Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  22

  “What can you see?”

  “Rain,” Mum replied.

  Her eyes seemed to glow behind her smart-goggles, as she watched live video from the summit of one of the Storm Peaks. Craning my neck, I could just see a red light blinking dimly though the rain, at the top of a rock wall so steep it made me dizzy to look up. Another streak of lightning zapped the clouds, catching Alpha Squad’s drone in stark silhouette. The machine looked like a bat searching for the entrance to its cave.

  These mountains were called the Storm Peaks for a reason. Through the fierce winds, driving rain and flashes of lightning, all the drone was able to send us were rain-blurred images of rain-soaked rocks.

  Dad yanked me back under an overhang at the base of the cliff. He’d insisted we shelter from the rain, although I don’t know why; we’d left camp eight hours ago and were already soaked to the skin. We’d followed the river towards the mountains, leaving it where it snaked around the edge of this peak to a waterfall on the other side, and then we’d trudged through swamps and over moss-covered boulders to the base of this cliff face.

  Wind. Fire.

  “Increase altitude ten feet,” Mum ordered. “Adjust camera angle thirty degrees.”

  Whatever the machine showed, Mum saw the same thing in her lenses. “More rain,” she muttered. “There’s a small plateau at the top with a lake, but I don’t see much else other than rocks and trees.”

  “Should we check the other side of the mountain?” I asked.

  “We can’t,” Mum explained. “The waterfall there is too powerful for the Aztecs to have climbed the cliff face, let alone hidden the marker anywhere up—”

  Her hands shot to her goggles, gripping the frames. “Wait.”

  “What is it?” Pan called.

  Mum brushed the question away with an irritated wave, barking more commands at the drone. She tore the goggles off and gave the machine a final order. “Return to operator.”

  “Jane?” Dad asked. “What did you see?”

  “I’m not certain. It’s dark up there among the clouds, but I think I saw some sort of structure close to the lake.”

  “Maybe a natural rock formation,” Pan suggested.

  “I think I know the difference,” Mum snapped. She rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I saw, but there could be something up there.”

  The drone buzzed and whirred, rotors spinning in its “wings” as the bat-shaped machine flew lower. It landed with a splat on the jungle floor, and the lights around the wings cut out.

  “What now?” Pan asked.

  Mum and Dad did one of their silent exchanges, nods and shrugs and eye gestures – a secret language that Pan was beginning to understand.

  “We’re going to climb up there?” Pan said.

  “No,” Mum corrected. “Your father and I are.”

  They’d already begun to prepare, adding things from Alpha Squad’s kit to their utility belts: climbing clips, ropes, a rubber mallet. I could tell from the way Mum replied to Pan that there was no chance she’d let us go with them – and this time I was OK with that. Just looking up the cliff face made my stomach curdle. It was really high.

  “How long will you be?” I asked.

  Dad stood back, looking up. “Up and down? I’d say four to five hours.”

  “Three max,” Mum said. “You two will be safe here. Stay hydrated. Stay alert. If someone is following us they could be watching.”

  “What if we see anyone?” Pan asked.

  “There’s a flare in the bag. Get somewhere safe and fire it. We’ll return as quickly as we can. Whoever it is, do not go near them.”

  Mum glared at me. “Do you understand, Jake? No fighting. Nothing crazy.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you understand, though?” Mum asked.

  “I just said I did.”

  “You nodded. I want to hear you say it.”

  “No fighting.”

  “Say you promise.”

  “I promise! No fighting and nothing crazy. Who am I supposed to fight, anyway?”

  “You usually find someone.”

  I couldn’t reply because they were already off, scrambling up a rise of boulders to the base of the cliff face. I watched them begin their climb, thinking how unfair Mum was never to trust me, to be convinced that I was always on the verge of doing something crazy or dangerous, or getting in a fight. That seems silly, looking back, because I was about to do something very crazy and very dangerous and get in a really big fight.

  But still.

  23

  It had only been a few months since I learned that my parents were professional treasure hunters. Every time I discovered a skill they’d kept secret I added it to the new profiles I was building for them in my mind. The old versions of Mum and Dad, those stuffy college professors, faded further from view, and my real parents came sharper into focus.

  They could rock climb.

  I mean, they could really rock climb. The longer we watched, the funnier it seemed that Pan and I had wanted to go with them up the Storm Peak. By the time we’d have sussed out how to get a grip on the rock wall, they would have been fifty metres up.

  We watched for over two hours, sheltered under low-hanging palm leaves, with the kit bags and Alpha Squad’s drone. From there we could see almost the whole way up the cliff, as well as along the river that curled around the mountain, and back into the jungle behind us. Hopefully we’d spot anyone that might be sneaking after us.

  Not that we were looking. Our eyes were fixed on Mum and Dad, and our smart-goggles were set to zoom. Mum led the climb, moving like a lizard in little bursts up the sheer face, using just the tips of her fingers and the points of her toes to cling onto the surface. She moved without dislodging a single rock, finding handgrips and foot holds in the tiniest fissures.

  Dad was the opposite, all brute force and grabs. If there were no obvious grips he created one by smashing the wall with his climbing hammer, causing chips of rock to cascade down the cliff. If Mum was dancing up the Storm Peak, Dad was fighting his way to the top.

  “Not bad,” Pan said.

  That was a big compliment, coming from her.

  “They could be a while longer,” she added. “We should get some rest.”

  Rest. God, we needed it. We’d been up since four in the morning, and then trekked for eight hours to reach the Storm Peaks. My bones felt like they were cast from cement. But I’d not be able to sleep. Ever since our parents had set off up the Storm Peak, I’d had that tingle in my belly, that sense that something wasn’t right…

  “Do you really think we’re being followed?” I said, thinking aloud.

  “Well, someone was at our camp,” Pan replied.

  “But why? And where are they now?”

  The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Whoever broke into our camp hadn’t stolen anything, so why had they been there?

  Someone was spying on us. Maybe it was the same people behind the disappearance of Alpha Squad. If so, they were not people to mess with. As we’d hiked here, Dad had guessed it might be a cult trying to protect the tomb of Quetzalcoatl, while Mum suggested it could be another group of hunters. Either way, they would be watching us now.

  “Unless…” I muttered.

  I slid my smart-goggles back on and looked again up the Storm Peak’s cliff face. I could still just see Mum and Dad climbing at crazy speed up the rock wall. My eyes continued up, following the path they were taking to the summit, studying overhangs, ledges…

  The tingle in my belly grew into a gnawing pain.

  “What is it, Jake?” Pan asked.

  “What if someone wasn’t just watching us? What if they were listening too? We didn’t search our camp for bugs, and we weren’t exactly being quiet about where we were going.”

  “So whoever was watching might know where the marker is too?”

  Pan shoved her goggles back on as she reached the same conclusion that I had. What if so
meone wasn’t following us? What if they were ahead of us?

  “Oh my God, Jake, there is someone else there.”

  I’d spotted them as well: two climbers higher up the cliff than Mum and Dad, and moving even faster. It was hard to pick out details, but it didn’t look like they had ropes. They had almost reached the trees that sprouted from the highest parts of the rock wall. At that speed they would reach the summit in about fifteen minutes. Whoever they were, they were going to get the marker first.

  “We should fire the signal flare,” Pan said.

  “No,” I replied. “Mum and Dad will come back down, and we’ll definitely lose the marker.”

  But we couldn’t just sit here and watch, either. We had to do something. I turned, looking around, thinking. A plan came to me but… No, that was too crazy. Wasn’t it?

  “Maybe we can make a catapult and fire rocks at them?” Pan suggested.

  “A catapult? Out of what?”

  “I don’t know! You’re meant to be the one with the plans!”

  I had a plan. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud…

  “We have to get ahead of them,” I said.

  “How? Mum and Dad are too far behind.”

  “Not Mum and Dad, Pan. Us.”

  Her eyes followed mine, and I think she understood because she laughed, and then laughed harder when she realized that I was serious.

  I was staring at the drone.

  “No, Jake! It’s not a helicopter.”

  “I think it would take the weight of one of us, at least,” I said. “Remember in Egypt? A drone like this one lifted us all up?”

  “Not exactly like this one! This isn’t a crazy plan, Jake, it’s way beyond that.”

  “Pan, this is the only plan we have. If we do nothing, whoever is up there will get the marker.”

  Pan gazed up the Storm Peak’s sheer cliff, and then back to the drone. “I really don’t know about this, Jake.”

  “It will hold one of us, I’m almost certain.”

  “Almost certain?”

  “No, I’m just certain. Almost. One of us rides on it, the other guides it from the ground using Mum’s smart-goggles.”

  “Why do you keep saying ‘one of us’?” Pan asked. “You’re riding it.”

  “What? Why me?”

  “It’s your plan!”

  “Exactly. So you should do the riding.”

  Pan stared at me as if I’d just started talking the ancient Aztec language. “Jake? I don’t do action things like this.”

  “Stop saying that, Pan! You’re in the middle of a jungle, hunting for a lost tomb. That’s pretty actiony.”

  “But I can’t think as fast as you do. Not with something like this. You have to do this, you know that. Besides, usually I wouldn’t be able to stop you – you’d already be on it, ready to go. Why the sudden… Oh. Oh, I see.”

  She followed my eyes again up the sheer face of the Storm Peak to the dark clouds that swirled around the summit.

  “It’s high,” she said.

  “Yeah. It’s high.”

  “And you don’t like heights.”

  “I know, Pan…”

  “You really don’t like heights.”

  “I know, Pan!”

  She was tormenting me for fun, but I could see the worry in her eyes, too. My life was going to be in her hands.

  She crouched by the drone, typed a code into a screen on its side, and slid on her smart-goggles. “Power, drone,” she said, copying Mum’s instructions. “Rise one metre.”

  Lights came on around the machine, and rotors whirred on its wings. It rose from the ground and hovered beside us.

  “Hop on, then,” Pan said.

  Imagine trying to balance on top of a floating dustbin lid. I could get on, but it took me several attempts to stay there, lying face down on top of the machine, with my legs dangling down either side and my arms wrapped under its base.

  “You sure about this?” Pan asked.

  I wasn’t at all, but I nodded.

  “OK, here we go,” Pan said. “Rise twenty metres.”

  I clung on tighter as the machine obeyed, and Pan steered the drone over a rise of boulders, to the Storm Peak’s cliff face. Each tilt and jolt caused me to cry out in fright, and so I clung tighter to the shuddering machine. We weren’t even that high yet, but already vertigo had begun to kick in, and the ground and safety seemed a mile away.

  Pan’s voice yelled in my goggles. “Hold on!”

  “I am holding on!”

  I couldn’t hold on any tighter as the drone carried me up, about ten metres out from the rocks. The higher I rose the stronger the winds grew, and the harder the machine shuddered. It was like being on a fairground bronco ride, only if I fell I was dead. Ferns and scrubby bushes sprouted from rocks, and small trees jutted from crevices like gangly arms. I fought an urge to grab one and cling on. It seemed safer there than on this shaking death machine. I felt physically sick with fear. I might actually have thrown up had I not heard someone yelling my name.

  It wasn’t Pan. The voices were closer, screaming.

  Mum and Dad clung to the cliff face, watching me rise past them on the shaky drone. They looked as if they’d just woken from a nightmare. Was that really their son flying into a storm on a tin can?

  “Jake!” Mum screamed. “You promised!”

  I tried to explain, but a roar of thunder drowned my shouts. The rain was pelting down now, and wind battered me from all sides.

  “Jake?” Pan called, still talking to me through my goggles. “Can you see the other climbers?”

  I looked up, struggling to see anything through the storm. The higher I rose into the clouds, the darker it became. A streak of lightning lit the top of the mountain, but I didn’t spot anyone on the rock face. Had the mystery climbers already reached the top?

  I forced myself to stay still as the drone carried me closer to the top of the cliff. From the ground the mountain had looked needle-sharp, but now I saw that the summit was a rocky plateau. Trees surrounded a round crater lake, like a basin, with a swirling whirlpool of rainwater. But Mum had thought she’d seen something else up here…

  “I’m close, Pan!” I screamed. “Land me on the top!”

  “I’m trying!”

  She shouted orders, but the drone didn’t respond. Instead it flew further up, carrying me even higher over the mountain.

  “Too far!” I screamed again.

  “I’m losing control, Jake!”

  Rain lashed at my face, and my goggles clouded. As I tore them off they slipped from my hand and fell and, stupidly, I looked down. My stomach somersaulted and I actually threw up. I’d never been that scared, but I couldn’t let fear take control.

  Without my goggles I couldn’t talk to Pan anymore. I was alone, clinging onto a tiny machine thirty metres above a mountain. Suddenly the flimsy drone felt like my best friend in the world, the only thing between me and the storm. I tried to think what Mum would say to me now.

  Jake, you’re grounded!

  No, not that.

  Concentrate, Jake! Clear your mind and think!

  I breathed in and held the breath. And right then it was as if the storm clouds suddenly parted and were replaced by brilliant blue sky. I knew exactly what to do.

  I slid an arm slowly from under the drone and pulled the grappling gun from my utility belt. In one quick move I sat up and fired it at the mountain top. At the same time there was a flash so bright it blinded me for a second. I sank back to the drone, crying out in fright. Black smoke rose from the machine and was whisked away by the wind. There were spots in my eyes, white flashes. Had the grappling gun backfired? No, the shot had worked. A wire trailed from the device and down to the trees on the plateau. Had someone else fired at me?

  Another flash of lightning lit the sky. Sparks flew up from the drone and it spluttered and swayed even more violently.

  Then I realized: No one was shooting at me! The drone had been struck by ligh
tning! I’d ridden a tin can into a lightning storm! One more zap and I was sure it would conk out. I had to get off this thing.

  “Pan!” I screamed, praying she might still hear. “Get me down!”

  She’d lost control of the drone. It was up to me now. I sat up a fraction and tugged the grappling line. Somewhere on the summit, its hook snagged a rock or branch. That was something, at least. I slid the device under the drone and used a climbing clip from my belt to connect it to its own wire, so the line was fixed to the machine. I unclipped my utility belt and slung it over the wire.

  Another flash of lightning, this time even closer.

  Get off this thing!

  Except… Really?

  Now, you idiot!

  I gripped the ends of my utility belt and jumped.

  I started sliding immediately, clinging onto the belt as it scraped down the grappling wire. I rushed closer to the mountain top, screaming the whole way. Just as I reached the treetops, I let go. I crashed into the branches, crashed through the branches, and landed facedown in something soft.

  I lay, groaning and gasping, wondering how I’d survived. From what I could make out, I’d landed in a bed of sticks and grasses and…

  “Eggs?” I mumbled.

  Something stabbed the back of my neck. I cried out, fearing I was under attack from whoever had climbed here ahead of my parents.

  Another stab, harder. Feathers hit my face, and something squawked. It wasn’t a person – it was a bird! It was too dark to tell what type of bird, only that it was huge, and with talons as long as kitchen knives. I’d landed in its nest and it wasn’t happy.

  I thrashed my arms but I was too dazed to fight. The bird’s claws pinned me to its nest, and now its razor beak jabbed at my face. I managed to shift so the attack missed my eyeball and sliced my cheek.

  “Get off me!” I screamed.

  The bird was about to take another stab at my eyes, when something crashed against the rocks a few metres from the nest. The drone had finally died and dropped from the sky. The bird squawked in fright and released its grip. I wriggled away from its nest.

  I rose, wiping rain and blood from my eyes, and blinking away lightning spots. It was as dark as midnight inside the storm, and I’d dropped my smart-goggles, so I had no night vision. At least my utility belt had landed close. I strapped it back on, glancing around the plateau. I didn’t see any torchlight. Had I got here first? And where was the marker?