Seven Wonders 3-Book Collection

Dad took a deep breath. “Look, I am so grateful that you’re alive. I know you’ve been through a lot. But I’m a man of science. I don’t doubt that these things happened, in some form. Many miraculous things happen. But all of them are explainable by physics, biology, brain studies, perception.”

  “So you think we’re seeing things?” Aly said.

  Outside the room, I saw people in white lab coats racing to the operating room. We were running out of time, fast. And I was starting to feel queasy.

  I scooped up Torquin’s backpack, then took Dad’s hand. “Come with me, okay?”

  Bewildered, Dad followed me out of the office, down the corridor, and outside. Aly and Cass ran behind. From the end of the hallway, I could hear the strains of a ukulele playing “Oh! Susanna” accompanied by a voice that was a cross between a foghorn and a complicated belch.

  We left the building into the silence of the Mongolian steppe. The sun was beginning to set, and the early-evening chill soothed my aching head. I set the pack down against the glass building and took out the canvas bags holding the Loculi.

  “Can you see what’s in here?” I said, opening the bag that contained the Loculus of Invisibility.

  “No,” Dad said. “There’s nothing.”

  I reached down into the bag until I felt the surface, keeping a careful eye on my dad’s reaction.

  As I disappeared from sight, he jumped backward. Cass and Aly each took one of his arms. “Jack?” he murmured. “What the—?”

  “I’m still here, Dad,” I said. “I am going to reach out and take your hand now. When I do, the power will transfer. You will see me and the Loculus, but you and I will be invisible to everyone else.”

  I touched his hand, and he gasped again. “Aly?” I said. “The other Loculus, please?”

  Aly took the Loculus of Flight from the other bag and approached Dad and me, hand outstretched. “Hang tight,” I said, clasping my hand around his wrist. “To Aly and to me. Really tight.”

  Dad grasped Aly’s hand. She began to rise, pulling him off the ground. He was heavy, and she went slowly, maybe about six vertical feet.

  “Yeeeaagghh!” Dad cried out. His legs were dangling beneath him, his eyes wide as satellite dishes. “Set me down! Set me down!”

  Cass was cracking up. “Oh . . . oh . . .” he said, nearly choking on laughter. “Sorry . . . this is the funniest thing I’ve ever not seen.”

  Aly brought us down gently. When we were sure Dad was stable on his feet, we returned the Loculi to their bags. He was breathing shallow and hard. “What . . . just happened?”

  “Those,” I said, “are the first two Loculi. The third, we’re pretty sure, is a Loculus of Healing. We need to find it now. For Professor Bhegad and for us. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is in Turkey, which isn’t that far from here, really.”

  “I can navigate,” Cass said.

  Dad closed his eyes for a long time, as if hoping this whole thing would go away. “My wife faked her own death,” he said. “My son is doomed. I’ve built a genetic company based on a false premise. I just flew off the ground but no one saw it happen. As a father, husband, scientist, and businessman, I have failed. Tell me I’m dreaming.”

  “You’re awake, Dad,” I said, “and you’re not a failure. You’re the best dad ever.”

  Dad opened his eyes. Tears were forming at their corners.

  “I think I’m going to cry,” Aly said.

  Dad put an arm around my shoulder. “You realize,” he said, “this is totally flipping crazy.”

  “Crazy,” I said, “is the new normal . . .”

  “But I can’t do this,” he said. “Not without further study. I’m sorry, son.”

  I pulled away. My knees felt like they’d been swapped out with saltwater taffy. Dad was standing before me in duplicate, then triplicate. His eyes were floating before me, wide and intense.

  “Jack . . . ?” he said.

  “Jack, what’s happening to you?” Cass demanded.

  I fell to my knees. “Just . . . a headache . . .”

  The last thing I saw before hitting the dirt were six pairs of arms reaching out to catch me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WORK TO BE DONE

  THE STORM RAGES. Though the building is not yet complete, it is a fine shelter, the construction solid. For my plans, it will be enough.

  I hear a thunderclap and look up. The door is open to the grim night. My would-be assailant lies unconscious over the threshold, at the feet of the guard. In silhouette the guard looks small and frightened, as though the worst is yet to come.

  He has no idea how much worse.

  At the foot of the stairs is a statue, not yet mounted onto the structure’s roof — a ruler who has died, and his wife who is still alive. For a moment I think about my own father and mother, a king and queen in a place long gone. My throat closes and I choke back a sob. I will never have the opportunity to do for them what I am about to do now for this ruler who calls herself queen.

  The ocean crashes at the bottom of the cliff. The building is cold and forbidding. But this will soon change. Beyond the building is an unspeakable place that will make this darkness seem bright, this bleakness seem like great cheer.

  The queen is about to rule again.

  I reach into my bag and remove the smooth cobalt sphere. The earth shakes but I am no longer afraid. It is all as it should be.

  I am Massarym. And there is work to be done.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE TAILOR WAKES

  “HE’S AWAKE . . .”

  “No, he’s not . . .”

  “His eyes are moving.”

  “Jack? Jack, do you hear me?”

  Jack. My name is Jack.

  The dream was breaking up into flinty shards, images that shimmered and vanished. I could hear voices. Real, not dream voices. Cass and Aly. I tried to move my eyes but they weren’t working. I tried to talk but I couldn’t.

  “He needs at least a half hour recovery, maybe more.”

  “He can recuperate while we’re moving him.”

  Dr. Bradley. Aly.

  What was happening?

  A warm hand clasped my arm. I was moving. Rolling. “He wasn’t due for one of these for another week, you say?”

  “Early. Like Cass.”

  “Then we can’t waste time. What about Bhegad?”

  Dad. Torquin. Dad again.

  “I appreciate the concern . . . but I will feel better . . . if someone destroys that banjo . . .” Professor Bhegad.

  “Is ukulele.” Torquin.

  Where am I going? What are you doing to me?

  WHY CAN’T I—

  “Taalk!”

  The rolling stopped. My eyes popped open and I blinked. We were in the hallway, outside the recovery room.

  “Did you say something, Jack?” Dad was staring down at me, his eyes creased with concern.

  I blinked. “I said talk. I think.”

  “I knew it!” Aly blurted out, clinging happily to my dad’s arm. “He’s okay.” She leaned close to me. “JACK, ARE YOU FULLY AWAKE? CAN YOU HEAR ME? YOU HAD A TREATMENT. YOU ARE BACK TO NORMAL NOW.”

  “Why are you yelling at me?” I asked.

  Cass appeared on the other side of the bed. “Bhegad’s awake. We asked him about the Loculus of Healing. And about the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Just to be sure. And guess what? You were right—about both!”

  “Good work, Tailor,” Aly said.

  “Tailor?” Dad asked.

  Bhegad’s soft, breathy voice called out. He was on a gurney next to mine. “Tinker . . . tailor . . . soldier . . . sailor . . .”

  “I’m the Sailor, because of my emosewa lanoitagivan ability,” Cass explained. “The Soldier is Marco—you never met him, Mr. McKinley, but he’s cool—because he’s mad athletic. And Aly is the Tinker because of her tech amazingness.”

  Dad smiled. “So what’s the Tailor’s special ability?”

  I smiled weakly. “I was hoping you’d te
ll me.”

  The one who puts it all together, Bhegad had once said. But that seemed like an excuse. Like the trophy you get even if your team finishes last.

  Unfortunately, Bhegad had fallen silent.

  “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s awesome,” Dad said. He gave a signal, and I felt myself being wheeled again. We were heading away from the recovery room toward the exit.

  “What’s happening?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

  “I had some time to think about what you told me before you passed out,” Dad said. “Since then, I’ve chatted with Dr. Bradley, Torquin, and your friends. I have decided it’s important to start planning for your fourteenth birthday. And fifteenth. So we’ve reserved Brunhilda to help us.”

  “What the heck are you talking about?” I said.

  We stopped by a small, empty room. Two McKinley Genetics Lab people stood just inside, holding some folded-up clothing.

  “Brunhilda is the name of our corporate jet,” Dad replied. “Change quickly. I’m going to get you a cell phone in case we get separated at any point. Wheels up in ten minutes. With Bhegad. Torquin’s flying.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  BRUNHILDA

  “PAH!” TORQUIN YANKED the steering mechanism to the left. “Slippy is like Lamborghini, Brunhilda like minivan!”

  “Her ride feels smooth to me,” Dad said from the copilot’s seat.

  The jet banked gently left. “Smooth, yes,” Torquin shot back. “Fun, no.”

  Cass, Aly, and I sat quietly in three padded seats behind the two men. Cass was fiddling with his flash drive/worry beads again, staring at the Charles Newton letter. “There’s something funky about this,” he said. “Did you notice some of the letters are lighter than the others?”

  Aly peered over his shoulder. “Bad photocopy,” she said.

  “Or bad typewriter,” Dad added. “On those old machines, the keys responded to pressure. If you didn’t type hard enough, the letters were lighter.”

  “But the light letters actually spell something,” Cass said. “‘The destroyer shall rule.’ Look.”

  “Are you sure?” Aly said. “Because a lot of those letters look light.”

  Cass shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like that could be a coincidence. Maybe it has something to do with King Mausolus.”

  “He wasn’t a king,” Aly said. “He was a satrap. Kind of like a governor.”

  “Maaa . . .” groaned Professor Bhegad from the back of the plane.

  We all turned. Bhegad lay on a reclined seat, a wheelchair folded up and strapped to the wall behind him. “How’s he doing?” I asked.

  “The commotion drained him,” Dr. Bradley said. “He hasn’t been awake this whole flight. For a human being in his condition, travel is very nearly the worst possible thing.”

  “He’ll make it as far as Turkey, right?” Cass asked.

  Dr. Bradley cocked her head but said nothing.

  Unbuckling her seat belt, Aly knelt by Bhegad and took his hand. “I don’t know if you can hear me, Professor, but if there’s a way to heal you, we will find it.”

  “Slippy,” Torquin grumbled, “would already be in Holly—Holla—Turkey.”

  “Halicarnassus,” Dad said. “And it’s not called that anymore. The Knights of Saint Peter changed the name to Petronium. Which, over time, became Bodrum. That’s where we’re headed. Bodrum, Turkey.”

  Torquin nodded, then glanced at his GPS. “Ninety-seven miles from Boredom.”

  I turned away, focusing on the monitor that swung out from the armrest of my seat. Since leaving home for the KI, we hadn’t had internet. Now I was making up for lost time, collecting research on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. If I had time, I wanted to look into the other Wonders, too.

  I zoomed in on some drawings. The place wasn’t sprawling or gaudy. It wasn’t a phenomenal feat of engineering like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. But there was something unbelievably beautiful about it, almost modern—tall, columned, nearly square all around, like the top of a skyscraper. It was ornamented with massive statues and covered with carvings. At the top, like a hat, was a pyramid that rose in steps up to a statue of a chariot holding two people.

  “‘More than one hundred thirty feet,’” I read aloud. “Taller than the Statue of Liberty, not including the base. It lasted sixteen centuries. The whole thing is surrounded by columns, thirty-six of them. Mausolus and his wife, Artemisia, sat at the top in a chariot—well, they didn’t, but a statue of them did. The place was called Caria back then, not Halicarnassus. It was part of Persia. The structure was considered crazy modern, even shocking. In those days fancy buildings were decorated with classical scenes, historical battles. But they used statues of animals, portraits of real people.”

  “Imagine,” said Cass. “Must have been fainting in the streets.”

  “What happened to it?” Dad asked.

  “Earthquake,” I replied. “Totaled in the early thirteen hundreds. A century afterward, the Crusaders conquer the area. Near the old Mausoleum site they figure, hey, nice place to build a castle. Soon they need to reinforce it, so they use stones from the ruins of the Mausoleum. You can still see the actual stones—only now that old castle is a museum.”

  “Museum of the Mausoleum,” Cass said. “MuMa.”

  “How do we find a Wonder that’s been cemented into a museum wall?” Aly said with a groan. “Think about it. The parts of the Colossus were in a pile. The Hanging Gardens were tucked away in a parallel world. We could get to them. They weren’t attached to anything else!”

  Cass’s face sank. “Good point.”

  “Well, just some of the stones were used,” I said. “There’s a collection at the actual site of the Mausoleum.”

  “I don’t know how we’ll get in,” Dad said. “The site is closed for the day. I just checked.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Aly said.

  Dad sighed, glancing back at Professor Bhegad. “I hope I don’t regret doing this.”

  Cass was peering out the window at a moonlit mountain peak of pure white that jutted up through the cloud cover. “Whoa . . . that’s Mount Ararat. Eastern edge of Turkey. Where Noah’s Ark washed up.”

  “Must have been some huge flood,” I said.

  “That must have been some huge ark,” Aly added.

  “Brunhilda is like ark,” Torquin complained. “Without flood. Or animals. Hang on.”

  With a grunt, he yanked on some control so hard he nearly took off the lever.

  Slowly, gently, we began to descend.

  The rented van sped down the Bodrum highway along the coast of the Mediterranean. I sat in the back with Professor Bhegad, who was awake again but not saying much. His wheelchair lay folded in the van’s wayback. Out the window, a carpet of moonlight led to the distant lights of the island Kos.

  Those lights blurred as Torquin took an exit hard and gunned up a hill.

  Professor Bhegad gasped. “Massa treachery . . . Torquin’s driving . . . not sure which is worse.”

  Torquin pulled to a stop outside a gated yard, fishtailing to both sides as he slammed on the brakes. “We’re here,” he announced gruffly. “GPS says.”

  “Hallelujah,” Cass said.

  Torquin frowned at him. “Halicarnassus,” he pronounced carefully.

  As I unbuckled my seat belt, Dad handed me a cell phone. “Take this, in case we get separated.”

  I took it, and we piled out of the van. To one side was a guardhouse, but otherwise a flat yard stretched out before us. In its center was a big hole surrounded by a few piles of stone. “That’s it?” Cass said.

  “There’s not enough material here for a decent-sized patio,” Aly said.

  I pressed myself close to the iron bars, staying still. Trying to sense the presence of the Loculus. Trying to feel the Song of the Heptakiklos.

  Each time we’d come close—to the Loculi, to the Heptakiklos itself at the center of the island—I’d felt it. It wasn’t music, exactly, although I
did hear beautiful sounds. It was something that I felt deeper than that, as if something were playing the sinews and nerves of my body like an instrument.

  I waited to feel it. I concentrated hard.

  Finally I shook my head. “It’s not here. I’m not feeling it.”

  “You can just . . . feel it?” Dad said. “Like some ESP thing?”

  “Let’s get closer,” Cass suggested. “Just to be sure.”

  “We can try to disable the security,” Aly said. “Or cut through the wire.”

  “I have a better idea.” Cass ran to the van and returned in midair, holding the Loculus of Flight. As he touched down in front of me, I reached for the orb.

  Together we rose over a field of stones and broken columns. There were far fewer than I imagined would be here. “Anything?” Cass asked. “Violins? Trumpets?”

  I shook my head. All I felt was the wetness of sea air and the slight tang of salt.

  We landed outside the gate, where Dad, Aly, and Torquin were waiting expectantly. “What now?” Dad asked. “We go home?”

  I glanced up the coastal road. In the distance, half-hidden by trees, was a massive structure that loomed over a bluff. “Is that the knights’ castle?”

  “Yup,” Cass said. “Want to try it?”

  “But . . . it’s not the Mausoleum,” Dad said. “So you won’t find anything, right?”

  “If the knights used pieces of the Mausoleum in their castle walls,” I said, “what if they also used pieces of the Loculus?”

  Aly nodded. “Stranger things have happened.”

  Dad sighed. “Seems far-fetched, but you guys have been at this longer than I have . . .”

  We jumped in the van again. I felt bad for Dad. He looked more confused than I’d ever seen him.

  Torquin gunned it up the road. The castle’s small windows, like beady black eyes, seemed to follow us as we approached. Its towers were connected by a crenellated roof, and I imagined helmeted guards aiming crossbows at us.

  “This place is mad creepy,” Cass said.

  “They were Crusaders, not luxury condo builders,” Aly said.

  I got out of the van and walked toward the museum. To the side was a padlocked gate, thicker and more formidable than the Mausoleum site’s, which led to a moonlit yard. Near the edge of the bluff I could see a roped-off area with a ragged pile of what looked like stones.