Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon Read online

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  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  AN EXPLANATION OF SORTS

  TRAITOR.

  Two-faced liar.

  Monster.

  The words tumbled through my brain each time I looked at the back of Marco’s head. He was in the front seat of the helicopter, sitting between Brother Dimitrios and Stavros, who was the pilot. A sack and a box rested on the ground between Marco’s feet, each containing a Loculus. To my right, in the backseat, were Yiorgos, Cass, and Aly. We were flying at breakneck speed. Stavros was a better pilot than Torquin, but not by much.

  I was numb. I fiddled with the bracelet Brother Dimitrios had slapped on my wrist, secured with an electronic key. We all had them, bands that contained iridium alloy. The KI—whoever was left of them—would not be able to track us. I didn’t really care anymore. All I could think about was the look on Daria’s face the last time I saw her. The concern for the sick little boy, Pul. Like nothing else mattered. Like her world was not going to vanish after two thousand seven hundred years.

  Marco was talking. Explaining. But his words drifted through the noisy chopper as if they were in some alien language. Now he was looking at us, expecting an answer. “Brother Cass?” he said. “Aly? Jack?”

  Cass shook his head. “Didn’t hear it, don’t want to hear it.”

  “We trusted you,” Aly added. “We risked our lives with you, and you were working for the enemy.”

  Brother Dimitrios turned to us. “We took you from the enemy,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Crazy old Radamanthus and his pointy-headed Karai groupies . . . they have infiltrated your mind, haven’t they?”

  “Did you tell them about the KI, Marco?” Cass snapped. “Did you give up their secrets? You sold them out, too?”

  “We still don’t know their location,” Brother Yiorgos said. “We can block the tracker signals—that’s easy—but decrypting them is beyond our capabilities. Marco couldn’t figure the KI location. But he said you might be able to.”

  “He was wrong,” Cass said.

  “I knew Bhegad, long ago,” Brother Dimitrios said. “He was my professor at Yale. Not a good teacher, I’m afraid. He disappeared in mid-semester, leaving behind an odd note. He was going to a secret think tank to determine the fate of the world! Genetic and historic consequences! Most scholars deemed it flat-out loony. It seems that while studying the works of Herman Wenders, Professor Bhegad came across the diary of Wenders’s son, Burt. A deluded boy, feverish and about to die, who believed his father had found a secret island, the remnant of Atlantis. Legend has it that Wenders and his people set up a permanent base there, which only they could locate. It became the home of a secret Karai cult. Until now, I believed it to be a fiction. I thought old Radamanthus was dead.”

  “If they’re the Dark Side, what are you?” Aly grumbled.

  “Tell me, what did Bhegad say?” Brother Dimitrios went on. “That you will die unless the seven Loculi are returned to the Circle of Seven? Hmm?”

  He knew about the Heptakiklos too! “Did Bhegad leave that info in his note at Yale, or did a little bird tell you?” I asked bitterly.

  Marco’s face blanched.

  “Before you were captured,” Brother Dimitrios said, “back in your hometown, you’d begun experiencing tremors—fainting spells caused by your genetic flaw. Then Bhegad whisked you away to this secret hideout. He keeps you alive, correct? He’s devised some . . . procedure. Something that keeps you healthy temporarily. But alas, the cure comes only after all seven Loculi are returned. Am I right so far?”

  His eyes bore into mine. All I could do was nod.

  “And he’s told you a story about a fair, golden-haired prince named Karai,” Brother Dimitrios continued. “His mother, Queen Qalani, played god by isolating the sacred energy source into seven parts. This upset the balance, creating havoc in the land. So the good prince Karai sought to destroy the seven Loculi. But his evil brother Massarym—a dark young man, of course, as dark is the color of villains—stole them away, causing the entire continent to implode. Something like that, yes? And you believed this?”

  “Think about it, dudes,” Marco pleaded. “Think about how we felt when Bhegad told this story. Each of us tried to escape—and then we all tried together. But they were on us. They brought us back and wore us down. So yeah, of course we came around—but not because we trusted him. For survival. Because we really didn’t have a choice.”

  Cass and Aly were looking at the floor. None of us had a good response.

  “Perhaps Prince Karai wasn’t such a saint after all,” Brother Dimitrios said. “Perhaps he was a foolish young man with a temper. Imagine if the saintly Karai had succeeded. He would have destroyed the Loculi, and the continent would have vaporized in an instant. Massarym took the Loculi away—for their protection.”

  “Marco already gave us this line,” Aly said. “There’s one problem with it. Atlantis was destroyed!”

  “Destroyed?” Brother Dimitrios snapped. “Really? You saw the Heptakiklos, no? Marco took the waters and came back from death. You know very well that a part of Atlantis remains today. It was not vaporized. The Karai Institute colonized it. Our rightful home!”

  “Massarym saved Atlantis from totally being eighty-sixed,” Marco said. “Because he took the Loculi away. He hid them away for the future. For a time when people would know how to use them. Like now.”

  “Bhegad has lied to you,” Brother Dimitrios said. “To him, people are a means to an end, that’s all. Like this supposed cure? If he were concerned about a cure, he’d set out to make one. Like our scientists did.”

  “You have a cure?” I asked skeptically. “You’ve only known us since we kicked your butts in Rhodes!”

  “No, we don’t have a cure,” Brother Dimitrios said simply. “I will not lie to you. I will always be direct. But we are working on one, and we’re very hopeful. And we may indeed have just learned about you in Rhodos, but you must remember that the Massa have been around for a long while. Although we had not met any Select personally before you, we have always known about G7W.”

  Marco nodded. “These guys are the real deal.”

  “I don’t care if they’re Santa Claus and his elves,” Aly snapped. “You broke our trust, Marco.”

  “We were family,” Cass said softly. “We were all we had. And now we have nothing.”

  He was on the verge of tears. Aly was looking out the window in a cloud of funk.

  But I was sifting through Brother Dimitrios’s words in my brain. I had to admit, against all of my emotions, they made some tiny bit of sense.

  I sat back in the chair, my head spinning. Was I being brainwashed?

  Sleep on it, Jack. A problem that seems unsolvable always looks different in the light of a new day.

  Dad’s words. I don’t have a clue how old I was when he said them. But they were stuck in my brain like a sticky note with superglue.

  I glanced out the window. We were flying across the Arabian Peninsula, with the sun at our backs. Underneath us, the desert gave way to a great forked waterway. “There’s the Red Sea,” Yiorgos said. “We will stop soon to refuel.”

  “It’s the ruins of Petra, to be accurate,” Cass muttered. “Passing due west from Jordan to Israel . . . Yotvata . . . An-Nakhl . . . So I guess you’re putting us on course for Egypt.”

  “Very impressive,” Brother Dimitrios said. “Egypt is correct. The Karai are not the only ones with a secret headquarters. Theirs, apparently, is where the search for the Loculus ends. Ours is where it begins.”

  “And ours is actually in one of the oldest of the Seven Wonders,” Yiorgos said proudly. “The oldest.”

  “The only one that still exists,” Brother Dimitrios added.

  Cass, Aly, and I shared a look.

  We were heading for Giza, for the site of the Great Pyramid.

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E

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  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  HEADQUARTERS

  THE GRAY JUNKER of a Toyota pulled to a stop. We had reached a small parking lot at the end of an access road that led from the highway. A sign at the turnoff read CAIRO: 14 KM. Behind us was an old minivan full of Egyptian Massarene. The security detail.

  “Home sweet headquarters,” Brother Dimitrios said with a smile. “I think you’ll like Giza.”

  Aly, scrunched into the backseat between me and Cass, was drenched with sweat. Some of it was probably mine. Egypt was even hotter than Iraq. Out my window was a cemetery of modest tombstones that stretched to the horizon, disappearing into the desert. We had just passed a village of modern, squarish buildings.

  Could we escape there? I sized up the distance. It would be a long run.

  Brother Yiorgos opened the passenger door and I stepped out. I’d been so focused on escape I hadn’t seen what was on the other side of the car.

  The Valley of the Pyramids was nothing like the photos we’d seen in school. The stone structures were mountainous, higher than the Hanging Gardens. Their simple, no-nonsense lines made them somehow more powerful. They looked as if they’d heaved up from the sand by some violent force of nature. It made sense they were the only remaining Wonder. They seemed indestructible.

  Three main pyramids towered over the desert landscape, their surfaces seeming to vibrate in the sun’s heat. Smaller versions dotted the landscape, along with acres of rubble and ruins. In the distance, three tour buses were pulling into a parking lot, and throngs of camera-toting tourists made their way toward the Big Three. The Sphinx, to the right, sat quietly looking away, content to ignore it all.

  “Monuments, like skyscrapers—all built for the pharaohs’ corpses!” Brother Dimitrios said, getting out of the car. “Imagine! They make you into a mummy. They load you into an ornate chamber inside the pyramid, filled with treasures. There you stay forever, your spirit properly pampered. Because part of that spirit, the ka, was thought to remain behind in the real world. And it needed to be comfortable.”

  “Kind of a ka garage,” Marco said with a grin.

  “That is so not funny,” Aly muttered.

  Brother Dimitrios began walking across the cemetery, gesturing for us to follow. “Only the Great Pyramid, the one farthest north, is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders. Naturally it’s the largest of the three, built for the pharaoh Khufu.”

  “If it’s a Wonder, it has a Loculus,” I said. “Have you found it?”

  “Alas, no,” Brother Dimitrios said, flashing a smile. “But now we have a team of experts. You.”

  He stopped by a small wooden building, a hut with a rusted lock. Yiorgos began fumbling with keys. As we waited, Stavros’s cell phone beeped and he turned away, taking the call. Behind us, several Massarene goons in black jackets were leaning against their minivan, smoking and looking extremely bored.

  For the first time since we met the Massarene, we were alone and out of earshot. Aly leaned in to Cass and me. “I say we run,” she said, looking toward the village. “We can do it.”

  “Aly, no,” Cass said.

  “They’re distracted,” Aly said. “They can’t shoot us because they need us. They don’t want to draw attention. The worst that can happen is they chase us. And we’re faster than they are.”

  “This is not only impossible, but insane,” Cass said. “I can’t believe you’re even thinking about it!”

  “They won’t be either,” Aly said. “That’s exactly why it will work.”

  I sneaked a glance toward the village. Getting there would mean sprinting up the access road, across the main highway, and over an area about the length of three or four football fields. In full view of everyone. Aly was edging away from us, her eyes on the distant road. A loud guffaw erupted from the Massarene. Some dumb joke.

  Aly was sweating. Her eyes were red. “I don’t trust them,” she said. “I don’t trust any of them. Especially Marco. Marco is the enemy.”

  Cass gave me an uncomfortable look. Our friend was losing it. “Aly,” I said, “you need some sleep. A problem that seems unsolvable always looks different in the light of a new—”

  Aly lunged toward me and Cass and wrapped us both in a quick hug. “I love you guys!”

  She bolted across the field, heading toward the main road. Her footfalls made small clouds in the dusty soil. Cass and I stood locked in astonishment.

  “Get her!” Brother Dimitrios cried out.

  Marco spun around from the wooden hut. “Is this a joke?”

  He took off at a sprint. It was effortless for him. He was like a cheetah to Aly’s pony.

  At the road, the goons jumped into the car. It sputtered, wheezed, and finally coughed to life. Its tires spun, squealing on the blacktop.

  Do something. Fast.

  The car was to our right. It veered off the road, making a beeline for Aly, coming diagonally across the field. If Marco didn’t get her, the goons would.

  I ran forward, into the car’s path, screaming at the top of my lungs. Waving my arms.

  Marco looked back over his shoulder at the commotion. The driver honked, swerving to avoid me. I matched every move, staying in his path. “Jack, watch out!” Marco cried.

  The goons were leaning on the horn now. I heard the squeal of the brake pads. I planted my feet, staring into the grille as it came closer. I saw my reflection in the chrome and shut my eyes hard.

  The impact came from the left side. Marco knocked me off my feet, wrapping me in his arms. We flew into the air, thumped to the ground, and rolled. I saw the car spinning out of control, its two right wheels lifting off the ground. Brother Dimitrios, Yiorgos, and Stavros ran for cover as the rear bumper plowed into the small wooden hut with a dull boom.

  The car came to a stop, impaled in the wall. For a moment nothing happened. Then a welling up of voices from inside the hut. People were flowing out now, examining the wrecked car, crowding around Brother Dimitrios and his two men. I heard his voice shouting “Get her!” People were thronging toward us from the road—Massarene goons, tourists, townspeople.

  Marco sprinted away into the crowd, after Aly. But he didn’t get far. I could see him stop cold, surrounded by people. I stood, looking into the distance.

  Cass ran up beside me. “She did it,” he said. “She really did it!”

  I looked around. Marco was gone. Brother Dimitrios and his henchmen were lost in the crowd. “Let’s go,” I said.

  We took off, into the chaos. Cass nearly barreled into a thin teen with a backpack. I swerved around a family of five with five cell-phone cameras. As I broke away, a tall man in a white outfit smiled placidly at me.

  I barely saw the wooden stick before it made contact with the top of my head.

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  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  RESURRECTION

  I FIGHT THE Dream this time.

  I don’t want it. I need to wake up.

  But it overtakes me with a swirl of gray-black, acrid smoke. I am running as fast as I can. I hear the screech of the griffin, the snarl of the vromaski. I know the end is near.

  Who am I this time?

  Which brother?

  My stride is long, my legs thick. My arms are full. I am carrying papers. No, not paper. Long sheets of tree bark, ripped from the trunk, neatly stacked.

  I plunge down a steep hill. My feet slip and I fall, head over heels. I land hard on my back against a bush. Its branches stab me in the neck, and I cry out.

  Panting, I sit up. I have no time for delay. The thin sheets of bark are strewn about. Seven of them. Each one contains a sketch, made from charcoal. Two are of statues, a fierce warrior straddling a harbor and a Greek god. The other six: A magnificent tower b
eaming light into the sea. A tapered structure overflowing with flowers. A powerfully simple pyramid. A tribute to a goddess of the harvest. A tomb for the dead.

  Seven Atlantean ideals, represented in statuary: Strength. Wisdom. Light. Beauty. Clarity. Rejuvenation. Respect.

  They will stand forever, I think. We will die, but they will remind us. They will contain the seeds of hope. Of resurrection.

  I gather them up and continue. I hear a sharp crack. The earth shakes. I know this feeling well. I know what happens now. The ground opens. But the crack is not beneath my feet. It’s much farther below. At the bottom of the hill. Someone is falling into it.

  This is how I know I am Massarym. For I am seeing Karai from above. And I scream at the sight of my brother disappearing.

  A face appears before me. A woman I know.

  She is floating.

  As I look into her eyes, the forest dissolves. The trees fade to a wash of light green, the sounds mute, and nothing matters at all.

  I call her name over and over and over.

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  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  FRAGMENTS

  “I DON’T THINK so.”

  I blinked upward into Cass’s face. His hair was haloed by a fluorescent ceiling light. I was in a glaringly bright room with puke-green walls and a tiled floor. My arm was attached to an IV stand, and by the wall was a wheeled table with beeping medical machines. “Huh?” I said.

  “You called me Mom. I said, ‘I don’t think so.’”

  “Sorry,” I said. “The Dream.”

  The fragments of images dispersed like fireflies at daybreak.

  Cass smiled. He looked like a little kid with a guilty secret. “She made it,” he said. “Aly. She disappeared into the crowd.”

  “Really?” I sat up and immediately regretted it. My head throbbed, and I shot my hand up to feel a bump that was swollen and hard as a handball. “Ow. That’s amazing!”