Eloise began to cry softly. “No. Just no,” she said between sniffles. “Dimitrios was kind of creepy, but he didn’t deserve this. . . .”
Cass put his arm around her silently.
I sat back, numb. I knew we had to go. I knew that every second we spent here was one second closer to being captured by the Zons. But I couldn’t move. I felt nothing.
Professor Bhegad . . . Daria of Babylon . . . and now Dimitrios. All of them gone in the quest for the Loculi. A quest that was now hopeless. “This was my fault . . .” I muttered. “It was my idea for Marco to impersonate Eloise. And because of that, Dimitrios is dead and the Loculus is destroyed.”
“Brother Jack, did you see that bronco?” Marco said. “No offense, but Eloise wasn’t ready for that.”
“My fault,” Torquin mumbled. “For throwing Loculus.”
Now, over by Cynthia, one of the Zons was pointing toward us, shouting to the others.
“Uh-oh,” Torquin said. “Have to go.”
“We can’t just leave him here!” Eloise said.
“Go—now!” Torquin bellowed, lifting Eloise off the ground with one hand and Cass with the other.
Marco had to pull me up by my shirt. “Dude, don’t lose it. You don’t want to end up like him.”
I got up and ran. Together we headed back toward the entry archway. A spear whistled over my head. It barely missed Torquin but cut a straight row through the top of his hair. Arrows began raining on either side of us. “Yeeeow!” Marco yelled.
“Are you okay?” I shouted.
“Only . . . a flesh wound . . .” he said through gritted teeth. Turning in midstride, he scooped up the fallen arrow with his noninjured hand and hurled it back. “Bull’s-eye!” he shouted.
“Hurry!” I called out.
We headed for the tunnel where Herostratus had emerged. As we plunged in, I could hear another spear clank against the rock wall, just above the opening. “Does anyone have a torch?” Marco called out.
“Oh, sure, Marco, I always keep a torch in my pocket,” Eloise shouted.
“Ow!” Torquin grunted. “Hit wall. Go left.”
We were running blindly now. From behind us came the thumping of size-gazillion feet. I could see the dull glow of light against the walls—they had torches! At least I could see walls, ceilings, and shadows now. We ran straight, past two side tunnels. But just ahead, Torquin was coming to a stop. He’d reached a fork and was sniffing left and right. “Smell air. One of these leads outside.”
An arrow skittered under my legs, sliding on the floor and into the tunnel on the right. “They’re close!” Eloise said.
That was when I saw a shadow moving in the right-hand tunnel, near the floor. Two eyes stared up at me in the darkness.
They were bright orange.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
PLAYING WITH FIRE BOY
“GO RIGHT!” I said.
“Why?” Cass asked.
“That cat—it’s Herostratus!” I replied.
Following Herostratus might have been the dumbest decision I could make, but I had to go with my gut. His name was the last thing Dimitrios had said.
We ran right, following the shadow of the cat into the tunnel.
I was expecting a hail of arrows or a flying lance. But I didn’t expect the loud scraping noise behind us. It made me jump in midstride and turn around, as a wall of solid rock closed across the tunnel, sealing it off to us at the fork.
“What the—?” I muttered.
Marco had seen it, too. “It’s a trap, Brother Jack. They’re locking us in.”
I whirled around. “Not much we can do. Come on!”
Torquin had waited for us at the next fork. He signaled us to go left.
Our path was uphill and I was sensing a change in the air. We were nearing some sort of exit. But as we bolted around a curve, Torquin came to a quick halt. “Whoa, apply air brakes!” Marco yelled.
We pulled up behind them. I peeked over Eloise’s shoulder to see Herostratus standing in our way, trembling. He was reaching into his pants pocket, fumbling with a set of keys.
“You betray, you pay!” Torquin said, balling his fists.
Herostratus shook his head. “Not me, babies,” he said. “I’m not the one who betrayed you.”
His hands shaking, he inserted the key into a door in the wall. It took him a few tries, but he finally pushed it open and stepped inside. “Please,” he said. “Hurry.”
I heard a scrape and saw a spark. A torch came to life, and we could see Herostratus using it to light three sconces. They sent flames shooting up into a long, narrow shaft.
We crowded into a room that was a perfect cylinder, almost too small to fit us. Aside from the sconces, the only other feature I could make out was a huge wooden crank at about waist level. “Please, step back from the center,” Herostratus said. “You’ll just have to squeeze.”
As we spread out, he began turning the crank. It squeaked loudly, echoing upward. Now I could hear frantic chittering above us as the shaft filled with the shadows of bats. “Ignore them,” Herostratus said. “They’re friendly. Except Fuzzy. He bites.”
“I hate bats!” Eloise shrieked. “Which one is Fuz—”
A black streak darted downward. We all ducked, screaming. But with a quick flick of his arm, Herostratus swatted it against the wall, inches from Torquin’s head. “That one.”
“Yum,” Torquin said. “May I take—?”
“No!” we all shouted at once.
Ignoring us all, Herostratus cranked and cranked. The floor began to shake, releasing a cloud of dust—and a perfect circular section of the floor popped out and began to rise.
A cylinder made of polished amber-colored marble thrust upward, inches from Torquin’s belly. It moved painfully slowly and with an ear-splitting groan, as the marble rubbed against the stone opening. I had to close my eyes to the dust cloud, and everyone was coughing.
But through all that noise, I was feeling a sensation in my brain that was a lot like the Song of the Heptakiklos.
When the noise stopped, I squinted through the settling dust. Near the top of the shaft, I could make out a section of the shaft’s wall that had been hollowed out. In the flickering light of the sconces I saw a perfect sphere, the size of a basketball. The Song was screaming now. “This is it,” I said. “This is the Loculus! But that one . . . back in there . . .”
Herostratus sighed. “The Zons will realize it is a fake, if they have not already. They are crafty, but over the eons have grown a little soft in the cerebrum.”
“The who?” Torquin said.
“The brain,” Eloise explained.
“So Brother Dimitrios died for a fake Loculus?” I could barely spit the words out.
“Brother Dimitrios,” Herostratus said, “was the one who made me swap it out. He met with me while the girl was preparing for battle. I told him I had made ceremonial replicas of the Loculus. We used them for pageants and such, so the real one would not be damaged. I was ordered by Cynthia, of course, to use the real one today. But I couldn’t help bragging about the craftsmanship of the replicas. Even though it is not in my nature to boast—”
“Go on,” Marco said.
“Well, I am the Custodial Storage Executive,” Herostratus continued, “so a few centuries ago I fashioned this hiding place. Clever, no?”
I thought back. Dimitrios had been gone while we’d made the decision to substitute Marco for Eloise. “But . . . why would Dimitrios want you to swap the real Loculus for a fake?” I said.
“Because he thought the girl would be torn to shreds,” Herostratus said. “A not unreasonable assumption. Which would ensure that the Loculus would remain here forever. Well, he didn’t like that. And neither did I.”
“I find this line of thought very upsetting,” Eloise said.
“So you switched the Loculus for a fake,” I said. “And then what? We would leave Eloise’s body in the stadium, run back here with you and Dimitrios, and then??
?whoosh—back to the island with the Loculus?”
Herostratus shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “Brother Dimitrios would. Alone. That was his plan.”
“You’re lying!” Cass said. “It makes no sense. The Loculi don’t work without the Select—which would be us. Dimitrios needed us to bring them back!”
“He had a different plan,” Herostratus said. “He was upset over being forced to accept some kind of truce between enemy camps.”
“The Karai and the Massa,” I said.
Herostratus nodded. “Yes, that sounds right. Well, Dimitrios had a list of young people who also had the mark—a database, I believe you call it. He thought that if he returned with this Loculus, he would be a hero. He would persuade his superior to recruit new . . . Selects. He believed that with you children on the island, he would never achieve the power he deserved.”
From the hallway outside, I heard a dull thump, and then another. Herostratus jumped. “They are breaking down the barrier. We must escape.”
As I reached for the Loculus, Marco grabbed the latch on the door. But it wouldn’t budge. “Let us out, dude,” he said to Herostratus.
A third thump was followed by a huge crash. And the pounding of footsteps.
“On one condition,” Herostratus said. “Take me with you.”
“Whaaaat?” Cass said.
“They are gods, and by the curse of Massarym, they will disappear upon the taking of the Loculus,” Herostratus said. “But my curse was not set by Massarym. It was set by them. When they are gone, I shall become human again.”
“Heck no, Fire Boy!” Marco spat. “You were going to go through with Dimitrios’s plan.”
“You’re as bad as he was,” Eloise said.
Now the footsteps were settling outside the door. Something pounded on it with a force that shook the entire shaft.
“Please!” Herostratus said. “Have mercy on a fellow traveler.”
The pounding was louder now. The center of the door was cracking, the latch beginning to warp. In one or two tries, they would be in.
Herostratus was looking at me desperately. His eyes were glowing an extrafierce orange now. I knew he’d suffered under the Zons. But he’d been punished for setting fire to one of the great structures of ancient history. And he’d been ready to sacrifice us for his own freedom. He couldn’t be trusted.
“Sorry, Herostratus,” I said.
I placed my hand on the Loculus.
Cass and Marco, on my left and my right, put a hand on my shoulder. Torquin and Eloise touched them.
At that moment the door crashed open, shattering the marble shaft that housed the Loculus.
And I heard the screaming of a cat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE DESTROYER DESTROYED
I NEVER THOUGHT I’d miss the Dream. The horrific, end-of-the-civilization Dream that puts me at the brink of death. But I do miss it now.
I want the world to be opening beneath my feet, the kingdom to be crumbling around me. I want to be frightened by griffins and vromaskis and running to save my own life.
Because these new dreams are worse.
In this one, I am floating in nothing. I don’t know where to go or what to do. My body is as tiny as an atom and as large as the solar system. It is expanding and contracting in a blink of a nanosecond. I can see nothing. I can hear, smell, feel nothing, but I know I am not alone. First a blot of black whisks into my vision and disappears into a cloud. Then I see Cass, and Marco and Eloise and Torquin. What is going on? All of them are as scared as I am.
They are calling to me without sound, pulling on me without touch. JACK, GET US OUT. JACK, DO SOMETHING.
Why me?
WHY?
I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know where to go. But I am the one who must make the decisions.
Somehow, it’s on me. But how can I? I am Jack the Nothing. Jack the Failure.
I am the Tailor unspooling.
I am the Destroyer destroyed.
I hurtle and bounce, grow and shrink. I hear screeching tires and hospital beeps, submarines and waterfalls, howling vizzeets and whispering zombies, death threats in sitcom dialog, the Song of the Heptakiklos.
And somewhere in the mix, as if to taunt me, are the old sounds from the Old Dream. They want to torture me, too. The explosions and screams. They know that I want out. They know that I will trade this for the destruction of a continent.
So I decide.
We are going there. Now.
But I fail there, too. Because now, as clear as my hand, Aly is pushing me away.
Aly is telling me there is work to be done.
Aly is pushing me back, back to this dream, to this place that is ripping me apart.
Where do I go? I ask.
WHERE DO I GO?
But her face fades.
Home!
Yes. Home. All I want to do is go there. My yard and my bike and all the things I like. My bed, which I see now.
I reach out to my bed. From here it is a thousand light-years away.
From a thousand light-years away I see that something is under the covers—WHO’S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED! So I yank the cover off and I scream.
It is a skeleton, grinning at me, its teeth chattering, surrounded by a swarm of bugs that rises into the air in the shape of a globe. A Loculus of Flies.
I clutch the Loculus closer. It’s still in my hands.
Number six.
NO, it COULD have been number six. But it’s not.
Because one Loculus is lost to the Rift. Because Jack the Tailor is Jack the Failure.
I remember the moment we lost it—Aly screaming, clutching it as she sinks . . . sinks . . .
And now all I can think of is that. The rift and the sword. The rift and the Heptakiklos and the island that is tilting . . . tilting . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE THINK SYSTEM
ON THE POSITIVE side, the sun was bright, and the air smelled like the sea.
On the negative side, I felt like someone had reached into my gut, squeezed hard, and pulled me inside out like a shirt.
All in all, I would rather have been in Disney World. Or even in a vat of vizzeet spit. Anything but in the pain that I was feeling right then. I think it took me fifteen minutes to stop screaming, and another fifteen to feel like my skin had finally found my body and attached itself again.
The first thing that came into actual focus was Marco’s face. I’d never seen it so contorted with pain. “Do not. Ever. Let that happen. Again,” he said.
I nodded dumbly. That was a no-brainer.
Where were we? I blinked until the surroundings came into focus. I could see the columns of the House of Wenders-aka-Massa. Soldiers, monks, and rebels were pouring out of the surrounding buildings, shouting to one another. I could see Torquin stumbling about, rubbing his back and arms against a brick wall as if to test if he was really there.
“What the heck just happened, Brother Jack?” Marco said. “I feel like I was just taken apart and reassembled.”
“Marco,” I said in a choked whisper, “where are Cass and—?”
Before I could finish, Marco grabbed my arm. He pulled me up, and I stumbled after him across the compound.
Not far from the cafeteria, Cass and his sister were lying like rag dolls in the dirt. As Massa surrounded them, Brother Asclepius raced out of the hospital. He knelt by them, feeling for their pulses. “Alive,” he said. “Bring them inside.”
Already a team of technicians was exiting the hospital with two stretchers. They carefully loaded Cass and Eloise on them.
As the team went through the hospital doors, I could see Aliyah and her guards sweeping down the steps of the House of Massa. She was carrying a sturdy golden box. “The Loculus of Healing is inside,” she explained, holding it toward me. “I think they need it. The blessings of Massarym on them. I will wait. And then I have many questions for you. Go.”
I took the Loculus from h
er and ran to the hospital.
I hadn’t a clue what had just happened, but figuring that out would have to wait.
“So, back in that chamber, you just touched that Loculus—even though you didn’t know which one it would be?” Cass said, lying on a hospital bed next to his sister’s bed.
I nodded. It felt great to be talking to a totally normal Cass and Eloise. The Loculus of Healing had worked on them. Aliyah and Brother Asclepius were watching their vital signs in a state of awe. To be honest, Marco, Torquin, and I had put hands on that Loculus, too. All of our bodies had taken a beating.
“I knew it had to be either Time Travel or Teleportation,” I said. “And either one would get us out of there.”
“Well, everyone around here looks the same age as when we left,” Eloise said. “So it wasn’t Time Travel.”
“Good choice,” Marco said. “Better than being speared by Amazons.”
“Teleportation hurts,” Eloise said.
Torquin nodded. “Take body apart, put back together. Very painful.”
“I don’t think that’s what happened,” Brother Asclepius said. “That’s the Star Trek version—you know, the molecules dissolve and reappear like magic somewhere else. But think about it. When you talk on the phone, your voice doesn’t travel. It’s turned into information—little bits of data that are decoded at the other end.”
“That can happen with bodies?” Marco said.
“Theoretically,” Brother Asclepius said. “Atoms are atoms. They’re all the same. So if the information on how to build a Marco is sent to a new set of atoms somewhere else, they assemble themselves. The thing is, that process would take an extraordinary amount of energy! It’s a miracle you didn’t die from the experience.”
“When it comes to Atlantis, some things are best left unexplained,” Cass said.
“What I don’t understand is, how did you get the Loculus to place you back precisely here, on this island?” Asclepius asked. “As opposed to someplace random, like the middle of the Arctic or West Africa?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m not exactly sure. I wasn’t really thinking. We went into some weird state, sort of like sleeping. I could feel my body growing and contracting. I thought we were all going to explode. Then I started thinking about Aly and Atlantis. I could see her yelling at me. It was crazy—like she was guiding me, telling me to go back to the island. When I concentrated on this place—boom, we were here.”