David Gilman - Ice Claw

“We figured that, but you’re more use to us alive than dead for a while longer. You don’t think your friend would abandon you, do you?”

Max! They were using Sayid as a trap! How? They didn’t know where Max was exactly, unless … Sayid’s thoughts slammed into a brick wall. What was the common denominator? Sophie. That was who Peaches had sent a text to. Peaches and Sophie were working together!

Peaches smiled, climbed out and slammed the door closed. Sayid had to find the answer contained in these numbers. And somehow get that information to Max.

Because once they had Max, Sayid was of no use to them.

They would kill him.

Fauvre wiped the sweat from his eyes, wheeling himself backwards and forwards, gathering pieces of equipment. He shifted a crude, old-fashioned microscope into position. Once cutting-edge, now years out of date compared to modern technology, it still had a use in a shoestring operation such as his.

Fauvre held out his hand for Zabala’s crystal. Max felt a possessive surge grip him. He had been entrusted with it by the dying man, had fought for his life to protect its secret and was now handing it over to the father of the girl who had betrayed him.

After a moment’s hesitation he dropped it into the outstretched hand. Fauvre rolled it between his fingertips, caressing it as if it were a priceless diamond. And it was priceless if its secret could be understood.

Fauvre felt the boy’s hesitation. “All right. Let’s see what my friend was killed for.”

The air in the room was heavy with sweat; the breeze helped cool it a little, but the acrid stench of burnt straw still caught their throats. Fauvre wiped his eyes with his sleeve and lowered his face to the lens. The darkened room was lit only by the diffused glow from a light box. Max could barely breathe with the tension. If Fauvre understood what was on that crystal it would be tantamount to opening the vault of a secret tomb.

After what seemed a long time, Fauvre pushed himself back from the table.

“Give me the birth charts,” Fauvre said.

He spun his chair around and clamped the two pieces of paper onto a whiteboard-the original chart Max had found in the chateau and the latest that Zabala had sent to Fauvre. He quickly made a bigger drawing of them so they could both see exactly what they were talking about.

Max watched the black marker slide across the whiteboard as Fauvre sketched the same-shaped triangle that was etched on the crystal, placing a letter at each corner- E, S, Q .

“ Several years ago three distant bodies in our solar system were discovered,” Fauvre said as he wrote them out, Eris, Sedna and Quaoar , pronouncing each one as he did, like a teacher back at school: “Eeris, Sedna and Kway-o-are.”

He touched each point of the triangle. “ E, S and Q . Zabala could not have known of their existence all those years ago. Back then the planets told him a major disaster was going to happen, but there was something missing-these planets and their conjunction.”

“Their alignment? That’s special, is it?” Max asked.

“Exactly!” Fauvre said. “These are the triggers and they are now in the correct place in the zodiac.”

Max wasn’t getting it. But he concentrated as if his life depended on it-which it might. He knew the moon affected the Earth’s crops and tides, so perhaps these planets could also exert subtle forces. Max’s fingers hovered across the diagrams, touching the unlocked secret, which as yet didn’t make complete sense.

“Zabala had all the vital pieces for his prediction,” Max said. “He wanted you to have the pendant. Because he had sent you the new chart he made.”

Fauvre spoke carefully. “I am convinced Zabala’s prediction of a natural disaster is correct and it will be brought on by a man-made force. Those three missing heavenly bodies now lend an enormous weight of conviction to its happening.”

Max could only go so far with crazy ideas. “I can’t deal with this stuff. There’s no logic. There’s no reasoning behind it. All of this because of a lousy triangle!” he blurted out. His dad had always taught him to be practical, to see the reality behind the facade of nonscientific claims.

“You’re wrong, Max! This information would have died with Zabala had you not taken responsibility and seen this thing through.” Fauvre spoke slowly and precisely, letting the boy’s frustration settle. “Max, this is not the idiocy of reading a horoscope in a daily newspaper. This is a scientist-my friend Zabala-discovering a powerful universal force.”

“I want something more definite to go on,” Max replied.

“This is precise. It is definite,” Fauvre replied. He drew the new triangle into the diagram Zabala had sent him. “This gives us the planetary alignments at the exact hour, day and year that this catastrophe will occur: 11:34 on the eighth of March.”

“Two days’ time,” Max said.

Fauvre held up the numbers he’d scribbled on a pad, taken from the crystal:

7 24 8-10 4 9 12 25-7 11 9 17

“But this is one part of Zabala’s secret I cannot understand. What do you think these numbers mean? I do not believe they have any bearing on the astrological horoscopes. There is no relationship between them and the drawings.”

“It’s a code of some description,” Max said, and as he did so, his stomach plummeted. Sayid! His face intruded into Max’s thoughts. There was nothing he could do about his friend. Not right now.

Fauvre saw the look of anguish on his face. “There is something you haven’t told me?”

Max nodded. “There was a sheet of paper with a square of numbers, twenty-five numbers. It made no sense except they all added up to sixty-five no matter which way you added them.”

“Then that square holds a message. Zabala was passing on vital information, perhaps even telling us how the catastrophe might be averted.”

Max racked his brains. There was no way he could remember the magic square numbers. “To encrypt anything you need a word or a phrase. The people writing the code and those deciphering it have to know it. It’s like a combination for a vault.” Max was sunk even if he had the magic square. He did not have the key words.

“We only found the numbers in the square and those on the crystal,” he said. “We never found the key words to help us decipher it.”

“But don’t you see, Max? Somewhere Zabala has given you those key words to unlock his message. You’ve seen them, or been given them, or been told them. Where is the piece of paper?” Fauvre asked.

“My mate’s got it.”

“And where is he?”

“He should be home, but I haven’t been able to get hold of him. Maybe the cops have him back in England. It doesn’t matter right now.”

Max moved to a wall map. “The triangle brought me here from Biarritz. The other two sides join up …” Max’s finger traced a line. “Here.”

“Geneva,” Fauvre said, alarmed.

Fear twisted Max’s stomach. “The particle accelerator at CERN.”

“You know about it?” Fauvre said.

Europe’s organization for nuclear research. Max was supposed to have gone on a school trip there a couple of years ago but was in a cross-country competition instead. Sayid had gone and said it was stunning. A hundred meters underground, a huge circle of accelerator tubes, eight and a half kilometers across, twenty-seven kilometers in circumference. It was the size of London Underground’s Circle Line. Massive. Biggest, most complex piece of machinery in history!

Sayid tended to get excited about science.

This was every physicist’s dream. The big bang theory. They were going to accelerate beams of protons at very nearly the speed of light. The beams would smash particles together, creating an unbelievable burst of energy. “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!” Sayid had shouted, stamping his feet like a madman, nearly falling over himself with exhilaration. In fact, he’d rabbited on for days about it. Drove Max crazy. Now Max wished he’d listened more attentively.