Chapter 1
It had been a few months since Matt Rider and the gang had seen the Master. Ever since his appearance at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, Matt had wondered how he could still be alive and what he wanted. Is revenge on his mind? he asked himself. More than likely it is.
Matt wasn’t thrilled that the Master had jumped on a truck that carried a secret military robot named Nemesis. Only a few select people knew about the Nemesis project, a project that had gone bad. It was merely coincidental that the military happened to come by at the same time the Master exited the church. Then he had disappeared. How does someone who looked like he did just disappear? How could he ruin Matt’s wedding day? But the Master didn’t care about that. He only wanted revenge.
After Matt and Sherry got back from their honeymoon, Matt started looking for the Master, but it was as if he were a ghost who had come and gone in a single breath. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and no one could find him. It seemed impossible that this could happen.
Matt thought it strange that reports had it that Albert Herr and his father, John Herr, were gone as well. Matt had looked into that, and it seemed as if Albert and his father had been linked to the Master for some time. The two were archeologists and had been working on a time machine.
One Thursday afternoon, Matt and Sherry took a drive to a building at Chelsea Piers. They shut the door to the GMC Yukon and walked up to the building, not knowing what to expect. From the outside, the structure looked as if it had been deserted for months. It was broad daylight, but Matt and Sherry kept their guns not far from their waists. An older man approached them and began to question them, but he backed off when he realized who they were.
The boarded-up building looked like something a gang would use, not a pair of archeologists. After asking many questions of the older man, Matt and Sherry went inside. There they found robot pieces all over the place. The disarray on the floor was evident, as was the destruction. The whole warehouse was a total mess.
Matt and Sherry looked at each other. They were starting to panic. On a desk, they found notes that had been scribbled on and crossed out. As they walked around, they knew something was terribly wrong. Matt had thought the dark days were behind them, but this looked bleak.
More disturbing were the body parts of machines. It looked as if Albert had done an extensive makeover on a very large robot. Matt picked up a robot hand. His biggest fear was that somehow the Master had control over both Nemesis and the Herrs.
Sherry began to wonder if the Herrs had helped the Master.
“I don’t think so,” Matt said.
“Well,” Sherry said, “you just don’t know.” She knew that Matt had a good heart and always thought the best of people. Circuit breakers and a multitude of wires lay in the dust-filled laboratory.
Searching the warehouse, Matt and Sherry found large boxes that had been covered up, and many computers set up to use. Matt didn’t quite know what to make of it all, and neither did Sherry. It seemed as if the Herrs had built something or taken something apart, or both. They had done a pretty good job of hiding whatever it was they were doing.
As the new police commissioner, Matt had a responsibility to watch over the city. He realized that something was up, but he didn’t know what it was, and it scared him. He and Sherry walked up a few stairs to where there was a desk and a computer set up. Matt discovered some papers with different formulas written on them. The writing looked like chicken scratches or a doctor’s handwriting. All the papers were like that, and Matt couldn’t read them. It was as if the writer were trying to re-create something he couldn’t figure out, and had started over and over again. It was very confusing, and Matt wondered what the heck it meant. Sherry took a look but couldn’t make sense of the writing, either. She took the papers and put them in her pants pocket.
They walked around the floor, Matt on one side and Sherry on the other, then did the same downstairs. Matt picked up a circuit breaker and took it with him as they left the warehouse.The elderly man who had greeted them saw them leaving. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked. Sherry said they hadn’t.
“Too bad,” he said. Then he added, “The Chinese man left with two hooded figures on a boat.“What? Say that again,” Matt responded. “What Chinese man? Maybe you’d better show us the log.”“I just patrol the dock,” said the elderly man. “Let’s go to the dockmaster.”
Matt and Sherry followed him to the dockmaster’s small shack. When he opened the door, the dockmaster’s body fell out. Matt estimated that he had been dead for about two days. Sherry and Matt looked at each other. “Now it starts,” he said. Matt grabbed the logbook that was on top of a shelf and handed it to Sherry, then pulled the body out of the shack. Then he called his precinct.
Looking through the book, Sherry came to an empty page. “Why isn’t there anything written here?” she asked. The elderly man said he wasn’t sure. They heard people calling for help, and Matt spotted two men tied up near the end of the dock. He ran over, took out his knife, and cut the ropes to free their arms and legs. He took the tape off their mouths, and as the men caught their breath, he asked, “Who did this?”
“Two hooded men and some Chinese man.”
“What!” Matt exclaimed.
The men said that one of the men was called Albert, and that he had taken one of the boats. Matt asked where it was headed. They had no idea. “All he said was, ‘Cold fusion, cold fusion.’ What the heck is that?”The two men left, and Jack Rider, Matt’s brother, and Takeo arrived. Sherry showed Jack and Takeo the empty space in the logbook, and explained about the hooded men and the Chinese man.
“Where are they headed?” Takeo asked.