

"How did you guys get here?" Marcie whispered, while Daisy and Red unscrewed the restraints from her. "How did you know where I was? I mean, in the base?"

"Ask Jason," Daisy said. "He came up with the game plan."

Jason self-consciously rubbed the back of his head, explaining, "Well, when you came by the junkyard last night to see me, I took the liberty of putting another one of my trackers on your jacket, and then, told the others where you were going, afterwards."

Marcie stood from her chair and rubbed the circulation back into her wrists. "Well, it's not like I don't appreciate this, guys, but I thought that you weren't going to help me on this one."

"Yeah, well…" Red muttered. "When you left, we had some time to think about...us not helping you, and how it looked. We felt like sludge in an oil pan. The whole town's losing its cool, and here we were, not putting our heads together on this."

"But, what about your folks?" asked Marcie. "Didn't you want to stay with them?"

"We did," Daisy admitted. "We wanted to help them, but then, we thought about all of the other people we've helped, along the way, and then, we realized that we could do it, again, that we can help everybody. We can't stop that now, Marcie."

"Yeah," Jason added, inwardly moved by the growing camaraderie. "You're, kind of, stuck with us, and that means that we have a mystery to solve."

"You, guys..." Marcie said, giving a self-conscious smile of pride at the band she was lucky enough to have found herself with.

However, before the spirit of concord could develop anyone further, the small lights in the room switched to a fiery neon red, accompanied by a shrill alarm, which reminded Marcie of a question she had asked her friends, earlier.

"Uh, tell me again how you guys got inside?"

"We used the same code that the prototype gave you, to get in here," Jason said, fretting and looking up at the blood red lighting.

"That code had a security prefix that gave me away, when I used it. They'll be coming for all of us, now!"

"Then, we better burn rubber!" Red said, leading the others through the open door.


Jonny Quest nimbly tore down the corridors, shoving aside lab workers, assistants, and programmers, on his way to the interrogation room.

Coming to a skidding halt by the small chamber, he slapped the palm button on the wall, and watched the door slid open, with rising anxiety.

In the crimson hellscape of the room's interior, two inert bodies were lying on the floor, lifeless eyes staring out into nothingness, and mouths agape with leaking fluid. Jonny didn't care about the pair of robots, but what did distress him was the empty chair with the loose restraints.

Leaning out from the room's threshold, Jonny alerted his father in the fastest, most direct way he could think of.

"Pop!" he wailed.


Hopefully hiding in plain sight, the gang frantically blended in with the other perturbed lab coats in the reddened corridor, moving past the workers, as their cover either stopped in confusion, or ducked into side rooms to avoid security barreling down on them for some imagined offense.

Marcie looked around the hallway, when she wasn't looking over her shoulder for pursuit, and noticed that none of the few landmarks or features that she had seen in this spartan passageway were familiar to her.

"Red, where are we going?" she asked him.

"The elevator we came in on. It's around here, somewhere!" He then saw an elevator lobby up ahead of them.

But, the fear of being lost didn't leave Marcie. In fact, it intensified. "Wait! I saw the map," she said. "There are two elevators, on this floor, but I think we're going the wrong way!"

"What?" Red exclaimed. He didn't need to hear that.

Commotion behind them caused the gang to swivel their heads to the sound of an angry, blonde teen in a black t-shirt recklessly parting a path of workers before him, like a plow, heading in their general direction.

"No time thinking about it!" Daisy said, reaching over and hitting the elevator call button, its doors opening with a grateful speed. "Get in!"

The group ran into the car and closed the door with a desperate button press to a lower floor, just as Jonny, finally, reached the lobby to look around this wider area, and get his bearings.

As the car descended, the gang leaned against the curved walls, listened to piped-in Muzak, and counted their blessings, while their caught their breaths.

Jason brightened in recognition upon hearing this particular cover song. "Hey, I know that song."

The elevator reached the summoned floor and its door slid open to a pair of waiting scientists, who allowed the faux researchers disembark.

However, as soon as the pair entered the car, Daisy turned and warned them, "Be careful going up there. They caught somebody raiding the lunch room fridge!"

The door closed on the befuddled two, as the gang started to leave the ruddy-lit elevator lobby.

"Where are we?" Daisy asked, studying the features of the hallway.

Noticing another map hanging on a wall in the lobby's periphery, Marcie gave a look, and said, "Residential Level. We have to get back up and find the other elevator, if we want to get out of here."

Red shook his head. "Not until it cools off up there. Let's lay low, for a while."

"Works for me," Jason agreed. "I just hope there's room at the inn for us."

Still studying the map, Marcie pointed to a section of it. "Hey, there are some guest quarters near here. They might be empty."

"Lead the way," Red nodded.

She guided the rest up the floor's main corridor, and then, took a turn into a side hall lined with four widely-spaced doors.

Without fanfare, Red moved up to the one marked VIP, but was stopped from entering, due to its security card reader by the side of the closed door. A sharp jab with his elbow, smashing the reading plate into falling shards, was his rebuttal to that.

He waved Jason over to his handiwork and whispered, "Do something with that."

Jason gave a dubious sigh, while peering into the tangle of wires, leads and connections, and then, proceeded to work on hotwiring the reader with pudgy fingers.

Footsteps coming from the far end of the corridor made the gang turn their heads down the small hall to the sound, in silent terror.

"C'mon, Jason," Marcie whispered.

With a petulant spark, the door hummed opened, and they jumped into the foyer of the suite, just as Questoids and a security guard marched through the hall.

Hearing something, a Questoid looked down the side hall where the VIP room was, and was about to step in and notice the broken pieces of the card reader's face on the floor, when the human security guard called out to him.

"There's nobody in there," the human reasoned. "Mr. Greenman hadn't come back, yet."

Satisfied with the information, the inquisitive Questoid turned away from the mouth of the side hall, and joined the rest of the posse.

Jason, his ear pressed hard against the door, tried to hear through its thickness, but decided that, since the door hadn't yet opened on them, it must be safe, and stepped away.

"I think they're gone," he whispered, rejoining them in the living room.

"Nice joint," Red commented, while they took in the cozy opulence of the place. "I'm glad I picked it."

"Let's check to make sure that it's empty, guys," Daisy suggested, walking over to the small dining room. The rest split up and, quietly, inspected the other rooms for occupants. Finding none, they collectively began to feel safer.

In the study/office where she searched, Marcie sat in the chair by the room's desk, to rest.

She glanced, admiringly, around the chamber, nodding at the ample library on the far side, and the tasteful appointments within, the decor and the furnishings, the desk before her, and the open book on top, with the red Gaelic scribblings written among the otherwise English text.

The incongruity of the book made Marcie bolt into a sitting up-position. "Huh?"

The rest of the gang, hearing Marcie's voice, gathered in the doorway of the study to see her laughing and looking through a thick, weathered book.

"Marcie, are you all right?" Daisy asked.

Marcie looked up from her perusal of the tome, saying to all of them, "Guys, I never felt better! Do you know whose guest room this is? Greenman's!"

Red sulked, "Aw, c'mon, Marcie! You didn't even give me a chance."

They entered the room and gathered behind Marcie, as she thumbed the pages, gleefully.

Daisy peered at the Celtic words, trying to read the English that it haphazardly covered. "What kind of writing is that? I don't understand it."

"I can't translate it, myself," Marcie said. "But, I do believe that it's Gaelic, the native language of Ireland and Scotland."

"Then, why is it all over the pages?" Jason asked. "What kind of book is this?"

Marcie gave a grin, closing the book and showing them the worn cover.

"A history book?" Red asked, incredulously. "You're getting overheated over a history book?"

"Not just any history book, Red!" Marcie pointed out, with pedantic happiness. "A world history book!"

"Huh?" the rest of the gang exclaimed.

"This is how he did it, how he planned all of his strategies, how he won!" Marcie stressed to them.

"What are you talking about, Marcie?" Jason asked.

"Greenman traveled through time, remember? He changed history, world history, and he did it with the help of this world history book. It told him every event and every war that took place in the past, and he used that knowledge to win his war against the other religions!"

"You mean, like a cheat code?" Red asked, surprised that such a simple object, like a book, could do so much damage.

A thought that Marcie shared, as she contemplated the awful power that sat in her hands. "The ultimate cheat code, guys. Jason, go out to the foyer and listen by the door. If anybody comes in, come back to us, and we'll hide. In the meantime, the rest of us are going to look for more clues. We've got him, guys. We've got him."

With that, Marcie stood from the desk and walked over to the bookshelf to see if other incriminating folios could be discovered, while Daisy spotted a wastepaper basket by the desk and began to root around in it, and Red, unsure of what to look for, gave a shrug and knelt on the carpeted floor, hoping to get lucky.

Daisy dumped the basket on the carpet and started sifting through the crumpled balls and creased sheets of discarded paper, looking through each piece of trash that caught her eye for information. Then, something elicited her attention.

"Well, we know that this Greenman guy is rich and likes his stadium seats," Daisy quipped, as she flattened a piece of printed paper. "It looks like he booked the whole building."

"Huh?" Marcie asked, turning to see Daisy's find.

Daisy held up a creased receipt with the office of Aerodrome Stadium stamped as a letterhead. Below it was Greenman's payment for use of the entire stadium for one week.

"What would he need a stadium for?" Marcie mused, before Red stood up from the floor.

"Y'know, this clue stuff would be better, if they were easier to find," he groused. "All I found was rug burn and some stupid seeds."

"Seeds?" Marcie pondered. "Hmm, better take them with us, Red. No telling what they could mean."

"It could mean that this guy's a messy eater," Red said, picking the seeds that he could see, off the floor. "And we better motor out of here. The more we're on the move, the less chance they'll have to corner us."

Marcie nodded. "Agreed. I don't want to be here, if Greenman comes back. Besides, I think we have enough to work out what he's up to. I hope."


Sneaking through the hallway and the twilight of the crimson alarm lighting, the gang made a beeline towards the elevator that brought them to that level. If they were lucky and cautious, then beyond the next elevator would be freedom.

Jason pressed the call button, and then, wailed when the door opened to reveal a Questoid on patrol.

Marcie, out of reflex, pulled out an Insta-Ice capsule, and threw it down on the floor of the elevator car. It spread and solidified around the robot's feet, anchoring him, before he could step forward to reach out and pull Jason into the car with him.

The door closed between both parties, and the gang used the time that Questoid had, breaking the ice away, to bolt down the corridor.

The elevator door opened, and the machine exited the car in time to see his quarry put distance from it. It took off in pursuit, a moment later.

Marcie took a second to glance at a large, armored door down the hall, stopped in front of it, and hit the button near it, allowing them to duck inside, just before the Questoid caught up to them. Unfortunately, it also, had free access to the room that they went into, and so, followed them in.

Neither party noticed the small sign stenciled on the side of the door, opposite the entry button, that read Warning-Garbage Incinerator. The door closed, and then, locked from the outside.

The room was fairly large and dim, with a single light above the occupants. Marcie and the gang backed as far away from the stalking automaton as room allowed, stopping when they bumped up against the steely wall behind them.

The Questoid, knowing that there was no escape for them, conserved power by strolling slowly towards them, his fingers flexing in readiness to rend and kill them manually, before reporting in.

He was four feet from them, when something in his electronic mind held him fast, and he stiffened to an unexpected halt. New code was wirelessly flowing into his brain, and he cocked his head to the side, in reaction, as if noticing a sound that only he could hear.

Then, he spoke, not so much to the befuddled group, but to himself, as if to drive him on to completing his new assignment.

"By order of the Undying Pagan Emperor, your perfidy will not go unpunished!" the machine said, turning and walking back to the locked door.

Dismayed, the gang stayed where they were, while the robot repeated his proclamation and began to bang on the unyielding door hard enough for it to gong.

"What's going on?" Red asked.

"No idea," Daisy answered.

Before any of the gang could ponder the next course of action, the screech of weighty metal scrapping against metal rang in their ears. That was uncomfortable. What happened next would prove to be downright distressing.

The entire dark wall on one side of the room slowly slid up, releasing a heavy gout of heat to wash through the room's interior, taking their collective breath away.

Moving away from the opening wall, they were close enough to see down a deep chamber whose bottom was obscure from their perspective, but glowed with a hellish light.

Their momentary fear was increased to a panic, when the wall on the opposite side of the one that slid up, began to close in on them by gradual inches, threatening to, eventually, sweep them into the inferno.

Only the width of the room and the slow speed of the moving wall bought the gang time to run to the front door, when the Questoid, noticing the pushing wall, turned his attention to stopping it, instead.

Marcie ran her hands along the door. It was seamless, practically sealed into the frame, when it closed.

"What are you doing, Marcie?" Jason asked, his voice raising an octave as the wall moved closer.

"Looking for a gap in the door that I could pour my acid into, so it could run down and eat the lock. But, it's sealed too tight!"

"The door!" Daisy suggested. "Could the acid eat through the door?"

Marcie gave the door a grim appraisal, then said, "I don't know if I have enough acid, or time for that."

"I'd punch that door down, if I could," Red muttered, admitting to himself that he had no ideas.

But, it Jason, who found inspiration in his words, as he brightened in this deathtrap, and turned to Marcie.

"That's it! We could do what we did with the VIP's lock!"

Marcie looked at Jason, wondering if his fear had broken him. "Uh, Jason, I know Red's strong, but even he can't go through steel."

"No, but your acid can. If the wall is thinner, you can burn a hole in it where the entry button's wiring is, then, I can hotwire the door and open it, just like I did to the VIP lock."

Marcie gave a nod of agreement. The idea was sound enough to try. Remembering where the entry button was on the outside, she went to that side of the wall, pulled out a small flask of strong acid from her inner jacket pocket, and began pouring careful amounts of the liquid against the barrier.

With each tiny splash, more and more of the material was eaten away, running burning troughs down the length of the wall, and opening a rough hole that hissed and yawned wider.

After a few seconds, Marcie stopped pouring to avoid hitting the conduits inside, took her scarf off to dab the hole's edges dry, and then, took out her penlight to give Jason light to work under, as he reached in to disconnect and reconnect leads.

The pushing wall was now three feet away from the gang, and slowly continued to herd anyone or thing from that side of the room towards the waiting incinerator, with the Questoid still banging impotently against it, and Jason still experimenting with wiring sequences to fool the lock's computer.

"Hurry up, Jason!" Daisy goaded. "The door opens inward. If the wall blocks the door, we're goners!"

Jason gritted his teeth, reaching as far as his wide arms could allow, to find a port to plug in a wire that he believed was the one that would unlock the system.

"Almost..." he growled, as the wall was approaching where the door's hidden hinges were.

His efforts were suddenly rewarded with a flash of hot sparks in his face, smoldering hair, and the door suddenly swinging, loosely, inward.

"All right, Jason!" Red bellowed, grabbing the edge of the door and pulling it in as far as it could.

In frantic single-file, everyone leapt through the narrowing crack of the door, made thinner as the wall now pushed against the rest of the door. The Questoid noticing that the door had been opened, tried to catch up to the gang, as they departed, managing to reach an arm through the door's closing gap.

Outside in the hall, the gang huddled at a distance, watching the arm bend and snap off at its weakest point, as the wall's strength overcame the robot's, closing the door after maiming him, and shoving him into the broiling depths of the incinerator.

Jason noticed a burning scent, and squeaked in fear, as he looked up, saw his hair smoking lightly, and beat it out.

Leaving the robot's remains lying in the hall, Marcie and the others jogged back to the elevator lobby. If they could call down an unoccupied car, they stood a better chance to slip away in the confusion.

She pressed the call button, while she pondered aloud, "I wonder why that Questoid acted so strange. He had us right where he wanted us."

"Hey, I'm not complainin'," Red spoke up. "Are you complainin'? 'Cuz, I'm not complainin'. We can worry about that mystery, after we put some miles behind us."

The car door opened, revealing Benton Quest and the rest of Team Quest, shocked out of their apparent desperation to leave, after seeing who stood in the lobby.

"What are you doing here?" Marcie snapped at Benton, equally shocked at what she saw.

"What are you doing here?" Benton snapped back, leading his people out of the car. "The Questoids are malfunctioning! They're going through my security guards, storming the Electronics Level, and destroying my time machine! My beautiful Hour Arch!"

Jonny glowered at the gang, hating to hear his father sound so upset. "I bet they had something to do with, Pop!"

"Indeed!" Hadji concurred. "They all used a Questoid code to get in! Maybe, they did something to all of the Questoids, as well!"

"Yeah, buddy!" said Jonny, staring hard at Marcie. "Why else would all of this go down right after she showed up?"

Race had to nod at the seeming logic of it all. "The kids' got a point, Doc. They must've found out about our new empire, and wanted to throw a monkey wrench in the works."

Marcie gave a though to what Hadji had suggested, a mass sabotage of all Questoids, then thought of the last Questoid to be breached and exploited prior to now. She gave a troubled, suspicious glance to Jason.

A look he recognized, immediately. "You think it was me? No way! I couldn't do all of that! I told you that the diagnostics computer in the truck called up all of the Questoid head's files, not me! I stink as a programmer!"

Marcie considered that. Electronics was Jason's forte, not computer science. She returned her attention to the wayward scientist. "I believe him. Okay, Quest, it's obvious that none of us knew that any of this was going to happen."

"Then, why did you come here?" Quest pressed.

"To get information on Greenman, your partner!" she answered, before a notion popped into her mind. "Wait a minute. You said that you were going to double-cross him by going into the past and undoing everything he did. What if he didn't trust you, and knew you would do that to him? What do you think he'd do?"

Quest wasn't sanguine about being attacked before he waged his own, but he found himself weighing such a distressing scenario, before the simple obviousness forced him to answer.

"He would destroy the Hour Arch, so I couldn't sabotage this timeline," he muttered. "If you're right, then he's not such a crazy eccentric, after all, blast him! It's too dangerous to stop the Questoids. They're too powerful."

He regarded his inner circle, saying, "All we can do is escape and plan our next move."

Then, he turned to the gang. "But, before we do, we owe you for all you've done to us."

"Whoa!" Daisy said, bringing her hands up before the menace that Quest's entourage was radiating. "This is, like, the first time we even met you, guys. Why don't we grab an elevator and beat it, then talk about who did what to whom, later."

Quest, leading his group closer towards the gang, who were now backing away, said to her, "It's who, my dear, and I believe we have just enough time to settle our affairs...now!"

The threat towards Daisy made Red stop his retreat, and crack his broad knuckles. "Hey, pal! I don't like bustin' eggheads…anymore, but I'll do it, if you don't let us go!" he warned Quest.

This caused the scientist to pause in his approach. With a world-weary sigh, he told Red, "Young man, I am a scientist, a theoretician, and a thinker. I will not sully my hands by lowering myself to your level."

It sounded multi-syllabic and pretentious, but Red had heard enough of that from nerds that he once bullied, to know a surrender when he heard one.

"I thought so," Red figured, cockily.

Quest casually turned to his bodyguard, and said to him, "Race, I pay you well enough. Dispatch this boy for me."

Race stepped ahead of his employer and strolled over to a surprised Red. "Sure thing, Doc."

From the air of confidence and fighting experience Bannon exuded, Red gave a nervous gulp. This was going to be a challenge.