Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon Read online

  “The question is, do those monsters include us?” I asked.

  Marco’s eyes darted toward the guards’ voices. “Come on,” he said gruffly, heading for the garden wall. “I’ll help you guys over.”

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  IN THE SHADOWS

  THE MOON WAS giving way to the rising sun. As we rushed away, my sandals seemed to get stuck on everything—roots, vines, rocks, salamanders. We were taking a wide berth around farmland. Huts were still shuttered from last night, and we were nearing the copse of woods close to the river, where we’d first come in. My face still hurt, and my feet were battered and bruised.

  We’d managed to hide out in the shadows of the garden, while the newly emboldened guards rushed through the inner wall. In the predawn darkness we’d slipped away unseen, but we knew our hours of undetected freedom were numbered.

  I wondered about Daria. Had anything happened to her during the earthquake? Where exactly had the fire been? For a moment I thought about turning back. About staying here instead of returning.

  And die here at age fourteen? Stop. Forget that now.

  Marco was at the river edge. He was looking back toward the city. I had a hard time reading his face. “Let’s do this before I change my mind.”

  “Marco, wait,” I said. “What about the first Loculus? You said you buried it here. At least we can bring that one back. One for two isn’t bad.”

  “Yeah, good thinking,” Marco said. “I’ll get it. It’s right nearby. You guys go ahead before they hunt us down.”

  “We’ll wait,” Aly said.

  “The guards will be here in a minute!” Marco snapped. “Go! All of you. Now! I can do this in two seconds.”

  Uncertainly, she and Cass clasped hands and prepared to jump.

  I turned to Marco. “Are you all right?”

  Marco took a deep breath. “Adjusting. I hate to lose.”

  “Don’t think of it as losing,” I said. “We’ll be back.”

  Marco smiled. “Glass half full, right, Brother Jack?”

  “Right,” I replied.

  I heard two splashes in the river. Cass and Aly and were on their way. I glanced back toward Babylon and saw four figures running through the entrance gate, clutching spears.

  “I see them,” Marco said. “They won’t touch me. Go ahead.”

  Somehow, I knew he’d be all right. “See you on the other side,” I said, turning toward the Euphrates.

  * * *

  I gasped for breath, breaking through the surface of the river. I felt a pull from above. Over my head, a nylon fishing line waved in the breeze. The hook was attached to my shirt.

  I blinked the water out of my eyes. The sun beat overhead, the river was calm. On the shore, a blond woman stood with a fishing rod, looking mortified. A small crowd had gathered around her. “I am so, so sorry!” she cried out.

  I looked around for our foursome, Bhegad, Torquin, Fiddle, Nirvana. I didn’t see them among the throng of people pouring out of tents down the shore. They were all wearing the familiar white polo shirts with KI symbols. Some of their faces were vaguely familiar from the Comestibule.

  I swam for the shore. Aly kept pace beside me. Marco was with us too, just as promised. I smiled with relief, watching him grab onto Cass’s tunic and swimming him toward the shore.

  But my strokes felt labored, as if I weighed three hundred pounds. I let my legs drop downward. Luckily we’d reached the shallows and I could stand.

  I staggered, as if my knees had been replaced with wet clay. I struggled to stay upright, shaking water from my eyes. Cass and Marco were on their feet too. Cass looked pale. He was handing Leonard to Marco. “Brother Cass,” Marco said. “Are you okay?”

  “Marco . . .” I called out, my voice parched. “Where’s the Loculus?”

  Marco shook his head disgustedly. “They came after me before I could dig. Guards. I had to book.”

  I turned. People were slogging through the water toward us. Fritz, the German mechanic with a KI snake tattoo on his face. Brutus, the baker, whose muffins I had botched in the kitchen. Alana, one of Marco’s martial arts instructors.

  I wanted them to go away. I felt numb. All my aches—tongue, arm, head—throbbed like crazy. My legs felt Gumby-like, and I had to blink to keep my balance.

  I felt the shore spinning. The smiles of the Karai people became a collage of floating, chattering teeth. I heard Marco say something, but when I turned he wasn’t there. I looked down. Aly had dropped to her knees. Cass fell back into the water, his arms flailing. I could see people rushing over. They had tubes and needles and boxes. They seemed to be floating in midair. Blending into one another and separating.

  “Treat . . .” I said, but my jaw was stuck, my tongue thick. “. . . ment.”

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  AGAIN

  MY BROTHER.

  My Dream begins where it last ended, in a chamber under the broken ground. Where the water has given me life from death. Where I float on air made of song. Where I face the empty Heptakiklos and the boy who stole the Loculi.

  The boy who looks like me. Who is my brother.

  He looks up. He is not surprised to see me.

  My eyes are locked on what is behind him. The patch of scorched earth that was once the lifeblood of our land—seven empty bowls carved from the rock, arranged in a circle. A sword in the midst of it all. It sickens me to the core.

  I begin to yell. I cannot control myself. He must return what he has taken. He has caused the Dark Times. His recklessness is destroying our world. I see beside him an enormous leather pouch. It has been made from the stomach of a giant horomophorus, a creature that can look over the tops of trees. Even through its thick lining, the seven spheres are visible. Glowing. They contain immense energy.

  He smiles. We are brothers, he says. We must understand one another. We can work together.

  As he speaks, the dreamscape shifts in the way that dreams do, and I become him. I am now the boy who was my thieving brother. But “thieving” is the wrong word. It is the word of the fallen boy, the one who I am no longer. I know this now: What I’m doing is not theft but salvation.

  I look at the agitated, bruised, soil-smeared face that is no longer mine. I look for a sign that he may understand. But whether he does or not no longer matters, because there is no more time.

  I take the satchel and I run.

  Behind me, my brother leaps toward the Heptakiklos. He grabs the sword in its center and pulls.

  It slides out with a loud shiiiiink. The jolt of light is blinding.

  The earth shakes violently. I fall, and so does he. As he turns to me, his eyes are panicked.

  What has he done?

  What have we done?

  He rises to his feet and rushes toward me.

  I open the satchel. I reach inside, searching for a sphere of nothing. A space that pushes aside the other six spheres. I see it. I touch it.

  I run, as he howls in confusion and anger.

  He no longer sees me.

  And I know I will never see him again.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  LAZARUS RISES

  “AH, LAZARUS RISES.”

  “His name not Lazarus. Is Jack.”

  Voices. I knew them.

  “I am referring, dear Torquin, to the Biblical story of Lazarus, who rose from the dead.”

  “Jack not dead, Professor.”

  “No, and Jack’s name is not actually Lazarus. It is an expression!”
r />   The room was bright. Too bright. I cracked my eyes open as best I could. The lingering images of my dream floated away.

  I focused on a Karai Institute flag hanging in the tent:

  Both Professor Bhegad and Torquin were sitting on folding chairs. Torquin was whittling a block of wood into something shapeless.

  I smiled. I never thought I’d be so happy to see old Red Beard. “Wow,” I said. “You’re okay. We thought we lost you in the river.”

  Torquin scowled. “Almost drowned. Was punished.” He violently hacked off about half the block of wood, which shot across the room. “Punishing Torquin, favorite KI pastime.”

  “The true punishment was what your bodies went through,” Bhegad said. “You were gone for almost five months. You did not feel the aging effects in Babylon—but upon your return, G7W kicked in. In other words, your body clocks caught up. You all went far past your scheduled treatment times. I cannot emphasize how close you came to dying, young man. These treatments are temporary, and they do lose effectiveness over time. You are lucky we expanded our camp here to full emergency capacity—under the guise of an archaeological dig, of course. I used my status as a world-renowned archaeologist to get the proper permits.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  From outside, I heard shouts. I tried to sit up, but my head throbbed. The morning sun was orange on the horizon, streaming through the door from the east.

  A white-shirted scientist peeked inside. “Marco’s gone, sir.”

  Torquin raced out the tent flap. Bhegad, too. He had been in a wheelchair the last time we’d seen him, and now he was walking on two feet.

  I heard a snuffling sound and turned to my right. Aly and Cass were both on cots, eyes closed.

  They were unconscious. Marco was missing. I felt flattened. Dazed.

  When I closed my eyes, it was hard to open them. So I didn’t.

  * * *

  “Jack?” This time it was Aly’s voice that woke me up. She and Cass were both sitting up on their cots, looking groggy. “Hey. Afternoon.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Three o’clock,” Cass said. “Time flies when you’re having fun. Professor Bhegad told us he already spoke to you. Sounds like we dodged a tellub.”

  “Do you have to do that all the time?” I said, clutching the side of my achy head.

  “Bullet,” Cass said. “Sorry. The good news is they found Marco.”

  “He ran off,” Aly said, shaking her head in disbelief. “He recovered from his treatment before the rest of us. Just before daybreak, he slipped out for a jog. Or so he says. He was gone for hours.”

  A jog?

  I was having a hard time computing this. My mind was still half in dreamland. Memories of our escape were flooding in—the Loculus, Kranag, the near-collapse of the Hanging Gardens . . .

  “Actually, when he told us to jump into the Euphrates before him, I thought he might surprise us and stay in Babylon,” Aly went on. “That boy hates failure.”

  “Well, he left the flying Loculus there,” I said.

  “He tried to get it,” Aly said. “He told Professor Bhegad he started digging it up. But when the guards coming after him, he had to jump in the river without it. Bhegad was furious.”

  Cass shrugged. “Imagine how bad Marco must feel. Probably went on a hundred-mile jog to clear his head.”

  I lay back, eyes closed. “Are all seven missions going to be like this?” I said. “I don’t know what’s harder, finding Loculi or dealing with Marco the Unpredictable. Ever since Rhodes, he’s been saying weird stuff.”

  Aly raised an eyebrow. “Since Rhodes? He’s been like that since the minute I met him.”

  “I think you guys are being a little harsh,” Cass said.

  I took a deep breath and shut my mouth. I needed to recover more fully. Then my mind wouldn’t be so negative.

  I dozed on and off for awhile, and when my eyes flipped open for good, I was alone in the tent with Professor Bhegad, and it was growing dark outside. Bhegad was picking things up, tossing them into suitcases. “Feel well enough to fly, my boy?” he asked. “We’re going home to the island.”

  “Now?” I sat up slowly. “I thought you’d want us to go back to Babylon.”

  “We have been discussing what happened during your journey,” Bhegad said. “And by the way, I must applaud you, Jack, for your unusual discernment at a time of moral crisis. Your decision to leave the Loculus was wise and humane.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “We knew this mission would be hard,” he continued, sliding a laptop into his suitcase. “While you were gone, we tried to anticipate every possible scenario. We’ve had months. Brilliant minds can achieve great things in that time—nanotech engineers, geneticists, metallurgists, biophysicists.”

  I couldn’t believe we were going back to Geek Island. This whole thing was just getting worse and worse. “Funeral directors too?” I said. “Looks like we’ll need those at the rate we’re going.”

  Bhegad leaned in close. “My boy, never forget: saving your lives is the Karai Institute’s raison d’être.”

  “‘Reason for being,’” grunted Torquin from the far side of the tent. “French.”

  “So we will not give up on you,” Bhegad said. “And believe me, you have not seen the last of Ancient Babylon. We will send you back, by hook or by crook.”

  Something about that statement made the hair stand up on the back of my head. Saving lives—was that really their motivation? Marco’s words came back to me. What if there is no cure? What if it’s all a sham? After those seven babies are returned? Bingo—thanks, guys, sayonara! Next stop, Nobel Prize.

  If Bhegad was so casual about the lives of the Babylonians, how did he really feel about us?

  “We can’t bring the Loculus back, Professor Bhegad,” I said. “We can’t kill thousands of people. Even if they’re in some kind of weird time limbo, they’re still people.”

  Professor Bhegad smiled. “Yes, and I understand one of them became a bit of a sweetie to you.”

  “She did not—who told you that?” I blurted out. My face burned.

  Torquin snorted. “Little bird.”

  Snapping a suitcase shut, Professor Bhegad headed for the tent flap. “Torquin, commence preparations for takeoff. Wheels up in half an hour. We keep a team here, because I expect to return before long. And this time, when you go to Babylon, Jack, you’ll be going with Shelley.”

  He stepped briskly outside, shouting orders to other people.

  “Wait!” I called out. “Who’s Shelley?”

  Torquin plopped a full suitcase at my feet. “Not a sweetie,” he said.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  PINEAPPLE AND GRASSHOPPER

  “I HAVE BEEN dreaming of an elppaenip smoothie,” Cass said, as we burst through the dorm entrance into the bright tropical morning. He held up a small glass box, in which Leonard was lying on a bed of sand. “And a yummy reppohssarg for you?”

  Sometimes, just sometimes, Backwardish just got on my nerves. “You know, Cass, maybe you can spell that stuff in your head, but it’s impossible to figure it out by hearing you say it!”

  “Pineapple,” Aly said. “And grasshopper.”

  “Thank you, I rest my esac,” Cass said.

  “Ee-sack is not the right way to say case backward!” I said.

  “You dootsrednu it,” Cass replied.

  “Aghhhhh!” As I took off after him, Cass ran away, giggling.

  Honestly, it felt pretty good being back in the lush lawns and air-conditioned comfort of the KI. We’d all had a day to chill, most of which was spent sleeping. We’d showered and been bandaged up. Bhegad’s intelligence committee had debriefed us on every detail of the visit. Even a team of “textile designers” had made patterns of our tunics and sandals. />
  Today Professor Bhegad was going to treat us to breakfast in his classroom at the House of Wenders and introduce us to Shelley.

  “Maybe she’s a new Select,” Aly remarked.

  “Freshly kidnapped,” Marco drawled.

  “Well, it’ll be good to have another girl,” Aly said.

  “I had a friend named Shelley who was a guy,” Cass said, jogging back to us. “Sheldon.”

  “Guy or girl, I don’t know how one more Select is going to make a difference in Babylon,” Marco said. He kicked a stone and it rocketed across the campus lawn.

  “Easy, Pistol Feet,” Aly said. She smiled at Marco, but he didn’t notice.

  Cass was trilling into the glass box. “Brrrrrr . . . brrrrrr . . .”

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “It’s my lizard noise,” Cass said. “It comforts Leonard. He’s very sick. Barely moved since we got back.”

  “He’s homesick,” Aly said. “You never should have brought him over from the other side.”

  Brought him over from the other side.

  I stopped short. “Guys. Wait a minute. How did that happen? How did Leonard come over from Babylon?”

  Aly, Cass, and Marco turned. “Same way we did, brother Jack,” Marco said.

  “But Torquin wasn’t able to go through the portal—because he’s not a Select, and only Selects pass through. So why Leonard?” I began pacing across the walkway. “Okay . . . okay, we have to think about this before we see Professor Bhegad. This isn’t the first weird thing that’s happened with Leonard. Remember, when he fell into the Loculus pit, he didn’t disappear—only when Cass reached down to get him! And Cass disappeared too. Both times—with the Loculus and in the river—Leonard was able to do what a Select did. Not by being a Select, but by being in physical contact with one!”

  I stopped. The realization was epic. But the others were staring at me weirdly. “Uh, we kind of knew that,” Cass said. “Marco figured it out two days ago, back when we were in the water. When I pulled Leonard out of my tunic.”