“How do you know they are the enemy?” Aly snapped. “How do you know Bhegad and the Scholars of Karai aren’t the bad guys? They’ve lied to us and manipulated us all along!”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” I said. “Please, open the door.”
Aly stepped forward and jiggled the knob. “It’s locked,” she said.
Marco leaped, launched into a spinning kick, and whacked the door open in one flying move. “Now it’s not.”
We stepped in. The glow from the piles of rock was so bright I had to shield my eyes. It was a kind of giant workshop, with tables placed randomly about and narrow pathways winding through the rubble. From somewhere deep in one of the piles I could hear a sound, a faint song like the one from the caldera. “Do you guys hear that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Marco said dubiously.
I held the flame high and wound through the pathways, searching for the giant hand I’d noticed before. It was sitting askew atop one of the piles. But up close I saw that it was made of stone, not bronze. And it was nowhere near big enough to grasp this torch.
Below it were dozens of other sculpted hands, made of stone, bronze, marble, or wood. Some of them were attached to arms. They were thin and thick, feminine and masculine, childlike and wizened.
Aly moved to another pile and picked up the broken stone bust of a bull. “This is crazy. It’s like a statue morgue. We could search this place for months trying to find the right pieces.”
She was right. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of statues here—people, gods, animals. If the Colossus were among them, it was impossibly buried.
The spot on the back of my head was beginning to throb again. The edges of my vision were fuzzing over. The glowing, the sound—what did it mean?
I heard the griffin shrieking in the distance. It could shake itself loose from the truck any moment. If Cass was still alive, his minutes were numbered. We didn’t have time to search for the Colossus right now. That would have to wait until after we rescued our friend.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get out of here.”
I tossed the bronze flame onto one of the piles. I couldn’t carry it up and down the side of a cliff.
It didn’t fall, though.
It just hung. In midair.
Aly, Marco, and I stood gaping and the bronze began to pulse. It was changing, growing translucent, as if it were paper.
Something was trapped inside. I leaned closer to see what it was. It didn’t seem solid or even liquid—just a swirl of bright, jagged objects hurtling around of their own power against the bronze flame’s inner structure. They boiled and vibrated, circling so fast that they became a kind of plasma.
Before our eyes, something was being born inside. Something oblong, delicate, like a giant egg.
A long seam formed down the length of the bronze flame. Then another.
And like the petals of a flower, it began to open.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THE AWAKENING
THE BRIGHTNESS WAS like a punch. Squinting, I fell back. Marco and Aly were yelling at me, but I couldn’t make out the words. The hum was excruciating. It snaked into the folds of my brain like a liquid.
The sides of the bronze flame peeled downward. Inside, a giant globe of plasma rose. It circled slowly over the piles of rubble, which began to swirl. Pieces flung themselves away against the glass, as if being thrown by an invisible hand. As we ducked to the ground, the greenhouse wall began to shatter.
Some of the shards—maybe one in a thousand—had a different fate. They rose more slowly.
One by one, they were sucked right up to the plasma ball. They stuck to its side like skin grafts. They were forming a shell, whipping upward and locking into place like a jigsaw puzzle solving itself, until an entire sphere had formed—a sphere of bronze, about half again as large as a basketball. It hovered above the remains of the flame.
“The Loculus!” I said.
“We’re supposed to take that thing?” Aly asked.
Marco moved closer. “Earth to Jack and Aly. Don’t just stand there. Grab it!”
He began climbing one of the piles. The sphere was whirling around the greenhouse now, faster and faster, whipping the mass below into a cyclone.
“Marco, get down from there!” Aly screamed.
A flying piece of stone clipped the side of his head and he toppled downward. Aly and I ran to his side.
“Have no fear!” Marco sat up, shaking his head. “The Immortal One takes a minor tumble. This Loculus has a mind of its own. It’s going to fly off to Pluto before we can figure out how to get it to—”
A shadow passed across his face and he fell silent.
We all looked up toward the glass dome. And we heard the griffin’s keening, bloodthirsty caw.
“How did it get loose?” I asked.
As it descended, I could see the mangled pickup door around its neck. It had torn it loose from the truck.
“Run!” Aly shouted.
As we scrambled toward the exit, the greenhouse roof exploded.
The red beast plunged downward. Its body seemed to fill the airspace. It flapped its wings frantically, cramped by the four walls. The door had dug into its skin and formed a nasty, featherless ring around its neck. The griffin’s yellow, segmented eyes were lined with black. They settled on Marco, and the beast growled.
I tried to shield Marco with my body, but he lifted me off my feet and ran me to the door as if I were a football. Aly was already through, and she pulled at Marco’s arm.
The griffin smacked against the door frame. It was too big to fit. Weakened by the battle with the pickup truck, it fell backward.
And the flying Loculus whacked it on the head.
The beast seemed finally shocked out of its rage. It glanced up at the object it had been trained to protect.
The glowing orb rose higher over the debris. The rocks below swirled furiously, battering against the griffin. The lion-bird rose again, roaring in pain.
With a burst of light, three gleaming bronze shards shot up from the pile and fused in midair. Then four more, then a dozen, until the walls echoed with a fusillade of sound.
High above us, the Loculus stopped moving. The cloud of bronze shards spun around it like planets orbiting the sun. I caught sight of the Colossus’s flame among them, still opened like a blooming lily.
The griffin, looking broken and confused, perched on an edge of the jagged roof to watch.
The air itself seemed to have become a shade of bronze as pieces vacuumed upward with impossible speed. They slammed against one another, fusing into shapes.
A base began to form at the bottom of the flame. It grew steadily downward, sucking up pieces large and small. It sprouted a handle, and then fingers to twine around it, followed by a palm. A wrist. A forearm. Shoulders.
At the bottom of the vortex, two enormous bronze feet expanded upward—from toes to heavy sandals to ankles and calves. Thighs became a torso, and slowly the top and bottom began to fuse together.
A gargantuan warrior of bronze, easily a hundred feet tall, stood over us. It was pocked with holes that were filling quickly as shards of bronze found their places. Its head rose higher than the shattered glass dome. Slowly it gained a face—a chiseled warrior’s face with closed eyes, as if asleep on its feet.
“By the great Qalani…” Marco murmured.
In moments the work was complete. The Loculus zoomed upward, and for a moment I thought Marco had been right—it wouldn’t stop until it reached the outer limits of the solar system. But it stopped abruptly, somewhere in the afternoon sky above the statue.
Then, slowly, it lowered itself into the flame atop the torch. Which began to close.
At that—at the sight of the Loculus disappearing—the griffin howled. It lunged off its perch toward the statue. Extending its talons, it attacked.
“What’s it doing?” Marco asked.
“It wants the Loculus,” I said. “Its job w
as to protect it—way back before the destruction of Atlantis. It doesn’t know about the Colossus. It thinks the Colossus is the enemy.”
Claws clanked against the statue’s bronze arm and the griffin bounced back. The weight of the truck door around its neck was playing tricks with its balance. It flailed its wings, trying to steady itself in midair. It landed on a broken splinter of glass that stuck up from the wreckage of the wall. The glass buried itself deep in the bird’s side.
At the sound of the beast’s deathly cry, the Colossus’s eyes opened.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
PLAN C
“GET…ME…OUT of here…” Aly said faintly.
“Um, wasn’t expecting that,” Marco murmured.
I couldn’t move.
The eyes of the Colossus turned from the griffin, took in its surroundings, and stopped when they reached Marco, Aly, and me. It was a blank stare—alive but not human, moving but bloodless.
Its head moved, groaning like the gears of a rusty engine. It seemed to be taking in its environment, looking for something. It ignored the caws of the injured griffin, which hung like a rag doll from the glass.
The giant statue leaned toward the center of the greenhouse, letting its left foot slide. A pile of rocks was kicked aside like so much dust. Then it lifted its right leg slowly, as if testing it. A metal, sandaled foot about the size of a moving truck came down on a stack of discarded statue pieces, instantly pulverizing them.
The plateau shook like an earthquake. Outside the monks were frantically scurrying away. In a few thundering steps, the Colossus had turned completely around and was facing the harbor. It began to walk away from us, shattering what was left of the glass wall in one step. The entire outer structure collapsed along with it, sending the griffin down into a pile of glass and stone.
Its body twitched and then went still.
The Colossus strode out onto the plateau. It turned toward the city of Rhodes.
“It’s going home,” I whispered. “To the harbor.”
“I hope it has insurance,” Marco said. “It’s a long way down.”
From above us came a rhythmic chopping noise. “A helicopter?” Marco commented. “What are those boneheaded monks doing?”
I thought about the domed structure above us. We never saw what was inside. “That big building?” I said. “It must be a hangar.”
“In a monastery?” Marco remarked.
“A Massa monastery,” I reminded him.
In a moment, the chuck-chuck-chucking of rotors was unmistakable. The helicopter rose, banking high above the Colossus. I could see Brother Dimitrios at the controls. “Guess he recovered,” Aly murmured.
The statue stared at the chopper, its bronze neck creaking. A red glow radiated from behind its eyes.
I looked over my shoulder toward the cliff. The sun was high overhead but starting to set. If we could save Cass, he’d need his treatment in fewer than twelve hours.
We will save Cass, I told myself.
“The Loculus is out of reach, in the Colossus’s torch,” I said. “The griffin is dead. Cass has to be back at the KI by midnight. Does someone here have a Plan B?”
Before anyone could answer, a searing orange beam shot out from the chopper’s passenger side. It connected with the Colossus’s torch, tracing a fiery line across it.
The Colossus retracted its arm. As it glanced up at the chopper, another laser beam hit it in the forehead, creating a pool of molten metal.
“What are they doing?” Marco said.
“I don’t know!” I replied.
“They want the Loculus,” Aly said. “That’s why Brother Dimitrios told you to touch the flame. He knew that if he brought one of the Select and the Loculus together, the sphere would activate. But I bet he didn’t count on the Colossus reappearing and taking it away.”
“We made the Colossus appear,” Marco said. “Brother Jack, Sister Aly, and the Kid Who Faced Down Death.”
A loud midair crunch made us look up. The Colossus had taken a swipe at the helicopter, destroying one of its landing feet. The chopper was pitching in the air, losing altitude. “They’re going down!” I shouted.
The Colossus turned and began heading for the edge of the cliff. Its footsteps thudded heavily. Chunks of the cliff edge began falling away. The chopper whirled wildly, lurching toward the statue.
The top of the torch had melted from the laser hit, and from this angle I could see the Loculus floating inside. With its other arm, the Colossus reached upward and tried to grab the helicopter’s whirring rotor.
The blades sheared off instantly, flying in all directions. We all hit the ground just as one of them spun past, inches away. Shrieking, Brother Dimitrios and his copilot tumbled out. They landed hard on the lowest ledge of the monastery.
The Colossus batted the empty chopper over the edge of the cliff. It hurtled out into the Aegean Sea. From above came the cracking noise of rifle shot. Bullets ricocheted off the bronze surface of the statue, leaving sharp dents.
“Oh, guns, great idea,” Marco said. “Very effective against a giant metal man.”
The statue turned. It stepped back toward the monastery wall, its head peering directly at its attackers.
The men bolted as fast as they could.
Marco grabbed me by the collar. “Let’s bail!” he said. “Forget about the Loculus. That thing can have it. Plan B, we go back into town and find someone with climbing equipment. We search every one of those caves until we find Cass.”
“That’ll take days!” I said.
“Do you have a better idea?” Marco asked.
“We created this thing,” Aly said. “It’s about to destroy this monastery. Then what? It walks into town and flattens Rhodes? We can’t let it do that.”
“We can’t abandon Cass,” Marco said.
I eyed the Colossus, who was now trying to get up to the top of the cliff. But the ledges were too high for it to simply use them as steps, and it didn’t seem coordinated enough to climb. It was scrabbling at the cliff, scraping layers of rock loose. Before long the monastery walls would collapse.
I looked up to the first level, where the dome had been rolled back to let the chopper fly out. I thought about the monastery that was about to be trashed. The portraits on the wall, which would be crushed in the debris—the devastated old man, looking back at a life of regret. His cocky younger self, sitting on a white sphere suspended in midair.
In midair…
“We need that Loculus,” I said. “That’s how we’ll get Cass.”
“Say what?” Marco said.
“Just follow me,” I said, running toward the stairs. “This is Plan C. For Colossus.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
ONE BEAST AT A TIME
I WAS THE first up. Marco followed, and then Aly. The Colossus was still on the second level. It had given up trying to climb and backed away from the wall. Above us, Brother Dimitrios’s men had rearmed. Someone had retrieved a machine gun.
“Stop!” a voice called out from below.
Bloodied and bruised, Brother Dimitrios was climbing the stairs from the third level. In his right hand he held a small, oblong object. A grenade.
On the cliff top above us, his men were frozen. Brother Dimitrios stepped onto the plateau, struggling with the grenade pin. “I want the pleasure of doing this myself,” he rasped.
The Colossus bent its knees. Its torch arm still aloft, it reached down with its other arm and lifted Brother Dimitrios off the ground. The grenade flew off toward the sea as the monk rose in the Colossus’s hand, screaming.
The statue would crush him in moments.
I ran toward the giant urns of olive oil. “Help me out—now!”
Placing both hands on an urn, I tried to push. The thing was unbelievably full and heavy. It was more like an olive ocean. In a moment Aly and Marco were by my side. “Heave…ho!” Marco said.
The first urn tipped over, splintering the wooden fence and spilling oil over
the side of the first level. We turned over the second and third urns in quick succession. A waterfall of the gooey stuff cascaded straight down to the second ledge, spreading under the Colossus in a thin pool.
The statue took a step back and slipped on the oil. As its gigantic leg kicked upward, it toppled over. Brother Dimitrios flew out of the Colossus’s hand. He smashed against the cliff wall and fell limp to the ground.
The Colossus fell with a deafening whomp. The torch, still in its hand, bounced against the stony soil. I could see now that the chopper’s laser had cut a big hole in it. Inside, the Loculus was jammed in the jagged opening. Only two sharp edges held it in place.
Two points of bendable bronze.
I ran for the stairs.
“Jack!” Aly cried out. “What are you doing?”
I could hear Marco’s footfalls behind me.
Racing back down to the second level, I ran to where the Colossus was struggling to stand.
At that moment my eye caught a sudden movement to the left. The griffin was rising out of the greenhouse debris—alive.
One beast at a time.
Splayed on the ground, the statue lifted its free hand to its eye, as if to feel for damage. As I braced myself, Marco clamped his hand on my shoulder. “Jack, you idiot, get back!”
Gritting my teeth, I pushed him aside and jumped onto the torch.
Holding tight with one arm, I reached inside with the other for the Loculus. It was shockingly cool to the touch, its soft metallic skin thin enough to give it some flexibility. As I pulled, as hard as I could, the Colossus jerked back.
The force was all the help I needed. The Loculus slipped free, into my hands.
“Got it!” I shouted.
Marco and Aly were at my side now. They pulled me away from the giant. But the olive oil had coated the ground beneath us. As we fell, the Colossus sat up. I saw for the first time that one of its eyes had been hit by the laser and melted into a zombielike droop. With a swoop of its arm, it grabbed my waist and lifted me, Loculus and all, into the air.