In the underworld

FOR DAVE AND ELOISE,

MY FELLOW VOYAGERS INTO WONDERMENT

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1: The Valley of Kings

Chapter 2: Vaporized

Chapter 3: Purys Elpam

Chapter 4: Triangulation

Chapter 5: Counterattack

Chapter 6: Good-bye, Wilbur

Chapter 7: Emergency Protocols

Chapter 8: Location D

Chapter 9: Epic Fail

Chapter 10: The Only Game in Town

Chapter 11: Whac-a-Massa

Chapter 12: Mongolia

Chapter 13: Death Is Cold

Chapter 14: Dad

Chapter 15: Genghis and Radamanthus

Chapter 16: Newton Speaks

Chapter 17: Dad Takes More Weird

Chapter 18: Work to Be Done

Chapter 19: The Tailor Wakes

Chapter 20: Brunhilda

Chapter 21: Gnome? Pixie? Troll?

Chapter 22: Secret in the Stones

Chapter 23: This Is Not Science

Chapter 24: Flying Zombie Skin

Chapter 25: A Game Most Dangerous

Chapter 26: That’s Gnizama

Chapter 27: Cold Feet

Chapter 28: Lost

Chapter 29: The Door

Chapter 30: The Blazing Fields

Chapter 31: Vasilissa

Chapter 32: The Trade

Chapter 33: It Is Good to Be Beautiful

Chapter 34: Shadows on Fire

Chapter 35: Gathering the Clouds

Chapter 36: Nadine

Chapter 37: Because of the Eyes

Chapter 38: We Tried

Chapter 39: The Grand Carbunculus Wizendum

Chapter 40: The Fence

Chapter 41: Code Red

Chapter 42: Hacked?

Chapter 43: Losing It

Chapter 44: The Song of the Heptakiklos

Chapter 45: Shouldn’ts

Chapter 46: Another Exit

Chapter 47: The Prodigal Sunshine

Chapter 48: Mom

Chapter 49: Artemisia Awaits

Chapter 50: A Rush of Air

Chapter 51: One Last Look Back

About the Author

Also by Peter Lerangis

Copyright

About the Publisher

FOR A DEAD person, my mom looked amazing.

She had a few more gray hairs and wrinkles, which happens after six years, I guess. But her eyes and smile were exactly the same. Even in a cell phone image, those are the things you notice first.

“Jack?” said Aly Black, who was sitting next to me in the backseat of a rented car. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said. Which, honestly, was the biggest lie of my life. “I mean, for someone who’s just discovered his mother faked her own death six years ago.”

From the other side of the car, Cass Williams slid his Coke-bottle glasses down his nose and gave me a pitying glance. Like the rest of us, he was in disguise. “Maybe she wasn’t faking,” he said. “Maybe she survived. And had amnesia. Till now.”

“Survived a fall into a crevasse in Antarctica?” I said.

I shut the phone. I had been looking at that photo nonstop since we escaped the Massa headquarters near the pyramids in Giza. I showed it to everyone back in the Karai Institute, including Professor Bhegad, but I couldn’t stay there. Not while she was here. Now we were returning to Egypt on a search to find her.

The car zipped down the Cairo–Alexandria highway in total silence. I wanted to be happy that Mom was alive. I wanted not to care that she had actually been off with a cult. But I wasn’t and I did. Life had changed for me at age seven into a Before and After. Before was great. After was Dad on business trips all the time, me at home with one lame babysitter after the other, kids talking behind my back. I can count on one finger the number of times I went to a parent-teacher conference with an actual parent.

So I wasn’t woo-hooing the fact that Mom had been hangin’ in a pyramid all this time with the Kings of Nasty. The people who stole our friend Marco and brainwashed him. The people who destroyed an entire civilization. The Slimeballs Whose Names Should Not Be Mentioned but I’ll Do It Anyway. The Massa.

I turned back to the window, where the hot, gray-tan buildings of Giza raced by.

“Almost there,” Torquin grunted. As he took the exit off the ring road, the right tires lifted off the ground and the left tires screeched. Aly and Cass slid into my side, and I nearly dropped the phone. “Ohhhh …” groaned Cass.

“Um, Torquin?” Aly called out. “That left pedal? It’s a brake.”

Torquin was nodding his head, pleased with the maneuver. “Very smooth suspension. Very expensive car.”

“Very nauseated passenger,” Cass mumbled.

Torquin was the only person who could make a Lincoln Town Car feel like a ride with the Flintstones. He is also the only person I know who is over seven feet tall and who never wears shoes.

“Are you okay, Cass?” Aly asked. “Are you going to barf?”

“Don’t say that,” Cass said. “Just hearing the word barf makes me want to barf.”

“But you just said barf,” Aly pointed out.

“Gluurb,” went Cass.

I rolled down a window.

“I’m fine,” Cass said, taking deep, gulping breaths. “Just … f-f-fine.”

Torquin slowed way down. I felt Aly’s hand touching mine. “You’re nervous. Don’t be. I’m glad we’re doing this. You were right to convince Professor Bhegad to let us, Jack.”

Her voice was soft and gentle. She wore a gauzy, orangey dress with a head covering, and contact lenses that turned her blue eyes brown. I hated these disguises, especially mine, which included a dumb baseball cap that had a ponytail sewn into the back. But after escaping the Massa a couple of days earlier and creating a big scene in town, we couldn’t risk being recognized. “I’m not Jack McKinley,” I said. “I’m Faisal.”

Aly smiled. “We’ll get through this, Faisal. We’ve been through worse.”

Worse? Maybe she meant being whisked away from our homes to an island in the middle of nowhere. Or learning we’d inherited a gene that would give us superpowers but kill us by age fourteen. Or being told that the only way to save our lives would be to find seven magic Atlantean orbs hidden in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—six of which don’t exist anymore. Or battling an ancient griffin, or being betrayed by our friend Marco, or watching a parallel world be destroyed.

I don’t know if any of them qualified as worse than what we were about to do.

Cass was taking rhythmic deep breaths. His floppy white hat was smashed over his ears, and his glasses were distorting his eyes. In the lenses, I saw a mirror image of my own disguise, the hat and ponytail, my left cheek decorated with a fake birthmark like a small cockroach. Torquin had been forced to dye his hair black. His ponytail was so thick it looked like a possum attached to his neck. He still wouldn’t wear shoes, so Professor Bhegad had had someone paint fake sandals on his feet. You’d be amazed how real that looked.

“You think your mom might have some motion sickness meds?” Cass asked.

“Let’s make sure she’s real first,” I said. “Then we’ll take care of the other stuff.”

“She’s real,” Aly said. “Five Karai graphics experts, four coders, and me—all of us examined that photo. No feathered edges, no lighting discrepancies or pixel-depth variations. No Photoshopping.”

I shook my head in total bafflement. “So she slips us a cell phone that leads us to the two stolen Loculi. She leaves us a code that reveals her identity, and she helps us escape. Why?”

“Maybe she’s a spy?” Cass asked.

Aly sighed, shaking her head. “If she were a spy for the KI, they would know. But they don’t. Right, Torquin?”

As Torquin shook his head, his ponytail-possum did a little dance. The car was veering left and right. Someone behind us honked.

Aly peered over the big guy’s shoulder. “Torquin, are you texting while driving?”

“Jack mother not spy,” he replied, putting down his phone.

“You could kill us!” Aly said.

“Wait,” I said. “Your thumb is the size of a loaf of bread. How can you hit the letters?”

“Make mistakes,” Torquin grunted. “But this is emergency. You will thank me.”

He yanked the steering wheel to the right, to get into the exit lane.

“No,” Cass said, “I won’t.”

* * *

The afternoon sun was setting on the Valley of Kings, about a quarter mile ahead. Even at this distance we could see tourists flocking to buses. The pyramids cast long shadows toward the Sphinx, who sat there, staring back. She looked pretty bored about the whole thing.

I wished I had her calmness.

Our turnoff—the dirt road to Massa headquarters—was in sight about a hundred yards away. Torquin turned sharply onto a rubbly path. The car jounced at every pothole, and I had to put my arms over my head to cushion the blows against the roof. He slammed on the brakes, and we stopped in a cloud of desert dust.

As we stepped out, three Jeeps appeared on the horizon, speeding toward our location. Torquin’s cell phone began beeping.

“Wait—is this the reason we’re going to thank you?” Aly asked. “You called for backup?”

“I thought we were going to surprise the Massa,” Cass said.

“Dimitrios smart and strong,” Torquin said, popping open the trunk. “Must be smarter and stronger.”

Aly reached in to hand us each a small backpack with supplies—flashlights, flares, and some stun darts. I slipped mine on quickly.

Before us was a small metal shack with a badly dented side. The entrance to the Massa headquarters looked like a supply shed, but it led downward into a buried pyramid untouched by archaeologists. Deep under the parched ground was a vast network of modern training rooms, laboratories, living areas, offices, and a vast control center, all interconnected. Some of the tunnels and rooms had been built during ancient times to honor the ka, the spirit of the dead pharaoh. To make that spirit feel coddled and comfy when he visited the world of the living.

The only spirit down there now was pure Massa evil.

“Moving now,” Aly said. She darted ahead of us and reached for the door handle.

With a swift yank, she pulled it open.

“What the—?” Cass said.

“No lock?” I said, staring into the blackness beyond the door. “Weird.”

Aly and I peered through the doorway and down concrete steps. It seemed overheated. I remembered this place being cold. At the bottom, a single lightbulb hung from a wire.

“It’s so quiet,” Cass said.

“What now?” Aly asked.

A soft, plaintive screech wafted upward. A pair of eyes moved erratically toward us out of the blackness.

“Duck!” I said.

We fell to the dirt as a bat flew over our heads, chittering. Torquin thrust his arm upward, snatching the furry creature in midair. It struggled and squeaked, trapped in his giant man-paw. “Not duck,” he said. “But very nice breaded and fried, with mango salsa.”

Aly’s face was white with horror. “That is so unbelievably disgusting.”

Torquin scowled, reluctantly releasing the critter. “Actually, is pretty … gusting.”

The Jeeps had stopped now. Men and women in everyday clothes were filing out, spreading around, surrounding the area. They carried briefcases, heavy packs, long cases. They nodded imperceptibly toward us, their eyes on Torquin for instruction.

“These are all KI?” Aly said.

“New team,” Torquin said. “Brought over after you escaped.”

“They’re armed!” Cass said. “Isn’t this overkill?”

Torquin nodded, his brows knit tightly. “Not for Massa.”

He had a point. Keeping low, I walked to the entrance and dropped to my stomach. Slowly I thrust my head out over the stairway. A sickly-sweet smell wafted up from below: mildew and rotted wood … and something else.

Something like burning plastic.

I pulled the flashlight from my pack and shone it downward. The stairs were littered with broken glass, wires, empty cans, and torn scraps of paper. “Something happened here,” I said.

“Need backup?” Torquin lifted his fingers to his lips in preparation for a whistle signal.

“No,” I said. “The Massa have surveillance. They’ve got to be seeing the Jeeps right now. If we go in together, with all the KI personnel, they’re likely to react with force. That could end badly.”

“So … you want just us to go down there?” Cass said.

“I’ll do it alone if I have to,” I said. “I need to see if my mom is really alive. If she’s down there, she won’t let anything bad happen.”

Cass thought for a moment, then nodded. “Dootsrednu,” he said softly. “I’m with you, Faisal.”

“Me, too,” Aly said.

“Mm,” Torquin agreed.

“Not you, Torquin.” I said. No way could we risk scaring the Massa with him. “No offense. We need you out here. To … be commander of the KI team.”

I began descending the stairs, swinging the flashlight around, trying to remember the layout. I could hear Aly’s footsteps behind me. Cass’s, too. “Commander?” Aly whispered.

“Had to make him feel important,” I said.

“Ah … choo!” Cass sneezed.

“Shhhh!” Aly and I said at the same time.

At the bottom was a hallway that sloped downward, feeding into rooms with different functions. As we tiptoed, I flashed the light left and right. The floors were littered with debris. The overhead lights were out. So were the security lights.

I peeked through the first door, a storage area. Metal file cabinets had been pulled open. Some of the drawers were strewn on the floor. A round, old-timey wall clock lay broken among them, fixed at 3:11. Wrappers, newspapers, and assorted garbage had been hastily dropped in piles.

“What the—?” Aly said.

Cass stepped into the room across the hall. He stooped down and picked up a string of beads, which he flipped so that the beads slid up and down. “I think these are called worry beads,” he said before slipping them into his pocket.

I shone my light into the room. Tables lined all four walls, with another long table stretching across the middle of the room. Cables lay strewn about like dead eels, chairs were upended, and trash littered the floor. No computers, no files, nothing.

“Looks like there was more hurrying than worrying,” I said.

“It’s impossible,” Aly said, shaking her head numbly. “There were hundreds of people here. It was like a city.”

Her voice echoed dully in the silent hallway. The Massa were totally gone.

A TRICK.

It had to be.

No one cleared out of a space this large in such a short time, for no apparent reason. They were up to something, I knew it. “Be careful, guys,” I said, ducking back into the hallway.

“Should we contact Torquin?” Aly asked.

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

If the Massa were luring us in, Mom knew about it. And Mom would make it all work out. Despite everything, I had to believe that.

As we tiptoed deeper in, the burning stench became stronger, more acrid, until we emerged into a familiar-looking corridor. This one was wider and brighter than the entrance hallway. Like much of the HQ, it had been built in modern times, for a modern organization.

“We took this route when we escaped,” Cass said, peering around. “Remember? We went toward an exit to the right. That was where we found the Loculi. To the left was the huge control room …”

His voice trailed off as he looked left. The hallway was lit by a dull yellow-orange glow. We stuck close to the wall. I checked my watch—seven minutes since we’d left Torquin. He would be coming after us soon.

We rounded a bend and stopped short. The main control room’s thick metal door was hanging open. Days ago, the place had been a hive of activity, Massa workers at desktop consoles and laptops, in consultations, shouting to one another across a vast circular space. An enormous digital message board hung from the domed ceiling, dominating the area.

Now the board was in pieces on the floor, engulfed in flames. Shattered glass lay everywhere, and tables had been reduced to splinters.

“It’s like they … vaporized,” Cass said.

Aly ran to a keyboard of a computer console near the wall. She upended a fallen chair and sat at the desk. “This one’s working!” she exclaimed, her fingers dancing on the keys. “Oh, great. It’s being wiped clean right now. Military-grade overwrite, every byte replaced with zeroes. They must have started this a few hours ago. I may be able to recover some data. I need a flash drive!”

Cass began rummaging in his backpack. I looked around for surveillance cameras. “Mom!” I cried out, my voice echoing in the cavernous dome. As Cass pulled a flash drive from his pack and gave it to Aly, I ran to the other side of the room, looking for clues. I peered through the doorway at the opposite end, which led to yet another empty corridor.

Numbly, I stepped in. A dim blue light pierced the hallway’s blackness. It was shining from a room to my right. I walked closer, focusing my flashlight on the open door.

Its panel said SECURITY. I could hear a soft but insistent beep inside.

Slowly I walked in.

“Faisal?” came Cass’s voice from behind me.

I jumped. “We don’t need the disguises,” I said. “She’s not here.”

“Who’s not?” Cass asked.

“Mom. None of them. They’re not anywhere near.”

My eyes focused on a flickering light shining from the wall to my left—a rectangular pane of glass with bright blue letters, flashing to the rhythm of the beep.

Beep.

FAILSAFE MODE: 00:00:17 …

Beep.

FAILSAFE MODE: 00:00:16 …

I snapped to and grabbed Cass’s arm. “Out—now! The whole place is going to blow!”

Aly was already in the hallway. I pushed her back the way we’d come. Together we sprinted up the hallway toward the exit. At the base of the stairs we ran into Torquin, which was like running into a small building. “Turn around and go!” I shouted. “Now!”

Torquin’s face went taut. He scampered up the steps and out the door with the speed of someone one-third his weight.

I felt the floor shake. I smelled sulfur.

The boom shook the walls, its blast hitting me square in the back.

“PKKAAAACCCH!” I COUGHED and spat as my eyes teared up from the dust.

I was outside, on the ground. Alive. My back rested against Torquin’s rented car, which meant I was about thirty feet from the Massa entrance.

I opened my mouth to call out, but instead I sucked in another lungful of sandy dirt. Spitting, I struggled to my feet. Everything hurt. My pants had been torn at the ankle. “Cass!” I finally called out. “Aly!”

“Torquin,” a familiar voice rumbled behind me. “Forgot Torquin.”

The big guy’s silhouette came out of the cloud, coated brown gray from head to toe, as if he’d been created from the dirt itself. With his right hand, he dragged Cass by the scruff of his neck. Cass’s face was blackened, his limbs slack. His floppy hat and glasses were gone.

“What happened?” I slumped toward them as fast as my scraped-up legs could take me.

In a moment, Aly was beside me, holding a grimy pair of glasses. “I found these. Is he …?”

“Chest moving,” Torquin said, setting him on the ground. “Need to find help.”

Aly and I dropped to our knees beside Cass. “Please, please, please, be okay …” I whispered, slapping his face gently. “Hey, Cass, come on. Don’t forget to be emosewa.”

“This can’t be happening …” Aly said, yanking a canteen from her pack and spilling some water on Cass’s face.

No reaction.

A team of KI soldiers surrounded us now. “We’ve got EMTs coming,” one of the KI men called out.

Aly pried Cass’s mouth open and dumped water in. “Come on, Cass,” she said. “Cass, you can do this!”

Cass’s body jerked upward, clipping Aly on the jaw. “Do what?”

“That!” Aly cried out in surprise, falling backward.

Cass turned away, retching a glob of wet sand. “Ewww, that needed a little purys elpam.”

Holding her jaw with one hand, Aly managed a huge smile. “I will buy you a gallon of it when this is all over.”

As two KI operatives approached with a stretcher, Cass’s eyes were trained on the Massa headquarters. The entrance shack was a pile of twisted metal.

Another muffled explosion shook the earth. The structure groaned loudly, tilted, and vanished into a widening black hole.

Cass sprang to his feet. We ran for our cars, leaving the stretcher empty on the ground.

* * *

“Corrupt … gibberish … broken …” Aly muttered. She was in the copilot seat of Slippy, the KI retrofitted stealth jet, her fingers flying across the keyboard of the tablet that was built into the arm of her seat. Torquin was our pilot, and for once he wasn’t making the plane do barrel rolls. He just focused on flying us back to the KI while Aly tried to get some usable information off Cass’s flash drive.

My eyes were fixed on the sea below. The water was silvery and bright on a cloudless day. I don’t know what I was looking for, maybe a big ship with a Massa flag blowing in the wind. I was kind of rattled, obsessed with only two thoughts:

We’d gone to find Mom.

We’d walked into a trap.

No warning about the evacuation. No hint about the time bomb. What if I hadn’t noticed the readout? What if we hadn’t gotten that far into the headquarters? What if we’d been a few seconds late? Did Mom know we would be going back?

How could she have let that happen?

Aly massaged her forehead, sitting back from the tablet. “If only we’d gotten there a few minutes earlier. Those jerks managed to overwrite just about everything. Maybe I can take apart the remaining data packets, but I’ll need better equipment.”

“You can do it,” I murmured. “You’re Aly.”

Aly sighed, turning away from the tablet. “How’s Cass?”

I turned toward the back of the compartment. Cass was lying against the bulkhead just behind my seat, on a narrow platform covered with layers of foam and blankets. He’d been asleep most of the way. Now he was blinking his eyes and grimacing. “What’s that smell?”

“No smell,” Torquin said. His face turned a slightly deeper shade of its natural red, and he held his arms superclose to his sides.

“Thank you for choosing KI Air,” Aly said. “Each seat is equipped with an oxygen mask for use in case of toxic Torquin armpit or fart odor.”

“Oow!” Cass groaned.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It hurts to laugh,” Cass said. “Where the heck are we? And don’t say anything funny.”

“We’re over the Atlantic,” I said. “You survived an explosion with some cuts and maybe a mild concussion. We left mainland ops and now we’re headed back to the KI.”

“Mainland who?” Cass said.

“The KI has mobile operatives all over the Mediterranean,” Aly said. “Their job is to stay there and provide backup when necessary. Torquin has been telling us about them. See all the news you miss when you’re asleep?”

“Where were the mainland ops when we needed them in Rhodes and Iraq?” Cass asked.

“We were incognito in Greece, and they had no clue where we were,” I said. “But you did see some of them in Iraq. Remember those teams that took those shifts along the Euphrates?”

Aly swiveled in her seat and reached out to touch Cass’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was just run over by a knat,” Cass replied.

“Knat?” Torquin grunted.

“Backwardish for tank,” Aly said. “Which means he’s feeling better.”

“I’d feel even better with some ice cream,” Cass went on. “Actually, any food.”

Torquin held up a greasy paper bag. “Iguana jerky. Cajun spice flavor.”

Cass groaned. “Any food except that.”

I saw a distant, shining, metallic cigar shape on the water below. A tanker, maybe, or cruise ship. It glinted in the sun, sending up sparks of light. For a moment I thought someone was trying to send us Morse code. Rubbing my eyes, I looked away. I needed to get some rest.

“I can’t figure it out,” Aly said. “How did the Massa escape? Where did they go?”

“And why didn’t my mom tell us we were heading into a trap?” I added. “She could have sent a message to her own phone. She knows I have it.”

“But she’s one of them!” Aly said. “Her mind has been turned.”

I glared at her. “I’m her son, Aly! Parents care about their kids. It’s … it’s just built in.”

“Well …” Cass muttered.

We glanced back to where he was lying.

Cass, who hadn’t seen his parents in years. Because they were in jail. Because they had abandoned him to a life of orphanages and foster parents.

I took a deep breath. “Hey, I—I’m sorry.”

But Cass’s eyes were wide with fright. The plane had begun to shake. We dropped like a roller coaster. My seat belt cut into my gut and I gripped my handrests.

Aly let out a gasp. “Does this mean we’re getting close?”

Torquin nodded. “Entering KI territory.”

“You’re doing that on purpose!” Cass said.

“Magnetic forces,” Torquin said with a shrug.

“Something extremely gross will fly out of my stomach and magnetize to the back of your neck if you don’t fly better,” Cass replied.

I saw Mount Onyx first, rising like a black fist from the water. In a moment we saw home—our new home, an island undetectable by even the most sophisticated instruments.

“What the …?” Aly said.

My eyes locked on the location of the Karai Institute campus, where I expected to see the lush green quadrangle, surrounded by brick buildings.

In its place was a giant plume of black smoke.

THE PLANE BANKED sharply right, away from the campus.

“Where are you going?” I demanded. “The airport is in the other direction!”

“Back of island,” Torquin said. “Change in plans.”

“It’s all jungle on that side!” Cass said. “We’ll never land this thing there.”

“Airport too dangerous,” Torquin declared.

“It’ll take hours to hike through the trees,” I said. “We need to get there fast, Torquin. The institute is on fire.”

Torquin ignored us both, yanking the steering mechanism again.

My stomach jumped up toward my throat. We were out over the water, circling farther away from land. As it vanished over the horizon, Torquin banked again.

We zoomed back in, toward the rear of the island. It was a blanket of green, surrounded by a thin sliver of beach. “The sand is too narrow!” Aly said, her voice rising in panic.

“Banzaiii!” Torquin yelled.

The plane’s nose pointed downward. I gripped the armrest. From behind, Cass grabbed my arm. He was screaming. Or maybe that was me. I couldn’t tell. As the plane dove, I closed my eyes.

We hit hard. My back jammed down into my hips, like I’d been squashed by an ogre. Cass slammed into the back of my seat. A deafening roar welled up around us as water slammed against the windows.

“Sand too narrow,” Torquin replied. “But sea not too narrow.”

As the jet’s forward momentum slowed to a stop, the windows cleared. I could see the island shore about a football field’s length away from us, separated by an expanse of ocean.

Cass’s eyes were tightly closed. “Are we dead?”

“No, but I think I sprouted some gray hairs,” Aly said, “aside from the lambda on the back of my head. Torquin, what are we doing here?”

Torquin mumbled something in a hurry. He jabbed a button, and Slippy began speeding toward the island on its superlight aluminum-alloy pontoons.

Cass, Aly, and I shared a baffled look. My heart was racing. As the pontoons made contact with sand, we jumped out. Torquin opened a compartment in the back of the plane and pulled out a huge pack of equipment. I’d never seen him move so fast.

Aly stared, ankle-deep in water. “Torquin, I am not moving another step until you talk to us. In full sentences. With an explanation!”

Torquin handed us each a flak vest, a machete, a lightweight helmet, and a belt equipped with knives and water canisters. “These are for protection,” he snapped. “Island is under attack.”

“You know that just from that smoke?” Aly said.

“Where smoke, fire,” Torquin replied. “Where fire, attack.”

His logic was not perfect, but when I saw the furious glint in his eyes I decided not to argue. Aly and Cass clearly felt the same way. We suited up quickly. Weighted down by the equipment, we waded to the shore. The trees formed a thick, impenetrable wall. No paths in sight.

Torquin stopped, carefully looking around. “Wait. Easy to get lost.”

“Just follow me,” Cass said. “We have the sun, the shore, the slope of the land, and Mount Onyx. More than enough points for geographic triangulation. We don’t need a map.”

We didn’t question him. Cass was a human GPS. He could memorize maps and routes to the inch.

“Need dictionary,” Torquin gruffed, as we all started after Cass.

* * *

I didn’t know which was worse—the smothering heat of the sun, the bug bites that made my legs look like raw hamburger, the screeching of animals we couldn’t see, or the smell of the smoke.

It was all horrible.

I knew Torquin’s analysis had to be wrong. The island was shielded by some force that made it impossible to find by anybody. But what had happened? An electrical short circuit? A lightning hit?

I dreaded what we would find.

Cass stumbled and stopped. His face was bright red, his clothes drenched. Setting his backpack down, he sat on a tree stump. “Dry …” he said.

“Have some water,” Aly said, unscrewing her canteen.

Cass waved it away. “I’m okay,” he said. “I meant, the land is dry. The trees, too. If the breeze pushes the fire in this direction, we’re toast. Literally.”

I nodded. “Let’s stay close, in case we have to retreat to the beach.”

“We have to help them,” Cass said, wiping his head. “We have to be like Marco. He would never retreat.”

“Marco,” Aly said, “retreated from us.”

I helped Cass to his feet. He quickly slipped ahead of Torquin, taking the lead. We were passing Mount Onyx now. Below us were Jeep tracks, where we’d raced back to the campus when the griffin attacked.

Cass picked up the pace. The smell was pungent and strong. White ash floated down through the treetops. Monkey screeches and birdcalls echoed around us. But I could hear other sounds now. Voices. Distant shouts.

“Stop!” Torquin ordered.

We nearly plowed into each other. Torquin passed us, squinting into the smoky air. I followed closer and saw what looked like an enormous spiderweb, strung between trees. “Security fence,” Torquin said. “High voltage.”

“Aly knows how to disable that,” Cass said. “She did it when we tried to escape.”

“From the inside,” Aly reminded him. “Not from here. We’re stuck.”

Torquin crouched silently, grabbed the top of an umbrella-shaped mushroom, and pulled hard. The stalk broke cleanly, revealing a blinking red light, flush with the ground. I heard a soft click. “Voilà,” he said. “Disables. Thirty seconds. For KI people stuck in jungle.”

“You know French?” Cass asked.

“Also croissant,” Torquin replied proudly.

Cass took the lead again. The scent of smoke was growing stronger. We were practically running now. The sweat on my back felt like a lake against the heavy pack. But up ahead, the dense jungle darkness was giving way to the light of a clearing.

A light made brighter by fire.

Cass stopped first. He dropped to his knees, his jaw hanging open.

“This can’t be …” Aly said.

We all sank down beside Cass, at the edge of the jungle now. The Karai Institute spread out before us, but it looked nothing like the stately college campus we’d left. The grassy quadrangle was chewed up by boot prints and speckled with glass from broken windows all around. I could see figures moving through the brick buildings, white-coated KI technicians fleeing into the woods. Flames leaped from Professor Bhegad’s second-floor collection of antiquities.

Fires raged behind the quad buildings, from the direction of the airport, the dorms, the supply sheds, and support buildings. The tendrils of smoke twined skyward, disappearing into an umbrella cloud of blackness.

“Leonard …” Cass rasped.

“Leonard?” Aly said. “All you can think about is what happened to your pet lizard? What about the KI staff?”

An anguished cry from across the quadrangle made us all instinctively duck behind a thicket. I peered through the branches to see a man in a ripped white KI lab coat tumble out the game room entrance. His hair was matted with blood.

As he scrambled to his feet, there was no mistaking Fiddle, our resident mechanical and aeronautical genius.

“We have to help him,” I said, rising, but Aly grabbed me by the collar.

From the building entrance, behind him, stepped a man dressed in black commando gear, goggles, and a helmet emblazoned with a black M.

“Massa …” Aly said, pointing him out to me.

“But how?” Cass asked. “The island is undetectable by human means.”

“Massa not human,” Torquin said.

Now I could see more of them—in the windows of the lab buildings, running across the basketball court. I could see them dragging KI scientists into the dorm, throwing rocks through windows. One of them, racing across the campus, tore down the KI flag, which stood in front of the majestic House of Wenders.

Fiddle staggered closer toward the jungle. He looked desperately around through the broken lenses of his glasses. I wanted to call out to him, but the commando grabbed Fiddle by his lab coat and yanked him down from behind.

“We have to help him,” I said.

“But it’s four against a bazillion,” Cass said.

Torquin crouched. “But this four,” he said, pulling a wooden case from his pack, “is very good.”

TORQUIN PULLED A long, slender pipe and a handful of darts from his pack. He moved through the jungle, crab-walking silently away from the thicket.

Dropping behind a fallen tree, Torquin put the pipe to his lips, and blew.

Shissshhhh!

Fiddle’s captor crumpled downward instantly, felled by a small, green-feather-tipped tranquilizer dart. “Eye of bull,” Torquin said.

I scrabbled to my feet and raced out of the jungle toward Fiddle.

As Fiddle saw me approach, he turned to run away. “It’s Jack McKinley!” I called out as loudly as I dared.

He stopped and squinted at me. “I must be dreaming.”

I took his arms and pulled him toward the trees. Behind us I could hear doors opening, voices shouting. Torquin’s tranquilizer darts shot out from the jungle with impossible speed, each one followed by a groan.

With the sharp crrrrack of a gunshot, a tree branch exploded just over Torquin’s head. We all dove into a thicket. “Why are we using darts when they’re using bullets?” Fiddle screamed.

“KI not killers,” Torquin replied. He reached out and lifted Fiddle onto his back as if he were a rag doll. “Go! Deeper into jungle. Hide!”

We followed Cass back the way we’d come. Behind us, an explosion rocked the jungle and we were airborne in a storm of dirt and leaves. I thumped to the ground, inches behind Aly and Cass. A tree crashed to the jungle floor exactly where Torquin and Fiddle had been.

“Torquin!” I shouted.

“Safe!” his voice replied from somewhere behind the tree. “Just go!”

Flames leaped up all along the pathway we’d just taken. As we ran blindly into the jungle, I peered over my shoulder to see Torquin and Fiddle following us. Cass was taking the lead, his head constantly turning left and right. Honestly, I don’t know what he was seeing. Every inch of the jungle looked the same to me. But Cass knew. Somehow.

Panting, he stopped in a clearing and looked around. The explosions were like distant thunder now, barely audible above the animal noises and the sound of our own breaths. “Did you know this place was here?” I asked.

“Of course,” Cass nodded. “Didn’t you? We’ve been here before. We’re near the beach where we saw the dead whale. If we have to, we can follow the coast around to the plane.”

“Whoa, dismount!” Fiddle said as Torquin stomped into the area. Sliding off the giant’s back, Fiddle grimaced. He took off his broken glasses and pulled a tiny shard from his cheek. “This really hurts. That means it’s not a dream, right? Which is a bummer.”

“Are you okay?” Aly asked.

“Yeah, I think.” Fiddle nodded. “Although I should have bought safety lenses.”

“What happened here?” I demanded, catching my breath.

Fiddle’s eyes seemed drained of life. His face was taut, his voice distant, as if he were recounting a horrible nightmare. “I’m … sitting in the airport minding my own business—and these turkeys fly in. No one expected it. We were caught totally unaware. Someone must have given us away …”

“Marco,” Torquin said.

“Marco doesn’t know the way here,” Aly protested. “None of us do. It’s got to be someone else.”

“It is.” Cass eyed me warily. “It’s … Jack.”

I looked at him, speechless.

“Not you, personally,” Cass said. “Your phone. The one your mom gave you, in the Massa HQ. You turned it on while we were here.”

“Wait,” Aly said. “And you left it on?”

“Okay, maybe—but so what?” I said. “No signal can get through to the island. It’s totally off the grid. Any grid!”

Aly groaned, slumping against a tree. “It’s not about location, it’s about vector, Jack—meaning direction. When we got in the plane, the signal traveled with us. Once we left the protected area around the island, the Massa could pick up the signal.”

I imagined a map, with an arching, beeping signal, traveling slowly from the middle of the ocean toward Egypt. Like a big old arrow pointing where to go. “So they just followed the path backward and kept going … until they discovered the island …”

“Bingo,” Cass said.

I felt dizzy. This whole thing was my fault. If it weren’t for my boneheaded move, we wouldn’t be in this danger. How could I have been so ignorant? “I—I’m so sorry. I should have known.”

Cass was pacing back and forth. “Forget that now, Brother Jack. Really. It’s okay. Actually, it’s not.”

“Need to counterattack,” Torquin added, looking back in the direction of the compound.

“You and what army?” Fiddle asked. “You got zombies hidden away? Because the Massa are all over the explosives supply now. I say we run. However you got here, let’s get out the same way.”

When Torquin turned, his face was lined and his eyes moist, as if he’d aged a few years. “Never leave Professor Bhegad behind.”

“Or the Loculi,” I said. “Where are they?”

Torquin and Fiddle both looked at each other and shrugged.

“We gave them to Bhegad,” Aly said. “He didn’t tell you where he put them?”

Cass sagged. “There goes that plan.”

“Okay … okay …” I said, rubbing my forehead as I tried to think this through. “Bhegad probably kept the location of the Loculi to himself—one person only, to avoid a security leak. So we find him first, and he’ll lead us to them.”

“Unless the Massa get to him before us,” Cass said.

“Bhegad tough,” Torquin said. “Won’t crack under pressure.”

“We need to find his EP assignment,” Fiddle said. “Emergency protocol. We all get one. It’s where we have to go in case of an attack.”

“These EP assignments,” Aly said. “Are they stored somewhere?”

Fiddle shrugged. “Must be. The assignments are changed randomly from time to time. We’re notified electronically.”

“I’ll need to get to the systems control building.” Aly looked up. “The sun is setting. We have maybe an hour before it gets too dark to see outside. That’ll help us.”

“But the control building will be full of Massa,” Cass said.

“We clear it,” Torquin declared.

Fiddle looked at him in bafflement. “How? With darts? You guys are out of your minds. We need an army, not a sneak attack with a half-blind geek, a caveman, and three kids barely out of diapers.” He looked toward the water.

Aly’s jaw hung open. “Did you say … diapers?”

“Caveman?” Torquin added.

Fiddle backed away slowly. “Oh, I forgot—feelings. Guess you guys want sensitivity. Fine, it’s your funeral.”

He turned, lurching into the jungle.

“Hey!” Torquin cried.

As he lumbered after Fiddle, I followed. Aly called me back but I kept going. “Torquin, let him go!” I cried out.

After a few turns, deeper into the dense-packed trees, I felt my foot jam under a root. I tripped and landed a few feet from Torquin’s pack. I guessed he must have dropped it to lighten his load. But I couldn’t leave it there. Not with those tranquilizer darts inside. We could use those.

Wincing, I sat up. I could hear movement—footsteps? I wasn’t even sure from which direction the sound was coming. The sky was darkening. I looked over my shoulder, but the jungle was without paths, and even my own footsteps were lost in the dense greenery. “Aly?” I called out. “Cass?”

I waited. High overhead a monkey screamed. It dropped from a branch and landed on its feet, jumping wildly up and down. Eeee! Eeee!

“Go away!” I said. “I don’t have any food.”

It was slapping its own head now, gesturing wildly back into the woods.

“Do I know you?” I said, narrowing my eyes at the creature. During my first escape attempt from the island, I’d been lured to Torquin’s helicopter by an extremely smart chimp. Who looked very much like this one. “Are you showing me which way to go?”

Oooh, it grunted, darting straight for the backpack.

So that was its game—distracting me so it could steal the pack! “Hey, give me that!” I shouted.

A loud crack resounded, followed by a familiar scream.

Aly’s voice!

Ignoring the branches and vines that slashed across my face, I ran back toward the noise. In moments I saw the dull glow of the clearing.

Silently I dropped into the brush. I had a sight line. Cass and Aly were where I’d left them. Aly’s arm was bleeding. Cass was holding a branch high like a spear. Around them were four helmeted Massa, armed with rifles. They grinned, jeering, taunting my friends in some language I didn’t know.

My muscles tightened, ready to spring.

No. No way you can jump in there alone.

Where was Torquin?

I felt something jam into my back and nearly screamed aloud.

Whipping around, I came face-to-face with the monkey. It was holding out Torquin’s backpack to me.

I grabbed it and spun back toward the clearing. Shaking, I pulled out the blowpipe. My hands were sweaty. As I reached for a dart, the weapon slipped out of my hand. It clattered onto a rock. Behind me the monkey screeched in surprise.

From the dense jungle, a rifle emerged, pointing directly at my face.

“YEAAAGHHH!”

Torquin’s roar blotted out all sound. He leaped from the brush into the clearing, about twenty yards to my right.

The four soldiers wheeled around. Torquin landed full body on the one who’d found me, squashing the guy to the ground. Behind him, another Massa soldier was trying to take aim at Torquin, but the two bodies were too close. Instead he raised his rifle high and brought it down on Torquin’s head. Hard. It hit with a solid thud.

Aly ran toward Torquin to help, but the assailant backed away, the weapon still in his hand.

Its barrel was now bent, forming the shape of Torquin’s skull.

Torquin stood, scratching his head in puzzlement. Then, grabbing the rifle, he flung it against a tree, with its owner still holding tight. The guy folded without a whimper.

“Two down,” Torquin grunted.

As the other two men maneuvered in the confusion, I snatched up the blowpipe, jammed a dart down the tube, and blew. It sailed into the clearing, nearly hitting Aly and Cass along the way.

Eeee! chided the monkey, holding out another dart.

The men couldn’t seem to decide where to point their rifles, at Torquin or me. I aimed carefully, firing once again. Cass and Aly dove to the ground, out of the way. But my shot sailed true this time, catching one Massa in the side of the neck.

EEEEEE! The monkey was jumping up and down now.

“My feeling exactly,” I said.

The monkey began gesturing frantically into the trees. I turned to see the remaining commando on his knees, lifting his rifle.

I ducked behind a bush, reaching for a dart. But I had used the last one. The monkey was grabbing my shoulder, leapfrogging over my head. “Hey!” I shouted.

Crrrack!

I flinched as the creature’s body jolted backward. It hit me in the face, knocking me to the ground. As I fell, a warm liquid oozed downward onto my neck.

I turned to see Torquin pummeling the last attacker with his massive fists. Cass and Aly were screaming, but I couldn’t make out the words.

“Little man, are you okay?” came Fiddle’s voice.

I blinked the blood from my eye. Fiddle was kneeling over me, cradling my head in his hand. “F-fine,” I said, spraying his face with red dots. “I thought you were going without us.”

“I was, until Gigantor got ahold of me,” he replied. “Dude, you totally rocked the Massa. I am impressed.”

“It wasn’t just me,” I said, sitting up.

Above, the setting sun had cast the sky orange. The waning light illuminated the small body of the monkey, lying in a twisted position on its back.

* * *

I watched Torquin quickly dig a hole with a bayonet. As he lowered the monkey’s body into it, distant shouts and explosions filtered through the thick jungle. The sky was darkening, which would only be to our advantage. By my calculation, the battle for the island had been under way for hours. We had little time and less hope of defeating the Massa. But in that moment all I could think about was the bravery of the little creature.

I felt a tear drop from my cheek onto the dirt. Aly looked at me with concern and put a hand on my shoulder.

“He took one for me,” I said with a shrug. “He didn’t deserve this.”

Aly nodded. As we rushed to cover the hole with soil, Torquin softly murmured, “Good-bye, Wilbur.”

“That’s the monkey’s name—Wilbur?” Cass asked.

Torquin wiped at his cheek with a huge hand.

“Guess he really meant something to you,” Aly said.

Torquin shook his head. “Humid today, is all.”

With a rustle of leaves, another commando emerged from the bush. It took a moment to recognize it was Fiddle, dressed in a Massa outfit he’d taken from an unconscious soldier. “I suggest we all suit up, guys. No time to lose.”

I turned. The four Massa officers were tied to trees at the edge of the clearing, their uniforms piled at their feet. “Four Massa, five us,” Torquin said. “I get uniform later.”

“Better hope they make them in plus sizes,” Fiddle said. “Now, hurry. And take the weapons, in case these guys wake up and break free.”

Leaving the gravesite, we each grabbed an outfit and put it on. The guys were all big, so the garb fit loosely over our own clothes.

Cass rolled up the cuffs of his baggy pants, pulled his belt as tight as it went, and grabbed a commando rifle. As Aly picked up another rifle and strapped it over her thin shoulders, her whole body sagged.

Fiddle gave her a dubious look. “You guys are a bigger danger to yourselves than the Massa are.”

“Try us,” Aly said.

“Follow me,” Cass said, stepping to the edge of the clearing. As we fell in behind, dodging our way around vines and trees, the jungle seemed to grow darker by the second. Under the helmet I was sweating like crazy. The noise from the compound had subsided, which meant the battle was winding down. What would we see? My heartbeat quickened with a mixture of hope and dread.

My rifle clanked heavily against my side, but that was nothing compared to the swarm of mosquitoes around my ankles. “Get away!” I said through gritted teeth, bending to swat at the cloud of tiny bugs.

I stopped in midslap at the sight of a flat rock, nearly as big as a manhole cover. On it was a carving of a fierce griffin, a half eagle, half lion. I bent down to examine it. I’d seen it before—back when I’d first tried to escape from the KI.

“Hm,” Torquin said, looming up behind me. He picked up the rock and scowled at the carving. “Griffin. Pah!”

The burning smell grew stronger. Through the branches now, I could see the winking lights of the compound. Distant voices shouted. From our left came the sound of painful, pitiful groans. Cries for help.

I looked at the others. They had all heard it, too. We changed direction, moving closer. I knew where we were now—just behind our dormitory.

We crouched behind thick brush. Not ten feet in front of us was a scraggly field, where a guard moved slowly back and forth, smoking a cigarette. “They’re using our dorm as a prison,” Aly whispered.

“At least they’re keeping KI people alive,” Fiddle said.

A pinpoint of light shot through the air. Before I could react, the stub of a lit cigarette hit the side of my face.

“Gggghhh—”

Torquin’s beefy hand closed around my mouth, cutting off an outcry. My cheek stung, and his fingers only made it worse.

The guard stopped in his tracks. He came closer to the jungle’s edge. Toward us. I held my breath. His eyes scanned the bushes as he shone a flashlight. From the dorm came a sudden clatter and the muffled voice of a KI captive: “Emergency! Yo, Massa lunkheads—Fritz is having a seizure! Somebody get him his medication!”

Fritz. The mechanic who had been part of my KI training.

But the guard ignored the voice. The beam was coming closer. It would discover my face first. I crouched lower, pressing my hands against the rocky ground. Torquin was to my right. He turned to me and mouthed the words “talk to him.” He gestured to my uniform.

I had almost forgotten. We were dressed like them. But what was I supposed to say?

“I see you …” the guard said, stepping closer.

Torquin glared. Taking a deep breath, I stood. “Of course you did!” I said, pointing to the welt on my cheek. “I … fell.”

Lame, lame, lame, Jack!

A smile grew across the guard’s face. He raised his rifle. “Nice outfit, kid. I know who you are,” he said. “And your face is going to look a lot worse if you don’t tell me where your little friends are.”

He lifted his rifle high over his head. I stepped back, shaking.

A dull gray blur shot across my line of sight. It connected with the Massa’s face with a sickening thud. Silently, he and his rifle fell to the ground.

The griffin rock was resting by his head.

“Now,” Torquin said, stepping triumphantly out of the woods, “we have fifth uniform.”

“HOW DO I look?” Torquin walked stiffly toward us, wearing the fallen Massa’s garb. The pants had ripped at the seams, his arms dangled out of the too-short sleeves, and his belly protruded from an unbuttoned shirt.

“Like a bear in samajap,” Cass replied. “Too bad it’s getting dark. We could kill them with laughter.”

Aly and I were poised at the edge of the jungle. Fiddle had raced into the dorm, which was now unguarded. Around us, the compound was in utter chaos. The place may have been a great research institute, but it wasn’t built to withstand an assault.

A piercing alarm made us jump. Seconds later, Fiddle raced out the back door of the dorm. Behind him swarmed a group of bedraggled KI people. Two of them were holding Fritz the mechanic by his legs and shoulders. As they disappeared into the jungle to our left, Fiddle gestured toward the escapees. “All of you!” he urged. “Get to MO twenty-one, now!”

“Is Fritz okay?” I asked.

“Diabetic,” Fiddle explained, as KI prisoners streamed out of the dorm. “Needs an insulin injection. Fortunately, there are plenty of medical doctors among the KI. We have a couple of hidden shelters on the island. MO twenty-one is near Mount Onyx. There’ll be insulin in the emergency supplies there.”

I could barely recognize some of the KI staff. Brutus, the head chef, had been beaten badly, his face swollen and red. He had to be helped by two others. Hiro, the martial-arts trainer, was walking with a crutch. They looked toward us, weary and bewildered, as if we were a dream.

Fiddle urged them on, then gathered Torquin, Cass, Aly, and me close. We could hear Massa reinforcements clattering in at the front of the building. “We don’t have much time before the goons figure out what just happened. I’ll stay here and get as many KI people to safety as I can. You guys get to work finding Bhegad’s EP assignment. Aly, you know where to go?”

“Building D,” Aly said.

Fiddle nodded. “Right. The systems control center. But I warn you, the info is encrypted beyond belief.”

“Depends on your definition of belief,” Aly said with a small grin.

“Radio me when you find him.” Fiddle fished a walkie-talkie from his pocket and threw it to me. “The uniforms will give you some cover. Be sure you find those Loculi. Bhegad will know where they are. Do you understand this? Good. I can meet you back at the plane. Where is it?”

“Enigma Cove,” Torquin said.

With a nod, Fiddle disappeared in the direction of the dorm. Cass, Aly, Torquin, and I bolted. We followed the perimeter of the campus toward Building D. I was scared out of my mind. The Massa knew our faces. In the light, we were toast. And the baggy uniforms didn’t help. But the gathering darkness might help us pass for Massa commandos.

As the alarm blared all over the compound, the chaos seemed to multiply in the quadrangle. Officers were screaming at subordinates, commandos were shoving KI staff toward the dorm. No one seemed to care about four more running people.

We crouched behind the squat, square building and peered into the window. Exactly two Massa were in there, pounding on keyboards. “Skeleton crew,” Cass commented.

Torquin stood, gesturing us to follow. He circled the building and strolled through the building’s front door, which had been blasted open. “I help, fellow Massa?” he boomed.

The two men turned. One of them nearly spit out his coffee. “Whoa, nice uniform! What have you been eating, dude?”

Torquin grabbed them by their collars, lifted them out of their seats, and butted their heads together. “Pound cake,” he said.

Aly slid into a seat in front of a console. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Code flashed across the screen at impossible speed.

“You can actually read that?” I said.

“Shhh …” The scrolling stopped, and the screen filled with random letters and symbols. “Okay, there it is … House of Wenders, sublevel seven. That’s Bhegad’s EP.”

“That’s the underground lab, where they made Shelley the Loculus shell,” Cass exclaimed.

“Where do you read that, Aly?” I asked, staring at the gobbledygook.

“It’s in hexadecimal notation,” she said. “Those combinations each represent letters and characters.”

I stared at her. “You scare me.”

“Actually, I scare me, too.” She turned from the screen, a concerned look on her face. “I wouldn’t have been able to read that even a week ago. Hurray for G7W. Now let’s see if we can scare the Massa …” Swinging around back to the keyboard, she said, “They will have access to our trackers now, right? So before we get Bhegad, why don’t I just zap the KI’s tracking machine—along with some other choice equipment … hee-hee …”

“We can’t just run across the courtyard to the House of Wenders,” Cass said. “There are tons of Massa. Dark or not, someone will recognize us, just like that guard did.”

“Go the long way,” Torquin suggested.

“On it.” Aly’s fingers were a blur. “Overloading the Comestibule circuits … disabling the breakers … should cause a small explosion there. Okay. On the count of three, the lights should go out everywhere except the House of Wenders. The Massa goons who aren’t heading to the dorm will be drawn to the explosion in the Comestibule, buying us some space and time.”

“Wait. What if someone is actually in the kitchen?” I asked.

Torquin looked skeptical. “The long way is better.”

Aly sighed. “I figure that the kitchen-cafeteria is the one place people won’t be during a Massa attack. Let’s hope I’m right. Ready? One … three!”

She leaped from the seat. A distant blast rocked the earth. I staggered and fell to the floor. “I thought you said a small explosion!”

“There goes five fifty-pound sacks of chocolate chips,” Cass said mournfully.

Torquin pushed us all outside. We ducked into a shadow, watching smoke rise from the Comestibule.

Together we sprinted across the compound, which was now pitch-dark, save for the lights in the windows of the House of Wenders, directly across from us. It loomed over the campus, as solemn and stately as a courthouse, its wide marble stairs topped by seven columns. The KI flag that flew on a pole in front was now tattered and blackened. As a group of five Massa raced down the stairs in confusion, Torquin called out to them: “Attack! Comestibule! Go!”

They stomped off toward the commotion, and we headed into the grand entrance hall, racing around the statue of the dinosaur that had spooked me so much when I’d first walked in here. The elevator in the back of the hall was empty. We piled inside and plunged downward to subbasement 7. Torquin held tight to his rifle.

The door opened directly into an enormous domed chamber, lit by a string of buzzing fluorescent lights. Torquin stepped inside, his bare feet slapping on the concrete. The room was full of abandoned workstations, their monitors glowing with the KI symbol.

“Professor?” I called out.

My voice echoed, unanswered, into the dome.

“Empty,” Torquin announced.

“I think we all see that,” Aly remarked.

“Any other suggestions where to go?” Cass said.

With a soft whoosh, the elevator door shut behind us. As I turned instinctively, the room plunged into sudden darkness.

A low, focused hissss came from the ceiling. Three emergency lights flicked on, casting everything in a sickly bluish-white glow. I felt a tickle in my throat. Cass began coughing, then Aly.

Torquin fell to his knees, his eyes red. Quickly he began ripping apart sections of his already ripped pants, then throwing the pieces to us. “Put on … nose!” he said, gasping for breath.

“What’s happening?” Aly said, doubling over with violent coughs.

Torquin jammed the fabric over his face. “Tear … gas!”

I SANK TO the floor. My knees hit the concrete with a sharp crack, my eyes began to water, and I felt as if someone had crawled into my throat with a set of knives.

Torquin was struggling with his rifle, looking toward the back of the room. There, a lab room door was swinging open to reveal a figure wearing a white coat and a gas mask. As the person came closer, Torquin took aim.

I could see a black-and-gray ponytail protruding out from under the mask. As Torquin sneezed, the person bolted to the left.

Aly was wheezing, convulsed into a ball. Cass looked dead. I tried to keep my eyes open, breathing directly into the fabric. I crawled around, following the masked figure, who was grabbing at the wall as if looking for something. I managed to close my fingers around an ankle and pulled. As the person fell to the floor, I reached up and yanked off the mask.

“No!” screamed a voice. “Don’t!”

I was face-to-face with Dr. Bradley, Professor Bhegad’s personal physician.

And traitor.

“You’re”—I gasped—“one of them, too?”

I thought my lungs would ball up and burst. As I fell back, Dr. Bradley sank beside me, red-faced and choking, grasping desperately for her mask.

With a grunt, she yanked it from my fingers. Climbing to her feet, she slipped the mask back on and steadied herself by grabbing the wall.

I blinked like crazy but I was too weak to stand. Dr. Bradley was pulling open a metal panel on the wall, flipping a switch.

She swung around toward me. My eyes were fluttering shut. Tear gas? I didn’t think so. This was some other poison. I was drifting into unconsciousness, fighting to stay alert.

The last thing I saw before blacking out was Dr. Bradley looming over me like a colossus, reaching down toward my head.

* * *

I awoke next to a corpse.

Or at least that’s what I assumed it was—a body draped under a white sheet on a slablike table. I was lying on the floor. Rows of fluorescent lights beamed overhead, buzzing softly. As I tried to sit up, my head pounded.

“Easy, Jack,” Dr. Bradley’s voice said. “We’re not quite done with Cass.”

Blinking, I turned. Her back was facing me as she leaned over another table. Her ponytail spilled over the back of her lab coat. I could see Cass’s shoes sticking out from one side.

“What happened?” I said.

“Dr. Bradley thought we were Massa,” Aly’s voice replied. I got to my feet to see her, and my head throbbed with pain. She was sitting with Torquin against the wall near the door. Both of them were red in the face. I figured I was, too, from the aftereffects of the poison gas. “That’s why she activated the gas. When she realized who we were, she turned off the jets.”

“I meant Cass,” I said. “What happened to Cass?”

“Treatment,” Torquin replied.

“But—but he’s not scheduled to need one yet,” I said.

“He’s early,” Dr. Bradley spoke up. “One possibility is that the poison gas brought it on. That’s what I’m hoping.”

“Hoping?” I asked.

Aly sighed. “Remember what Professor Bhegad told us way back when we first got here? As we get closer to age fourteen, the effects of G7W start to accelerate. The episodes are more frequent, and the effects are stronger.”

“When is Cass’s birthday?” I asked.

“He doesn’t know,” Dr. Bradley said softly. “Even the KI, with all their resources, couldn’t get hold of his birth records. They were misfiled in some city hospital and possibly destroyed.”

“So he may have less time than we do,” Aly said.

Dr. Bradley shrugged. “The good news is that the treatment worked. For now, at least, he will be functional.”

“Excellent … work,” said the corpse.

The voice startled me. It was unmistakably Professor Bhegad’s. As I took a closer look at the figure under the sheet, I saw that its head and face weren’t covered. But even so, I might not have known the old professor. He was almost unrecognizable, his face chalk white, his eyes watery and small, his hair like a tangled mass of straw. “Good to see all of you,” he said, a line of drool dribbling from his mouth as he spoke. “I don’t know … how this happened.”

As his eyes flickered and he drifted off, Dr. Bradley turned away from Cass. “Your friend should be fine for now. As for Professor Bhegad …” She took a washcloth from a nearby sink and placed it on the professor’s head. “He was thrown to the floor after an explosion. His lung collapsed, and it’s quite possible he has some internal injuries; I haven’t been able to do a full examination.”

“We have access to Slippy on the other side of the island,” I said. “Fiddle can help you get there with the professor and Cass, while Torquin, Aly, and I rescue the Loculi.”

“Professor Bhegad needs hospital care,” Dr. Bradley said.

“Can you bring what he needs—some kind of portable hospital?” I said. “We can’t risk keeping him here. If the Massa find him, they’ll torture him for information. I can give you a walkie-talkie if you need one.”

“I have my own,” Dr. Bradley said wearily. “I can reach Fiddle. I suppose this is our only choice.”

“Professor Bhegad,” Aly said, gently brushing a strand of wispy white hair from his forehead, “Dr. Bradley is going to take you away from here. Have the Massa taken the Loculi?”

“N … no …” Professor Bhegad shook his head and turned shakily toward Torquin. “They are in … location D … Go now … keep them safe.”

“Is that the same as Building D, the control center?” Aly asked.

“Not Building D,” Torquin said. “Location D.”

“Which is …?” I prodded.

“Dump,” Torquin replied.

* * *

The smell and the Song hit me at the same time.

We were in a Jeep that Torquin had stolen at the edge of the compound. Well, stolen isn’t really the right word. It belonged to the KI, but two Massa guys were in it until Torquin pulled them out and threw them against a tree. Now we were careening across the airfield toward the Karai Institute landfill, aka dump. My head felt light, as if something had crawled into my brain. Not a sound, exactly, but a vibration that began in my ears and spread throughout my body. “I’m feeling it,” I said. “The Song of the Heptakiklos. That means the Loculi are nearby.”

“It sbells like subthigg died here.” Aly was holding her nose. The stench was acrid, foul, and growing fast as the Jeep pulled up to a smoking hill. “I’ll stay in the car.”

“Big help,” I replied, climbing out the backseat.

I held the end of my too-long sleeve over my nose, but Torquin was breathing normally. “Nice place,” he mumbled. “Come here to meditate.” We stopped in front of an enormous compost pile, which he carefully examined with his flashlight. Then, barehanded, he began digging out blackened banana peels, hairy mango pits, and globs of wilted vegetables.

The Loculi, it seemed, were buried in a pile of garbage.

Behind us, distant shouts resounded from the jungle. I squinted but all I could see was a small area around me, lit by moonlight and an old, dim streetlamp. Torquin turned, quickly handing me the flashlight. “Pah. Massa. I distract. You continue. Find door. Code is FLUFFY AND FIERCE.”

“But—” He stalked away before I could say another word.

I stared at the mound of rotten food and nearly puked. But the voices were getting closer, and they did not sound happy.

There was one spot that looked as if the garbage had been stirred around recently. I hoped it was the right spot, and not just some jungle animal’s favorite snack location. Holding my breath, I thrust my hand into the goop. It was clammy and cold. My fingers slipped. I felt a rodent scampering out from underneath, nearly running across my shoes.

Keep going …

My wrists were covered now. Liquid dribbled down my arm. Each movement brought a fresh whiff of horribleness.

There.

My knuckles knocked on something hard. Guided by my flashlight in one hand, I used the other hand to fling away big gobs until I could see a kind of hatch within:

“JACK … WHAT ARE you doigg?” Aly cried out, racing toward me from the Jeep. “Torquid’s holdigg off sub Bassa. Do subthigg.”

I gestured toward the filthy screen. “Torquin said the code was ‘fluffy and fierce.’”

“We’ve seed those words before,” Aly said. “Whedd we first got to the isladd, I foud Torquid’s pass code id the codtrol buildigg—‘all thiggs fluffy and fierce.’ How does that help with this—‘Epic fail’? How cadd you fail before you evedd try? Add why ‘you rodett’? Add what’s with the LCD screed?”

“I don’t know!” I said. “Maybe it’s some kind of code. You’re the code person!”

The voices were getting louder. It sounded like Torquin was arguing.

“If it’s a code,” Aly said, “you should be able to edter subthigg. With a keyboard or dubber pad.”

Keyboard. Number pad.

I stared at the message closely. “The letters are in squares,” I said. “It looks like a keyboard.”

“But it’s dot,” Aly said, looking nervously over her shoulder. “It’s a bessage! Hagg odd. Let bee look at it …”

Together we stared at the dumb, insulting thing. I wasn’t seeing the words now, just the letters. They were swirling around in my head, arranging and rearranging. There was something about them …

I reached out and touched the F of Fail. The LCD screen changed.

“What did you just do?” Aly said.

“Fluffy and fierce …” I murmured, quickly spelling out the words—pressing the L of Fail, the U of You, the F of Fail twice, and so on … “I’m just tapping the letters, spelling out the words.”

“It would’t be that sibple!” Aly insisted.

The door beeped. I jumped back. “It’s a keyboard!”

Aly swallowed hard. “Subtibes,” she said, “it’s a gift to be sibple …”

I pushed hard on the door, but it didn’t budge.

“You’re dot puttigg your weight idto it!” Aly said.

“You try,” I said.

Aly recoiled. “Doe way!”

I pounded again. I could hear voices getting louder. Aly and I both turned to see Torquin arguing with three Massa. I shut off my flashlight, leaned back, then thrust my shoulder into the door.

A thick cake of hardened, putrid glop fell away, revealing a door handle in the shape of a pull-down lever.

Grabbing it in my slippery hand, I yanked it down. The door creaked open, outward. I thrust my flashlight into the space. It was wider and deeper than I expected—maybe four feet in all directions. I stuck my head inside to see the whole area. And there, resting against the left side, were two canvas bags, full and round and exactly the right size. They were cinched at the top with a rope. One was an olive color, the other brown. Both of them were ragged and full of holes. I guessed Bhegad had hidden these in a hurry.

Quickly I opened the olive sack and saw the glowing, whitish shape of the Loculus of Flight. With a smile, I cinched the bag closed and opened the other. Although I could feel the Loculus of Invisibility, I couldn’t see it.

“Yes! Got ’em.” Making sure both bags were tightly closed, I pulled them out. I braced myself to run and turned toward Aly. I came face-to-face with a superbright flashlight beam. “Aly, will you please lower that thing?”

A deep, guttural voice answered. “As you wish.”

I jumped back as the beam dropped downward, revealing a hooded man, his face concealed by a cowl. In the dim streetlamp light, I saw Aly a few feet beyond him. Torquin was with her now, too. Their faces were ashen, their hands in the air. Behind them stood three Massa.

“What a stroke of luck to find you here,” said Brother Dimitrios, pulling back his cowl. “We missed you in Egypt. But how considerate of you to return and find these for us.”

BROTHER DIMITRIOS HELD out his hand, palm up. Behind him stood his two favorite henchmen. Brother Yiorgos was dark and balding, with a round face and a constant creepy smile. Stavros had a mass of curly hair, a thick unibrow, and a scowl, his chin blackened by beard stubble.

Both of them held guns pointed toward Aly and Torquin.

“I do not like to use such brutish tactics,” Brother Dimitrios said, “but I believe we are having some temporary trust issues. You left us rather abruptly in Giza.”

“You kidnapped us!” I said.

Brother Dimitrios chuckled. “We freed you from the people who had taken you from your homes. That is the opposite of kidnapping, yes? More like rescuing, I’d say.” He was moving closer now, hand still outstretched. “We extended an offer to you. A lifeline. An opportunity to prevent your own deaths. And instead you fled to your abductors. Tell me, how’s that working for you now?”

I took a step backward. “You destroyed Babylon. You brainwashed Marco. You’re turning him into some kind of monster. And you promised him he’d be a king! How were we supposed to trust you?”

“Because we are the ones who tell the truth, Jack,” Brother Dimitrios said. “We are the good guys.”

“You destroyed the Karai Institute!” I said.

“They would have destroyed us if they’d gotten the chance,” Brother Dimitrios said. “It has always been part of their plan. But none of that matters now. The KI no longer exists. We are the only game in town. Which is as it should be. I trust we will eventually earn your loyalty, Jack. But for now, you need only give us the Loculi. It is the smartest thing you can do. For yourselves and the world.”

As he reached for both sacks, Aly gasped aloud. “Don’t!”

I held tight and backed away. Brother Dimitrios chuckled again. “So shy now. And yet you were the one who generously showed us the way to the island, which we’d been seeking for decades.”

Once we left the protected area around the island, the Massa could pick up the signal, Aly had said.

“You planted that phone!” Aly accused him.

Brother Dimitrios raised an eyebrow. “You mean, the phone you stole?”

I couldn’t read his expression. Was he mocking us? Was it possible Mom had played us?

I thought about what she had done—left us a high-res close-up of her own eye, which we’d used for the retinal scan. That was how we’d gotten access to the Loculi. That was how we were able to escape. She had risked her status to help me. To help us.

At least I’d thought so.

Dimitrios barked a dry laugh. “You know, the timing couldn’t have been better. You see, we were looking for a new headquarters anyway, since you betrayed the location of our old one to your Karai Institute friends. So this gave us the opportunity to eliminate the competition, so to speak.” He looked around with a satisfied smile. “Not to mention upgrading our location at the same time.”

A distant explosion made me flinch. The KI was being destroyed. This reality was squeezing me like a fist. The Scholars of Karai had built the island on centuries of research, on land that no one could ever find. Now all of it—the labs, the healing waterfall, the Heptakiklos, the space-time rift—was under new ownership. Because the Massa had found the one person dumb enough to leave a trail. Me.

“As you can hear, we are already in the process of a … gut renovation,” Brother Dimitrios said. “We will rebuild here, more gloriously than you can imagine. If you keep the Loculi, you will die, Jack. Or you can choose to give them to us. And we will save your lives.”

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to shape some kind of plan, something that made sense. I concentrated on the McKinley family motto, which had always gotten me through tough times: a problem is an answer waiting to be opened.

All my life I’d thought that mottoes were dumb. Just words.

Opening my eyes, I stared at the two canvas bags.

There was only one possible answer.

“All right,” I said, slipping my hands under the sacks. “You win. Take them.”

“JACK, NO!” ALY cried.

Torquin let out a roar. He turned and lifted Brother Yiorgos off the ground like a toy soldier, but the sound of a gunshot made him freeze.

Brother Stavros stood with one arm raised high, a revolver in his fist. Smoke wisped upward from the barrel, from where he’d shot in the air. His other arm was locked around Aly’s neck. “Don’t make this hard for us,” he growled.

Torquin let Yiorgos fall to the ground.

“Vre, Stavros, this is not a movie,” Brother Dimitrios said. “Let go of the girl.”

Aly pushed herself away from Stavros’s grip. Yiorgos rose, grimacing. They all stood, bodies angled toward me. In the dim light I couldn’t see anyone’s face clearly, but I gave a sharp warning glance to Aly and Torquin. I did not want them to get hurt.

Lifting the sacks, I curled my hands underneath. The material was worn and ripped, and my fingers felt for the holes.

There.

Quickly I slipped my hand inside the brown sack. I felt the warmth of the Invisibility Loculus. That was all I needed. Just to touch the surface.

I knew I was fading from sight by the look on Brother Dimitrios’s face. Utter shock.

He lunged forward. I leaped aside, spinning to the right. I untied the top, pulling out the entire Loculus. Tucking it under my arm, I held tight to the other sack.

Brother Stavros scooped his gun off the ground, where it had fallen.

Anything and anyone you touch becomes invisible.

I grabbed Aly’s uniform. With a grin, she turned toward Stavros. “Face, meet foot.”

He looked around, baffled at the voice coming from nowhere, and he never saw the swift kick Aly planted on his jaw. As he fell unconscious, Aly hooked her hand into Torquin’s belt. “Your turn.”

“Time for Whac-a-Massa,” he said.

Together we moved toward Brother Dimitrios, angling from the side. He stood, trembling, staring in the direction we’d just been. “This is the biggest mistake you can possibly make. Trust me. Also, striking a man while invisible is ungentlemanly conduct.”

“A little to the left,” Torquin replied.

As Brother Dimitrios flinched, the red-bearded giant delivered a haymaker to his jaw. Dimitrios’s feet left the ground. He flew back into Brother Yiorgos, and both men hurtled backward, smacking into a tree.

The three men lay there, inert. Torquin flexed and unflexed his fists. I could practically see smoke coming from his ears. “Good day, gentlemen,” he grunted.

I took Mom’s cell phone from my pocket. It had betrayed us. It was the reason they’d found this place. And I was not going to be taken advantage of again.

I reared my arm back and threw the phone into the jungle.

“Let’s get out of here before more of them come!” Aly said. “We have what we need.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Aly smiled sheepishly. She threw her arms around me, nuzzling her head on my shoulder. “Jack, you’re the best.”

“Mush,” Torquin said.

I pulled the Loculus of Flight from its sack. We would use both Loculi to get to the beach quickly, airborne and unseen.

But all I could think about was the phone. And its owner.

I don’t even remember the flight back to the beach.

* * *

I do remember seeing the shining hull of Slippy from high in the air. And Fiddle’s relieved smile as I let go of the others’ hands, making them visible as we touched down on the sand. “Where’s Jack?” he shouted, running to greet us.

Aly nudged me in the side. As I put my Loculus down in the sand, Fiddle jumped back. “Aaaghh! Don’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry, it’s the Invisibility Loculus,” I said. “It makes you invisible. Which is useful when you’re flying over enemy territory.”

He nodded. “You got them both—awesome! Cass, Bhegad, and Dr. Bradley are on board. We’re ready to book.”

I slipped the Invisibility Loculus into its sack, grabbed them both by the canvas tops, and ran after the others toward the jet. “How’s the professor?” Aly shouted.

“Dr. Bradley’s doing the best she can. They’re in the back of the plane. We managed to get a lot of equipment from the hospital—for him and for you.” Fiddle slowed. “Dr. Bradley can continue your treatments for a while. If you guys die, our dream is over. The KI really goes down in flames.”

“Sorry to spoil things for you,” Aly remarked.

Fiddle blushed. “Plus I care about you guys. Seriously. We all do. Now come on. They’re going to find us. While you were gone, more Massa flew into the compound. Top brass, I think. Huge plane.”

As we raced the final few yards to the jet, Cass appeared at the jet’s hatch, at the top of the ladder. “Sgniteerg!” he said. “Hope you’re impressed I could say that.”

Aly bounded up the ladder. “Just glad you’re feeling … terbet?”

Cass winced. “I think you mean retteb.”

Fiddle put his arm on my shoulders. “Good luck, tiger. Thanks for saving my sorry butt. You’re in the hands of the Jolly Red Giant now.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked.

“I found some more of our people in the jungle,” he replied. “A small group, mostly injured and scared. I don’t know how they made it out. But along with the prisoners from the dorm—it’s a core, and who knows how many more we’ll find. I want to stay here with them. Build a force, if we can.”

“The Massa will wipe you out,” I said.

Fiddle gave me a wry grin. “Best brains. Biggest muscle power. Which would you bet on?”

“Good point,” I said. “I feel sorry for the Massa.”

I gave Fiddle a bear hug and scampered up the ladder. As I took a seat near Aly and Cass, Torquin squeezed his frame into the cockpit. From the back of the plane, Professor Bhegad’s voice called out feebly: “Children … Aly … Jack … Cass … Marco …”

He was lying on a set of cushions against the rear bulkhead. Dr. Bradley had managed to strap him down and was adjusting the drip on his IV.

“All here,” I said gently. “All three of us. Marco is … gone, Professor. Remember?”

Professor Bhegad looked confused for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said. “Of course …”

The engine started with a roar. “Belts!” Torquin said.

I strapped myself in. Over the engine noise I heard a high-pitched cry. I figured it was a seagull.

Until my eyes caught a motion at the edge of the jungle. People.

I shone my flashlight through the window. Two figures were running across the sand toward us, waving their arms. One of them was much faster—someone broad-shouldered, with a slightly bowlegged gait and flowing brown hair.

“Marco?” Aly said.

But my eyes were fixed on the other person—older, female, her head covered by a bandanna.

“Stop the plane!” Cass shouted. “Let’s find out.”

“Too late!” Torquin replied.

The jet began to turn. I grabbed binoculars from the floor and peered through. The woman and Marco stood shoulder to shoulder now, looking up at us. Shaking her head, she removed the bandanna and flung it to the ground.

The breath caught in my throat. As the jet turned its pontoons toward the water, the coast grew smaller. Smoke passed across the moon’s surface like lost ghosts.

“Jack?” Aly said. “What did you just see?”

I let the binocs drop from my fingers. “My mom.”

“HOW CAN YOU be sure?” Aly picked up the binoculars and tried to scan the shore, but it was too dark to see anything.

I was shaking. “The walk. The way she moved her head when she took off that bandanna. Her eyes …”

“You could see all that?” Aly asked.

“I could see enough,” I said.

Aly let out a deep breath. “So it’s true. The photo was real.”

“Which is a good thing, Jack,” Cass said. “Even if you don’t think so now. You have to have faith that you’ll meet her. That things will work out.”

“A mom who faked her own death.” I whirled around at him, angrier than I ever thought I’d be. “Who didn’t care enough to be in touch for six years. Who’s part of a team of killers and liars. How will that work out?”

“A mom who’s alive, when you thought she wasn’t,” Cass said softly.

I backed off, taking a deep breath. I’d seen Cass’s parents in a newspaper photo that Cass had kept in his backpack. The headline read “Mattipack Crime-Spree Couple Caught!” The mug shots showed two scowling people with bloated, angry faces.

“How do you have faith?” I asked. “Have you … have you ever tried to get in touch with your mom and dad?”

Cass nodded. “I called the prison a couple of years ago. It was weird. Mom couldn’t believe it was me. I talked a lot, but she didn’t say much. Just listened. When our time was up, I could hear that she was crying. She said ‘Love you, Cassius’—and then, click.”

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