“We have outings, nature walks,” he replied. “Sometimes the guide lets us go off the beaten track. I remember it all. If I have enough data, I can mentally map a larger area according to the size and variety of the vegetation and the dispersion of light. Also spoor deposits. Patterns of animal poop can be geographically significant. Also, by the way, poop is a palindrome. The same backward and forward.”
“Thank you,” I said numbly.
Cass traced his finger along a path through the jungle on the upper left, a different direction from the path to the helicopter. At the very top of the map was a shoreline with a dock and a boat. “We’ll head here, to a beach the guards use. Which has a boat.”
On the way, his finger had crossed a line with jagged markings. “Is that the electric fence?” I asked.
Aly shook her head. “Not a fence. Filaments. Thin as cobwebs. You don’t know you’ve been through them until you’re on the ground, wriggling. They don’t kill you, but you’ll wish they had. The filaments were de-electrified and dropped to the ground during your escape attempt.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Active again,” Aly said, shaking her head. “And hard to disable. The security system is decentralized. I managed to hack the recording devices and cameras around the dorm. But the other campus cameras are still live, and so are the filaments.”
“Dora the Explorer here knows where all the surveillance cameras are,” Marco said, gesturing toward Cass. “We’re going to take a route to the control building that avoids the guards’ sight lines.”
“Once we’re there, I will get to work on the security system,” Aly said.
“How will we get in?” I asked.
All three of them smiled at me.
“Dude, you’ve got to have some kind of talent, right?” Marco said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE MOE QUADRANT
“ARE YOU SURE this will work?” Aly whispered as we raced along the back wall of the dining building.
“No!” I shot back. “I mean, I don’t know!”
The moon was a ghostly blur under the cloud cover, but we could see Cass just ahead of us, pacing a precise path out of camera range. “This way,” he said.
I patted my pocket nervously. In it were two shoelaces I’d taken from a pair of spare shoes in my closet, and a large rock. I was shaking with fear.
They were counting on my part of the escape plan. But my idea seemed borderline idiotic. “Okay, stay near the wall and get to the fire escape of Building D,” Cass said.
We ran into the darkness, careful of the lone guard and cameras and anything else that might give us away. Cass led us to Building D, a brick structure set all by itself away from the main campus. Just above us hung a retractable fire escape. Marco reached up and grabbed the bottom rung. His backpack was stuffed with supplies, but on his shoulders it seemed weightless. “Isn’t someone going to hear this?” he said.
“I used WD-40,” Cass whispered. As Marco lowered the ladder in silence, he added, “So, listen up, guys, here’s what to do when you get to the top—”
“Aren’t you going with us?” Aly said.
Cass shrugged. “I have this thing about h-h-heights.”
Marco grabbed Cass by the waist, slung him over his shoulder, and climbed the ladder. “Don’t look down,” he advised.
Aly and I followed. We made our way across the rooftop, stepping lightly. As we passed a small skylight, I glanced down. The place was whirring with mechanical life. A rack of servers beeped and flickered. Laptop screens shone with Karai Institute screensavers. No people.
Marco and Aly were crouched at the opposite edge of the roof, looking down. A few feet away sat Cass, with his back to the parapet. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he murmured.
“Tell Jack what to do first, Cass,” Marco said. “Then hurl.”
“Ok-k-kay. See if you can locate the c-c-camera,” Cass said, jerking his thumb vaguely downward.
I glanced over the side of the roof. The camera was there. Fastened to the side of the wall. I calculated the distance downward as I pulled the shoelaces from my pocket.
“We’re counting on you, MacGyver,” Marco said.
I gulped. A great big EPIC FAIL sign flashed in my head as I took a deep breath. I tied the two shoelaces together and then knotted the rock at the bottom. I could sense my three partners staring at me, baffled. “Okay, so it’s not Mission Impossible,” I said.
Leaning ever so slightly over the roof, I eyed the maroon camera. I dropped the rock, holding on to the shoelace. Trying to gauge the distance, I swung the rock outward and let its momentum carry it back toward the lens.
Thwuck.
It struck dully against the wall, about two feet to the left of the camera.
“Let me try.” Marco grabbed the shoelace from my hand and pulled up the rock. Holding the lace with his right hand, he used his left to hurl the rock up into the sky. He stood there, watching motionless until the rock reached the end of its trajectory and the string snapped it back.
It hit the lens dead center, sending a spray of glass and plastic to the ground.
My jaw dropped open. It had worked!
“Good thinking, Marco,” Aly said.
“Marco?” I repeated. “It was my idea—”
“Get down!” Aly whispered. “That was loud. What if the guard heard it?” We ducked behind the parapet next to Cass, our breaths puffing wispily in the cool humidity.
I listened for a car, an opening door, a voice.
Nada.
After a moment, I peered over the top. “Coast is clear. Let’s book.”
“My knees are l-locked,” Cass complained.
“At least you’re not speaking backward,” Aly said.
Marco yanked Cass over his shoulders again and led us back down the fire escape. We ran around to the entrance, under the remains of the camera. The door to the building had a card swiper that glowed red. “You’re doing great, brother Jack,” Marco said. “Now use that card I stole from Bhegad. It gives access to all the buildings.”
I fished the stolen card out of my pocket and swiped it. The little light went from red to green, and Marco pushed open the door.
We raced inside. Aly tapped on a touch pad and a screen glowed to life:
“Oh, g-g-great,” Cass said.
“You guys should have known about this,” I hissed.
“We did.” Aly pulled out a flash drive. “To a computer, a fingerprint is a set of data—zeroes and ones like everything else. I managed to get into the stored ID database and download Torquin’s finger ID. The system will automatically upload it and conclude that he put his index finger on the pad.”
She inserted the drive and the screen changed to a KI wallpaper with a new flashing message: HELLO, O MIGHTY SAVIOR OF ALL THINGS FLUFFY AND FIERCE.
“That’s Torquin’s welcome message?” Marco said.
“He has an odd idea of his own personal mission.” Aly’s fingers flew over the keyboard. The screen began flashing complex sequences of circuits. “Cafeteria…library…sewage…”
“No sewage pipes,” Cass protested. “I’m afraid of heights and depths.”
Aly smacked the keyboard. “Here’s the security fence. But they’ll only let me access one quadrant at a time.”
“How do we know which is the right one to pick?” I asked.
“The one that doesn’t get us killed,” Aly replied. “Eeney, meeny, miney…”
“Moe” was the quadrant that went straight past Bhegad’s house. He lived behind the library, in a little gingerbread cottage that was like something out of “Hansel and Gretel.” All the lights were on inside.
“We can’t do this!” Cass whispered.
“He’s snoring,” Marco remarked. “I can’t even hear us!”
We managed to slip by, one at a time, crouching below an open window. Cass was the last. He was frozen at the edge of the house. “Ahhh…” he said, his eyes narrowing for a sneeze.
“Oh, no,” Marco murmured. “Please no…”
“Hold it in!” Aly whispered.
“CHOOO!”
We all went stiff. From inside Professor Bhegad’s cottage came a snuffling sound. Then a honk.
He was still snoring.
Marco dove for Cass, grabbed him by the shoulder, and pulled him past the window. We headed for the jungle, running through a small yard and then an open, grassy field.
Aly found a well-trampled path into the underbrush. After a few dozen yards she stopped. “There,” she said, pointing to what looked like a small sapling. “Careful.”
The disabled electric filaments were hanging like cobwebs.
As Aly bounded into the jungle, Marco escorted Cass by the arm. “Okay, brother Cass,” he said, “you’re the navigation guy. Lead the way.”
Cass took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he began walking tentatively to the right. “This way. And if you see something, say something.”
Aly and I followed close behind, with Marco bringing up the rear. His backpack clunked as he walked, and for the first time he looked uncertain. “I wish I had my basketball,” he murmured. “I feel more comfortable with my basketball.”
The memory of this jungle sickened me. The vines lashed just as sharply as they had the day before, the roots caught just as tightly—but in the darkness it was ten times worse. We had only the occluded light of the moon, and soon the canopy blocked even that. Through the underbrush, I could practically feel Cass shaking. He sounded like a GPS voice on a short circuit. “Go l-left here, I th-think…”
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“I hate the dark,” he said. “Okay, head for the shadow of that ball, tent tree. Um, sorry. Tall, bent tree…”
As we walked, no one wanted to talk much. The bugs swarmed all over us, and we stayed busy slapping them away.
“Um…this pathway to the left looks right,” Cass said. “I think.”
“What do you mean, you think?” Marco called out. “I thought you were perfect.”
“Not when I’m nervous,” Cass said.
“Can we slow down?” Aly asked. “I’m out of breath.”
“If we go any slower, we’ll be going backward—geeaaah, horsefly!” Marco said, slapping his forehead.
Breathing hard, Aly sat on a flat tree stump. “Feeling…a little…light-headed.”
Marco stood over her, waving his arms in a regular rhythm to keep away the flies. “Hey, you just rest, sister Aly,” he said. “Soon we’ll be out of this horror hole. The night I disappeared, my mom was going to make a big lasagna. I’m hoping she froze it, ’cause you’re all invited over.”
I nodded. “My dad was cutting short a business trip to see me. He’s probably worried out of his mind.”
Aly was bent over, her head between her legs. We had to hunch down to hear her. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But this feels better,” she said. After a moment, she continued in a soft voice. “My mom? She knows I’m alive. I can just feel it. We have this bond. I’m worried about my dad, though. He’s older. The stress is probably killing him.”
“Mine probably hasn’t noticed,” Marco said. “It’s the middle of football season. He’ll figure it out after the Super Bowl. I just hope he’s not defrosting the lasagna.”
“How about your parents, Cass?” Aly asked.
Cass was heading farther up the path. “Um, we have to go this way…”
“Look who took his brave pills,” Marco said. “Hey, wait up, Davy Crockett, Aly’s injured!”
“It’s okay,” Aly insisted. “I’m ready.”
As she stood up, I looked at what she’d been sitting on—a stump.
“Guys?” I said. “Does that look weird to you? A flat stump in the middle of the jungle? I mean, trees don’t shear themselves flat. Someone had to have done this.”
Marco took a flashlight from his pack and shone it on the stump:
“Dude, somebody carved this,” Marco said.
Cass wandered over and leaned in. As he ran a finger over the grooves, a strangled scream rang out from the woods.
Aly.
We turned and ran. She was about twenty feet ahead of us, standing rigid, her hands to her mouth. “I did not see that—I am feeling sick—my eyes are playing a trick—I did not see that,” she was muttering.
“See what?” asked Cass.
Aly swallowed. “Nothing. Probably a possum, or a woodchuck, or an armadillo or a hyena or whatever the heck they have in a jungle. It just—in the dark, it looked like a panther or something, only with a hog’s face. And teeth.”
I froze. “A hog’s face?”
Marco put his arm around her. “Hey, it’s okay. Lot of stress here tonight. We’re almost there, right, brother Cass?”
“Should be about twenty minutes,” Cass said.
Aly nodded, and she and Marco fell in behind Cass once again.
I stayed close, trying to keep my peripheral vision open. But all I could think about was my recurring dream. Of the chase and the explosion and the earthquake. And the beast I had seen so often in my imagination, the hose-beaked vromaski.
The creature with a body like a beast of prey, a snout like a hog, and teeth.
We trudged on until I felt I had no unbitten skin left. It seemed as if we’d been gone a whole night. The moon was still high but dulled by clouds that had moved in suddenly. Before long the cool sea breeze stiffened up. It tickled my lungs and I began to cough. The ground beneath us was growing sandier. I could hear the crashing of waves now. Cass stopped, his head cocked to the left.
“Akerue,” he said. “We made it.”
I could see a dull licking of whitish-gold ahead of us through the branches. It was the dim, defiant reflection of the now nearly obscured moon against a body of water. A wave thundered onto the shore, and one lonely seagull cawed. As its silhouette rose into the faint circle of the moon’s remaining light, we all began to run toward the sound.
Marco hit the sandy beach and flew into a cartwheel. Aly started dancing but dissolved into a fit of laughter and coughing. There was a faint rotten stench, which I figured to be some washed-up dead fish, but even that seemed sweet.
It was the smell of freedom.
As I stumbled forward, my foot caught a root and I fell. I didn’t care. I rolled to my feet, a laugh tearing itself upward from my throat. In the distance I could see a small wooden dock, with the shadow of a boat rising and falling on the water. The soft creak of its mooring ropes against the hull was the only sound.
Until Cass’s shriek pierced the night. Directly to my right.
“Get this thing off me!” he shouted.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ESCAPE FROM KI
MARCO RACED BY me in a blur.
By the edge of the woods, Cass flailed against an enormous assailant. In the moon’s dull light, all I could see were shadows, a changing mass of flesh and limbs.
I ran as fast as I could. But as I got closer I realized what Cass was battling. It wasn’t an animal or a human.
It was a monster. And it was dead.
The thing was rolling with him, its bones all akimbo in the moonlight. Marco was pulling Cass away, but Cass’s arm was in the rubbery grip of a dripping band of sinew.
I was too panicked to gag. Before I could reach them, the sinew recoiled with a thwap. Marco hurtled backward, tumbling head over heels with Cass down the sloping beach.
At the bottom, Cass rolled to his feet. “Never again!” he shrieked. “I will never, ever let you talk me into something like this again!”
With that he bolted toward the jungle.
“Where are you going?” Aly called out from the beach.
“I’m covered with guts!” Cass shouted. “I tripped over that stupid thing.”
“So you’re going into the woods?” Aly said. “The jungle flies are drooling, Cass. They can’t wait to see you. Now get in the water and wash up!”
I turned
to look at Cass’s attacker. It stretched across the sand like the prow of some organic ship, its ribs curved upward toward the moon.
“Thar she blows,” Marco muttered.
It was a whale, maybe ten or twelve feet long. It had been washed up, maybe a day or two ago, and apparently attacked by predators. Cass hadn’t seen it in the darkness and had just stumbled into it. As I eyed the huge carcass, the first few droplets of rain thudded softly onto the body.
A whale this size meant we were near an ocean—this was no bay or inlet. I wasn’t sure what that meant for our escape. I guess I was hoping for something a little less vast.
“Ow,” came Aly’s voice.
Marco and I turned to see her stumbling in the sand. She was arm in arm with Cass, heading toward the water. “‘Sup?” Marco said.
“Just…stepped on a shell,” Aly replied. “Carry on.”
“Come on, brother Jackie. Let’s get the boat,” Marco said.
I followed him toward the dock. The rain was picking up, along with a sudden wind, and I thought I could hear a distant rumble. Marco was untying a wide, flat-bottomed boat. It was about twenty feet long or so, with wooden sides, two sets of oars in oarlocks, and two seats. “There’s no motor on this thing,” he said. “The darn thing is a rowboat. I’ll get in first.”
“We can’t escape across an ocean in that!” I said. “You saw the size of that whale. What if its father is out there looking for it? What if there are sharks? It’s also raining. And dark. And there’s thunder.”
“Okay, so it’ll be a little cozy.” Marco jumped in and grabbed a pair of oars. “Are you with me?”
I took a deep breath. I was not going to face Bhegad and Torquin by myself. Reluctantly I stepped in after him. Sitting down, I took hold of the other pair of oars. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said, fitting them into the locks.