Peter Lerangis - The Tomb of Shadows

“Aly knows how to disable that,” Cass said. “She did it when we tried to escape.”

“From the inside,” Aly reminded him. “Not from here. We’re stuck.”

Torquin crouched silently, grabbed the top of an umbrella-shaped mushroom, and pulled hard. The stalk broke cleanly, revealing a blinking red light, flush with the ground. I heard a soft click. “ Voilà ,” he said. “Disables. Thirty seconds. For KI people stuck in jungle.”

“You know French?” Cass asked.

“Also croissant ,” Torquin replied proudly.

Cass took the lead again. The scent of smoke was growing stronger. We were practically running now. The sweat on my back felt like a lake against the heavy pack. But up ahead, the dense jungle darkness was giving way to the light of a clearing.

A light made brighter by fire.

Cass stopped first. He dropped to his knees, his jaw hanging open.

“This can’t be …” Aly said.

We all sank down beside Cass, at the edge of the jungle now. The Karai Institute spread out before us, but it looked nothing like the stately college campus we’d left. The grassy quadrangle was chewed up by boot prints and speckled with glass from broken windows all around. I could see figures moving through the brick buildings, white-coated KI technicians fleeing into the woods. Flames leaped from Professor Bhegad’s second-floor collection of antiquities.

Fires raged behind the quad buildings, from the direction of the airport, the dorms, the supply sheds, and support buildings. The tendrils of smoke twined skyward, disappearing into an umbrella cloud of blackness.

“Leonard …” Cass rasped.

“Leonard?” Aly said. “All you can think about is what happened to your pet lizard? What about the KI staff?”

An anguished cry from across the quadrangle made us all instinctively duck behind a thicket. I peered through the branches to see a man in a ripped white KI lab coat tumble out the game room entrance. His hair was matted with blood.

As he scrambled to his feet, there was no mistaking Fiddle, our resident mechanical and aeronautical genius.

“We have to help him,” I said, rising, but Aly grabbed me by the collar.

From the building entrance, behind him, stepped a man dressed in black commando gear, goggles, and a helmet emblazoned with a black M.

“Massa …” Aly said, pointing him out to me.

“But how?” Cass asked. “The island is undetectable by human means.”

“Massa not human,” Torquin said.

Now I could see more of them—in the windows of the lab buildings, running across the basketball court. I could see them dragging KI scientists into the dorm, throwing rocks through windows. One of them, racing across the campus, tore down the KI flag, which stood in front of the majestic House of Wenders.

Fiddle staggered closer toward the jungle. He looked desperately around through the broken lenses of his glasses. I wanted to call out to him, but the commando grabbed Fiddle by his lab coat and yanked him down from behind.

“We have to help him,” I said.

“But it’s four against a bazillion,” Cass said.

Torquin crouched. “But this four,” he said, pulling a wooden case from his pack, “is very good.”

TORQUIN PULLED A long, slender pipe and a handful of darts from his pack. He moved through the jungle, crab-walking silently away from the thicket.

Dropping behind a fallen tree, Torquin put the pipe to his lips, and blew.

Shissshhhh!

Fiddle’s captor crumpled downward instantly, felled by a small, green-feather-tipped tranquilizer dart. “Eye of bull,” Torquin said.

I scrabbled to my feet and raced out of the jungle toward Fiddle.

As Fiddle saw me approach, he turned to run away. “It’s Jack McKinley!” I called out as loudly as I dared.

He stopped and squinted at me. “I must be dreaming.”

I took his arms and pulled him toward the trees. Behind us I could hear doors opening, voices shouting. Torquin’s tranquilizer darts shot out from the jungle with impossible speed, each one followed by a groan.

With the sharp crrrrack of a gunshot, a tree branch exploded just over Torquin’s head. We all dove into a thicket. “Why are we using darts when they’re using bullets?” Fiddle screamed.

“KI not killers,” Torquin replied. He reached out and lifted Fiddle onto his back as if he were a rag doll. “Go! Deeper into jungle. Hide!”

We followed Cass back the way we’d come. Behind us, an explosion rocked the jungle and we were airborne in a storm of dirt and leaves. I thumped to the ground, inches behind Aly and Cass. A tree crashed to the jungle floor exactly where Torquin and Fiddle had been.

“Torquin!” I shouted.

“Safe!” his voice replied from somewhere behind the tree. “Just go!”

Flames leaped up all along the pathway we’d just taken. As we ran blindly into the jungle, I peered over my shoulder to see Torquin and Fiddle following us. Cass was taking the lead, his head constantly turning left and right. Honestly, I don’t know what he was seeing. Every inch of the jungle looked the same to me. But Cass knew. Somehow.

Panting, he stopped in a clearing and looked around. The explosions were like distant thunder now, barely audible above the animal noises and the sound of our own breaths. “Did you know this place was here?” I asked.

“Of course,” Cass nodded. “Didn’t you? We’ve been here before. We’re near the beach where we saw the dead whale. If we have to, we can follow the coast around to the plane.”

“Whoa, dismount!” Fiddle said as Torquin stomped into the area. Sliding off the giant’s back, Fiddle grimaced. He took off his broken glasses and pulled a tiny shard from his cheek. “This really hurts. That means it’s not a dream, right? Which is a bummer.”

“Are you okay?” Aly asked.

“Yeah, I think.” Fiddle nodded. “Although I should have bought safety lenses.”

“What happened here?” I demanded, catching my breath.

Fiddle’s eyes seemed drained of life. His face was taut, his voice distant, as if he were recounting a horrible nightmare. “I’m … sitting in the airport minding my own business—and these turkeys fly in. No one expected it. We were caught totally unaware. Someone must have given us away …”

“Marco,” Torquin said.

“Marco doesn’t know the way here,” Aly protested. “None of us do. It’s got to be someone else.”

“It is.” Cass eyed me warily. “It’s … Jack.”

I looked at him, speechless.

“Not you, personally,” Cass said. “Your phone. The one your mom gave you, in the Massa HQ. You turned it on while we were here.”

“Wait,” Aly said. “And you left it on?”

“Okay, maybe—but so what?” I said. “No signal can get through to the island. It’s totally off the grid. Any grid!”

Aly groaned, slumping against a tree. “It’s not about location, it’s about vector, Jack—meaning direction. When we got in the plane, the signal traveled with us. Once we left the protected area around the island, the Massa could pick up the signal.”

I imagined a map, with an arching, beeping signal, traveling slowly from the middle of the ocean toward Egypt. Like a big old arrow pointing where to go. “So they just followed the path backward and kept going … until they discovered the island …”

“Bingo,” Cass said.

I felt dizzy. This whole thing was my fault. If it weren’t for my boneheaded move, we wouldn’t be in this danger. How could I have been so ignorant? “I—I’m so sorry. I should have known.”