Tight pressure in his lungs, burning in his throat—it was decision time. Swim back up for one more breath and risk letting all of them fall into Flintlock’s hands again? Or stay underwater and keep searching for that missing tile, even if it meant he might never take another breath?
Sam’s choice was made before he even realized that he’d made it. In a split second, he was back to pawing through the tiles, turning them over, tossing them aside so that they fell in slow motion through the water.
The number one had to be here. It had to be.
Because if it wasn’t—he’d blown it. Just like he’d always been afraid that he would. Just like his mom had said at the kitchen table a few days ago. And what had he done? Ignored her. Blood was thumping in his temples, the water waiting to rush into his lungs.
Sure, Sam Solomon could plan pranks and solve puzzles and win contests. That’s what he’d always liked best. But study for a math test? No, better to work out how to hack into the vending machine in the school cafeteria and make it spew free Snickers bars all over the floor. Do his homework? Better to spend hours trying to beat his high score on Hamster Maze.
Better to use his brain for stuff that didn’t really matter that much.
Because what if—when something really did matter—his brain just couldn’t get the job done?
Sam had turned over every tile he could see. And none of them had a number one.
He’d read about drowning. He knew the physiology. But the only thing he wanted to know now was, how much will it hurt?
Just as the last sliver of hope was slipping away, the light of the head lamp caught two lumps on the ground nearby—their backpacks!
One last chance. Sam lunged forward, snagged the strap of Martina’s backpack, and yanked it toward him. No tiles under it—though her glasses were there. Sam grabbed his own backpack and dragged it aside.
One lonely tile sat buried beneath it. Sam grabbed it without even looking at the number.
It had to be a one. Because if it wasn’t, Sam was wrong. Not a puzzle master, just a pawn who’d let his friends down. Also, he was about to die.
The metal prong on the back of the tile slid into place. Sam felt the wall vibrate even before he glanced at the number on the tile.
It was a one.
Before Sam could even register relief, something began to happen all around him.
The water! It was moving!
A fast-moving current swirled through his hair, dragged at his clothes, and tugged him over to the grate in the wall. The water in the mine shaft was being sucked away through the hole like a giant bathtub drain. Sam was pinned face-first against the grate, water roaring in his ears, blinding him. Now he knew what it felt like to be one of those little rubber bath toys he had as a kid.
And he still couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe . . .
Then the pressure let him go, and he felt air on the back of his neck and pouring into his lungs. He was sliding down the wall, and he hit the floor with a soggy thump. After a moment, he rolled over onto his stomach, tried to push himself up, and couldn’t.
The head lamp had been washed off his head, and Sam was plunged into utter darkness. He was so tired. Maybe he’d just lie here for a while . . .
“Sam. Sam!”
Someone was shaking his shoulder, hard. Sam tried to bat the someone off, but it was difficult to move his arms. Ow. He hurt all over.
“Sam, wake up! Don’t you die on me!”
It was Martina. Clearly she wasn’t going to leave him alone to have a nice little rest. Sam groaned a little and opened his eyes. Martina was bending over him, holding the head lamp, her wet hair plastered over her face.
Sam dragged a breath into his lungs and curled up on his side, coughing and wheezing. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck, but he was alive. And so, crouched against a wall, holding his right arm with his left hand, was Theo.
“You did it!” said Martina. “It was a magic square, wasn’t it?”
Sam managed a smile. “It sure was, genius.”
They’d survived. That was good.
A voice suddenly boomed down from the top of the mine shaft. “Down here! Get a rope! A long one!”
Or rather, it was good for about five seconds.
It really doesn’t seem fair, thought Sam, as he struggled into a sitting position. I mean, c’mon! Time out! Call the ref! They’d all survived a fall into a flooded mine shaft, Theo dislocated his shoulder, Sam solved a puzzle underwater—all Flintlock had to do was climb down a rope? Where was the justice in that?
And what was with that metal door? Sam rubbed water out of his eyes. Since he solved the puzzle, he figured the door would just open . . . but it didn’t. It just stood there, still shut tight, mocking him.
“Come on, Sam,” Martina urged him. Sam groaned one last time and let her pull him to his feet. He spotted her glasses among the tiles at her feet and picked them up, handing them to her as she tugged him over to the door.
“Isn’t there a handle? A knob?” she said, after shoving the glasses back on her face. They were a little crooked. She looked kind of like a mad scientist.
“I didn’t see anything like that.” Sam had to stop to cough again. “And there aren’t any hinges on this side. See? Do you think it’s another puzzle? Maybe we have to touch certain parts of it in sequence?”
“Could be,” Martina mused. “Maybe it’s equipped with a heat sensor?”
Without a word, Theo heaved himself off the wall and came over to join them. He studied the door for a moment. Then he let go of his right arm, placed his left hand flat against the metal, and pushed.
The door screeched and swung inward.
“It’s just a door,” he said. “You push it.” The big guy actually cracked a quick smile before walking through.
Martina and Sam stared after him, openmouthed.
A second later, Martina grabbed her soaking backpack and thrust Sam’s at him before dashing after Theo through the door.
Sam stayed behind. He snatched the three stone tiles—the one, the six, and the seventeen—out of their places on the grid.
“What’re you doing?” Martina’s voice came from the doorway.
“Making it harder for those guys to follow us!” Sam shouted back. It would work too. He felt the wall vibrate, as it had before, and he heard another grinding, shifting noise far away. Moments later, water began to spill out of the metal grate. It was lapping over the tops of Sam’s boots by the time he’d followed Theo and Martina through the door and slammed it behind him, tossing the tiles to the floor on his side.
“Let’s see them solve the puzzle now!” he said.
There was a metal wheel on this side of the door, the kind Sam had seen in submarine movies. It must have unlocked when he solved the magic square—he just didn’t notice because he was so busy drowning at the time. He grabbed it and spun it to seal the door tight again. Then he turned around to see where they had ended up.
Martina had her head lamp back on, and it illuminated a narrow corridor with another door at the far end, twenty feet away. From the pick marks on the wall and the wooden supports lining the passage, Sam guessed this must have been part of the mine as well.
They hurried together along the corridor until they reached the door. This one did have a handle, and Sam put his hand on it.
“Wait!” said Martina. “What if it’s another trap?”
“Trap, schmap,” Sam said. “How bad could it be?” He turned the handle, pushed through, and gasped—because what he saw on the other side was not what he expected at all.
“Wow,” Martina breathed. “It’s some sort of workshop!”
The beam from her head lamp danced over desks and shelves and worktables, piled with coils of wire, glass tubes, stacks of books, piles of paper and parchment, machines that seemed to sprout handles and rods and gears the way bushes sprouted leaves. Sam couldn’t even being to guess what most of this stuff was for.
&nbs
p; Then Sam spied something he did recognize—an old-fashioned lamp hanging on the wall. “Hey, Marty! Don’t move your head.”
“You know not to call me that.”
“Whatever. Just keep the light there!”
Sam came closer to the lamp. It was even halfway full of oil. If they just had some matches . . .
“Here, Sam.”
Something came flying out of the blaze of light that was Martina—a lighter. Waterproof. Sam grinned. He touched the flame to the wick of one lamp, and then to the others he could see along the wall. When he was done, the whole place was aglow with warm, yellow light.
It looked like the workshop of the maddest inventor ever to wield a test tube. And it looked old—a couple of hundred years or so. The desk was leather-topped, the furniture like something out of a museum. But what was an antique workshop doing a hundred feet under the Nevada desert?
Sam turned to the only person around who might have a clue. “Okay, Theo.” He eyed the big kid, who was leaning against the metal door, gripping his right forearm against his body, his face ashen with pain.
“It looks like we have a few minutes before we’re in mortal danger again, so it’s time to level with us,” Sam told him. “Tell us what’s going on.”
Theo nodded, his breath coming in short bursts. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try . . .”
“Sit down,” Martina said, gesturing to a wooden desk chair nearby. “I’ll pop your shoulder back in. Then you’ll be good as new.”
After Sam and Theo exchanged a slightly skeptical look, Theo lowered himself into the chair.
“Do you really know what you’re doing?” Sam whispered in Martina’s ear. “The sight of blood makes me, um, a little . . .”
“Oh, calm down, there isn’t going to be any blood.” Martina waved him off. “You might hear some popping or a crunching noise, but that’s it.”
“Okay,” Sam said, feeling a little queasy.
“Better talk, Theo,” Martina told him, her voice level. “It’ll take your mind off what I’m about to do.”
“Okay.” Theo sounded a little queasy himself. Martina’s hands began to probe gently at his shoulder. “You were right, Sam. This isn’t just a normal trip, and I’m not just another kid who won the contest. Evangeline and I, we’re both members of a secret society called the Founders.”
Sam felt his jaw drop open. Martina momentarily stopped what she was doing and stared down at Theo. Sam was shocked that his “he’s an undercover secret agent” guess wasn’t too far off after all!
“The group has been around since this country was born, its membership passed down from one generation to the next, its secrets guarded with the members’ very lives—OW!”
“Sorry,” said Martina. “I got a little too excited. Go on.”
“Right.” Theo drew in a slow, careful breath. “It all started right after the American Revolution. The men behind the Declaration of Independence were scrambling to organize a working government. The nation was still licking its wounds, and everyone was worried about reprisals from Britain. Worried that one day soon, Britain would rebuild its armies and return to take back what was once theirs. Benjamin Franklin worried about this too, but no one knew exactly what ends he went to in order to protect the United States. No one knew, until one day he gathered six of his most trusted colleagues at a secret meeting. James Madison, John Jay, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.”
The names brought to mind many American history lessons and drawings of serious-looking men on coins and bills. Sam tried to imagine them as real people, meeting in dark rooms, whispering by candlelight.
“Not all those guys liked each other. But they all agreed to meet if it meant protecting the country. Franklin told them . . .”
Martina bent Theo’s arm and pulled his elbow gently away from his body. “Try and relax, Theo. Are you ready?”
Theo nodded, still talking, “He told them that he’d invented something. Something powerful. Something terrible. It could be used to defend the United States. But if an enemy got ahold of it, it would be a disaster. So he swore them to secrecy, and—”
Steadily and slowly, Marty pulled Theo’s arm above his head, and Sam thought he heard a faint pop. Theo grimaced, but a moment later, he sighed with relief.
“Thanks,” he told Martina. “That’s better. Lots better.”
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Sam asked Martina, a little awed.
“Girl Scouts.” Martina pushed her crooked glasses up her nose, looking proud. “I got a badge.”
“Okay, back to Ben Franklin,” Sam said. “So, he did more than fly kites in thunderstorms, huh, Theo?”
“A lot more,” Martina said cheerfully. “For instance, he invented a stove. The Franklin stove! And bifocals. And—”
“Marty. Seriously? Not now.”
“Sorry,” Martina said, blushing. “Go on, Theo.”
Theo got to his feet and rested his head against the metal door, gently rubbing his right shoulder. “Okay. So Benjamin Franklin revealed his invention to each of the six men and swore them to secrecy. Shortly after, they formed a group called the Founders. They made it their mission to keep Franklin’s creation completely secret and completely safe. They hid it, and only the seven of them knew where.”
“So this thing’s been hidden for, what, two centuries?” Sam asked. “What is it, anyway? A bomb, or a gigantic gun, or what?”
“I don’t know.” Theo shook his head. “Only the seven Founders knew.”
“And they’re dead, so they’re not going to tell us,” Sam put in. “They are dead, right? Don’t tell me Ben Franklin invented some kind of zombie death ray.”
Martina sighed. “Do you think we actually live in a comic book, Sam?”
“Hey, given what’s happened today, ‘zombie death ray’ doesn’t seem completely out of the realm of possibility!” Sam exclaimed.
“No zombies, Sam,” Theo said with a smirk. “The original Founders died long ago, but their commitment to the cause was passed on. There have always been seven Founders since the days of the Revolution. And they’ve always protected Franklin’s secret with their lives.”
Sam felt a chill. He’d wondered what was so important that Flintlock and his men had been willing to kill to get it. Now he knew.
“Once they formed the Founders, the original members made a plan,” Theo went on. “They hid Franklin’s weapon in a secret vault that could only be opened by someone bearing seven keys. But these weren’t just your normal run-of-the-mill keys. Franklin knew any key like that could be copied, its lock picked. Instead, they each chose a special artifact, a one-of-a-kind object that represented the ideals they stood for. These artifacts became the keys to open the secret vault. The Founders all kept a key in their possession, its location unknown to everyone but them. Only on their deathbeds did they reveal its location to someone in their family chosen to take their place as the next Founder.”
“So this is . . .” Martina looked around, wide-eyed. “This is the hiding place for Ben Franklin’s key?”
“Yes,” said Theo.
“Seriously?” Sam frowned. “Somebody built all this just to hide a key? Sundial puzzles and crazy killer sudokus and . . . and everything? Didn’t they have safety deposit boxes back then? This is baloney, guys. And you accuse me of living in a comic book!”
Theo looked straight at him. “Why do you think all this is here, Sam? Somebody went to a lot of trouble to build it, to keep it secret. Is my story really so unbelievable, compared to everything you’ve seen?”
“Let’s say you’re telling the truth,” Martina said. “Why would it be in Death Valley? Ben Franklin never came here! Nevada wasn’t even part of the United States when he was alive!”
“Right,” said Theo, his face darkening. “Thought you might bring that up, Martina. It happened during the Civil War. One of the Founders of that time betrayed the others. It was . . . a difficult time for the country. Americans a
gainst Americans. Anyway, with some of the locations of the keys compromised, the other Founders decided they had to take precautions. Many of them were moved to places like this. Places no one would ever think to look.”
Remote, Sam thought. Sure, like in the middle of the desert. That must have seemed safe to people back in Civil War days. They couldn’t have imagined busloads of tourists or helicopters of bad guys in the middle of Death Valley.
And yet . . . here they were.
“So . . . wait a minute.” Sam looked at Theo. “You knew this place was here, in Death Valley?”
Theo nodded.
Sam felt his temper heating up. “You took us out here . . . on purpose? You knew what was going to happen?”
“We were looking for this vault, yes. And we knew that there was a possibility that the enemy might catch up with us. But my task was to stay with you and to protect you from harm.” Theo couldn’t meet Sam’s eyes when he said that—as if he thought that he hadn’t done a very good job with the protecting part.
“So what does that make you? A Founder? A descendant of . . . whom? Benjamin Franklin?”
“No.” Theo shook his head. “That’s Evangeline. Her ancestor, Richard Temple, was the illegitimate son of Benjamn Franklin. Franklin never claimed Temple in public, but he secretly passed the torch of the Founders on to him when he died.”
Sam ran a hand through his wet hair. Skinny, frozen-faced Evangeline Temple was a living descendant of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most important figures in the nation’s history? Sam shook his head, trying to get all these new facts to rattle into place inside his brain. “Okay,” Sam blurted. “Fine. Evangeline’s a Franklin. Why not? So, what about you?”
Theo shook his head. “Who I am isn’t important right now. What’s important is that we keep as far ahead of Flintlock and his goons as we can.”
“So, Flintlock knew this vault was here too?” Sam demanded.
“Doubtful. They must have been following us. Waiting for us to find it first so they could close in.”
“And we did.” Sam felt his mouth twist in disgust. “Led them right to it. We even opened the door for them.”