He was picking up the pace. As long as no one was looking for us, we would be fine. We were just about to reach the archway.
Boooweep! Booooweep! Booooweep!
The sound was more like a whack to the head than an alarm. It shrieked through the room, pounding our ears, blotting out all other sound. Cass jumped nearly three feet. Startled workers turned from their screens to look up at a huge Jumbotron-type screen. It blared two words in bright red letters against a white background:
SECURITY BREACH!
Under it were photos of Cass and me.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
THE EXIT AT THE END OF THE HALL
“GO!” I SHOUTED. “Just go!”
We bolted through the archway, out of the room and into a wide, modern corridor. Workers were hurrying curiously toward the control room. Some of them were checking their phones.
We ducked into a restroom and hid in two adjoining stalls. A guy raced out from the stall next to ours, muttering under his breath. We waited until the footfalls died down, then sneaked out.
“Second left!” Cass said, eyes on the phone. “Looks like there’s an exit at the end of the hallway there.”
“I’ll scope it out first!” I sprinted ahead to the second corner. Before making the turn I stopped, back against the wall, and peered around.
Cass was right. The corridor just around the corner from us ended in a doorway, about fifty feet away. But standing in front of it were Brothers Dimitrios and Yiorgos. They were yelling in Egyptian at two hapless-looking guards.
I sprang back. “We’re busted.”
“What are they saying?” Cass whispered.
“How should I know?” I replied.
It wasn’t until then that I realized my head was buzzing. And not just because of the chase.
It was the Song of the Heptakiklos. Near us. Very near.
“Do you—?” Cass said.
I nodded. Cass peeked at our phone. Then he looked across the hall at a door on the wall across from us. A door like a bank vault, thick and ornately carved.
“Jack?” he whispered. “How much room do you have in that sack?”
He held out the phone to show me our GPS location. The room opposite us, behind the vault door, showed as a rectangle.
In that rectangle were two glowing white circles. “This person who owns the phone,” I said, “is definitely trying to tell us something.”
We walked closer. “Where’s the handle?” Cass hissed. “Vault doors are supposed to have big old-timey handles, like in the movies.”
“Ssh,” I said.
Dimitrios was still talking. I focused on a smooth black panel, where a doorknob might once have been. It glowed black and red. “It’s a reader,” I said.
“Fingerprint, like at the KI?” Cass said, his face tense. “Or maybe a retinal scan.”
“RS” was the name of the app—it meant Retinal Scan.
“Cass, you are a genius!” I said.
I snatched the phone from him, and he flinched. Both of our hands were way too sweaty. The phone slipped out, clattering to the floor.
Dimitrios’s voice stopped. We froze.
I scooped up the phone, fumbling with the controls. I pressed the control button to get the app grid. I swiped too hard, scrolling past three screens.
“Who’s there?”
Dimitrios.
I scrolled back until I found the one I was looking for. RS.
I pressed. The eye filled the screen. I could see myself reflected in it. My chest contracted.
There was something about this eye, something that seemed familiar.
Do it. Now!
“Jack, they’re coming!” Cass shouted.
I turned the phone and held the eye up to the black sensor.
Beep.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
DEAFENING SILENCE
THE DOOR CLICKED open. We pushed it hard and slipped inside. The thing weighed a ton.
“Stavros? Is that you—finally?” Dimitrios’s impatient voice bellowed.
Click.
The door made an oddly delicate sound as it shut.
We held our breath. A different voice shouted from the right, the direction we had just come from. “Nowhere, Brother Dimitrios! Vanished from their rooms. Both of them. But they can’t go far.”
Brother Yiorgos.
Now the voices met, directly in front of us. “The trackers?” Dimitrios demanded. “If they escape—”
“They’re wearing the bracelets,” Yiorgos said. “The KI will not be able to find them if they escape. Which they will not do.”
Dimitrios made a sound of disgust. “I want every exit out of this place sealed,” he said.
I could hear his footsteps thumping away from us. We stood still in the ensuing silence, not daring to move. The room was pitch black. A string, connected to an overhead lightbulb, tickled the top of my head. My chest felt like a rabid hamster had been let loose inside.
I knew a Loculus was in here. Maybe both Loculi. The Song was deafening. I stared at the sliver of light under the door. It flickered as guards raced past. Now random shouts were echoing loud and fast. Voices I didn’t recognize. Languages I didn’t know.
When this wave of sounds was gone, I reached upward and pulled the string. The bulb clicked on, flooding the room with greenish-white light.
The rear side of the door was a slab of metal, undecorated. At the spot opposite the sensor was a thick iron latch, which had opened when we’d used the retina.
I turned into the room. It was empty, save for an old, sturdy-looking wall safe with a rusted panel:
“Try the pattern!” I said.
Cass started with 142857, then went on to 428571 and 285714. “They’re not working!” he said.
“Stop,” I said, staring at the panel.
Simplify.
The number keys looked old. Some of them were faded. If people had been opening this safe for years, their fingers would wear off the numbers.
The wear and tear showed a pattern.
I lifted my finger toward the one. Then I tapped out a pattern that resembled the shape of a seven—left to right across the top, then diagonally down to the left-hand corner.
1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.
With a dull click, the door swung open.
Inside, embedded in the wall, was a deep rectangular hole that contained two wooden boxes. “Eureka,” I whispered.
Cass opened one, to see a familiar glow—the flying Loculus. As he reached inside, it levitated to meet his fingers. “Good to see this again . . .”
I opened the other box, which seemed to contain nothing. As I thrust my hand inside, my knuckles hit something solid. I grinned. “Two for two.”
Attached to the wall, to the right of the safe, was a table containing a couple of sturdy sacks—big ones, which had obviously been used to carry the boxed Loculi here.
I placed the flying Loculus, in its box, inside one sack.
The other Loculus I would need to have in hand. Quietly I sidled to the doorway and put my ear against it. Silence.
Looking at Cass, I mouthed Let’s go.
As we turned back to the Loculus, the door beeped. I looked over my shoulder.
The inner latch was turning downward, slowly. I reached up, pulling the lightbulb string. The light went out.
And the door began to swing open.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
PUSH HARDER
THE LIGHT BLINKED on. A man with thick stubble looked straight at me. He muttered something extremely nasty-sounding in another language.
Then he looked away.
Behind him, a woman wearing a Massa cap peered inside. Her eyes circled the closet.
My back was jammed against the wall, my palm firmly on the Loculus. I held my breath. Cass was clutching my arm so tightly I wanted to scream. I wanted to remind him that invisibility depended on contact, not grip strength.
The two began to argue. The woman reached up and shut the light. Sl
owly the door swung back.
We waited for the click. Even then, neither of us dared take a breath for a few seconds. Until the footfalls had faded into the distance.
“That was close,” Cass said. “I owe you, Jack.”
“Stay alive,” I replied. “That will be the best payback. Now let’s get out of here. Hang on to my arm.”
I held on to the invisibility Loculus, and Cass took the flying one. No one would be able to see us. I carefully thrust the handle down, pushed the door open, and stepped into the hallway.
It felt great. Too great. You have no idea what your body feels like when you’re invisible. Solid but weightless. It’s the opposite of being underwater. There you have to adjust to the resistance. You push harder. Every motion is exaggerated. With invisibility, it’s the opposite. You feel like your arm will fling off with every swing, your feet will slip and thrust you into the air. You have to pull back. It makes you want to giggle.
And I could hardly imagine a less giggle-worthy moment.
I turned left. At the corner I peered around to see the exit. At the end of the long hallway, in front of the exit door where we’d seen Dimitrios minutes before, three burly men stood guard.
Cass’s grip tightened on my arm. We lifted off the floor, only a few inches, to avoid having to make footsteps. I sucked in a lungful of the dry desert air that blew in through the open door. It felt liberating.
Unfortunately the ceiling was too low for us to fly over the guards’ heads. So we hovered, waiting.
The sound of a truck stopped the men’s conversation. Through the door I could see uniformed men piling out, rifles and ammo belts across their chests. We shrank against the walls as the small militia ran inside, shouting.
I shivered. Cass stared wide-mouthed.
The soldiers were fitted out for war. They were here to find us.
As the guys spread out to the different hallways, the three guards turned back toward the open door. They were looking outside again, shoulder to shoulder.
What do we do now? Cass mouthed.
With my free hand, I reached for the pouch on my belt and mouthed back, Call MacGruber.
By now, the container of ice cream was melted and gooey. I tossed it, and it landed about three feet behind us with a dull thud. It was totally visible, totally a mess. For good measure, I threw the bottle of vegetable oil after it.
The guards turned. Their faces scrunched in bewilderment, and they began walking toward it curiously. Leaving the door. Heading directly in front of us.
We backed away, flattening ourselves even more.
One of the guards bumped against my shoulder. Solid. I nearly dropped the Loculus.
He staggered back with a gasp. In his eyes I could see two and two coming together reluctantly. These guys must have been taught about us. About what we had found.
The man called sharply to the others. All three reached into holsters, pulling out pistols.
Two of them walked slowly toward us, their eyes unfocused but intent. The third moved to the door, blocking escape.
The guard closest to us grinned. “We know you are there. Exactly where, you cannot get away. I will be proud to be the one to bring you in. So. You have to the count of three to appear, or I will shoot. One . . .”
I looked at Cass. My fingers were sweaty and slippery on the Loculus. I wedged it under my arm.
The guard poked me with his rifle butt and laughed. “Three!”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
MUSTACHES EVERYWHERE
I HEARD THE click of a safety catch. I wrapped my fingers around the pepper container, screwing off the top—and I tossed the contents.
Moving fast, I wriggled out of the gun’s way. And I tossed the contents.
“Yeeeeeaaaa-CHOO!”
The guards and his ally sprang back. The other guard, the one at the door, faltered, just in time for me to throw another fistful of pepper.
“Let’s go!” I shouted.
We tore out of the building to a chorus of sneezing, and a new vocabulary of very bad words.
We kept to the outer wall, staying in the shadows. Not far away, we sped by the soldiers’ truck. As I passed, I noticed a set of keys flung into the cup compartment. “Have you ever tried driving?” I asked.
“Yup,” Cass piped up. “On the farm.”
We jumped in. Cass put the truck in gear, and we lurched away in a cloud of foul odor.
The streets of Nazlet el-Samman were a relief. They smelled of cinnamon and frying meat. We had ditched the truck just off the highway, far away from here, and jogged the rest of the way.
“Police?” I asked whoever would listen. “Do you know where the police are?”
“How about a girl, about our age?” Cass said. “Really smart?”
We looked around desperately for cops and for Aly, but it was hard to see. The street was packed shoulder to shoulder. On the one hand, this might help shield us from the Massa, but on the other hand, we could barely move. I had to grab Cass’s arm to keep from being separated. Every hat looked like a Massa lambda cap to me. Every person looked like a Massa. I saw at least seven men who were dead ringers for Brother Dimitrios. Mustaches were everywhere.
It was getting close to lunchtime and vendors stirred up food in great big pots. A kid in a striped T-shirt raced in and out of slow-moving tourists. “Hahahaha!” he cackled, easily evading a pursuer who must have been his younger brother. A girl walked purposefully by us, pulling two goats on tethers. Voices rang out loudly in all kinds of languages: “Over here . . . ella tho . . . kommen sie hier bitte . . . bienvenue . . . the best!”
“Jack, I’m starving,” Cass said.
“No,” I said. “Just no. We have to get out of here.”
“This is fast food,” he said. “We can eat and run.”
“No!”
We wound our way past tables full of plastic pyramids in Day-Glo colors; arrays of T-shirts that said MY PARENTS TOOK ME TO EGYPT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS DUMB T-SHIRT; and an artist with a beret who was painting a portrait of a patiently smiling grandfather on a canvas labeled PYRAMID OF GEEZER.
I pulled Cass into a narrow side street. Even in full sunlight, the alley was dark. An angry-looking chicken stood in a doorway, scolded us, and then lost interest and went back in.
“What do we do now?” Cass asked.
“I say we get away from this place,” I said. “The farther the better. They’ll come after us. They’ll see the truck and cover the whole area. We can stay invisible but that’s not going to help us in the long run. We’ll keep an eye out for a hardware store so we can wrench these iridium bracelets off, and hope the KI picks us up.”
“What about calling home?” Cass asked.
I thought about Aly’s disastrous phone conversation with her mom in Rhodes. But I knew the sound of Dad’s voice would be pretty amazing. It was tempting. “I’ll think about it.”
Cass gazed back into the street. “It’s easier to think on a full stomach.”
I rubbed my forehead. It ached. And not the weird, G7W kind of pain that meant I needed a treatment. It was pure hunger.
I looked left and right. The alley was empty. No one watching. Quickly I placed the invisibility Loculus in the empty box, closed it, and put that into the empty sack. “Keep your eyes open,” I said.
We walked out the alleyway and into the bustling street. In the shadows of the nearest building, a skinny cat and two skinnier kittens eyed us warily. I stepped on an errant chunk of pita bread and kicked it toward them. As they pounced, a fat guy with a thick mustache grinned at us from behind a long, hissing grill. “Bueno! Bon! Primo! Ausgezeichnet! Oraio! The best!”
He held out a chunk of shish-kebab meat on a toothpick, which Cass scarfed right down. “Ohhhhh, he’s right,” Cass said with a blissful smile. “It’s amazing. I’ll have a full one, sir.”
I pointed to a delicious-looking hunk of meat, roasting on a stick. “Whatever that is.”
“Ahmed! Shish-kebab, shwarma
!” the guy called out. His partner, a tall guy with a darker mustache and chiseled arms, doled out Cass’s dishes first. Then he cut five slices of the shwarma meat and laid them on a fluffy piece of pita bread with onions, peppers, and steaming rice.
I could barely control my drool before biting in. “Ah, hungry boys!” the man said. “American dollars? Only six!” He smiled. “Okay, for you—only two-fifty!”
Money.
In the preparation for the time-rift, I hadn’t thought to bring any. “Um . . . Cass?”
“I left home without my American Express card,” Cass said.
I peered up at the food vendor. He was tending to another customer, a fat guy with an Indiana Jones hat, plaid shorts, white socks and sandals, and a family of four.
Invisibility could come in very handy. I swung my bag around and pulled open the box.
“Hahahahaha!” With a piercing laugh, the kid in the striped T-shirt sped past. He knocked my arm hard. The box toppled onto the street.
“The Loculus!” Cass cried.
I dove for the box, scooping it up off the pavement. I felt inside, praying the Loculus was still there.
Nothing. I could hear the music. I knew it was around somewhere. But I couldn’t see it. “It’s gone,” I said.
Cass was on his knees, feeling around for it. I dropped down to join him. People screamed in surprise as we pushed them away.
“Hey!” the shish-kebab guy shouted.
I turned. Ahmed, his partner, was catapulting over the counter. “You thief!” he said. “You pay!”
Tourists were turning to stare. A gray-haired guy with an ice-cream cone snapped a photo. A little girl began to cry.
“Stop them!” Ahmed shouted.
No time to think. I sprinted into the crowd. I knocked over a basket, upsetting a snake charmer who tried to smack me with his oboe. As people gathered around to look, I tripped over a pair of baby goats who were lapping water from a puddle. They bahhed angrily as I tumbled onto the stones. I landed in front of a trio of break-dancers in flowing white garb. “Excuse me,” I said, ducking into an alleyway.