He reached toward me. I flinched, but he took my chin in his hand and pushed it gently to one side. With his other hand, he lifted one of the bandages on the back of my head. “Splendid! The surgeons did a clean job back there. Are you still in much pain?”
My patience was gone. I was always taught to be nice to grown-ups, but that had expired. “They knocked me out and dug into my brain—yes, I’m in pain! I want to call my dad! Why am I here? And who the heck are you?”
The man pulled up a seat. As he extended his hand, his Coke-bottle glasses slid back down his nose. “Forgive my poor manners. As I used to say to my students at Yale, ‘I have three names—Professor Radamanthus Bhegad—but unlike most academics, I let you use my first name. So you can call me…Professor Bhegad!’”
He sniffed with a very satisfied expression.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” I growled.
“It slew them at Yale,” he said with a sigh. “I apologize for all the secrecy here. You see, Jack, it’s very simple. You need us. You have a rare genetic condition that is about to kill you, and we at the Karai Institute are the only ones who know how to treat it.”
I looked at him warily. “I thought you already treated it.”
“We’re not done yet. This condition is complex. It has lain dormant in you until now. Untreated, it will overload your circuits, so to speak, and cause death.” He sighed and wiped his glasses. “The good news is that when we are finished, you will attain superpowers beyond your wildest dreams.”
“Is this a joke?” I asked.
“Pardon?” he said.
“You mean, superpower superpowers?” I asked. “Like flying, stopping bullets, becoming invisible, having X-ray vision?”
“Dear, dear boy,” Professor Bhegad said, shaking his head with a barely tolerant smile, “the radioactivity in X-ray vision would wreak havoc, wouldn’t it? It is a silly comic-book myth.”
“And there are some superpowers that aren’t?” I asked.
Bhegad nodded. He began to get this odd, faraway look in his eye. “The brain is an amazing thing, Jack. Quite exciting for a boy, no? Whoosh…whoosh…Geronimo!” He seemed to be igniting from the inside. Beads of perspiration lined his forehead. “Of course, this goes two ways. You see, we need you, too. Which is the main reason I am here. To explain your connection to a lost ancient civilization.”
“Wait. Lost civilization?” I said. “I’m still at superpowers.”
Without explaining, he began lifting doughnuts and fruit and glancing underneath. I noticed his fingernails were yellow, practically bitten to the nub.
That’s when it finally hit me. This guy was a nutcase. And I was alone with him. This place wasn’t a lab or a hospital. The “Karai Institute” was an institution!
“Excuse me, Professor…sir…” I said slowly, trying to keep my temper from rising, “I need to see your bosses. Please. Tell them where I am. Tell them there’s been some mistake. Tell them I don’t have my phone, and I need to contact my dad now. Because if they don’t, he will sue their pants off!”
Bhegad looked up from the plate of food. His fingers were smeared with chocolate icing. “You sound frustrated. But you needn’t worry. We have taken care of all details.”
“What does that mean?” I shot back.
“For reasons that will become clear, secrecy is necessary. You will understand when I show you this informational slide show, if I can find that blasted remote….” Leaving the pile of food, he flicked a switch on the wall, and a screen began to lower from the other end of the room. He knelt to peer under the table. “Honestly, no one puts things back where they belong….”
I had to get out of here. Slowly I stood up. The exit was just beyond him. I was sitting at the other end of the table, on the right side. On the floor behind me to the left was a pile of papers. “Oh! Is it that little black thing?” I said, pointing to the corner. “Behind that stack of folders?”
“Ah, thanks…let me see…” he said, waddling around the table.
I waited until he was leaning over, looking away.
And I bolted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
G7W
I RAN DOWN an empty, carpeted hallway. At the end was an exit sign pointing left, with a little graphic that indicated stairs. I took the corner at top speed.
I didn’t expect the stairs to be so close. Or to run into a card game in progress on them.
“Whoa, where are you going?” Aly cried out. She, Marco, and Cass jerked backward as I tripped over the steps.
Marco caught me midfall, but didn’t let go. “’Sup, Jack? Didn’t Bhegad explain everything?”
“You mean the part about him saving my life?” I said, struggling to pry myself loose. “Or turning me into a DC Comics hero?”
“Are you a DC guy?” Cass asked. “Emosewa!”
“Meaning awesome—Cass likes to talk backward,” Aly explained. “I’m a fan of the old-school Superman TV series…with George Reeves?”
They were all crazy. “Get me out of here! I want to see the head of this place!”
“You just did,” Cass said. “Well, he’s not the head of the whole thing…”
But Marco was already dragging me back toward the room. “Just do this, okay?” he said through clenched teeth. “Don’t be a pain in the butt.”
“By the Great Qalani, what are you doing to him?” Bhegad’s voice thundered as he came around the corner. “If he pops those stitches, we lose him!”
Marco loosened his grip. I shot upstairs and pulled open the door, to the sound of a piercing alarm.
Three guards pivoted on their heels and faced me, hands on their weapons.
I stopped in my tracks. I was trapped.
“Jack,” Bhegad said softly from the bottom of the steps, “I have PhDs from Yale and Cambridge. If you think I’m crazy, then you must think your three friends are, too. And Torquin and the guards. And seventy-nine world-class experts in genetics, biophysics, classical archaeology, geography, computer science, mythology, medicine, and biochemistry. Not to mention a support staff of two hundred and twenty-eight. The Karai Institute is the finest think tank in the world. And we are patient. We can wait until you’re ready to listen. But you will not escape. So it’s either now or later. Your choice.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said.
Bhegad beckoned me to come down the stairs. “Marco, Cass, Aly—would you kindly turn your backs?”
Marco spun around first—and my jaw nearly dropped. Buried in his dark mop of hair was a white Λ.
Cass’s, too.
“Mine is under the dye,” Aly explained.
I swallowed hard. I took a couple of steps downward. The guards slammed the door shut. “So…you’re all…?”
“The lambda is a unique physical sign,” Bhegad explained. “We don’t understand the mechanics of it. The hair changes rather quickly, and at virtually the same age among all who have the condition. But we do know its significance. It is common to one group of people, whom we call the Select.”
“Select? What are we selected for, something good?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” the professor replied. “Each of you has a rare genetic marker. It is an extraordinary gift, but it also happens to be a ticking bomb. Jack, we were hoping to have five of you here—including a young man called Randall Cromarty. You know the name?”
I was about to say no. But the name did ring a bell. A news item. A grainy video that had been circulating for the last week or so. Some kid rolling a gutter ball, throwing up his hands, dropping to the floor. The story Dad had sent me. “The kid who died in the bowling alley?”
Bhegad nodded. “At the age of thirteen, in Illinois. Cause unknown. Before him, a girl named Sue Gudmundsen fell into a fatal coma while in a San Diego mall—also thirteen. And Mo Roberts, playing catch with his little sister. In all cases, our medical team was too late. But we found you in time.”
“Torquin…” I said. “Dr. Saark…But how did they know
?”
“For that, you can thank our IT staff,” Bhegad said. “After your last checkup, Dr. Flood made a note on your computerized medical records about the very beginnings of the lambda. Our tracking software picked it up.”
“You hacked my medical records.” My checkup had been about a week before the math test—a day before Dad left for Singapore. Had Dr. Flood mentioned anything about a mark on the back of my head? I couldn’t remember.
“Hacking is such an ugly word,” Bhegad replied wearily.
“So…what does the lambda mean?” I asked.
“Think of those nightly news headlines, the stories that float around social media like crazy.” Bhegad smiled. “An ordinary person lifts an entire car to free a trapped loved one! A kid considered mentally defective draws ornate cathedrals from memory, to the tiniest detail! As humans, we access only part of our brain’s capacity. But these people have tapped into a vast unused area of the brain that we call the ceresacrum.”
“What does that have to do with us?” I asked.
“Some people breach the ceresacrum temporarily, in response to crisis,” Bhegad replied. “Some are born with a bit of access, not much. But what if the ceresacrum’s gate could be lifted? Not just the rare flash of genius or the momentary feat of strength, but total access? Imagine! In each of us lies the potential to do superhuman things. Feats of great physical daring, art, science. The ability to defy laws of nature. Am I clear, Jack?”
Aly, Cass, and Marco were grinning at me now. My mind was a big fog of duh. “No.”
“Some genes are buried deeply in our DNA,” Bhegad continued. “For example, we all possess the code for a tail…for gills! But these are not expressed, as we say. Nature has shut the mechanism, except in extremely rare cases. Being able to open the ceresacrum gate is like having a tail. The genetic ability is there, but ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the world’s people do not express it. You four” —he glanced slowly at each of us— “are the point zero zero zero one.”
Now it was becoming clear. And the clarity hurt. “You mean…we’re all genetic mutants?”
“Yes, in a good way,” Bhegad said. “You four possess what we call G7W. It’s a marker. A piece of genetic code. We do not understand how it works, but we know what it indicates. You are the elite. The top of the top. The ones whose ceresacrum can be cracked wide open. Millennia ago, this ability may have existed in many, if not all, humans.”
“Wait,” I said. “Evolution is survival of the fittest. So if you had dudes who were superhumans way back then, why wouldn’t they have survived to now?”
“Because those who die early are, by definition, not the fittest.” Bhegad leaned forward. “Jack, we ran a genetic map of Randall Cromarty’s DNA after he died. And Sue Gudmundsen’s and Mo Roberts’s. They all had G7W.”
I looked from Aly to Marco to Cass. Their faces were drawn. “So I’m—all of us—we’re going to die?” I asked.
“No one who has had this marker has lived past the age of fourteen,” Bhegad said. “For whatever reason, the gene kicks into action around your age—and its actions are too powerful to be withstood by the body. Which is why we brought you here. We have developed a treatment. The operation on your head was the first step. You will be required to undergo regular procedures every ten days or so. Your first will be in about seventy-two hours. But we cannot keep you alive forever. There is a point after which nothing can be done—a sort of expiration date we can read in your genome. And that is what scares me. The fact that all our science is still not enough to keep you alive.”
I sank to the stairs. The carpet felt clammy. The walls felt cold. It was as if the stairwell itself were my coffin. I wouldn’t leave here without dying. I wouldn’t see my dad ever again. I might develop a power or two in the meantime. Maybe paint a cathedral or twirl a helicopter in my bare hands. And then…?
“So your job is to study us,” I said. “We’re your superhero guinea pigs. So what happens when we’re dead? Will you call our families and friends—or just have Torquin dump our bodies in the sea?”
“Yo, hear him out, brother,” Marco said.
“I’m not your brother!” I snapped. “Here’s a deal, Professor Bhegad. Call my dad. Give him your location. Let him come here so I can see him—”
“Jack, please,” Bhegad said. “Your father would snatch you back in an instant—the worst thing that could happen to you. Besides, it would be impossible to give him these coordinates. This place is not visible by ordinary means. Radar, sonar, GPS—none of them register here. There are forces on this island even we do not understand—”
“Then go get him and bring him here,” I said. “If he knows I need the treatments, he’ll stay. He’ll help!”
“We can’t risk that!” Bhegad shouted. “Your lungs need air, your eyes need light—but your ceresacrum needs something here, in the earth itself. Eons ago, this island was a continent. Its people created grand architecture, made extraordinary music, governed with fairness and sophistication. It was protected by a curious flux point of natural forces within the earth—electromagnetic, gravitational, perhaps extraterrestrial. When the place was destroyed, the forces were, too.” Bhegad’s phone beeped. He snatched it angrily from his pocket and looked at the screen.
“Dude, man up to this,” Marco said to me. “We’re on what’s left of Atlantis. And we’re, like, great-great-great-to-a-zillionth descendants.”
“Atlantis? Very funny,” I said, attempting a laugh.
No one else laughed with me. I looked toward Professor Bhegad, but he was texting, his face lined with concern. As he snapped it shut, he said, “I must go. But, yes, Marco is correct. You are connected to Atlantis by blood. Your ceresacrum must feed off the ancient power in order to survive. But that power must be found.”
I swallowed hard. Aly and Cass were looking pale and frightened. “How?” I asked.
Bhegad stood. He pocketed his phone and began edging up the stairs toward the building’s exit. “We don’t know where it is now. The power of Atlantis was stolen. Broken up and hidden all over the world. You must find what was taken. Your lives will be saved, Jack, if you locate all the elements of that power. You must bring them together and return it to Atlantis.”
Bhegad’s phone beeped again, and before I could say a word, he was up the stairs and gone.
CHAPTER NINE
THE SELECT
I FELT LIKE I’d been run over by a three-ton tank. Or squashed by Torquin’s feet.
Aly, Cass, and Marco were all talking at once. Really loudly. We were walking out of the building and onto the path that ringed around the quad. They were telling me what a smart guy Bhegad was and how he was our only hope and how famous we would become.
Half of me felt like a caged orangutan in the zoo. The other half wanted to burst out laughing. Either Bhegad was going to save my life or I had been pranked by some island Yoda who was two sandwiches short of a picnic.
“Atlantis…” I muttered. “Superpowers…I’m supposed to believe this?”
Aly put her arm around me. “Hey, we all doubted it, too!” she said in a loud, affirming voice, like she was talking to someone at the other end of a room. “It’s a tough transition!”
I looked at Cass. “I think Bhegad is nuts. No offense, but I’m not sure about you guys either. You all don’t mind not seeing your parents?”
“Um, no.” Cass’s face clouded over. “Not really. Well, I do, I guess. I mean, I did.”
My heart dropped. I felt like an idiot for asking the question. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are they…?”
“No!” Cass shot back. “They’re not dead. But we…my family isn’t close.”
Marco ran ahead of us on the path. He grabbed a basketball that was lying against the side of a building and began dribbling.
“Trust us,” Aly said. “This is no Truman Show.”
“She likes old movies.” Cass stepped up onto the path’s narrow stone border, and began flapping his arms rhythmi
cally. “Be grateful, Jack. Just think what would have happened if they didn’t find you.”
I had to admit that one. “Okay, I might have died. But I feel totally cured now. Do you really believe this skeezy story—they’re keeping us alive so we can find our inner superpowers, but only if we find the lost power of Atlantis?”
“I believe him!” Aly exclaimed.
“Brother Jack, we are surrounded by world experts,” Marco said, spinning the basketball on one finger. “Wicked smart people. If they just wanted goons to travel and find the Atlantean powers, they could get them. They got Torquin, didn’t they?”
I looked around. Teams were working hard, mowing lawns, repairing roofs, paving walkways. A group was wiring a small maroon half globe to the side of a building. It looked to me like the surveillance cameras in Dad’s old office building. They waved to us as we passed.
“I used to feel the same way you do, Jack,” Aly said, toning her voice down. “I was on a plane flight home from Washington, DC, watching Citizen Kane for like the thirtieth time, and just when I got to the election scene, I had a seizure—and then I was here. The only other person was Marco. That was depressing.”
“Thanks a lot.” Marco threw the basketball at her head, but she caught it. “One minute I’m about to break the scoring record in a middle school basketball game, the next minute I collapse on the court—and I wake up here. I was the first one.”
“You’re in middle school?” I asked. I’d been assuming Marco was at least fifteen.
“I’m thirteen. Big for my age. I think they almost flew me back home, just to get rid of me. But then I started getting the treatments.” Marco faked left, stepped across my path, and quickly snatched his ball back from Aly. “I can’t wait to become invincible.”
Cass had veered off the path and was moving diagonally to the right.
“Where are you going, brother Cass?” Marco asked.
“Nowhere. Just trying to retrace the exact path I took at three o’clock or so.” Cass shrugged. “I committed my foot placements to memory. The patterns of the little pebbles in the blacktop. And the ssarg.”