The Tomb of Shadows

  I nodded. I thought I was going to pass out.

  “He can’t see you nod!” Aly whispered. “Say something.”

  About a billion words were stuck in my throat, all trying to elbow each other aside. “Yes,” was all I could manage.

  He didn’t answer, and I thought he’d hung up.

  “Keep going,” Aly urged.

  “Sorry about the living room!” I blurted out. “And the bedroom. And the fact that Vanessa quit.”

  Dad’s voice was choked. “Dear lord . . . it is you. Where are you, Jack?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I’m on a plane. With friends. But we need to get away from some people. Somewhere remote.”

  “Not too remote!” Torquin barked. “Need lots of fuel. Won’t be enough.”

  “Why?” Dad replied. “Who are you getting away from? Who was that speaking?”

  “Our pilot, Torquin,” I said. “Dad, please. I’ll explain everything later. You have to help us. Where are you?”

  “Mongolia,” he replied. “I can meet you here.”

  “Mongolia?” I took the phone from my ear and put it on speaker.

  “Far,” Torquin replied. “Very very very far.”

  “It’s a small, private airport!” Dad’s voice called out. “North of Ulaanbaatar.”

  “Can we make it?” I asked Torquin.

  He shrugged. “No choice.”

  “Okay, Dad,” I said into the phone. “Can you give Torquin directions?”

  “Turkin?” Dad said. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  Red Beard was accessing the route settings on a console world map. “Name Torquin,” he said.

  Seven hours later, Slippy was above the clouds, but they were a blur. Everyone but Torquin and me had fallen asleep, but now Cass’s face was plastered to the window.

  “Can you tell where we are?” I asked.

  Cass shrugged. “We’re traveling about Mach 2, twice the speed of sound. Which means if I told you where we were, by the end of the sentence we’d be somewhere else. But I saw some desert. Maybe the Gobi. Which means we’re close. Ask Torquin.”

  As I rubbed my eyes, I noticed Torquin’s brow was beaded with sweat, his knuckles white on the controls. “Close,” he said.

  I glanced at the fuel gauge, which was nearly on empty. I looked at Aly and Cass. She was awake now, and her eyes were fixed on the gauge.

  “Um, Torquin?” I said. “About that fuel indicator? When my dad’s car hits E, there’s, like, thirty miles before the gas runs out. So, we’re going to be all right. Right?”

  “No,” Torquin said. Sweat was dripping from his arm.

  “What do you mean, no?” Aly snapped.

  “Opposite of yes,” Torquin said. “Cutting engine. Now. Will save fuel.”

  “Will kill lives!” Aly said. “You can’t just glide!”

  “Will turn it on when closer,” Torquin replied.

  From behind us, Dr. Bradley spoke up. “Oh, dear heavens, why didn’t we just land in Russia?”

  “Next time,” Torquin said.

  The plane went silent. We took an abrupt downward dip, hurtling through the clouds. Torquin began calling flight instructions into his headset.

  Professor Bhegad let out a moan of pain. I felt Aly’s hand clutching my arm. Below us stretched a green plain surrounded by mountains. A stampeding herd of horses sent up dust clouds, their shadows long in the morning sun, their manes flowing behind them. If we weren’t about to die, they would have been beautiful. In the distance, covered by a ceiling of gray, was a sprawling city surrounded by plumes of smoke.

  Torquin’s phone, which was now resting in a cup holder, began to buzz. He reached over to grab it but his hand was shaking. It clattered to the floor and I scooped it up myself.

  My dad’s name showed on caller ID. I put it to my ear. “Dad!” I shouted. “Do you see us?”

  “You’re coming in too low!” he shouted. “What is your pilot doing?”

  Torquin took the phone from my hand. “Mayday!” he bellowed. “Low fuel. Mayday!”

  He flicked a switch, turning the engine back on. The plane juddered hard, as if we’d flown into a solid fist. From the rear, Professor Bhegad cried out loudly.

  I could feel us nosing upward. In the distance was a compound of low glass buildings.

  “The runway is clear!” Dad’s voice was shouting. “You’re coming in short!”

  “Do it, Slippy . . .” Torquin said. “Do it!”

  The roaring engine sputtered weakly, then died.

  We hit hard. My knee jammed into my chest. Beneath us was a noise like a thousand cars, flattened, dragged, scraping across the ground. It was punctuated by panicked screams—Cass, Aly, Dr. Bradley, everyone except Torquin. We whipped abruptly right and left. Rocks slammed into the windshield.

  I heard the deep ripping of metal and felt a sharp jolt. Looking out the window I saw the wing break off like ice from a roof.

  The plane tipped sharply upward. We were going to roll over. I struggled to turn toward Aly and Cass, to see them one last time. But my head slammed forward into the back of the pilot’s seat and everything went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DEATH IS COLD

  THE MANGLED STEEL vanishes. The field is blackness. I hear nothing but a distant whoosh.

  If I am dead, then death is cold.

  The darkness gives way to an emerging dream light, and I am on a rocky cliff over a vast sea. The wind lashes my face and I struggle to walk. My chest is bloody, my arms and legs weak, my face chapped and burned. I shiver, huddling into myself.

  Is this the Dream again?

  I don’t think so. Gone is the smoke-dark green of ancient Atlantis, the bitter lushness of the air, the raging fire, steep canyon slopes—the recurring scene that has been with me for years.

  Now I feel salt water in the air, and my arm aches from the weight of . . . what?

  I look down, forcing myself to see. My arms are tightly clutching an orb. But not like the two I know: not warm and golden like the Loculus of Invisibility, nor luminous and white like the Loculus of Flight.

  It is dense and deeply blue, almost black. It will not hide me from an enemy or save me from a fall.

  What good is it?

  As I breathe I gain strength. I move faster. Someone is chasing me and gaining ground.

  In the distance is a majestic building, shadowed by the setting sun. I am filled with joy. I have not seen it complete. A man is waiting there for me. He looks relieved to see me but fearful of whatever is behind me.

  But as he steps forward, the earth shakes.

  I stop.

  He is running now, yelling to me. His arms are outstretched. But I do not let go. Despite the acrid smell arising from the earth, twining into my nostrils.

  The stench of death.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DAD

  “JACK?”

  Cass’s voice piped up through the waning dream. “Tell me you’re evila.”

  I peeled my face from the back of the seat. “Tell me you’re not speaking Backwardish in heaven.”

  We were tilted sideways. Through the window I could see an airstrip about a hundred yards ahead of us, with a jet marked MGL parked at a hangar. Beyond it, a scrubby plain stretched out for miles to distant mountains. Cass was still belted into his seat, but it had ripped out of the floor and slid against the wall. “Heaven is really uncomfortable,” he said.

  I felt as if I’d been punched in the chest. I loosened my seat belt to relieve the pain. Torquin was struggling to get out of his seat. I spun around to see Aly slumped forward, her hair limp over her forehead.

  “Aly!” I staggered toward her, hanging on to the plane’s wall for support.

  Dr. Bradley beat me to her. She was feeling Aly’s pulse and looking at her face with a flashlight.

  Aly flinched and turned away. “Owww . . . turn that thing off. I have a headache.”

  I exhaled with relief, crumpling to t
he floor of the plane. “You have quite a lump,” Dr. Bradley said. “We’ll have to examine you more closely.”

  “Jack . . .” she murmured. “How is Jack?”

  “Fine,” Cass said. “I am, too. And Torquin. In case you were wondering.”

  I felt my face turning red. “How’s the professor?”

  “Shaken up but okay,” Dr. Bradley said. “Ironically, lying down in that protected area, he was the least vulnerable of us all.”

  “Landing gear gone,” Torquin announced, digging a rope ladder from under his seat. “Use this.”

  He unlatched the door and it swung open sharply. As he fastened the end of the ladder and dropped the rest of it out the door, my eyes were fixed on an old Toyota speeding toward us across the rocky soil. As it skidded to a stop, the driver-side door flew open.

  I knew it was my dad without even seeing his face. I could tell by the angle of his feet, pointing outward as if they’d been screwed on slightly wrong. “Jack!” he shouted, running hard toward the tilted plane. “Jack, where are you?”

  The ladder was only about eight feet. But I stood frozen in the doorway. Dad was smiling so hard I thought his face would crack. His hair was less brown than gray now, his face lined a bit more than I remembered. Which seemed impossible, because I’d seen him only a few weeks ago.

  He stood at the bottom of the ladder, holding out his arms, and even though I’m way too heavy I jumped. He caught me and held tight, turning around and around, swinging me like I was a little kid. He was crying, repeating “Oh thank god” over and over, and even though I was crying, too, I kept silent because I just wanted to hear his voice.

  “I’m okay, Dad,” I said as he set me down and we began walking away from the jet. “Really. What is this place? Why are you in Mongolia?”

  “Where have you been?” he said. “I want to know everything!”

  As Cass and Aly scrambled down the ladder, a medical van with the logo MGL skidded to a stop.

  “Look, Dad,” I said, “there’s someone on the plane who needs to go directly to a hospital. He’s pretty old and in bad shape.”

  “Okay . . . right . . . roger that.” As Dad’s eyes moved toward the plane, his whole face seemed to stiffen. I glanced back to see Dr. Bradley and Torquin carefully lowering the professor out of the plane. Emergency workers were already racing toward them with a stretcher.

  “That’s just Torquin,” I explained. “He’s a little strange looking, but he grows on you. These are Cass Williams and Aly Black.”

  But Dad wasn’t paying attention. “Radamanthus Bhegad . . .” he murmured. “What is that man doing here?”

  “You’ve heard of him?” I said. “He was a famous professor at Princeton or something.”

  “Yale,” Cass called out.

  Bhegad moaned painfully as the team of white-coated Mongolian workers set him on the stretcher. Dad stood over them, his hands on his hips. “Just a second,” he said. “I have a few questions before anyone moves this man.”

  Professor Bhegad’s eyes were hollow and scared. “M-Martin . . .” he sputtered.

  How did Professor Bhegad know my dad’s name?

  “I’m Dr. Theresa Bradley,” Dr. Bradley said. “We have to take the professor to a medical facility immediately or he may die.”

  “I am a fair and kind man,” Dad said, his face turning redder. “I believe in charity and forgiveness and liberty, and I don’t believe in hate. But this is the one man I can safely say the world would be a better place without. This man is . . . is a monster!”

  “Dad!” I’d never seen him like this. I glanced helplessly at Dr. Bradley, who was speechless. “Okay, Dad, I know what you’re thinking: This guy kidnapped my son. But as crazy as it sounds, he wants to save our lives. My friends and I—we have a condition. It’s going to kill us—”

  “By the age of fourteen,” Dad said. “Like Randall Cromarty. Like all those kids your mother and I researched.”

  Cromarty. I remembered one of the last things he’d said to me over the phone on the day I was taken: Did you see the article I sent you about that poor kid, Cromarty? Died in the bowling alley near Chicago . . . He was always talking about these not-so-random tragedies, kids who were dying for no apparent reason.

  “Researched?” I said. “You knew about G7W all along . . . and you didn’t tell me?”

  “It would have scared you,” Dad said. “You were a kid. Instead, your mom and I tried to do something. We dedicated our lives to finding a cure. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I have been financing McKinley Genetics Labs all these years.”

  “You never told me—all those plans and you never told me!” I said. “Dad, please. Let them take care of Professor Bhegad. You have to talk to him. We’ve been at a secret institute devoted to the study of G7W. He did find the cure!”

  Dad barked a sad, bitter laugh. “He told your mother that lie, too. Which was why she ended up in the bottom of a crevasse in Antarctica.”

  “He knew Mom?” I said.

  Professor Bhegad’s eyes flared with urgency, but he was too weak to speak.

  “He killed her, Jack,” Dad said. “The man is a murderer.”

  “No!” I said. “It’s not true! She—”

  “She went to meet him at a secret lab in McMurdo Sound and never came back.” Dad barreled on. His entire body shook as he stood over Professor Bhegad, blocking the EMTs’ path and ignoring their pleas in Mongolian. “Then, years later, he came for you. First my wife, then my son. When I got home from Singapore, you were gone. They said there was a man at the hospital, posing as a priest. An obese man with a red beard.” He turned, peering at Torquin.

  “Not obese,” Torquin muttered. “Large bones.”

  “Dad, please, listen to me!” I tried to pull Dad away from Professor Bhegad, but he held on to my arm. “She’s not dead.”

  Dad’s eyes were filling with tears. “You always believed that, Jack. I never had the heart to contradict a little boy’s optimism. But she fell hundreds of feet—”

  “Into a crevasse,” I said. “No one found the body, remember? Because there was no body. Because the whole story is wrong. It was faked, Dad. I don’t know how or why. But I’ve seen her. We’ve spoken. Trust me on this. She’s alive.”

  Dad’s body went slack. He looked at me through hollow, uncomprehending eyes. “That’s impossible.”

  “Anne . . .” Professor Bhegad murmured, struggling to get the words out, “was . . . my trusted associate. Lovely, smart . . . but impatient for the cure. Afraid for Jack’s life. Our research was too slow for her . . .” He took a deep breath. “She thought . . . the Karai and Massa should join forces, to go faster. I told her . . . impossible to heal a rift centuries old. But she was young . . . persistent. She confided to me that she had contacted the Massa. This was a breach. I had to bring it up . . . to my superior.”

  “There’s someone higher than you at the KI?” Aly asked.

  The professor nodded. “The Omphalos. A code name. I do not even know if it is a man or a woman. We speak through a go-between. I relayed everything Anne had told me. The response was swift . . . angry. Speaking to a Massa agent . . . the highest-level breach of security. Punishable by death. I became afraid for your mother’s life. I blamed myself for revealing too much. And then . . . the news came . . . her accident in Antarctica. I don’t know what she was seeking there. The KI has no base in McMurdo Sound. Her death devastated us all. I never suspected she was staging a fake disappearance. That she was—defecting to . . .”

  The professor began to cough, his face turning bright red. As he fell back onto the stretcher, his eyes rolled up into his head. “Please,” Dr. Bradley said. “He is very weak.”

  Nodding numbly, Dad stepped aside. The medics lifted Bhegad and carried him away.

  As they loaded him onto the van along with Dr. Bradley, Dad’s face was the color of snow.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  GENGHIS AND RADAMANTHUS

  “SO...YOUR MOTH
ER looked okay?” Dad said. “Healthy?”

  We were all packed into his small Toyota, bouncing up a rutted road—Torquin and Dad in the front; Aly, Cass, and me in the back. The EMT van was disappearing around a long, sleek, glass-and-steel building that looked all wrong in the rugged landscape. Out the other direction, a railroad train snaked across the flat Mongolian plain, and a flock of sheep moved away like softly blowing snowdrifts. My body still ached from the crash landing, but I barely noticed that. Half of me was thrilled to see Dad. The other half was angry at what he’d been keeping from me.

  “Healthy, but working for the enemy,” I said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you knew about the KI, Dad? Why were you keeping secrets?”

  Aly put her hand on top of mine. That was the only way I knew it was shaking.

  “You were a little kid, Jack,” Dad replied. “We didn’t want to alarm you.”

  “I’m not a little kid now,” I said.

  Dad pulled into a space in the glass building’s parking lot and stopped the car. “You’re right. I owe you an explanation. All of you.” He rubbed his forehead. “You see, years ago, your mom had begun noticing strange deaths of young people—all fourteen, all amazing prodigies. They all had a similar mark on the backs of their heads, white hair in the shape of a Greek letter lambda. I thought it was just an odd news piece, but Mom believed it was something more. She had two cousins, both prodigies—one a musician, the other a mathematical genius. Both dead at fourteen. Both with a lambda pattern in their hair. And so she began obsessively looking for this pattern on you. And she found it.”

  “How old was Jack?” Aly asked.

  “Five, six, maybe.” Dad stroked his chin as he thought back. “The hair wasn’t white yet, but it was a different texture. Nothing anyone would notice unless they were looking for it. Of course, we panicked. Mom tracked down thousands of obscure hints and finally learned about Bhegad’s work, his theory of the Selects and their genetic abnormality. She contacted him and they began corresponding. He was always very secretive—I didn’t trust him, but Mom was convinced he was onto something. He took more and more of her time and then one day she announced she had to go to Antarctica—to meet him, she said. I didn’t want her to go, but I was so busy setting up biotech research companies, raising money, hiring geneticists, investigating theories. One day I got the call. Your mom was . . .”