“But . . . the tracker . . .” Aly said.
“We have ways of controlling those signals,” Brother Dimitrios said. “They are blocked by trace amounts of iridium. A patch, placed anywhere on the body, will do the trick.”
“Yes . . . iridium . . .” Aly’s face was wan. “So you listened to him, Marco, there in Rhodes. You came to Iraq and went looking for the Loculus. You figured out that only Select could pass through the portal. But then, after our discovery, with Leonard, you saw your opportunity to bring these guys through.”
“The morning after your treatment,” I cut in, “you went for a jog. The KI couldn’t find you.”
Marco nodded. “I used that iridium patch. Brother Dimitrios was camped about five kilometers north of the KI camp.”
“So while Cass, Aly, and I were recovering from our treatments, you had a secret meeting with these guys and told them we’d found the Loculus,” I barreled on. “And the extra good news that you could transport them to Ancient Babylon.”
Aly’s eyes were burning. “You used us, Marco. You lied. When you told us to go on ahead, because you had to relieve yourself—”
“You were bringing these guys over!” Cass blurted out.
Brother Dimitrios chuckled. “This is the excuse you gave them?”
“Okay, it was lame,” Marco said. “Hey, it was hard work, guys. I had to move fast. Don’t look at me like I’m a serial killer, okay? I can explain everything—”
“And we will, on the way,” Brother Dimitrios interrupted.
“On the way where?” Aly demanded.
Marco opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Brother Dimitrios was glaring at him. Brother Yiorgos handed him a sturdy metal box. He flipped open the lid. It was empty inside, and just big enough to hold a Loculus. “Bring it to me. It’s time.”
Marco turned, lunging toward the invisible orb.
I don’t remember if I cried out. Or what exactly I did. I only remember a few things about the next few moments. Shock. The weight of Marco’s invisible body against mine as he rushed to the door with the Loculus.
He knocked me off my feet. I hit the ground next to Shelley, which had not turned green. Nowhere near.
“Watch it!” Aly screamed, as a shower of bronze knives dropped from the ceiling. I rolled away as they clattered to the ground.
Marco had managed to run straight through, his reflexes quicker than gravity.
“Follow me!” Cass said.
“Wait,” I said, looking down at the wheezing bronze sphere known as Shelley. It looked pathetic to me now. A comic-book contraption.
Maybe not. Picking it up, I dropped it into the pit. As it clanked sadly to the bottom I turned to go. “Okay, Cass, get us out before the place blows.”
He led us back out through the booby-trapped room. We were all so numb with shock we barely paid attention to where we put our feet. It was a wonder we didn’t get nailed by a new trap. Or maybe by now we’d sprung them all.
A moment later we were outside. We stared into the faces of several more Masserene monks, at least a half-dozen of them. But Marco and Brothers Dimitrios, Stavros, and Yiorgos were nowhere to be seen. “Where did they go?” I demanded.
The ground shook. An Archimedes screw toppled to the ground in a shower of dust and water. Vizzeet were scattering to the winds, leaving behind the rags and bones that were once Kranag. Black clouds roiled angrily in the sky, lit by flashes of greenish lightning.
The monks stood stock-still. From all sides, the rebels were advancing. Most of them held blowpipes to their lips. Zinn was screaming at Daria, and Daria shouted back to them.
“What are they saying?” I asked.
“They think these men are your people,” Daria said. “I explained they are the enemy. Oh, yes—one other thing.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“I told them to fire away.” Daria pulled me forward with all her strength. I held tight, racing through the garden grounds. Behind us, I could hear the groans of Massarene monks as they fell to the ground. Lightning flared, and a massive ripple ran through the ground, as if a giant beast had passed just underneath our feet.
We scaled the inner wall, dropping to the other side. As we landed, I heard the crack of gunfire.
“No!” Aly cried out. “We have to go back! They’re killing the rebels!”
But the wall itself was crumbling now. We had to run away to avoid being crushed.
I looked back through the opening and saw the Hanging Gardens of Babylon collapse into a cloud of black dust.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
YOU HAVE TO LEAVE
WE RAN ACROSS the furrows of grain. A farmer screamed as a team of oxen dropped into the earth, out of sight. We fell to the ground, barely missing the crack that grew across the soil like a grotesque opening zipper.
“Stop here!” Marco’s voice cried out.
He materialized at the edge of the farm, not twenty yards in front of us. “Go through the city and directly to the river!” he shouted. “I’ll take the old guys and come back for you!”
He grabbed a satchel from Brother Stavros’s shoulder and pulled out a glowing Loculus. A visible one. The one we’d taken from Rhodes. Marco must have dug it up when he was bringing the Massa in.
When he was betraying us.
He knelt again and vanished. I saw the satchel bulge and realized he was storing the invisibility Loculus. As he materialized once more, the three Massarene gathered around him and put their hands on the flight Loculus. Together they rose high above the farmland. The men let out frightened shouts, scissoring their legs like little kids. In another circumstance, it might have looked funny. But not now. Not when we’d been betrayed by one of our own.
Not when we were destroying an entire civilization.
“He . . . he is truly a magician . . .” Daria said, looking up at Marco in awe. “Will he be safe?”
“Don’t worry about him!” I said. “Let’s go!”
Daria and I ran together across the field, with Cass and Aly close behind us. Daria looked bewildered but determined. How little she knew.
The Ishtar Gate was looming closer. One of the moat walls had cracked, and a crocodile was climbing out onto the rubble. It eyed Cass and Aly as they took a wide berth around it. The turrets of the gate were empty. One of them had partially collapsed. As we sprinted through the gate’s long passageway, we had to shield our heads from falling pieces of brick. We burst out the other side into utter chaos. The stately paths of Ká-Dingir-rá were now choked with fallen trees. Boars, fowl, and cattle ran wild, followed by guards with bows and arrows. I saw mothers scooping up children and running into houses with broken doors, teams of wardum carrying the injured away from harm.
“Daria,” I shouted as we ran, “you have to leave this city! It’s not safe any longer.”
“This is my home, Jack!” she replied. “And besides, I can’t—Sippar will stop me.”
“The mark on your head—we have it, too,” I said. “It gives us special powers. We can take you through Sippar. To safety!”
We were approaching Etemenanki now, the turnoff to the wardum houses. I felt Daria let go. “I must help Nitacris and Pul!” she shouted.
“You can bring them with you!” I said, following after her. “And your other friends—Frada, Nico. If they hold on to you and don’t let go, they can come, too!”
She stopped. “Go, Jack. You must think of yourself. We will follow if we can.”
“You have to come now,” I insisted. “Later may be too late!”
She shook her head. “I cannot leave them, Jack. As you can never leave Aly and Cass.”
It hurt to hear her leave out Marco’s name. And it hurt more to know I could not change her mind.
“You promise you’ll follow later?” I asked.
I felt Cass pulling me from behind. “What are you doing, Jack? Run!”
“Go out the nearest gate,” I shouted to Daria. “Keep going until the trees beg
in, then head for the river. Look for the rocks arranged like a lambda—the shape on the back of your head. When you dive in, head for a glowing circle and swim through to the other side! Anyone who is touching you can come through with you. Will you remember that?”
A loud boom knocked us to our knees. The top of Etemenanki tilted to one side. A crack ran from the top level downward, slowly widening, spewing dried-mud dust. I could see courtiers racing out of the building.
“Jack! Cass!” Aly’s voice cried out.
“You must leave, Jack—now!” Daria shouted.
“Promise me you’ll remember what I just said!” I shouted.
“I will,” Daria replied. “Yes. Now go!”
Now Aly was pulling me, too. I shook her and Cass loose. Daria was running back to her quarters. For a moment I thought of running after her.
“Jack, they’ll be all right!” Aly said. “I don’t believe Brother Dimitrios. Either Shelley will work, or Daria will come through the portal.”
“How can you be sure?” I said.
She drew me closer. “You and I have a lot to do still. If the Massa gets ahold of the Loculi, there will be more deaths. Us, for example. I will not lose you, Jack. I refuse.”
I looked over my shoulder. Daria had disappeared around the corner. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s book.”
We raced through the city streets. By now they were a catalog of damage and destruction—roofs blown off houses, milk cans strewn about, injured animals screaming. I saw an old woman sitting against the side of a house, cradling a man in her arms. I had no idea if he was dead or alive.
When we arrived at the river edge, Brother Dimitrios and the Massarene were already there. They seemed fewer in number, thanks to the actions of the rebels. But as far as I was concerned, one Massa was too many.
The Loculi had been packed in two satchels. The Massa had them now. We had lost, and we would have to deal with it.
“I’m going to bring these guys through, two by two,” Marco said. “It’ll take a few trips. Or you guys can help me.”
Aly, Cass, and I stood on the riverbank with our arms folded.
“I will stay for last,” Brother Dimitrios said, giving us a stern glance. “To make sure all goes as planned.”
With a shrug, Marco held out his arms. Brothers Yiorgos and Stavros held on tight. Together they ran into the water.
I don’t remember much of the trip, except that I burst through to the other side near one of the monks Marco had apparently just pulled through. He was gasping with panicked high-pitched squeals, like a little kid. “Okay . . . I’m okay . . .” he kept saying.
I could see Cass, Aly, and Marco bobbing on the river, not far away. I trod water, catching my breath. Testing my body for symptoms of sickness. What if we were to collapse right now, the way we had last time we came back from Babylon? Where was the KI?
I looked downstream, to where I knew the compound would be. All I saw were piles of blackened canvas and debris.
On the riverbank, Brother Stavros had sidled over to keep an eye on me. “What did you do to the KI compound?” I demanded.
“We had to take action,” Brother Yiorgos shouted.
“Action?” My stomach sank. The water temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. I scanned the shore but saw no signs of life. “Are they alive?”
“Never mind,” Yiorgos said. “Come to shore.”
Professor Bhegad . . . Torquin . . . Fiddle . . . Nirvana. What had happened to them? Had they escaped? Been taken prisoner?
I didn’t want to imagine the worst. I never thought I’d feel so much for the people who’d captured me in the first place. But compared to the Massa, the KI seemed like a bunch of happy aunts and uncles.
We were near a stretch of riverbank, barren but for a dusty, new-model van. “I would advise you to swim with us,” Brother Dimitrios called out. “The vehicle is very comfortable on the inside. And quiet. We will have much to discuss.”
Yiorgos was swimming toward me, looking suspicious, as if I were going to swim away—to what? No one was there to rescue us now. “I’m coming,” I grumbled.
Marco was already near the shore, holding tight to Cass. Aly wasn’t far behind. I swam hard against the current. Each time my face lifted out of the water, I noticed the empty, peaceful opposite shore. It was hard to imagine that right now, in a dimension we could not see, a ziggurat was falling in super slow motion. The earth was opening up, fires were spreading, and an entire city was on a crash course with destruction.
After Sippar busted up, what would happen to Babylon? Would it be pulled apart like taffy, exploded like a bomb—or just vanish into space? We knew that time had split almost three millennia ago. But how did time de-rift?
And where was Daria?
I glanced backward. If she took an hour to reach the shore in Babylon, she would show up a week and a half from now. I’d be long gone. She would emerge into a world beyond her most bizarre imaginings.
If she came.
“Brother Jack!” Marco shouted. He and the others were walking in waist-deep water now. As I let my body drop and my feet touch the sand, I could see three more Massarene on the shore. They looked almost laughable in their brown robes and sandals, carrying rifles in hand. But no one was smiling.
“If we run away, what will you do?” I said. “Shoot us? How will you explain that?”
“Dear boy,” Brother Dimitrios said, “you do not want to find the answer to that, and neither do we.”
“Give these guys a chance, Brother Jack,” Marco urged. “You might be surprised.”
Cass was staring at the remains of the camp downstream. Tears inched down his cheeks. “Brother Jack . . .” he said, practically spitting the words. “What do you know about brotherhood, Marco?”
Aly put her arm around his shoulder. The two of them turned to the van. I was in no hurry. My face felt funny, my chest as if it had expanded a whole other size. I looked back over the water, scanning the surface against all logic for another face. Hoping to hear another voice, accented with Aramaic, calling my name.
But I saw nothing.
Someday, I knew, I would have to forget. But I would never forgive.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
AN EXPLANATION OF SORTS
TRAITOR.
Two-faced liar.
Monster.
The words tumbled through my brain each time I looked at the back of Marco’s head. He was in the front seat of the helicopter, sitting between Brother Dimitrios and Stavros, who was the pilot. A sack and a box rested on the ground between Marco’s feet, each containing a Loculus. To my right, in the backseat, were Yiorgos, Cass, and Aly. We were flying at breakneck speed. Stavros was a better pilot than Torquin, but not by much.
I was numb. I fiddled with the bracelet Brother Dimitrios had slapped on my wrist, secured with an electronic key. We all had them, bands that contained iridium alloy. The KI—whoever was left of them—would not be able to track us. I didn’t really care anymore. All I could think about was the look on Daria’s face the last time I saw her. The concern for the sick little boy, Pul. Like nothing else mattered. Like her world was not going to vanish after two thousand seven hundred years.
Marco was talking. Explaining. But his words drifted through the noisy chopper as if they were in some alien language. Now he was looking at us, expecting an answer. “Brother Cass?” he said. “Aly? Jack?”
Cass shook his head. “Didn’t hear it, don’t want to hear it.”
“We trusted you,” Aly added. “We risked our lives with you, and you were working for the enemy.”
Brother Dimitrios turned to us. “I’m afraid we took you from the enemy, children,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Crazy old Radamanthus and his pointy-headed Karai groupies . . . they have infiltrated your mind, haven’t they?”
“Did you tell them about the KI, Marco?” Cass snapped. “Did you give up their secrets? You sold them out, too?”
“We still don’t know th
eir location,” Brother Yiorgos said. “We can block the tracker signals—that’s easy—but decrypting them is beyond our capabilities. Marco couldn’t figure the KI location. But he said you might be able to.”
“He was wrong,” Cass said.
“I knew Bhegad, long ago,” Brother Dimitrios said. “He was my professor at Yale. Not a good teacher, I’m afraid. He disappeared in mid-semester, leaving behind an odd note. He was going away to a secret think tank to determine the fate of the world! Genetic and historic consequences! Most scholars deemed it flat-out loony. It seems that while studying the works of Herman Wenders, Professor Bhegad came across the diary of Wenders’s son, Burt. A deluded boy, feverish and about to die, who believed his father had found a secret island, the remnant of Atlantis. Legend has it that Wenders and his people set up a permanent base there, which only they could locate. It became the home of a secret Karai cult. The Dark Side.” He chuckled. “Until now, I believed it to be a fiction. I thought old Radamanthus was dead.”
“If they’re the Dark Side, what are you?” Aly grumbled.
“Tell me, what did Bhegad say?” Brother Dimitrios went on, ignoring Aly. “That you will die unless the seven Loculi are returned to the Circle of Seven? Hmm?”
He knew about the Heptakiklos, too! “Did Bhegad leave that info in his note at Yale, or did a little bird tell you?” I asked bitterly.
Marco’s face blanched.
“Before you were captured,” Brother Dimitrios said, “back in your hometown, you’d begun experiencing tremors— fainting spells caused by your genetic flaw. Then Bhegad whisked you away to this secret hideout. He keeps you alive, correct? He’s devised some . . . procedure. Something that keeps you healthy temporarily. But alas, the cure comes only after all seven Loculi are returned. Am I right so far?”