Countdown

  “Yeah, let’s fly to Vegas, take the penthouse suite, bet everything you’ve got on roulette, and live the high life. One last blast before —” He couldn’t finish the joke. The reality was too grim.

  She tried to keep the banter going. “Teasing me about my imminent demise,” she said. “That’s sweet of you.”

  He gave a rueful smile. “You know me. Mr. Hearts and Flowers.”

  “Ha. Yeah. Always the romantic.”

  He reached for the doorknob. “Look, are you going to go to sleep or not? That’s all I came in for.”

  “Yes. I’ll sleep,” she lied. “Don’t worry about me.” He just looked at her. “Don’t say anything to Dan,” she added. “About me not sleeping, I mean. I don’t want him to worry, either.”

  “As if he could help it,” Jake said. “I’ll say what I want to Dan. I don’t take orders from you.” A few days ago, his words would’ve stung, but there was no malice in his tone.

  “Hey, Jake?” she called as he turned to the door.

  He twisted back around. “Yeah?”

  “If something does happen to me, you’ll take care of him, right? You’re so great with Atticus, and Dan will need someone who . . .” She trailed off as Jake’s face grew pale. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Jake pressed his lips together for a moment before he spoke. “Of course I will. That goes without saying. But it won’t be necessary. We’re going to find the ingredients. We’ll get you the antidote.” He took a step forward, and for a second it looked like he was about to extend his hand, but then his arm fell back to his side. After everything she’d done to him, nothing short of a helicopter crash could induce Jake to touch her.

  “Just get some rest. You’ll feel better tomorrow.” He left the room and shut the door.

  She knew he was right. She needed rest. She had to keep herself together.

  She was the leader. She was in charge.

  If she fell apart, so would everything else.

  She woke up in the dark, feeling hot and sweaty. What time was it? She looked around for the glow-in-the-dark clock dial but couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything; the darkness was so thick she could almost feel it, she could smell its musty odor.

  She lay back and closed her eyes, hoping this terrible feeling, whatever it was, would go away. Sweat poured off her forehead. Why was she so terribly hot? She sat up in a panic. Fire! It must be fire. She thought of her parents, the fire that had killed them both. Could someone want her to die the same way?

  Pierce . . .

  She jumped out of bed. She had to warn Dan, to save him, to get him out of the burning hotel. She fumbled through the inky darkness, looking for the door. Then she stopped. She heard something. The roar of the fire? No, it was lower, more ominous. A growl.

  Was someone in the room with her? Frantically, she spun around. “Who’s there?” she shouted.

  No one answered. She froze, listening. Silence.

  Pierce’s men, she thought. They’ve come to get me. To stop me before I can stop them!

  Another sound broke the silence. More growling. That sound isn’t human, she realized. It’s a jaguar!

  She groped around the room until she found a heavy book. A stick would have been better, but this would have to do.

  In the corner of the room, she saw it: the red glow of the jaguar’s eyes trained right at her.

  She screamed and threw the book. The eyes merely blinked and inched closer. The jaguar growled soft and low, preparing to pounce. “No!” Amy screamed. She threw herself at the jaguar, attacking it before it could attack her. She reached for its neck, gripping it with her superstrong hands, shaking its head, hoping to keep its razor-sharp teeth from tearing her to shreds.

  Then a bright light blinded her and another creature pounced on her, yanking at her arms, pulling her away from the jaguar.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” she yelled. “Can’t you see it’s trying to kill me?”

  “Amy! Amy, let go!”

  Dan was yanking on her arms, trying to pull them off the jaguar’s neck. But . . . it wasn’t a jaguar.

  It was Jake. She had her hands around his neck. He towered over her, firmly pushing her away, but she was too strong for him now. He grimaced, his eyes wide with terror. She relaxed her grip and collapsed in his arms. “Jake?” This was so confusing. What had happened to the jaguar? Jake led her to her bed. She blinked and rubbed her aching head, while he gingerly touched his sore neck. Dan sat beside her.

  “What were you doing, Amy?” Dan asked. “It looked like you were trying to kill him!”

  “No . . . no . . .” Dan had switched on the light. The darkness was gone. She could see clearly now. There was no jaguar, no fire. She wasn’t hot anymore, though she was still drenched in sweat. In fact, in spite of the jungle heat, she was beginning to feel chilled.

  “Jake, are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” Jake rubbed his neck and tried to smile, but it was strained.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear. But I thought —” She paused, knowing how crazy it would sound.

  “Amy, tell me.” Dan was pressing her hand. “What just happened to you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Amy said. “I thought a jaguar was in the room, attacking me.”

  “I heard you shouting,” Jake explained. “So I came in to see if you were all right, and you leaped at me and —” He didn’t finish.

  “Basically tried to strangle him,” Dan said.

  Amy began to shake. She’d been hot only a few minutes before, but now she was freezing. “I could swear I heard growling. I saw the cat’s glowing eyes right over there.” She pointed at the corner by the door.

  “Maybe you were dreaming,” Dan suggested.

  “Or hallucinating,” Jake added.

  Hallucinating. Oh, no. Amy tried to clear her mind, but it was still foggy. Her room had been on fire, she’d been sure of it. But then, no, it wasn’t a fire, it was a jaguar . . . a jaguar had attacked her. It had seemed so real. . . .

  She huddled under the covers, shivering. Her worst fear had come true. It had been nagging at her, this fear, all day, but she wanted so badly to deny it. She was suffering from the side effects.

  The serum was affecting her mind. She couldn’t trust herself. She was losing control of her muscles, her emotions, and her brain was misfiring, too. Her judgment was suspect. If she was capable of mistaking Jake for a jaguar, what other mistakes might she make?

  Dan and Jake were watching her, concern etched on their faces. She felt a sudden rush of affection so intense it made her chest throb.

  She had to make a decision now, a decision that was best for all of them. She knew what she had to do. “Dan.” She put her hand over his. “I need to talk to you alone.”

  Jake left, shutting the door quietly behind him. Dan sat beside her on the bed, his whole body stiff with worry. “Dan,” Amy said. “I need your help.”

  He nodded, still waiting.

  “I know I’m asking a lot of you, something very big. I know you want out as soon as we’re finished with Pierce. But I need you now . . . . If we don’t find the antidote in time and something should happen to me, you’ll be the one . . . I mean, you’ll have to . . .”

  Dan shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, Amy. I won’t let it. We’re going to find the antidote in time, I promise.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes and dropped down her cheeks. She wanted to believe him so badly. But she knew how much they were up against. “What I’m saying is, I need you to take charge of the mission. Now.” Dan bit his lip. “I know you don’t want to do it,” she said. “But —” She was surprised at how hard it was to ask for help at last, after refusing it all this time. It took all her strength to admit to weakness. “The serum is acting on me. You saw what ju
st happened.”

  “Amy, that wasn’t you.”

  “Exactly. I’m under the influence of the serum. I can’t trust myself. And you shouldn’t trust me, either.”

  “What are you talking about?” His eyes darted around the room, not meeting hers. He knew where this conversation was headed.

  “I’d like to think . . . I’d like to believe that, in spite of everything, if I needed you — really needed you, the way I do now — you could step in and do whatever needs to be done.”

  That phrase hung in the air, full of questions, full of terror: whatever needs to be done. “Sure, of course, Amy,” he said too quickly. “You know I’ll do whatever you need. Just tell me what you want me to do and —”

  “Listen.” She took his wrists in her two hands and shook them, trying to reach him. They’d been out of touch with each other, in a way, for weeks. She had to get through to him now. “I’ve taken on a lot of our responsibility myself. I know you think it’s because I don’t trust you to handle it. But that isn’t true, Dan. I’ve been trying to spare you from pressure, and from danger. But I know you’re smart, and strong, and capable. You can make the big decisions. You can lead the family.”

  As he allowed himself to hear what she was asking of him, his jittery face hardened. He looked older almost instantly, and calmer, and sadder. “I have faith in you,” Amy said

  Dan watched her. His hands were shaking. There was a heaviness around his eyes and mouth that no thirteen-year-old should have. It broke her heart. He pulled his wrists out of her grip and put his hands on top of hers. They were steady now. “You can count on me.”

  Trilon Laboratories

  Delaware

  When five o’clock finally came, Nellie hung out, “working late” until everyone was gone and it was time for her real work to begin.

  Nellie wished she could be in Guatemala with Amy, but she had a job to do here. Amy needed an antidote to the serum more than ever. What did Pierce do to offset the side effects of the serum? Maybe that information could ease Amy’s symptoms and buy her some time. Nellie was going to find Sammy and put him to work on it — now.

  Nellie’s time at Trilon hadn’t been a complete waste. For one thing, she’d seen the biochemists in her lab using nanotechnology to study the interactions of different compounds at the molecular level. They had a laser that could carve tiny marks on a piece of metal or glass — say, a slide they might use under a microscope. Nellie had watched them use that laser without really knowing what it was for. But she had a use for it now.

  It took a few tries to get the hang of it, but she managed to carve a message onto a glass slide. The message was invisible to the naked eye but perfectly legible under a microscope. She wrapped the glass in paper to protect it from scratches and slipped it into her pocket.

  She sneaked upstairs, dodging security cameras, and walked down a dark corridor until she came to the vending machine. She used her stolen ID to open the machine and sneak into the secret basement. She opened the door from the stairwell and peered into the hall.

  Sammy was being led into a room — from what Nellie could see, it looked like another lab, even more high-tech than his last one — by an armed guard. The guard shoved Sammy into the room and locked the door. Then he stood outside the door, automatic weapon at the ready, guarding it.

  Oh, Sammy. What had he done to earn a round-the-clock armed guard? How was Nellie ever going to get past that guy? She let the fire door shut and looked around for an alternative way in. She stood in the stairwell, empty except for a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. And just above the fire extinguisher . . . a grate. A grate that probably led to an air vent, which you’d need if you didn’t want to suffocate way down here in an underground subbasement.

  The bottom of the vent was out of Nellie’s reach, but if she stood on the nearest step, her fingers could just touch the screen. Maybe if she stood on the fire extinguisher . . . She took down the metal canister, set it on the bottom step, and stood on it. The canister held her weight but rolled precariously under her toes. She pulled her trusty penknife out of her pocket and unscrewed the screen from the air vent.

  Wait . . . She thought she heard a noise in the hallway on the other side of the fire door. She froze. Was someone coming?

  Another noise. She quickly jumped down, replaced the fire extinguisher, and dashed up a flight of stairs. She’d just reached the second landing when she heard the subbasement door bang open. She froze again, praying that whoever was there — most likely the armed guard — wouldn’t come up the stairs or notice the loose screws in the air vent.

  After a few tense seconds, the door banged shut. She peeked over the railing down into the stairwell. No sign of the guard.

  She tiptoed back down the stairs. All clear. She set the fire extinguisher back on the stair, stepped on it, and continued working on the screws.

  She loosened the bottom two screws and dropped them into the pocket of her white lab coat. She slipped her fingers under the grate and gripped the edge of the vent. If she could just haul herself up somehow . . . But it was too high.

  Then she noticed the bracket in the wall that was meant to hold the fire extinguisher. She clung to the vent with her fingers and hopped up, stepping on the bracket with her right foot to boost herself into the vent.

  As she made the leap, the fire extinguisher rolled out from under her foot and fell off the step with a clatter. She scrambled up into the vent. The grate closed after her just as the door burst open. Nellie crawled back into the vent, away from the grate, just far enough to see the armed guard look around, pick up the fallen fire extinguisher, and run up the stairs to look for intruders. Another guard came out when the first one returned to the bottom landing.

  “Find anything?” the second guard asked.

  “No.” The first guard put the fire extinguisher back on the bracket, which had been loosened slightly by Nellie’s foot. “Guess it was just the fire extinguisher falling.”

  “That bracket needs to be tightened,” the other guard said.

  They stood quietly for a moment, guns at the ready, listening for any sound. Nellie held her breath.

  “All clear,” the first guard said. They opened the door and went back to patrolling the lab. Nellie let out her breath. Good of those guards to care so much about fire safety. She started crawling through the vent, searching for Sammy. Every few yards, she came to a grate. The first one looked out on the short hallway. The second onto a room that looked like an office. The third opened onto a lab. There was a bank of computers, a machine Nellie didn’t recognize that flashed a white light every five seconds, a large freezer, and a lab table covered with vials, flasks, beakers, and high-powered microscopes.

  From her vantage point near the ceiling, she looked down at a slim young man in a white lab coat, his face pressed to the eyepiece of a microscope, still hard at work at nine o’clock in the evening. She’d know that mop of curly black hair anywhere. Sammy.

  She was about to whisper Pssst! Sammy! when she noticed a movement in the corner of the room. A guard sat in a chair by the freezer, while another blocked the door. Both were armed with automatic rifles.

  Sammy lifted his head and wrote something in a notebook.

  The fan clicked on and cool air began to flow through the vent. Nellie shivered. She was chilled and felt like she was going to sneeze.

  Oh, no. NO.

  She was not going to be captured because her nose tickled. That was not happening.

  The inside of her nostrils tingled. She clamped her mouth shut and pinched her nose. She closed her eyes and prayed. No, no, I will not sneeze, I will not —

  Uh-oh. It was coming. She felt the pressure from inside her lungs, the rush of air. That tickle wanted out, and she couldn’t stop it. She released her nose and slowly, slowly, silently pulled in a little air. Calm, she told herself. Calm. Stay calm, no
se.

  She waited. The sneeze passed.

  Forty-five minutes later, and still the guards watched, and still Sammy worked. He was so brave, she thought. She could have gotten him out of there, but he wouldn’t leave. He stayed to help the cause.

  Nellie’s heart swelled for him. But her legs were cramped from sitting perfectly still in the air vent. She sent a silent ESP message to the guards: Let the poor guy go to bed. He’s got to sleep sometime.

  At last the lab door opened. The guards escorted Sammy out. They turned off the light and left.

  After ten minutes, she thought it might be safe to slip down into the lab and leave him her message.

  The lab was dark except for a blue security light. Nellie knocked out a slat of the grate, then reached through the hole to unscrew the screen. She climbed down into the lab, took the slide out of her pocket, and left it under Sammy’s microscope.

  SAMMY, AMY TOOK SERUM, FULL DOSE. ANYTHING TO DELAY THE SYMPTOMS? — N.

  Then she crawled back up into the vent, using a chair to reach it. The grate shut behind her but was still loose at the bottom, so she could come and go as needed. Or maybe, when the time came — if the guards ever left him alone — Sammy would find a moment to use the vent and escape.

  Don’t give up, Sammy, she thought. Amy needs you. We all need you.

  Tikal, Guatemala

  “Oh, my gosh. Look at this.”

  Dan watched Amy double-check to make sure she’d read the e-mail right. She’d logged onto the fake account she’d set up for practical things, like making reservations at their hotel in Tikal, just to be sure she wasn’t missing any messages.

  “Someone found Olivia’s book,” Amy told the others. “At least, he says he has. And he wants five thousand dollars to give it back.”

  “Who is it?” Dan leaned over her shoulder to read the message:

  “It’s not signed,” Amy said. “And I don’t recognize the e-mail address, but it’s Guatemalan.”

  “It’s got to be a trap,” Jake said.