by PJ Hoover
Benjamin stared at Jack. “You’re really not serious, are you?”
Jack grew a smug smile. “Totally. She’s had at least five hundred jobs in the last century.”
But Benjamin shook his head. “No, I mean you don’t seriously expect me to deliver messages back and forth between you two, do you?”
Jack looked about to snap out a sarcastic reply, but didn’t get the chance. “So why am I up at the crack of dawn?” Benjamin asked.
Jack levitated back over to Benjamin. “Gary’s on the trail of something hot. He’s been in the library all night working on decrypting the map you got from the ghosts.”
“It is a map?” Benjamin asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Yep,” Jack said. “So let’s get going. I told Gary I’d have you there in an hour.”
It took a good amount of pestering, but between Benjamin and Jack and a bucket of cold water, Andy managed to wake up and get dressed.
“Tell me again why we’re going to the library?” Andy asked once they’d teleported to the Ruling Hall. “In fact, why are we always going to libraries? There’s like a million other cool places to go in Lemuria. Why is it always the library?”
“To work on the second clue,” Benjamin said.
Andy groaned. “But it’s Saturday. I had plans with Iva today.”
“Iva and Heidi are already at the library,” Jack said. “Did I forget to mention that?”
“But we had plans,” Andy said.
“So you still do,” Jack replied. “Just think of them as being much more fun now.”
Gary couldn’t have picked a more obscure library.
“Cryptography Library,” Andy read as they walked through the door. It had taken them a good fifteen minutes to find the place, buried deep in dust on one of the upper levels.
Gary looked up from the table where he sat with Iva, Heidi, and Aurora, and motioned them over. The way his eyes shined, he didn’t look like he’d just pulled an all-nighter.
“How’s it—?” Benjamin began.
“Shhhh….” Heidi said. “Gary’s just about got it solved.”
“You do?” Benjamin asked.
“Shhhh….” Heidi said again.
Benjamin noticed she looked at him when she shushed him which he took as an encouraging sign. He smiled back and kept his mouth shut.
Andy, of course, sat next to Iva, and kissed her before even looking at anyone else. Benjamin tried to avert his eyes, but the only other thing to look at was weird symbols that crawled all over the walls.
Gary looked up from the scroll. Except this wasn’t the same scroll Benjamin had teleported from his mind. This scroll had all sorts of extra letters and symbols drawn all over it.
“What happened to my scroll?” Benjamin reached over to grab it, but Gary moved it away.
“I’ve been decoding it.” Gary pointed in front of him.
“You wrote all over it?” Benjamin heard the annoyance creep into his voice, but he didn’t care. Gary shouldn’t have written on it. He’d battled ghosts to get it.
“Gary didn’t write anything.” Aurora turned the scroll around and pointed at a symbol. “Look.”
Benjamin recognized it immediately. The three hearts, etched in gold, just like the wrapping paper on the puzzle box; they hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen the map. A shiver ran down his spine.
“What happened?” Benjamin ran his finger over the design.
“It looks like your secret admirer marked this one, too,” Andy said.
Benjamin glared at him. It was way too early in the morning to be talking about secret admirers.
“We managed to shift the phase of the molecules on the scroll fractionally, and everything you see here came to life,” Gary said.
“You did what?” Andy asked.
But Benjamin wasn’t listening. He studied the map, seeing the new symbols which matched the symbols moving all over the walls of the library. “These look familiar.”
“They should,” Aurora replied. “We have some like them on the walls of the lava tube where I live.”
“That’s right,” Benjamin said. “I knew I’d seen them before.”
“I have all the decoding results on a crystal back home.” Aurora stood up. “It’ll only take me a couple minutes to go get it.”
Aurora teleported away and was back in a matter of minutes. But two seconds after she rematerialized, Ryan Jordan also appeared in the door. He smirked at them with his unwelcome presence and walked in.
Why did Ryan always turn up at the wrong time? It was just so…so uncanny. No, not uncanny. Ryan was eavesdropping intentionally, no doubt for Nathan Nyx. Again.
Benjamin walked over to Ryan. “We’re using this library.”
“I doesn’t look that way to me,” Ryan said. “But you know, whatever. Don’t let me bother you.”
“What are you doing here?” Andy walked over to join Benjamin. Benjamin noticed Andy’s fists clenched as he spoke.
“Calm down,” Benjamin said telepathically though he really wouldn’t have minded too much if Andy hauled off and punched Ryan again. Heck, he’d have liked to get one or two good punches in himself.
“Good question.” Ryan said. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
Aurora walked over and got right up into Ryan’s face. Her dreadlocks seemed to double in size which made her almost tower over Ryan. “What we’re doing here is none of your business.”
Ryan stayed face-to-face with her, until finally, he took a step back. “Maybe I’ll just stay and see for myself.”
Nobody spoke, but then Andy let out a deep breath. “Okay, the truth is Benjamin has a secret admirer who’s leaving him coded messages, and we’re just trying to figure out what they say.”
Benjamin could have killed Andy. He felt his face turn so red, he was sure he looked like someone had painted it. And Ryan took it for everything it was worth. He doubled over laughing. Benjamin glared at Andy who didn’t seem to notice.
“I bet it’s Sherry the Scary,” Ryan said between laughs. “I always knew she had the hots for you.”
Benjamin gritted his teeth. “Sherry the Scary is not my secret admirer.”
“How do you know if you’re in here trying to decode secret messages?” Ryan laughed for another few minutes before managing to regain his composure. “Well, I guess I’ll be going then. I don’t want to get in the way of true love.” He smiled, waved, and teleported away.
“That was a little too close,” Andy said.
“But how would Ryan know to come here?” Iva said.
Aurora put her head in her hand. “Yikes, guys. I think it was me. When I teleported back to the lava tube, I felt someone connect to my teleportation signature.”
“You felt it?” Andy asked.
“Oh yeah,” Aurora said. “As crazy as all these teleportation issues have been, I’ve been keeping really close tabs. It must’ve been Ryan.”
“Maybe so, but it doesn’t matter,” Gary said. “We need to get back to work.”
And Gary got back to work.
Aurora plugged the storage crystal into one of the readers. “I’ll program it to broadcast to our heads-up displays,” she said. “That way, we can all see the code.”
As good as her word, in a couple seconds Benjamin saw strange symbols and pictures scroll across his screen. But even after watching them, they still looked like a bunch of nonsense.
“It looks like a derivative of Rongorongo, though there are some major differences,” Gary said.
“Rongor-what?” Andy said.
“Rongorongo,” Gary repeated. “You know. Like they spoke on Easter Island.”
Andy laughed. “Is this that Easter Bunny Island again? Nobody believes in the Easter Bunny.”
“Maybe they should.” Jack appeared on top of Benjamin’s shoulder. “With genetic engineering, anything is possible—even giant bunnies.”
“Who deliver eggs into baskets?” Andy asked.
“I
thought it was chocolate. And plastic grass.” Jack scratched his head. “Why would anyone want plastic grass anyway?”
“Don’t you guys see the similarities here?” Gary pointed out a few of the symbols he’d projected onto the table in front of them.
“Oh, sure.” Andy pointed to one symbol. “Here’s a little man holding a stick. And here’s a little man running. And look—this little man is doing a headstand.”
“What’s up with Easter Island anyway?” Heidi asked. “My Empathy teacher avoids the subject like the plague.”
“No wonder,” Jack said. “Easter Island is one of those things most telegens don’t like to talk about.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because basically it was a huge disaster,” Jack replied. “It was an island Lemuria left above the ocean on purpose when they sunk the continent. And they left it inhabited, but wiped the memories of the telegens who stayed there.”
“Wiped their memories?” Heidi asked. “Isn’t that against the law?”
“Not back then,” Jack said. “Almost nothing was against the law back then—during the sinking.”
“So what happened?” Benjamin asked. By the looks on his friends' faces, they wanted to know as much as he did. Jack had even caught Andy’s attention.
“Well the island was left with these super powerful telegens who had no idea about anything—Lemuria, Atlantis, Earth,” Jack said. “So like telegens—and humans for that matter—are so apt to do, these people separated off into different tribes. You can probably guess the rest. The tribes grew. The tribes fought. One tribe knocked over another tribe’s Moai. That tribe retaliated. They cut down all the trees. The animals all died, and before anyone knew what had happened, so did all the telegens, leaving nothing but a bunch of upturned statues scattered all over the island.”
“It’s the statue island,” Heidi said. “I knew I recognized it from somewhere. And everyone died?”
She shuddered as she asked it, and immediately Benjamin felt fear in her mind. And he knew why. Heidi, like him, was thinking about the tunnel full of ghosts. The dead telegens. The last thing they needed was an entire island full of more ghosts. Benjamin shook his head and tried to brush away the thought.
“Okay, so the language on this scroll is similar to the language of ancient Easter Island,” Benjamin said. “What does that mean to us?”
Jack twisted up his face. “Beats me. I’m just here to give the history lessons.”
“What do you think, Gary?” Benjamin asked.
But Gary didn’t reply. He put up his hand in a hang-on-a-second motion, and his eyes were glazed over in that heads-up display way, so Benjamin waited. But not very long. Gary whipped the scroll around and began tracing something out with his hand.
“Look at these symbols,” he said, pointing.
“Okay,” Andy said. “Then what?”
“I just accessed the Easter Island maps, and these symbols here correspond to basically every Moai on the island,” Gary said.
“And a Moai is what?” Andy asked.
Gary rolled his eyes. “Duh. It’s a statue.”
“Duh,” Benjamin echoed. Did Gary know everything?
“But you’ll notice there are a few more on this scroll than in the Easter Island database,” Gary said. He was talking faster now; the air almost tingled around Gary.
“Right,” Andy said. “I was just about to say that.”
Which couldn’t have been true.
Heidi smiled. “I bet that means they have something to do with solving this riddle.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Gary replied.
“So, what do we do?” Iva asked. “Do we try to find more information on these extra statues?”
Gary nodded his head and opened his mouth to speak, but Benjamin didn’t let him reply. They’d wasted enough time. “It means we visit Easter Island,” Benjamin said.
Iva turned on him. “We can’t leave Lemuria. It’s against the rules.”
Benjamin knew she’d take some convincing. Andy, on the other hand, looked like he was ready to teleport right then and there. Benjamin motioned with his head toward Iva.
Andy sighed and turned to Iva. “You know, sometimes the rules are meant to be bent just a little.”
But Iva shook her head. “I’m not teleporting out of the dome. We could all get stuck out there.”
“Oh come on, Iva,” Heidi said. Benjamin saw the adventure in Heidi’s eyes and knew she was in. Apparently the fear of deadly ghosts had been replaced with the excitement of unsolved mysteries. “We’ll just teleport there and come right back. It’ll be fun.”
“No, Iva’s right,” Gary said. “We can probably find out what we need from the library.”
Andy laughed aloud. “Okay, Gary, you can stay here and look up all the information you want here in the library. But I’m teleporting to this Easter Bunny Island to find out what’s really going on with Benjamin’s secret admirer.”
Benjamin opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again. He figured the best thing he could do right now was let Andy try to convince everyone to visit the island. The sad fact was that they really did need Gary there, unless someone else could automatically pick up ancient Rongorongo, which, given the short amount of time they had, was as likely to happen as Nathan Nyx turning away from the dark side.
CHAPTER 11
Moving Moai Is Hard Work
It took a little bit of convincing to get Iva and Gary to agree to teleport to Easter Island. Okay, it took a ton of convincing. Iva was sure they’d get caught by one of the teachers, and Gary was sure they’d get stuck outside the dome. And even the next morning, Gary was still complaining.
“Do you realize where Easter Island is?” Gary said.
Nobody answered.
He threw up his hands. “It’s in the middle of nowhere. That’s where.”
Andy let out a deep breath. “Gary, we’ve come up with five backup plans in case we can’t get back in.” He held up his hand, all five fingers extended.
“I’m just saying,” Gary said. “What we’re doing is risky.”
“Life is about risk, right?” Jack said. “At least that’s what I try to tell Lulu.”
“Even Aurora cancelled on us,” Gary went on, ignoring Jack. “She knows we’ll never get back through the dome.”
Heidi let out an exaggerated sigh. “She said her dad needed her help with something. Don’t be such a chicken.”
“Yeah, would you just teleport already?” Benjamin said.
Getting to Easter Island was the simple part. Iva showed off the teleportation skills she’d developed during her year at Delphi. Jack vanished right after her. Andy and Gary teleported next, leaving only Heidi and Benjamin.
“Sure you don’t want to try it yourself?” Benjamin asked, looking for something to say. He knew Andy must’ve teleported bugs into his stomach as a joke; there was just no other explanation for the jitters he felt in there.
Heidi shook her head, and Benjamin noticed her hair. Red ringlets that bounced around when she moved. He looked away. He had to stop thinking about her. They had serious business to take care of, and besides, even though she’d been a little bit more friendly, nothing else had changed. She and Josh were still together.
“No way,” she said. “I only teleported by myself yesterday for the first time, and that was just across the room.”
“Okay,” Benjamin said. And then, before he could rethink it, he moved close to her and grabbed her hand. She opened her mouth to say something, but he looked away and teleported them, keeping the image of Easter Island fresh in his mind. Right beside the image of her curly red hair.
As soon as they reached the island, Benjamin released her hand but didn’t move away.
“What is that?” Heidi walked away, toward the rocks.
“El Gigante,” Gary said. Even amid all his complaining, he’d picked the teleporter destination himself.
“You aren’t kidding.” Andy walked ove
r to join Heidi. “That thing is huge. No wonder it’s stuck here in the quarry.”
“I could have lifted it out,” Jack said, settling on El Gigante’s head.
“No way,” Andy said. “It must weigh a million pounds.”
“Three hundred tons to be exact,” Gary said. “Which is why no one in their right mind would ever try to lift it.”
“I’ll try not to be insulted,” Jack said. “Unaltered telegens wouldn’t have had a chance. Nogicals, on the other hand…”
“Yeah, whatever,” Andy said. Obviously the memory of him lifting the stone door to Kronos’ chamber last summer was too fresh in his mind. Benjamin had thought at the time that the effort had killed Andy.
“You don’t believe me?” Jack asked, and his sunflower eyes sparkled.
“Right. I don’t believe you.” Andy looked away, surveying the surrounding area.
Behind him, El Gigante lifted off the ground. Not too far—maybe two feet. Jack held it there and cleared his throat.
If Benjamin hadn’t known Jack so well, he never would have thought it possible. But he was learning, every day. Being genetically engineered certainly had its benefits.
“Oh, Andy,” Jack said. “Look at me.”
Andy turned around, and his eyes doubled in size. “No way.”
Jack set it back down, and it rolled way more on its side than it was before.
Next to him Gary fidgeted. “I really don’t think we should move any statues. It might upset the archaeologists.”
Jack just smiled and plunked down on Benjamin’s shoulder.
“Let’s start by finding these ‘extra’ Moai on the map,” Gary said. “The ones that aren’t recorded in any of the Easter Island surveys.”
They followed Gary up to the side of the volcanic crater. Benjamin looked into the fresh water and saw Easter Island reflected back at him.
“Hmmm,” Gary said.
“Hmmm, what?” Benjamin asked. The ‘hmmm’ had a really bad sound to it.
Gary scratched his head. “Well, based on the longitude and the latitude of our present location, the extra Moai must be at the bottom of this crater.”
Iva squinted. “But it’s filled with water.”
