by Jess Keating
“Not good, not good,” Mo panted beside me. His arms swung madly as he ran.
We must have gone deeper into the cave than I realized. Finally, a bright pinprick appeared in front of us. The entrance to the cave! But the wide mouth we’d come in through had shrunk to half its original height, and it was located much lower.
“What the devil is going on?!” Charlie screeched.
“It’s the gears!” Leo said. “We must have activated them somehow when we touched the code! This cave has a door, and it’s closing!”
He was right. The cave’s entrance was slowly sliding shut, dropping from the ten-foot ceiling all the way down to the ground like some sort of ancient garage door.
The hole was growing smaller with every pounding footstep. Calculations whizzed through my mind. Could we make the impossible happen? I quickly considered the angles of the descent, how many of us there were, and the sheer speed at which the door was dropping. The truth was obvious …
We weren’t going to make it.
“Slide!” Charlie yelled. “We can’t get trapped in here!”
I squeezed my eyes shut as I pummeled forward, begging my body to do as it was told. If even one of us targeted our slide wrong, we would be crushed under the weight of the door. When I opened them again, I was terrified to see that the rock door shifted closer to the floor. How could nobody see that this was a terrible idea?!
“STOP!” Grace sprinted ahead like she had activated some turbo-speed button on her legs. She reached the door before us and held out her arms, blocking our path.
“What are you doing?!” Bert yelled as he skidded to a stop. The rest of us crashed into him, tripping over our own feet and falling to the ground. Eventually, we stopped as Grace had demanded and sank to a pile of panting mouths and twitching limbs.
Grace bent at the waist and let her hands rest on her knees as she caught her breath. Behind her, the door continued its crawl to the floor. Six inches left. Five. Four …
Seconds later, the door thudded shut and we were completely sealed in.
Silence and dust settled as the reality of what had happened sunk in.
“There was no way we all were going to make it out,” Grace said. She shook her head fiercely and the light from her head lamp shot swishy beams through the damp air. “Not a chance. It’s all for one, remember? We don’t leave anyone behind.” She wiped her sweaty face with the back of her hand. “And so, we all have to stay.”
I rubbed the sweat and dust from my eyes and let my shoulders sink with relief. Frankly, I was pretty darn happy that none of us had been crushed to death under a massive rock door.
But that meant …
“We’re trapped in here,” Charlie said. She gripped her arms tightly and the whites of her eyes shone brightly as she rolled them to the ceiling, inspecting the space.
“Not true,” Leo said. He patted Charlie’s shoulder with one hand. “We can’t get out this way, but we’ve still got the code. The code will lead us to the technology we’re supposed to steal and it will get us out of here. I’m sure of it. Don’t worry, Charlie, we won’t be stuck here forever.”
She smiled weakly. “Promise? Charlotte Darwin won’t find her end in the Galápagos?”
“Duh,” he said. “You’ve got much more to accomplish back home. We’re seven geniuses. I think we can figure out one measly little code.”
It’s easy to feel resigned to your fate when you know you only have one choice. We trekked back to the wall where we’d discovered the code and tried to focus, ignoring the fact that if we didn’t figure out what it meant, we would all be stuck in here forever.
Martha would have no way to find us. And Pickles would be on her own again, this time on an empty ship.
My heart clenched.
“Does someone have a pencil and paper?” I asked, desperate to get to work. To feel some kind of control in this claustrophobic situation. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were in an enormous coffin. At least, that’s what it would be if we didn’t make it out of here.
Would our remains ever be found?
“Here.” Mary snapped me out of my morbid thoughts. She handed me a small pad of paper and a worn pencil. “Nikki, you came up with the idea of where to look for the code itself. I think you should take the lead on this.”
I looked to Grace for her approval.
“Agreed,” she said. “You seem to have a knack for this. Let’s brainstorm.”
I sat cross-legged on the floor by the code, and everyone settled around me in a circle. I transcribed the letters and numbers carefully, then made a duplicate for everyone so they had their own paper to examine.
“The highest number is 92,” I began. “The lowest is 1. Anyone have any ideas?”
Leo held up his paper. “I think the code might be a sequence of words. Each number could represent a letter in the cipher,” he said. “But it’s interesting that we’ve already got some letters here to work from.” He listed on his fingers. “G, T, M, T, E, and A.”
Charlie scratched the letters into the dust by her feet, fiddling with the different orders. “What does that mean? Why wouldn’t every letter be assigned to a different number?”
“Maybe the cipher doesn’t have a way of including certain letters?”
Bert frowned. “What good would it be, then?”
“It makes things more difficult,” Grace huffed.
“In many cases, ciphers use a key word.” Mary scribbled something on her piece of paper. “So in a way, this is easier. The code tells us that whatever the key is, it isn’t a word. At least not one in the traditional sense.”
“So what contains letters, but isn’t a word?” Bert scratched his head.
“That sounds like a riddle that Gollum would ask us,” Mary said. She clasped her hands together and squeezed for a moment, turning her knuckles white.
“Huh?” Charlie asked.
“In The Hobbit,” Mary clarified. “Remember? Gollum kept asking Bilbo a bunch of riddles, and he had to get them right if he wanted to escape.” She recited the riddle: “Voiceless it cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters.”
We all stared at her, waiting for the answer.
“The wind,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. Even talking about books seemed to lighten her mood. “It can cry, flutter, bite, and mutter, you know?”
“I always liked that first Lord of the Rings better,” Mo said. “Legolas is the man.”
Mary sighed dreamily. “No argument there.”
“We are a kind of fellowship, I guess,” Charlie sniffed. “Though I’m very glad there’s no Gollum in this situation. I don’t think I could handle a half-naked little weirdo running around in here with us, rambling about taters or precious rings.”
“No Gollum that we know of,” Bert pointed out.
“Fellowship!” Grace clapped her hands to get our attention. “Focus, yeah? What has letters but isn’t a word!”
“Right,” Bert said, getting back to business. “It must be something where the letters are ordered, since we’re trying to match each number to a letter to make any sense.”
“Maybe a flight schedule?” Charlie said. “They pair letters with numbers and times.”
We began compiling every instance we could think of where letters were paired with numbers. Flight schedules, famous street names, even grocery checkout codes for produce.
After an hour of fiddling, Leo tossed his paper aside in frustration. The air inside the cave was starting to make my skin clammy and itchy, like I was sitting in a tepid bowl of soup.
“None of these are working,” Leo said. He was stating the obvious, but I was grateful for a chance to stop rearranging numbers in my head.
We’d managed to find the code itself by thinking small. Maybe we could solve it by doing the same? I don’t know why, but it was almost like the walls, with their tiny code, were talking to me.
I just couldn’t hear what they were trying to say.
I tried out my theory on the others. “Guys, what if the answer to the code can be found the same way we found the code itself? By thinking small in this huge space. Is there something there? What’s small in size but can also be all-encompassing like this cave?” Curiosity and fear mingled together in my chest and hovered over my heart. I knew I was onto something but had no clue what it was. Or maybe I was just dehydrated and would soon be hallucinating about Gollum stealing the apple in my backpack.
“Thinking small?” asked Leo. “What do you mean?”
“Yeah, smaller than what?” Bert interjected. “This is madness! Smaller than letters? Smaller than numbers? Negative integers? There are too many choices!”
I looked blankly at Leo, but my thoughts were far, far away, desperately trying to untangle themselves.
Magic is science we can’t yet explain.
“I don’t know!” I yelled, frustrated at this whole puzzle. “All I know is that we found this dumb code by thinking and being small, so I thought maybe if we did the same—” I tore up my paper, chucking the pieces in the air. One settled onto the front of my chest. I brushed it aside angrily.
“I’ve got it!” Leo turned to face me. “What about atoms?”
Bert lit up like he’d just solved the theory of relativity. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. He began scribbling on his paper and used Grace’s for reference for the original code. “Atoms! Atomic numbers, you guys!”
“The periodic table of the elements!” I said. “Yes!”
“That has to be it!” Leo said. “Ordered numbers that correspond with certain letters. And it explains why some letters are already included. G, T, M, E, and A aren’t used as atomic symbols! So what does the code say?”
“I’m working on it!” Bert snapped. “90 is thorium, and 68 is erbium, so our first word is the. That’s a good sign! That leaves us with an R, and with 53 as the atomic number for iodine, that means the next is an I. Hydrogen is the number 1, which means our next word is right, and atomic numbers 8 and 10 are oxygen and neon, respectively, so that’s one …”
We all watched as he decoded the rest of the message. My heart, which had been thumping madly in my chest a few minutes before, seemed to limp to a halt as the letters revealed themselves on the paper. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe that the code would turn out to be a sequence of words we could read aloud, making the vault magically open? A sentimental password or name?
But instead, the solution seemed to be only one stage of the riddle. It wasn’t a phrase to read out loud, it was an instruction. Or maybe, a warning.
The right one must speak.
“What do you think it means?” Grace whispered, suddenly aware of the message behind the code. “Who is the right one to speak?”
We all exchanged glances, but nobody knew where to begin answering that question.
“And more importantly”—Charlie shuddered—“what happens if the wrong one speaks?”
There are some moments in your life where you have to sit back and wonder, How on earth did I get here? This was one of those moments. Just a few months ago, I was stuck working out of a makeshift laboratory at home with my mom. My best (and only) friend was Pickles, and I spent my days inventing things that sometimes (okay, usually) blew up portions of the house.
Why couldn’t I get those days out of my head now? A sad, aching pull in my chest tugged me back to a time when it was just Mom and me, with two place settings at the table. Bert was right; I did feel like I was being watched.
But not by security cameras.
I felt like my past was sneaking up on me, stalking me like a stealthy predator on silent paws. But, of course, that made no sense. I knew the others had my back—so what was I afraid of?
Why couldn’t I shake the clammy chill on the back of my neck in this awful cave? I could only hope that whatever was inside this vault was worth it.
Grace must have sensed our frustration and fear, because she forced herself to her feet and stood tall. “We’re almost there.” She rubbed her hands together, as though she was trying to light a fire under us. “The right person must speak. Maybe it’s simple: The person on the right must speak.”
“What right though?” Charlie asked. “Standing on the right facing the wall? That would be Leo. Or from the vault’s perspective, the person on the right?”
“Who would appear to be on the left,” Bert clarified. “Which would be me.”
“Or it could mean the right person, like the correct person. Or the person that is meant to do it in the first place. Or destined to do it.” There was an edge to Mary’s voice that sent a shiver across my skin.
“Plus,” Leo added, “we don’t exactly know what the right person is supposed to say. Are they supposed to speak and say anything? Or can they order a cheeseburger and the door will still open? We’ve all been talking this whole time, anyway. Who’s to know?”
Grace threw up her hands in frustration. I couldn’t blame her. It was way too easy to get lost in what-ifs. “Let’s just each try asking the cave to open for us,” she decided. “This day is weird enough, what’s a little talking to a wall while we’re at it?”
One at a time, we spoke aloud, trying to convince the vault to open. Mary asked politely. Charlie begged. Grace asserted very clearly. Even Mo hummed a little rhyme to convince it to open up.
“This is getting ridiculous. Talking to a cave?” I fumed, when it was my turn. Turning to face the wall, I couldn’t stop my voice from rising in annoyance.
“Hey!” I screamed at the wall and pounded my fists against its hard wet surface. “Let us in already! Please!”
The one good thing about yelling in a cave? You get a fantastic echo. And that echo gives you the teensiest bit of satisfaction when you’re annoyed, so you get to hear your anger bounce back at you and reverberate in your ears dozens of times.
The bad thing? It doesn’t do a lick of good. In the end, you’re still stuck in a cave.
“Nikki.” Leo’s voice was calm. “Why don’t you sit down and relax for a minute. We’ll figure this out.”
There were a few mumbles of agreement, but I didn’t have time to answer.
Why? Because the wall in front of us began to shift.
Leaping back, we watched in shock as the thick slab of rock grumbled and groaned. Tiny pebbles and dust fragments tumbled to our feet. A faint streak of gold light poured out from a slit that appeared in the wall before us. It grew wider and wider, like a cat’s vertical pupil, yawning open in the dark.
“Get back!” Grace instructed.
“Did yelling actually work?” Bert said, scrambling back to steer clear of the skittering pebbles at his feet. A low whistle escaped his lips. “I guess we know who the right person was,” he said.
I ignored their stares and gawked at the room appearing in front of us. Its walls were the same mottled gray as the cave itself, with small rivers of water dripping down the sides. The space was very cramped and lit from within.
I shielded my eyes against the bright spotlight that was trained on a single gray pillar in the middle of the room.
“This is some Indiana Jones stuff,” Bert breathed in awe.
On the pillar sat a glass box, exactly like the one from Martha’s notes. There were no red lasers protecting it, or weird marks on the floor, or even basic “Do Not Touch” warning signs.
It was just sitting there, waiting for us to pick it up.
As my vision adjusted to the bright spotlight, the contents of the box became clear. Something silver and round sat perched atop the three bands that swirled together in a nest of metal, glinting and winking at us in the light. Sparkling like iridescent fish scales, or vibrant metal.
Martha was right.
It was a ring.
“Who do you think should grab it?” Bert ventured. Nobody moved.
I bit my tongue. I knew what answer was coming. But that didn’t make it any easier. For some reason, this cave seemed made for me, from the Alice in Wonderland pers
pective to the voice-activated door. Even the tiny box sitting on the pillar right now practically called out to me.
Was I the right person?
And if so, why?
I stepped forward into the light. My skin prickled with that familiar combination of fear and curiosity that I’d felt ever since we’d stepped foot in this damp hideaway. I’d never seen this object before. But it made a bizarre sort of sense that it had to be me to pick up that ring.
I didn’t want to hesitate. Didn’t want to think about the booby traps that taking the ring off the pillar could activate, or worry what might happen next. We had to neutralize this dangerous weapon and get out of here. Back to Pickles. Back to safety. And that meant I had to act.
Was the electric spotlight emitting that weird, distant hum?
Or was it the ring itself?
I grabbed the box from the pillar. “I’d say we’re about to find out.”
You know what feels good after being trapped in a sweltering cave and solving ridiculous codes all to grab some tiny, sparkly, supposedly dangerous ring?
A shower.
You know what sucks about that shower?
Waiting for six other people to go first, because the stupid ship you’re on has only one bathroom.
That’s right. My name is Nikki Tesla, and I’m a sweaty, stinky, ring-stealing mess. And I drew the shortest straw in our shower lottery.
After we’d finally made our way into the vault and stolen the ring, things went pretty much according to plan. No alarms went off. The door to the cave mysteriously cranked itself open again. And no Gollums erupted from the walls to chase us to our dooms. But we did have one surprise when we finally made it back to our ship, panting and whimpering with exhaustion and sweat: For the first time since I’d known her, Grace offered to cook dinner. She never let on at the Academy, but it turns out that Grace is a whiz in the kitchen, especially if that kitchen is located on a ship. Within minutes, the delicious smell of sautéing onions and garlic and the tinkering sounds of a meal being prepped drifted through the cool, salt-filled air.
