Marco had slipped by me. From a bend just a few yards ahead, he turned around. “Dude, chill.”
“Don’t tell me to chill!” I said. “That was the last of the kerosene!”
“No, I mean, chill, dude—check this,” Marco said.
The three of us turned. Marco was standing in the middle of the path, holding a machete high over his head. It looked like the one I’d lost in the chute. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.
Marco pointed to the ground. “It was here. Someone must have dropped it.”
I ran to the bend. When the others were safely beside me, I dropped the torch to the stone floor. There the flame could die without sacrificing my hand.
The light was enough to illuminate the tunnel just ahead.
At the end of it was a mangled iron gate that had been forced halfway open.
“Torquin’s gate!” I cried out.
I ran toward it, the others close behind me. The bottom of the gate hung about four feet off the floor, warped and bent. “Wow, those guys are strong,” Cass said.
“We’re there!” Aly cried out, wrapping Cass in a big hug. “You did it! You led us back to the entrance!”
Marco was examining the bent iron. “Who invited Torquin to this party?”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him under the gate. “We’ll explain later.”
We raced around to the right, retracing our original steps. In moments the light from outside was illuminating the tunnel.
I felt the tickle of a faint warmish breeze. Marco fell in beside me, whooping at the top of his lungs. Cass and Aly were laughing and shouting behind us.
At the end of the path I burst into the open air, looking up to the sky and sucking in the moist, tepid jungle air. I had never tasted anything better. “Woo-hooo!” I screamed.
“Yrotciv!” Cass whooped, leaping in the air like crazy.
As Aly and Marco joined him in a screaming victory dance, I caught sight of a lump in the grass, just a few feet ahead near the pathway. The bent elbow of a rumpled white shirtsleeve.
“Professor Bhegad?” I cried out, running toward him.
The others followed close behind. The professor was on his side, fast asleep, his hands curled up under his head. His tweed jacket had been placed neatly underneath him, and his glasses lay folded in the grass just a few inches away, along with a handheld device showing something that looked like a radar screen.
Marco knelt and shook his shoulders. “Yo, Professor, ’sup? You okay?”
Professor Bhegad turned. He muttered something incoherent. Then his eyes focused, and his jaw nearly dropped to the ground. “Marco? Is that really you, my boy? But…how…?”
He sat up and wrapped Marco in a tight embrace. “Didn’t know I was immortal, huh, P. Beg?” Marco said. “Oh. Sorry. Not supposed to call you that.”
“You can call me anything you want,” Bhegad said through a broad grin.
Aly was patting Marco proudly on the back. Cass was dancing to his own inner happy tune. Bhegad looked like he was about to cry.
I had to admit, I wasn’t expecting that reaction.
Everyone began talking at once. Aly told the story of the rescue, the ceiling of guano, the healing waterfall. Cass described the pathway in detail. Bhegad listened in utter shock. He’d been expecting to see a corpse.
“Hey, what happened to Torquin and the Three Stooges?” Aly asked.
“They emerged without you,” Bhegad said softly. “It was the second time Torquin had lost you. I gave them a severe tongue-lashing and sent all of them back to KI …”
As they talked, my eyes were drawn to the professor’s handheld device.
I scooped it up and moved a few paces away, studying it. At the top of the screen was the word Onyx. Below that, pairs of letters that each were in different colors: a yellow JM, red AB, green CW, blue MR.
Jack McKinley, Aly Black, Cass Williams, Marco Ramsay.
Most of the screen was occupied by a vaguely round shape with faint concentric bar lines, like the outline of a mountain on a topographical map. Inside the shape, traces of yellow, red, and green all spiraled into the center from the outside, added a blue line, and then went back out from the center on another path that eventually merged with the first.
When I looked up, Bhegad was hurrying toward me. His eyes were dancing. “The Circle,” he said. “Tell me about the Circle, Jack!”
I ignored him, looking over his shoulder toward my friends.
“Guys,” I said softly. “He’s been tracking us all along.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE HEPTAKIKLOS
MARCO AND ALY stared at Professor Bhegad in disbelief.
“But—but that’s impossible,” Marco stammered. “How can I be tracked if I’m not wearing a tracker? You need an ankle bracelet or a special watch.”
“Please,” Bhegad said. “We can discuss this later. Tell me about the Circle!”
Aly took Bhegad’s device from me and examined it. “All four of us are here—time-lapse path—three going in, four coming out.”
“You knew the correct pathway into the maze beforehand?” Cass asked.
“No!” Bhegad said. “Not until we tracked your paths. But—”
“Where is the tracker, Professor Bhegad?” Aly demanded angrily. “Hidden in our shoes? Have you been following us all along?”
Professor Bhegad swallowed hard. “Part of the initial operation was to install tracking devices in each of you,” he said quickly. “Surgically. Not for any nefarious reason. For your own good.”
My mind reeled. “So when I tried to escape that first day…” I said. “And when we all attempted it, the next night…you knew where we were. The whole time, you were following us!”
Bhegad nodded. “Well…yes. But I thought you’d figured that out by now. How else would I have found you with the submarine?”
“You knew I wasn’t really at my treatment that night…” Aly said.
“You let us get onto that boat,” Cass added. “We almost drowned!”
“No, no, that’s not true,” Bhegad protested. “You did fool us for quite some time. I confess, your tricks with the looping camera footage and so forth actually worked rather well. It’s lucky that dear Torquin has a suspicious soul. After seeing a large fly crawl up Cass’s window in an exactly identical path seven times, he woke me up and we tracked you, but by then you were already at the beach.”
“What else aren’t you telling us, Professor?” I demanded. “What exactly have you done to us?”
“Peace, brothers and sister,” Marco said, his voice unnaturally calm. “Let us not yell, but rather show him how we feel.”
He reared his arm back and hurled the device deep into the jungle.
“No!” Bhegad shouted. “Do you know how much those cost?”
Cass stood over Professor Bhegad, glowering. He looked like a different person. “Marco died for your mission. If he hadn’t fallen in the right place, his blood would be on your hands. You owe us, Professor. You owe us big.”
“Owe you?” Bhegad said, his voice rising with impatience. “My dear boy, we planted the tracker for your sakes. We did not want to risk losing you. There are other forces after the secret of the Loculi. You are not as safe as you think. Now, please, tell me everything you saw in there!”
“Wait—what forces?” Marco asked.
Bhegad took a deep breath. “The Scholars of Karai discovered this island. For a century we have been dedicated to restoring Karai’s lineage. He recognized the foolishness of creating the Loculi—of trying to control the great Atlantean power. But his quest to destroy them backfired. It angered Massarym. So Massarym stole them and took them off Atlantis—and that removal brought on the destruction and sinking of the great civilization. Karai somehow survived, and he devoted his life to finding what his brother had taken. He searched the world for clues, going undercover, bribing people, until at last he finally found Massarym’s plans.”
“Do you have th
ose plans here?” I asked.
Bhegad shook his head. “It was long ago. They’ve since been lost. We believe Karai wanted to return the Loculi to Atlantis. To restore the balance, possibly to raise the continent and start anew. But he was constantly thwarted by the Massa—a group of Massarym’s followers. They were in awe of the powers Massarym drew from the Loculi. They thought him a god, and he thrived on that. But after Atlantis sank, he changed. He regretted his decision to steal the Loculi. He realized Karai had been right—they were too dangerous and should not have been created in the first place. But Karai’s desire to return them to the island—this horrified Massarym. He feared another cataclysm, a global one. He thought Karai had lost his mind. He considered destroying the Loculi but worried about the release of energy. So he devoted the rest of his life to hiding them away for eternity.”
“These people—the Massa—are they still active?” I asked.
Bhegad nodded. “They are obsessed with finding the Loculi—and us. We believe they are close to locating this island. Our surveillance has picked up increased chatter.”
“Can’t we all just be friends?” Cass asked. “Work together? We want the same things.”
“Most certainly not.” Bhegad shook his head. “The Massa have stayed loyal to the early aims of Massarym. They are about control. Domination. Ultimate power. We must find the Loculi before they steal them and figure out how to activate the powers.”
“If we let you sic us on the Evil Empire,” Marco drawled, “what do we get in return?”
“Your lives.” Bhegad glared at him. “If the Massa get the Loculi, you can’t return them.”
“Which means…we die,” Aly said.
Bhegad turned to me. “Now tell me about that Circle, Jack.”
I gulped. “It was carved into stone and there was a…bowl dug out of the middle, with writing in it. And this mist billowing out of a crack. Jammed inside the crack was a piece of sword,” I said. “And around that part were seven other bowls—”
“The Heptakiklos…” Bhegad said, his voice choked. “The Circle of Seven. Wenders was right. It’s here—the center of Atlantis! The place where the Loculi were stolen.”
“Each of the bowls had a carving,” I continued. “Statues and buildings that were totally recognizable—”
“Whoa. Pause button,” Marco said. “Behold the Immortal One. Marco who fell a billion feet without a scratch.” He stared around at us all, his eyes blazing. “Why are we worried about G7W anymore? And treatments? We have the Magic Waterpark of Life!”
I sucked in my breath. In all the excitement, I hadn’t thought of that. The water had brought Marco to life. Maybe it had cured us, too. Maybe we were free to go home.
I looked at Aly and Cass and knew they were thinking the same thing. Bhegad pulled a small, finger-shaped object out of his jacket pocket. He took Marco’s hand and shoved the instrument onto his right index finger.
Marco flinched. “Yeow. Easy, P. Beg, the Immortal One is still sensitive to pain.”
“Blood sample.” Bhegad removed the instrument and fished a Band-Aid out of his pocket for Marco. We gathered around, watching in bafflement as the numbers changed on the instrument. When they stopped, Bhegad sighed. “Same enzyme levels, same signs of mitochondrial chaos.”
“In English, please,” Marco said.
“The waterfall regenerated your tissue,” Bhegad said. “But it had no effect on G7W.”
“You mean, if we skipped a treatment and started going haywire and then got dropped into the water…” Aly said.
“It would not do a thing.” Bhegad shook his head sadly.
That seemed impossible. I searched Bhegad’s face. He had lied to us before, and there was nothing stopping him now.
“Atlantis was about balance,” the professor continued. “Clearly some of the energy has seeped through the rift. Powerful energy indeed, which is now trapped down there in the waterfall. But you are connected to Atlantis in a deeper way. Your ceresacrum needs that connection, that balance created between the Loculi and the forces underground. We must find them, Jack.”
“If Karai couldn’t do it, how can we?” I asked. “Especially with the Massa breathing down our necks?”
“You said there were carvings,” Bhegad said. “In each of the seven circles. Can you re-create them?”
“I can,” Cass volunteered.
“You don’t need to,” I said. “There was a statue over a harbor, a great lighthouse, pyramids, hanging gardens…. They were the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”
“By the Great Qalani…” Bhegad said, aghast. But before he could say a word, his phone let out a sharp beep. He glanced down and blanched.
The screen read CODE RED.
He flipped the phone up to his ear. “Bhegad here…A what?” His face darkened. “Are you sure? We’re on our way.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Bhegad was already heading back toward the compound. “Tell me. That blade you saw, in the middle of the Heptakiklos. Did you pull it out, Jack?”
“I put it back in afterward!” I shot back.
Bhegad went pale.
Before I could ask him to explain, an ATV crashed through the undergrowth with Torquin in the driver’s seat. “In!” he commanded.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The Karai Institute,” Bhegad shouted as he piled into the front seat, “is under attack!”
CHPATER THIRTY-FIVE
CREATURE FROM THE BREACH
“WHEN THE RIFT was opened, what exactly did you see, Jack?” Bhegad was shouting over his shoulder from the front seat, as the ATV bounced over the ruts on the path.
“Nothing!” I shouted back. “I couldn’t. There was this blinding light. But I felt something. Like a flapping of wings.”
“Me, too!” Marco called out. “And this weird sound, like screeching.”
“Impossible…” Bhegad said, shaking his head. “I thought they’d all been killed…”
“Sorry!” I said. “I really messed up, huh?”
“Yes!” Torquin turned the vehicle hard, dodging a thick tree and nearly throwing us out. “Made gate fall.”
Bhegad ignored him and turned to us. His face was etched with panic. “In Atlantean times, this area was not a volcano yet but a hidden valley. For ages, the Atlantean royal family came here to partake of the mist. The strange power. But when Queen Qalani sought to create the Loculi, she needed more of the energy. A way to control the flow. So she enlarged the fissure where the mist came out. To prevent leakage, she used a magic sword as a plug. She could remove and replace it whenever she wished.”
“Leakage of what?” Aly said. “What is this energy? It heals people. It makes the island invisible. There’s got to be some scientific explanation.”
“We believe the fissure is an aberration in the earth’s magnetic field,” Bhegad said. “A flux point in the space-time continuum. A sort of time tunnel.”
“That’s impossible,” Aly said, “according to all laws of physics—”
“Classical physics,” Bhegad corrected. “Relativity, string theory—these tell us that space and time are fluid. That they bend and create dimensions that are difficult to see. But difficult, as we’ve found, is not impossible. We’ve suspected that a small breach existed. There have been dozens of unconfirmed sightings of ancient creatures over the years. The vromaski must have slipped through the fissure.”
I did not like the sound of this. “So what happened when I pulled the sword out for that moment? What came through?”
We zoomed out of the jungle and onto the outskirts of the institute. One of the buildings looked as if it had been bombed. Its roof was a violent mass of broken shingles. From all over the campus, Scholars and guards were rushing toward it.
Torquin skidded to a stop at the building. As the guards jumped out, Torquin held one of them back. “You stay. I protect. Wait. All of you.”
The moment he turned to go, a grotesque screech rippe
d through the air. I heard the crashing of glass and thumping of falling furniture. A KI guard dropped from a second-story window, screaming.
Inside I could see a blur of red. Another window smashed. Through the opening I glimpsed a long, whiplike object thrashing back and forth.
A tail.
“What the—?” Aly said.
Torquin was kneeling by the cart, taking aim with a gun. The other guard knelt with him.
A massive head emerged from the broken roof—a beast at least fifteen feet high. It resembled a giant eagle, but its eyes were yellow and segmented like an insect’s, its skin bright red.
“Ready…aim…” Torquin said.
“No! Do not shoot!” Bhegad commanded.
The creature turned at the sound of the voice. Its eyes shot pinpricks of light, the facets reflecting the sun. It glared in Bhegad’s direction and tented its wings. With a sudden thrust, it propelled itself up and out of the building. The wings stretched impossibly wide. They flapped once, twice, and even at our distance we could feel the shift in air pressure.
The monster’s body, covered in bright red fur, was barrel-chested and heavy like a lion’s. Its legs were muscular and long, and as it took to the air I saw a row of saber-sized talons retract into its paws. It seemed impossible something this large could fly. It was too big. Its body was all wrong for flight.
It soared upward as if it had never heard of gravity. And then it dived toward us, with an ear-piercing screech.
I recognized the sound. The flash of red. The flap of wings. I had experienced them all in the volcano—during the moment when I had pulled out the broken blade.
I had let this thing through.
Bhegad was yelling at the top of his lungs, pleading with the others to hold their fire. Marco leaped out of the cart, directly in front of Professor Bhegad. “Hey, Big Bird, over here!” he shouted. In his hand was a chunk of jagged rock.
The raptor cocked its head toward Marco. He threw the rock, making a direct hit between its eyes. It let out a shriek, wings stuttering in midair.