“It’s going to be okay,” her mom said. “Stay calm.”
“Indeed.” Watkins swallowed. “Hobbes, what’s the plan here?”
“Security forces on their way,” he said. “Six minutes out.”
The crowd had completely surrounded them, and Eleanor flinched at the first pounded fist against her window. More pounding followed, against the hood, the doors, the windows.
“Six minutes?” Watkins said. “Will we even last six minutes?”
“Let’s hope so.” Hobbes pulled a pistol from his holster and brandished it, which sent some of the rioters scattering away, like a receding wave, only to have the mass of people crash up against the car again with renewed strength.
Eleanor had lost sight of the forward vehicle and hoped Luke and Finn and the others were safe. She avoided making eye contact with any of the people right outside her window, keeping her gaze trained straight ahead at the back of the seat in front of her.
“We should be safe in the vehicle,” Hobbes said. “It’s armored and bulletproof. Just sit tight—”
Something smashed against Watkins’s window, a brick or a stone, and he yelped.
“Sir!” Hobbes shouted. “Get down!”
The impact had left the shatterproof glass frosted white, fractured in thousands of pieces, but intact. But then someone smashed Eleanor’s window, and then her mom’s. Eleanor couldn’t see out them anymore, could only hear the repeated bashes, again and again, until the claw of a crowbar poked through, leaving a sliver of clear light that widened with each successive impact.
“Hobbes!” Watkins shouted. “The girl!”
Hobbes pivoted in his seat to point his gun at the opening in Eleanor’s window, but then her mom screamed as they broke through her side. Hobbes swung his gun in that direction.
“Careful where you point that!” Uncle Jack shouted.
When they breached Watkins’s window, Eleanor knew it was hopeless. The gap in her mom’s window was now big enough for an arm to reach in, toward the lock. Uncle Jack reached for it, roaring as he seizing it with both hands.
But then a second hand slipped into Eleanor’s window, and before she could react, it had unlocked her door. She screamed as the mob wrenched it open, and several men clawed inside and pulled her out.
“Eleanor!”
She felt Uncle Jack grasping for her, his hands slipping away, and then she saw him charge out of the vehicle toward her as the mob carried her, but he was quickly surrounded and cut off. Hands gripped her arms tightly, and she was surrounded by angry faces of men she didn’t know.
A gunshot split the air, echoing off the rising walls of the narrow street, and the mob recoiled from Hobbes, who stood by the vehicle with his pistol aimed upward. Watkins stood behind him, her mom next to him.
“Stand down!” Hobbes shouted over the sudden silence.
The mob replied with renewed shouts of anger but kept some distance from the SUV. Uncle Jack was still trying to fight his way toward Eleanor, buffeted on all sides by the protesters. But now that Watkins had exited the vehicle, the rioters seemed to be directing most of their fury in his direction, and Uncle Jack eventually reached her side.
“Let her go!” he bellowed at the men holding her, and they did.
Sirens wailed in the distance, and the rioters reacted to that with another pause, like they were all taking a collective breath. Then something at the edge of Eleanor’s sight caught her attention, someone waving, and she turned to look.
It was Youssef. He stood a little back, out of the thick of the mob, waving at her and smiling.
She couldn’t help it. She waved back.
He motioned for her to come toward him, to go with him. Eleanor shook her head, but he didn’t give up.
“Who is that?” Uncle Jack asked.
“That’s Youssef,” she said. “Our taxi driver.”
“What does he want?” Uncle Jack asked.
Youssef’s waving had become more urgent, and he started shouting something Eleanor couldn’t quite understand. But he kept repeating it over and over. It sounded like “escape,” but she didn’t know what he could mean by that until she saw Samir standing behind him. With him were Luke, Finn, and von Albrecht. They had left the forward car, and they were waiting for her. She had to make a choice. She believed there was a way to set it all right somehow, but she knew she wasn’t going to find it with Watkins and the Preservation Protocol.
“We have to go with them,” she said to Uncle Jack.
“Go?”
“You said if you knew a way out of this, you’d take it.”
“But—” He looked toward Eleanor’s mom as the sirens drew closer, and some of the rioters began to disperse.
“She won’t understand,” Eleanor said. “You have to trust me, Uncle Jack. It’s now or never.”
He frowned for another moment of indecision, and then nodded. Then he helped push their way through the surging crowd toward the others.
“Hurry!” Samir called to them. “This way!”
When Eleanor and Uncle Jack reached them, Luke gave her a relieved nod, and Finn smiled. Over her shoulder and over the roar of the mob, she heard her mom screaming her name. But Eleanor didn’t turn to look.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Samir then blazed a path for them through the throng, with Youssef coming behind them, and one street over they all reached the edge of the mob and found a van waiting for them.
Youssef hopped into the driver’s seat. “Get in, get in!” So they piled into the vehicle, and Youssef turned the key and floored it, shooting off in the opposite direction from Watkins’s SUVs, leaving Samir waving good-bye to them from the street.
“Took you long enough to get the hint, kid,” Luke said to Eleanor.
“I had no idea,” Eleanor said. “How did—”
“It was Nathifa,” Betty said.
“What? How?”
“She wasn’t the one who got on the laptop,” Finn said. “It was me. I was trying to find out about my dad. When she realized what I had done, she told me to act like it was her, no matter what. She said that was the only way she could stay free and help us.”
“So she didn’t betray us?”
“No,” Finn said. “She rescued us.”
“She call Samir,” Youssef said. “She said we need big G.E.T. protest. This is an easy thing, because everyone hate the G.E.T. And then she tell us where to watch to get you out.”
“Wow,” Eleanor said. “She . . . she’s my hero.”
“Mine too,” Uncle Jack said. “And I’ve never met her.”
“Where is she now?” Eleanor asked. “Will she be okay?”
“She be okay,” Youssef said. “We take care of her.”
“And what about us?” von Albrecht asked. “Where are we going?”
“To my plane,” Luke said.
They reached the airport without incident, but across the desert they could still see smoke rising from the G.E.T. camp near the pyramids. Consuelo waited for them on the tarmac, faithful and ready as always. They thanked Youssef, told him to thank Samir and Nathifa, and said good-bye. Then they boarded the plane, and this time, Eleanor took a seat next to Uncle Jack, and as Luke prepared for takeoff, she asked Finn if he had said anything to his dad.
“When?” he asked.
“When you left him back there.”
“Oh,” he said. “I just told him that everyone fits. No matter who they are.”
Eleanor nodded. “I think that’s true.”
Luke called back to them from the cockpit. “We’re just about ready, kid! Let’s get this show on the road. Where we going?”
Eleanor had no idea. She didn’t know how to shut down the Concentrators without paying a painful price. But she wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet. She looked around the cabin at Uncle Jack, and Finn, and then she looked at von Albrecht.
“Didn’t you say the first Concentrator that Watkins found was the master of the others?” she asked h
im.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Eleanor said. “To the Himalayas.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank the many people who have helped me see Eleanor through the next chapter of her adventure. First, Donna Bray, for introducing me to Eleanor in the first place. Jordan Brown has continued to provide invaluable insight and guidance, as well as friendship. My agent, Stephen Fraser, has offered unceasing encouragement and support, not to mention reliable movie recommendations. The love of my family and friends remains one of the greatest gifts in my life, for which I am endlessly grateful. And finally, I would like to thank Jaime, for whom words fail me in expressing my love and appreciation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Nami Leu Photography
MATTHEW J. KIRBY is the author of the acclaimed middle grade novels The Clockwork Three, Icefall, and The Lost Kingdom, as well as one book in the New York Times bestselling series Infinity Ring. He was born in Utah, but with a father in the military he has lived in many places, including Rhode Island, Maryland, California (twice), and Hawaii. As an undergraduate at Utah State University, he majored in history. He then went on to earn MS and EdS degrees in school psychology. Matthew currently lives in Utah. You can visit him online at www.matthewjkirby.com.
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BOOKS BY MATTHEW J. KIRBY
THE DARK GRAVITY SEQUENCE
BOOK 1: THE ARCTIC CODE
BOOK 2: ISLAND OF THE SUN
CREDITS
COVER ART © 2016 BY PAUL SULLIVAN
COVER DESIGN BY KATIE C. FITCH
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
ISLAND OF THE SUN. Copyright © 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947627
ISBN 978-0-06-222490-3 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © April 2016 ISBN 9780062224927
* * *
16 17 18 19 20 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Matthew J. Kirby, Island of the Sun (Dark Gravity Sequence)
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