He was also looking around, probably for us. Dimitrios was nasty and sadistic, and don’t get me started about his breath. He’d been there at the fight in the jungle with the rebels, and he knew about Marco’s defection back to the Karai side.
The only person I feared more on this island was his boss, the head of Massa. Her name was Aliyah, but everyone in the Massa called her Number One. I looked over my shoulder. We were maybe twenty feet from the jungle. Was she in there? Back at headquarters? Eaten by a vromaski?
Beside me, Marco was running his palm from his forehead to his chin and flinging away sweat. He was breathing heavily from the run.
“I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen Marco the Magnificent out of breath,” I said.
Marco smiled. “Must be the shock of seeing Casso the Lasso in action. You were amazing.”
“Too bad my sister didn’t think so,” Cass said.
Marco tried to hold back a laugh, but it spat out of him so explosively that he started to cough.
“What’s in your pocket?” Cass asked.
“Huh?” I said.
“A piece of paper in your back pocket,” Cass replied. “I didn’t see that before.”
Mom’s note.
I reached around, pulled out the paper, and unfolded it:
“A code,” Cass said. “Cool.”
“Um, can we deal with this later?” Marco said. “Maybe after we get to Mount Onyx?”
Cass shook his head. “What if she’s warning us about a trap? Let’s crack it now. All of us together, we can do it in no time.”
Marco groaned. “I’m the Soldier. Soldiers don’t do codes. Soldiers keep watch.” He crouched, parting the branches of the bush with his fingers. But his eyes were slits. “Codes are solved by . . . Tinkers and Trailers.”
Cass glanced up from the note. “Trailers? I think you inhaled quicksand, Marco.”
“Whoa, what did I just say?” Marco murmured to himself, blinking hard. “Okay. Cass is the Sailor ’cause his brain is a GPS, Aly’s the Tinker for the killer tech ability. And Tailor Jack . . .” He let out a massive yawn.
“Maybe I can sew your eyelids open,” I said.
Marco ignored the comment. His sleepy eyes sprang wide. “Whoa, put that code away, boys. Here comes Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Cass and I huddled closer to the ground and looked through the bush. I shoved the note back into my pocket.
Stomping up the beach toward us was an SUV-sized Massa with a hooded robe that could have doubled for a tent. “Let’s book,” Marco cried. “That ain’t Nirvana.”
I tensed to go, until the guy let out a juicy, enthusiastic belch.
“The greeting call of Torquin,” Cass murmured, his body relaxing.
“Heyyyy, if it isn’t the no-hair giant formerly known as Red Beard!” Marco called out. “In Massa fall-fashion wardrobe.”
“Disguise,” Torquin grunted, patting the sides of his robes. “Smuggling stuff underneath.”
“Vizzeet antidote and griffin vaporizers, I hope,” Marco said. As he stood to greet Torquin, he slipped and fell to the dirt.
“Marco . . . ?” I said.
“Whoops,” Marco replied. “My—”
The word bad caught in his throat. His eyes rolled up into his lids. A shudder began in his fingers then traveled up his body. Gagging uncontrollably, he began to convulse.
“Marco?” Cass cried out. “Is this some kind of joke? Because you’re freaking me out.”
“He’s having a G7W episode!” I said.
“He said he was immune,” Cass pointed out.
We watched in shock as Marco’s body contorted and lurched like one of the fish on the beach.
Without wasting a moment, Torquin scooped up Marco in his soot-stained arms. “We go to Massa hospital. Now.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ALL YOU NEED IS LOHV
A SLINGSHOT ROCK cracked the skull of the first vizzeet. An arrow pierced the leg of the second. In mid-spring, a vromaski took a bullet to the head.
The Karai rebels were armed and all around us in the jungle. We saw only flashes of them as we stumbled through the brush, but they were picking off Atlantean predators left and right. Torquin nearly fell a couple of times. But he held Marco tight over his shoulder.
“Is he . . . alive?” Cass shouted, panting with the effort to follow at Torquin’s pace.
“Marco tough,” Torquin replied.
I pushed my way through brambles and over roots. Marco’s skin was pale, his body limp. I tried to avert my eyes from at least three Massa corpses I saw lying in the brush on either side. Had the entire compound been abandoned for the beach?
“How do we know . . . that anyone . . . will be at the hospital . . . ?” I asked.
“Doctors . . . do not leave patients . . .” Torquin shot back. “Hypocritic oath.”
“I think that’s the wrong word,” Cass said.
I could see a brightening in front of us, which meant we were heading out of the jungle darkness and into the Massa headquarters.
Near the end of the jungle path stood the man who was once the Karai head chef. Old Brutus’s clothes hung loosely from his once beefy frame, and a thick rag was wrapped over his left eye. “What happened to you?” Cass asked.
“Vizzeet spit,” he explained, barking a short laugh. “Didn’t need that eye anyway. Coast should be clear. You’re almost there. When this is all over, we’ll make a fine meal out of these critters. Oh. Your mama told us to give you this.”
He unhooked a backpack from his shoulders. As he swung it around, I could see the familiar bulbous shapes of the two Loculi. “You guys are amazing,” I said. “Thank you.”
“She said she would get the shards to you. . . .” Brutus continued, but his voice tailed off as he spotted Marco on Torquin’s back. “Isn’t that kid the traitor?”
“He’s one of us again,” I replied.
“Then good luck,” Brutus said with a curt nod, and he disappeared back into the jungle.
In a few minutes we emerged into the compound that was once the Karai Institute. After the Massa attack, the lawns had become brown, overgrown, and cratered from bomb blasts. The stately brick buildings, which once looked like some Ivy League college teleported to the tropics, were battered and patched with plaster. When we were last here, most of the structures were surrounded by scaffolding. But the earthquake had turned those into mangled steel and piles of planks.
As we raced to the hospital I heard a burst of excited voices, like kids in a playground. Between two of the buildings, I spotted the Massa trainees—Eloise’s friends—all grouped together near their training yard. One of them called out Marco’s name before a couple of goons ushered them away and out of sight. I was glad they were safe.
Turning back to the hospital, I called out “Hello?”
With his free arm, Torquin pounded on a wall so hard I thought for sure he’d punch a hole in it.
The lobby was brightly lit and reeked of that supermedicinal hospital smell. I couldn’t see anyone at the front or elsewhere in the vast lobby. But above us, on a second floor balcony, a white-coated doctor emerged from a door. He looked startled by the noise, but when he laid eyes on Marco, he immediately said, “Bring him upstairs. The elevators are out.”
A wide staircase led to the balcony and we raced upward.
“Call me Brother Asclepius,” the doctor said, gesturing to an open door.
“This is Marco—” I began.
“I know Mr. Ramsay,” the doctor said. “Please, lay him on the bed.”
Torquin did as he was told. As Cass and I began to explain what had happened, Brother Asclepius gently cut us off. He had dark brown skin and probing eyes that seemed to grow with concern. “Yes, this is a G7W episode. Treatable, but a harbinger of the final deadly effect of the gene—”
“So you can fix him?” Cass said hopefully.
The doctor’s calm gaze faltered. “I—I’m afraid the equipment for this procedure was in th
e east wing, which was destroyed.”
I felt as if my entire body were dropping through the floor.
“Destroyed?” Cass said. “Why would anyone destroy medical equipment?”
“The Massa are canny, but often reckless,” Brother Asclepius replied. “They did not properly identify this building as a hospital during the liberation.”
“It wasn’t a liberation!” Cass spluttered. “It was an attack. Professor Bhegad told us these episodes will kill us if they’re not treated! Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Ohhhhhrrrrrrgh . . .” Marco groaned, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“A strong young man. Stubborn,” Asclepius said. “I can sedate him. I can use every technique in my power to keep him alive, but I’m limited without access to the right resources. Maybe the Karai staff have knowledge of an emergency supply of medications somewhere. They were the ones who built this hospital. But without the right equipment, there’s only so much I can do.”
“Call for the rebels, Jack,” Cass said. “With that superloud whistle, like Nirvana did. With the fingers in the mouth.”
“I don’t know how,” I said. “I thought you did.”
Cass shook his head. We both looked at Brother Asclepius, who gave us a helpless shrug.
I glanced around for Torquin, but he’d slipped out of the room. I spotted him through the second-story window—outside, pacing back and forth at the edge of the jungle.
I threw open the window and shouted, “Torquin! We need the Karai!”
Torquin turned toward me. His eyes were glazed, his face sweaty, and for a moment I thought he might have had an episode, too. As he looked up, he said something in a choked, squeaky voice that sounded like complete nonsense.
“Was that English?” Cass yelled.
“Ohhh . . . yes . . . pardon me,” Torquin said.
“Pardon me?” Cass said. “Did you just say—?”
“The Karai, Torquin!” I said. “Can you do the whistle?”
Torquin snapped to, gave me a stubby thumbs-up, turned toward the trees, and inserted two fingers into his mouth.
A pathetic little tune puffed out, mostly breath.
“Oh, great,” Cass said. “He has so lost his mojo. They’ll never hear that.”
“Hey, he’s lucky to be alive. Give him a chance. The rebels are listening for us. They’ll hear him.” I turned to Brother Asclepius. He was injecting Marco with something, hooking him up to IVs. From the beeping of the monitors attached to Marco, he seemed to have stabilized.
Cass and I both breathed a sigh of relief. For now.
“Okay, come on, Torquin . . .” Cass murmured, glancing toward the window.
From outside came a strong “Happy Birthday” whistle that echoed off the hospital wall. Outside, Torquin threw us a big grin.
Brother Asclepius turned from Marco and wiped some sweat from his brow. “Well, I was able to buy us a little time at least.”
Cass smiled wanly. “Thank goodness for the Hypodermic oath.”
“Hippocratic,” Asclepius said gently. “After the ancient healer Hippocrates.”
“I knew that sounded wrong,” Cass said.
I took Cass by the arm, pulling him out of the room onto the long balcony that overlooked the lobby. There I sat on the carpet and pulled out Mom’s note. “Can we do this while we wait? We may need it.”
Cass plopped down next to me as I unfolded the sheet of paper:
I could sense Cass trying hard to concentrate. “Did she just make this up on the beach, with all that stuff going on around her?” he asked.
“We started to talk, but Dimitrios was noticing us,” I said. “She must have written this when they were taking Eloise away.”
Cass stared at the message. “She couldn’t just write regular words?”
“What if someone intercepted it?” I pointed out. “Her cover would be blown. Mom is supersmart and superfast. But so are you, Code Guy. Any ideas?”
“Okay . . .” Cass said, narrowing his eyes at the paper. “I’m seeing a bunch of letters. . . .”
“I got that, too.”
“Except for the very end. The thirteen. Those are digits.”
I looked at him. “So?”
“So,” Cass said, “that thirteen could be some sort of key to the rest of the message. Like, ‘read every thirteenth letter.’”
“I’ll get a pen.” I ran back into the exam room and grabbed a pen from a counter. While there, I took a quick look at Marco’s chest.
In, out. In, out.
Good.
I ran back out and quickly went to work, numbering the letters first and then circling every thirteenth:
“R one?” I said. “That can’t be right.”
“Duh, it’s not,” Cass said. “Okay. Okay. Maybe this is just a substitution code. Where each letter represents another one.”
“Like the one you gave me at the Comestibule, when I first came to the island,” I said.
“Ylesicerp,” Cass replied, scribbling on the paper. “First you need to number the letters of the alphabet.”
He angled the sheet toward me:
“Yeah . . .” I said.
“Now, let’s look at that code again,” Jack said. “I’m thinking the ‘thirteen’ is our key. Like, replace every letter in the message with the one thirteen letters ahead of it.”
I nodded. “So if you see A, you go thirteen letters to the right, and you replace it with N. Which is the fourteenth letter.”
“Yup,” Cass replied. “So if each A is an N, then each B is an O, each C is a P—”
“Then you get to M, which is Z,” I said. “What happens after that?”
“You wrap around,” Cass replied. “Go back to the beginning. So N becomes A, and O becomes B, and so on.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Next step, write the alphabet on top and the replacement letters underneath. Makes it easier.”
Staring at Cass’s string of letters and numbers, I wrote it out:
“Ognib,” Cass said. “Now solve that message.”
I didn’t want to get anything wrong. I quickly wrote out Mom’s message and replaced each letter, using the key I’d just made:
“Aha!” Cass said, grabbing the paper from my hand. As he read it, his face fell. “Uhhh, guess not . . .”
As if in answer, Marco let out a low, unconscious groan from the table.
“Even in a coma, he lets us know we messed up,” Cass said.
“Maybe the substitution works in the opposite direction,” I said. “We went thirteen letters to the right. What if we go to the left?”
Cass shook his head. “The alphabet has twenty-six letters—twice thirteen—so it would be the same either way.”
“Maybe we’re not seeing something. . . .” I unfolded the paper and sounded out the letters softly: “Nir va nag avem elohvr . . .”
“Wait . . .” Cass said. “Read that again, but don’t pause for the spaces.”
“Nirvanagavemelohvr—” I began.
“Stop,” Cass interrupted, pulling the paper closer so he could see. “You said Nirvana. There it is, plain as day! Nirvana gave me . . .”
My heartbeat quickened. “Nirvana . . . gave me love?”
“L, o, h, v . . .” Cass said. “Your mom has trouble with spelling?”
“No, Cass,” I said. “Look at the rest of the message. Everything after ‘Nirvana gave me’ is gibberish—lohvrqha snow. No matter how you put spaces in it, it makes no sense.”
“The second half of the message could be in a different code. . . .”
I stared intently at the letters. “L, O, H, V, R, Q, H, A—maybe the letters stand for something . . . like an acronym.”
“For what?” Cass said.
“L, O, H,” I replied. “That could be Loculus of Healing.”
Cass nearly hit the ceiling. “Nirvana gave me the Loculus of Healing!”
“V, R, Q . . .” I said.
“Followed by H, A,
S, N, O, W—that’s two real words, not anagrams,” Cass said. “Has now!”
“Yes!” My fingers trembled. “So it says, ‘Nirvana gave me the Loculus of Healing. VRQ has now.’ What’s a VRQ?”
Cass began pacing. “Very Rough Question. Virtual Reality Quiz.”
“Victory Round Quaffle,” I said. “Virginia Royal Queen . . .”
“VRQ . . . it has to be a name, right? Vinnie. Victoria. Virgil.”
“That’s it!” I said.
“Virgil?” Cass said.
“Victoria,” I replied.
“We know someone named Victoria?” Cass asked.
“Close enough,” I said, stuffing the sheet into my back pocket. “We know a Victor Rafael Quiñones.”
CHAPTER SIX
FACE-TO-FACE
“TORQUIN, WHERE ARE the shards?” I called as I ran out the hospital entrance.
Torquin turned. In the heat of the late afternoon, his fire-blackened skin was covered with sweat. I could see a large, angry-looking, round lesion on his arm, where he must have caught a glob of vizzeet spit. He looked at me blankly. “Huh?”
“Are you okay, Big Guy?” Cass asked, gazing at him with concern. “You know, one of my foster parents had diabetes. When their blood sugar was too low, they acted like you—”
“There is much I need to tell you. . . .” Torquin said in a raspy voice.
The robe. I realized that was why it fit him so strangely. There was something underneath. “Torquin, did my mom give you anything before you left the beach?” I insisted.
Torquin’s eyes sparked. He shook his head as if waking out of a dream, and I repeated my question. Nodding, he lifted off his robe. Underneath he was still wearing his tattered rags from Greece, but now the plain brown sack of shards hung by a thick cord around his neck. “Yes, this.”
“You could have told us!” Cass said.
“Nice, Tork!” I said. “Those are the pieces of the Loculus of Healing.”
As Torquin took off the sack and held it out to me, an arrow whizzed out of the woods. It speared the sack, ripping it out of Torquin’s hand, and pinned it to the ground near the hospital wall.