Zinn and Shirath fell to their knees. With quick, sure movements, they picked darts from pouches and began blowing them into the horde. A vizzeet hurtled backward with a keening scream. It knocked over another three, who panicked and began clawing the first. “They do not like confusion!” Daria shouted, her shawl pulled protectively over her head. “Very nervous!”
“We noticed!” I said.
The darts flew fast, tinting the air with green. As vizzeet fell upon vizzeet, Daria and I crawled over to Yassur. Daria pulled a leather pouch from the sash around his waist, held his head back, and began dripping a clear potion from the pouch into his eye. I grabbed Yassur’s blowpipe, loaded it, and put it to my mouth.
The first three shots landed in the dust, but the fourth caught one of the mangy beasts in the shoulder. There were dozens of them now, as if the quake had knocked a whole new tribe of them out of their hiding place. Marco was on his knees beside me, pulling from his tunic pocket a set of matches, a balloon, a string, and a small flask.
“What are you doing?” Aly demanded.
“Kerosene from the KI!” he shouted, first wetting the string and then filling the balloon. He tied the end of the balloon tight and flung it toward the vizzeet. As it landed, just in front of them, he lit a match.
The flame shot along the soaked string. As the balloon exploded, the vizzeet retreated like a tide, rolling in the dirt, tumbling over each other. “Move!” Marco shouted.
We ran around the building. The carved oak doorway was shut fast. Marco reached the cubes first. “What’s the combo again?”
I reached around him and pulled: two . . . eight . . . five . . . seven . . . one . . . four.
The door opened into blackness. We stood at the threshold, willing our eyes to adjust, glancing at the empty chamber that was not empty.
Shirath and Daria raced toward us. Zinn was right behind them, helping Yassur. Marco turned, holding out his arms. “There are traps,” he said. “You cannot see them. We have to follow Cass. Narrow your shoulders.”
Cass took a deep breath. He stood before the opening, his eyes scanning the floor.
From the back of the chamber I heard a soft click. The back door slowly opened. Kranag.
But the skeletal old man was nowhere to be seen. In his place was a flash of yellow eyes. A low-slung body walking on all fours. A sleek, scaly neck.
“Hello, Mooshy . . .” Marco picked up the spear he had taken from the guards. He reared back with his arm.
“No!” Daria shouted. “One has been killed already. You must not kill this one!”
Its feet blindingly quick and sure, the mushushu ran the jagged pathway around the traps and leaped toward me with its jaw wide.
Marco thrust the spear. Daria screamed.
The point caught the mushushu in its flank and passed right through. With a croaking cry, the beast fell to the ground at my feet. I caught a rush of stinking, warm breath.
Daria, Shirath, and Yassur knelt before the beast. The mushushu convulsed on the ground, its mouth wide open but emitting only a soft hiss.
Its face began to change before my eyes. Below the skin, bones seemed to liquefy, shifting position. The lizard snout contracted, the buggy eyes sank inward. As the face became more human, the body was wriggling into a different shape, too.
“No . . . ” Daria said, her face twisted into an expression of such shock that it almost made her unrecognizable.
People said he could become an animal himself . . . Daria’s words echoed in my head.
The mushushu was gone. Transformed.
We were staring into the face of Kranag.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
FALLING BACK
DARIA AND I knelt by Kranag. His mouth moved without sound, his papery-white face seeming to shrivel as we watched.
“Let’s go!” Marco said.
He was looking nervously to our left. I could hear the approach of distant footsteps. Shirath, Zinn, and Yassur were lifting Kranag’s body, taking it away from the front of the door.
In a moment I saw why.
Vizzeet began screaming, leaping down from the upper levels of the Hanging Gardens. Black birds swooped down out of nowhere. In a swarm, they descended on the lifeless body of the man who had controlled them.
I turned away. This was a party I did not want to see.
“That is disgusting,” Cass said.
“Forget that!” Marco urged. “Get us back to the Loculus, dude.”
Cass nodded. He turned and led the way into the chamber, zigging and zagging around the invisible traps. As we made our way to the back, Marco was sweating.
We were as careful as could be this time. This time, nothing shot at us and no gas tried to choke us. We felt our way around the cage and the spikes, which still jutted invisibly up from the ground.
“Okay, now,” Cass finally said as we safely reached the rear wall.
Marco unhooked his pack and pulled out Shelley. Setting the trapezoid quickly on the ground, he gave it a sharp slap.
With a clunk, Shelley fell over onto the dirt. “It’s not working,” Marco said in disbelief. “Bhegad said all we had to do was tap it!”
From the pit, the eerie music washed over me. I could feel all my senses sharpening, my vision focusing. I lifted the metal contraption. It was heavier than I expected, but I held it over my head.
Then I dropped it.
It landed hard on the ground. With a loud clang, it popped to full size, bounced up off the stone floor. It hit me square in the nose. Like a rubber ball, only metal and magical.
As I cried out in pain, Marco caught it in midair.
I took it from him and held it high. It was dull and bronze and strangely translucent. As I brought it toward the pit, I could see through to the other side of it. Holding it steady, I leaned in to find the invisible Loculus.
The music intensified. I knew I was disappearing, even though everything around me seemed pretty much the same. I could tell by the looks on my friends’ faces.
And by Daria’s gasp. “Where is he?”
“Disappeared,” Marco said. “But still here.”
Daria reached toward me but she stumbled on the invisible lip of the pit. Losing her balance, she fell forward, her hand smacking against the surface of the Loculus. Instinctively I grabbed her arm. Screaming, she lurched away.
We both stumbled back into the room. Marco thrust his arm to keep us from falling back into a potential trap.
Cass and Aly were staring, dumbfounded. “Daria disappeared,” Cass said.
“I know,” I replied. “I touched her.”
“Did you touch her right at the beginning?” Aly asked. “The moment she fell in? Because she vanished the moment she stumbled, Jack.”
“She . . . she touched the Loculus,” I said. “Are you telling me she vanished on contact? All by herself?”
Daria stared at me, then back at the now-invisible pit. “What is this thing, Jack? I—I can no longer see it.”
“Try to find it, Daria,” Cass said intensely. “Show us what you mean.”
Daria reached back toward the area and instantly dissolved to nothingness. “It is here!”
My mind was racing. “Daria,” I said, “when you told me the story of Kranag’s life, you said he came from a strange land. With some other people. A man with a strange mark. What did that look like? Do you know?”
“Nitacris spoke of it,” Daria said tentatively, stepping forward and materializing again. “Two lines of gray. Coming to a point at the top. On the back of his head.”
“Do you have it, Daria?” I asked.
“Why do you ask?” she said.
“Because we have it,” I replied. “All four of us. We are covering it up with dye.”
Daria looked at the floor. Slowly she lifted her arm and brought it around to the back of her head.
Then, for the first time since we’d met her, she removed the head scarf.
“I don’t believe this . . .” Aly whispered.
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On the back of Daria’s head, amid the shock of red hair, was a white lambda.
Daria was one of us.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE MARK
“THAT INSANE LANGUAGE skill,” Marco said. “It makes sense now. Daria’s got G7W.”
“She’s also got a pedigree,” I said. “Because G7W comes from the royal family of Atlantis. Which means King Uhla’ar and Queen Qalani.”
Aly nodded. “Who had only two sons . . .”
“Daria,” I said. “Your parents . . . what do you know about them?”
“Nothing,” she said quietly. “I was a foundling. For my first years I lived on the streets, until I was taken into slavery. Nabu-na’id and Bel-Sharu-Usur often remind what a great kindness this was.”
“It’s got to be a lie,” Aly said. “She has to be Massarym’s daughter. It’s the only way she could have the mark.”
“Or Karai’s daughter,” Cass offered. “Or the daughter of Queen Qalani’s sister. Or King Uhla’ar’s cousin. Or the brother’s fifth cousin twice removed. Royal families can have a lot of people, Aly.”
Outside the cavernous room, Zinn and the others were shouting. I could see them sinking to their knees, blowpipes to their lips. Someone was coming.
“Forget the explanation,” Marco said. “Let’s go!”
I picked up Shelley. “How close do we need to get?”
But Shelley seemed to be giving me the answer. It began to pulse on its own, lifting upward, out of my palm and into the air. The Song of the Heptakiklos twanged through my body now. Marco, Cass, Aly, and Daria were cringing. They felt it, too.
I could no longer see the pit’s smoothly curved bottom. It was covered with a gaseous plasma of light, ebbing and swelling like a living cell. Before my eyes the contours of the Loculus began to form into a translucent sphere, a bright storm cloud of visible energy.
On the shining metallic rim of the pit, a red tile flared like the flash of a camera. Then the next one did, too, and the next and the next, until the light was circling the rim in a spinning pattern that zapped Shelley with electric jolts like lizards’ tongues. Inside, the ball of gas swelled steadily to fill the shape of the Loculus.
Shelley’s hinged metallic surface was becoming smooth. It changed colors, its dull brown growing silvery, until the two shapes were mirror images. When they were nearly touching, a shadowy bruise grew on the Loculus and another on Shelley—two blue-back shadows facing each other.
The plasma boiled violently as they came closer. It gathered below the bruise, pushing at it, then finally breaking through. The boom rocked the chamber, knocking us off our feet. The Atlantean energy blasted out of the black circle and into Shelley’s, with a force so strong I thought the contraption would vaporize.
“It’s working!” Cass said.
I could no longer see Zinn and the others outside. But I could hear yelling and a clash of metal. “What’s happening out there?”
“Must be more guards,” Aly said.
The Loculus was heating up, vibrating like crazy. I heard a bloodcurdling scream outside. A rebel slid across the pathway just outside the door, bloodied and screaming. “How many guards are there?” Cass asked.
Marco was staring at Shelley. “How long before this thing turns green?” he asked.
“An hour,” I replied.
Aly looked nervously at the door. “We won’t have that long!”
“No,” Marco said. “It’s not supposed to happen this way. The timing is all wrong.”
“What’s not supposed to happen?” I asked. “Timing of what?”
“Come on, Shelley babe, turn green,” Marco said, shaking it roughly. “Turn green!”
“Leave it alone, Marco!” Cass shouted.
I grabbed Marco’s arm. I was afraid he’d break the mechanical Loculus. “What has gotten into you? Let it do its work!”
Dropping his hands, Marco stepped back. He glanced over his shoulder toward the commotion outside. Behind him, Shelley was starting to make noises. To vibrate jerkily.
“Okay, guys,” he said, “you know who brought this Loculus here, right? I mean, the legend is pretty clear. . . .”
“Duh, Massarym, the evil brother of Karai,” Aly said. “This is no time for a history lesson, Marco—”
“And what did he do?” Marco demanded.
“Stole the Loculi and hid them in the Seven Wonders!” I shouted.
“He did it because Karai wanted to destroy them!” Marco said. “Karai was mad at his mom, Qalani, for doing what she did. And he had a point. Isolating the Atlantean energy into seven parts was bad. It upset the energy balance. But Karai was too dumb to realize that destroying the Loculi would nuke Atlantis.”
“Marco, Atlantis was nuked anyway!” I said.
“Why are we talking about this now?” Aly demanded.
“Don’t you see?” Marco said. “Karai was wrong. If he’d just left the Loculi alone, he and Massarym could have done something. Repaired them. Adjusted the energy. Whatever. The smartest minds in the history of the world lived in Atlantis. But Massarym couldn’t convince his bro, so he had to take the Loculi—”
A shadow moved into the light. At the doorway, across the width of the cavern, stood a tall man in a simple brown robe, his face shrouded by a hood, his feet in simple leather sandals.
I had seen a similar outfit before—many of them—on a hillside full of monks on the island of Rhodes in Greece. Monks who were protectors of the relics of the Colossus of Rhodes. Who called themselves Massarene, after the Atlantean prince they worshipped. Who, under the leadership of a guy named Dimitrios, had tried to kill us.
Cass and Aly backed away slowly as the man put his hand on either side of his hood and pulled it down. In the darkness, his salt-and-pepper hair looked mostly black.
It can’t be. I stared at him, blinking.
“Brother Dimitrios?” Aly said.
“Well, well,” the man replied in a heavily accented voice, “what a pleasure to be sharing such a rousing adventure with old friends.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How can you possibly be here?”
As two other hooded figures moved into the torchlight, Brother Dimitrios said, “I would be rude if I did not introduce my colleagues, Brothers Stavros and Yiorgos. We are here to collect something we have sought for a long time.”
Were they Select? Impossible! They were way too old.
He doesn’t see the traps—the projectiles, the gas . . .
“Come and get us,” I said with a smile.
Brother Dimitrios threw back his head and laughed. “Nice try, my boy. We know what’s in here. You see, we have been briefed by one of the best. An expert at both access and intelligence. A young man with his heart and mind finally in the right place.”
“You found another Select?” Cass asked.
“I didn’t need to.” Brother Dimitrios looked into the chamber and smiled. “Good work, Marco.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
THE BETRAYAL
“MARCO . . . ?” CASS SAID, his face bone-white.
Marco looked away.
I tried not to see that. I tried to tell myself that he was looking at the Loculus. That he would run safely through the booby-trapped room, lunge at Brother Dimitrios, and punch him in the face for his brazen lie. But he said nothing. No denial at all. Which meant he had betrayed us. The idea clanged around inside my head. It was impossible.
Daria looked utterly baffled. “Marco, who is this man? Is this your father?”
“No, it’s a thief, playing a mind game!” Aly said. “Don’t listen to him. He thinks we’re dumb, gullible kids.”
“Am I playing games, Brother Marco?” Dimitrios called from the door.
Marco looked away. “You’re early,” he mumbled.
“Beg pardon?” Dimitrios asked.
Sweat was pouring down Marco’s face. “Remember what we said, dude? By the river? After I brought you here? My peeps were goin
g to put Shelley in place and take the Loculus. I was supposed to have time to talk to them. About . . . the truth and all. Then I would signal you.”
“Ah, my apologies,” Brother Dimitrios said. “But circumstances have changed. The Babylonian guards are—were—more forceful than we’d anticipated. So if you don’t mind, the Loculus, please.”
My brain wasn’t accepting Marco’s words. He couldn’t be saying them. It sounded like a cruel joke. Like some evil ventriloquist was using him to pull a prank on us.
“I don’t believe this . . .” Aly murmured, her eyes hollow. “Marco, you brought them here. You’ve gone over to the Dark Side.”
“You can’t have the Loculus,” I said. “Absolutely not. We need to wait for Shelley to work. If you remove the Loculus too early, all bets are off for Babylon. This place will be sucked up into oblivion. Wiped off the face of the earth. Tell him, Marco!”
Daria stared at her. “Oblivion? What does it mean?”
“It is the place where Babylon is headed, unfortunately,” Brother Dimitrios said. “Where it should have gone, centuries ago, in the proper passage of time. This city exists outside of nature. You’ve had several free millennia, happy and content, while millions of deaths have occurred in the rest of the world.” He looked at each of us, one by one. “And as for Shelley, based on the writings of an nineteenth-century crackpot? I hate to disappoint you, but it is a comic-book contraption, nothing more. It cannot possibly work.”
Marco was looking guilty and confused, his eyes darting toward the back of the chamber. We all stood speechless, our brains racing to provide some sort of meaning to all of this. “You brainwashed him,” Cass said.
“It wasn’t brainwashing, Brother Cass,” Marco said. “I mean, think about it from his point of view. We total his monastery. We destroy the thing the monks had been guarding for years, right? Then we fly away, in full sight. So he tracks us to the hotel. And when I leave with the Loculus, he’s there. On the beach.”
“So what you told us was a lie!” Cass said.
“I left some things out, that’s all,” Marco said, “because you guys weren’t ready to hear it. Look, at least Brother D didn’t kidnap me, dude. Bhegad did that. Brother D didn’t take me from my home and stick me on a deserted island. The Karai Institute did that. Dimitrios? He just talked to me. About Massarym. About the snow job Bhegad has given us. About what the KI is really up to. He said, hey, go home if you want. He wasn’t going to force me to do anything—even after all the bad things we did to the monastery. But hearing the truth really knocked me out. I knew I couldn’t go home. Not yet. Because now we have a new job to do.”