“Agreed,” Dan said. “But it doesn’t matter. Trap or not, we need that book.”
The grim reason why they needed the book hung like a shroud over the room.
Dan pulled up a satellite map of the park and pinpointed the location for the drop. “Look at that.” He pointed to a cluster of tents in the jungle, a large truck, and, not far away, an area cleared of trees. “Looks like an illegal logging camp to me. Or poachers.”
Amy shook her head. “Poachers wouldn’t know what the book was if they found it. Someone is using them as a cover.”
“Either way,” Dan said. “We’ve got to find the riven crystal, and we need to get Olivia’s book back. Tonight.”
“The four of us can’t handle all that alone,” Jake said. “And besides, who knows how many men have been paid to kill us this time.”
“Let’s bring the other guys down for backup,” Dan suggested.
“No,” Amy said firmly. “Why put more lives at stake than we need to?”
“Because our lives are at stake now,” Dan insisted. “Especially yours. Amy, we need help here.” He paused, suddenly feeling unsure. Amy had asked him to take charge. Now that he was doing it, was she going to stand in his way? What would he do if she did?
They stood face-to-face, each waiting for the other to back down. “Amy, it’s my decision.” He paused, swallowed, and worked up his courage. “And it’s final.”
She backed off almost too easily. “I’m sorry, Dan. I’m not used to this.” He felt so sad for her now that he almost relented. The little brother in him wanted to cry out, I take it back, Amy! I was kidding. You’re in charge again, really . . . . And he would have given anything to let her take over, if it would undo the serum, undo her death sentence, and let her live.
She smiled at him, a proud-sister smile that simultaneously annoyed and touched him. “All right. Call Ian.”
At the mention of the name Ian, Jake flinched. She started to say something to explain, to help him understand, but he cut her off. “We need all the help we can get,” he said. “I get it.”
Dan hoped Amy was glad that Jake had returned to his usual gruff self and stopped fussing over her. As if things were normal. At least they were being civil to each other. It was hard to get anything accomplished when they were at each other’s throats — literally. He dialed Attleboro on their secure line. Ian picked up. “Ian, this is Dan. We’ve got a lot of news to update you on.”
“Dan?” Ian sounded slightly confused. “Where’s Amy?”
“She’s here,” Dan said. “But we’ve had some trouble, and I’m in charge now.” He glanced at Amy as he spoke. She was looking down at her lap, hands twitching slightly. Then she lifted her head and nodded at him as if to say, That’s right.
Ian put Jonah and Hamilton on speaker for the update. Dan filled them in on the book and the blackmailers.
“The book is safe!” Ian cried. “Thank goodness. I’ll gather the crew and we’ll fly down immediately. Do you need anything from home?”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “Bring five thousand dollars in cash. We don’t think this is really about money, but that’s what the blackmailers asked for.”
“Will do.”
“Bring Pony, too,” Dan said. “We’ll need everybody we can get.”
“Right. Of course, you realize that after eight hours stuck on a plane with Hamilton, Jonah, and Pony, I will be a stark raving lunatic.”
“You’re already a stark raving lunatic,” Dan teased. “Just get your butts down here.”
“On our way.”
“Wait.” Dan looked at Amy again and blinked back the tears that sprang to his eyes. “There’s one more thing you should know.” There was silence over the line as Ian waited for the news, as if he sensed it was something serious. “Amy took the serum,” Dan said quietly. “A full dose, undiluted. She’s doing better today, but she’s having some severe side effects, so —”
There was a long pause. “That’s why you’re in charge now,” Ian said.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, no,” Ian whispered. “Amy. I —” Dan heard the strain in his voice as he trailed off. Ian might be lightning quick with insults and retorts, but expressing shock and sorrow didn’t come so easily to him. “How long does she have?”
Dan hated to say it out loud, especially in front of Amy. But there was no way around it, and they didn’t have time for anything but the truth. “About four days.”
“We’ll see you tonight.”
A pall fell over the hotel room. Amy’s leg shook restlessly. Dan felt as if someone had tied weights to his wrists and ankles, as if the smallest movement took a superhuman effort. He was responsible now for everything that happened from that moment on. It weighed on him. He could feel the responsibility pressing on his shoulders and spine like a backpack full of rocks. A lot of this was his fault. Amy had taken the serum to save him after all.
“Amy? You okay?” Dan asked.
She looked at him, her eyes hollow. “Don’t worry about me. Let’s just get this done.”
They had until dark to make a plan. “We’ll split into two groups,” Dan said. “One group will go find the crystal, and the other will get the book.”
“No,” Amy protested. “The book pickup is a trap. It’s dangerous. I’ll go alone.”
“Great plan, Amy,” Jake countered. “You go alone, Pierce gets you and the book.”
“Pierce doesn’t know I’ve taken the serum,” Amy said. “His men won’t be expecting a girl with superstrength. I’ll take them by surprise.”
“You’re not strong enough to take on his army alone,” Dan said. “Jake is right. I’m going with you.”
“And so am I,” Jake said.
“No,” Dan insisted. “Amy and I will handle it alone.” Jake began to rise in protest, but Dan cut him off. “Period.”
Jake shook his head ruefully. “You’re more like your sister than you realize, Dan.”
Was that true? Dan didn’t know. Remains to be seen, he thought. “By tomorrow morning, we’ll have both the crystal and the book — and we’ll be that much closer to the antidote.”
“That’s right,” Atticus said. “Nothing can stop us now, Amy.”
Amy tried to smile. Dan hoped Att was right. But they’d been this close to victory so many times before, and it always seemed to slip away again, just beyond their reach.
Not this time, he vowed. This time everything will go our way.
For once, it has to.
Off the coast of Maine
A tall, burnished, brawny man stood in front of J. Rutherford Pierce, squirming. Pierce himself was desperately willing his left leg to stop shaking. He rested a hand on his knee to keep the leg from kicking out involuntarily. He wondered if this man standing before him, who gleamed with strength and health, was experiencing any of the symptoms Pierce was having. After all, Pierce was responsible for enhancing the man’s strength. This was Morrow, the new chief of Pierce’s henchmen. Pierce had been giving them daily doses of serum for weeks now. Perhaps Morrow was squirming because he, like Pierce, was having increasingly uncontrollable spasms in his arms and legs.
Or maybe he was squirming because he was in trouble.
Pierce had sent Morrow and his men to sabotage the Cahill kids in the Guatemalan jungle. Eight grown men, made superstrong, superfast, and supersmart by the serum, attacked four normal children, and didn’t manage to capture or kill a single one of them.
“That is not acceptable,” Pierce said.
“I know, sir.”
“You know what happened to your predecessor.”
“I do, sir.”
The previous chief of security and his men had been given a slow-acting poison before being sent to Tunis to capture the Cahills. Had they been successful, Pierce would have given them the antidote to the poison. Th
ey had not been successful.
Their deaths were slow and painful.
Pierce tapped his chin, pondering the best way to punish this new wayward squadron of thugs, when Morrow set a briefcase on a chair and proceeded to open it and produce something in a plastic bag.
“I know that nothing can make up for our failure,” Morrow said. “But I hope this will help.”
Pierce took the bag and opened it. “What is it?”
“The boy dropped it in the jungle. I’m not sure what it is, but it looks important.”
It was a book — a very old book. Indeed, it was important. Very important.
“Thank you, Morrow. Good work. You are dismissed.” Please leave, Pierce thought, glaring at Morrow. Please get out of here so my left leg can jerk in peace.
It was a terrible, embarrassing thought. Pierce would never let on to anyone that he had any weakness whatsoever. Still, the spasms were getting progressively worse. It was getting harder and harder for him to appear in public — and if he was going to be out on the campaign trail every day, he would need to get these symptoms under control. But how to do that without decreasing his dose of the serum?
Pierce turned his attention to the book. Olivia Cahill’s Household Book. Some of it seemed trivial — recipes, grocery lists, chores — and some he didn’t understand. There were charts, diagrams, drawings, and pages written in languages he didn’t know.
Then he found a section that prickled the neatly trimmed silver hair on the back of his neck: Perdites Civitates Codex. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he recognized the places the Cahill kids had been to recently: Troy, Carthage, Tikal . . . and Angkor. That must be where they were headed next.
He’d go to Cambodia himself and beat them to whatever it was they were looking for. They seemed to be gathering rare ingredients: the whiskers of an Anatolian leopard, silphium, chips of riven crystal, and — aha — snake venom from Angkor Wat. But why? What were they up to?
The answer became clear as he studied Olivia’s book more closely. Some of these “recipes” were more complicated than they looked. Olivia seemed to be working out ways to counteract the effects of the serum her husband had invented.
Then Pierce understood. Olivia Cahill had formulated an antidote to the serum. And Amy and Dan were gathering the ingredients to make it.
They were trying to take his power away from him. He must not allow that to happen. His bid to take over the world would be a failure.
J. Rutherford Pierce did not tolerate failure.
His men had let him down so far. But the kids wouldn’t be able to fight them off forever. The Pierce army would fulfill its mission; the Cahills would die. And now it was more urgent than ever. But as he was thinking these grim thoughts, another realization began to dawn on him. He had recruited his brilliant friend Dr. Jeffrey Callender to dilute the serum, to find a way to make the side effects more tolerable. Dr. Callender and his team were working night and day on this project, but they hadn’t come up with a solution yet. Maybe, Pierce thought, the solution is right here in this book. If his own labs could produce the antidote, it might be used to offset the effects of the serum.
He would be able to take the serum forever — without muscle spasms or any bad effects at all.
He could be unstoppable.
Trilon Laboratories Delaware
Nellie sat at her desk, trying to look busy while a worker glued a label to her door:
NADINE GORMEY
VICE PRESIDENT, BIOCHEMICAL RESEARCH
Hilarious. She — Nellie Gomez — was posing as someone who knew thing one about biochemistry — enough to boss around a staff of PhD chemists — and getting away with it. She would have had a good laugh about the whole thing if it wasn’t so serious.
Had Sammy found the message she’d left on his microscope? Was he okay? And had he figured out how to slow Amy’s symptoms? She hoped he’d find a way to get word back to her, somehow.
Dr. Stevens’s assistant had sent her a memo entitled “Password for Access to Classified Files, Level 3,” with a password and instructions for logging into a top secret file-sharing system.
Interesting. So there was a top secret file-sharing system, and now that she was a vice president, she had access to it. Why just Level 3, though? That meant there was a Level 2 and a Level 1. And Nellie had a feeling that Level 1 was where she’d find the good stuff.
She logged into Level 3 and looked around. Not much there she didn’t already know: They were ordered to work on reducing the side effects of a certain drug, but no one really knew exactly what that drug was. The names, contact info, and backgrounds of the chemists who worked under her were listed, but no mention of Sammy by name.
She forwarded the memo to Pony, asking him to hack into Level 1 and get back to her. She went to the coffee station for a refill, and by the time she got back to her desk, Pony had cracked it.
Use this password to log into Level 1, he wrote, sending her a series of numbers.
Thanks, she wrote back. Any news from Attleboro?
Yeah — we’re all on the Wizardmobile, flying down to Tikal. I’m set. Jonah’s got a fridge stocked with Electroshock Caffeine Blast in every flavor, including ones I didn’t know they made. Jalapeño Chocolate!
Good, Nellie wrote, but she was frustrated. Amy had four days left to live. Nellie wanted to be there, too. Instead she was stuck in this sterile corporate lab . . . doing crucial work, she reminded herself. Work that needed to be done to save her girl.
Using Pony’s password, she logged into the Classified File System, Level 1. Now this was interesting. There were memos and research reports from various scientists she didn’t recognize. There were a few bogus reports she did recognize. She’d managed to fake the atomic structure of some compound she’d never heard of by drawing the shape of her favorite Putt-Putt golf course. That was a highlight.
There was a lot of chatter about one particular researcher: a certain SM.
Sammy Mourad?
He was never mentioned by name, but the more she read, the more Nellie was convinced that this was Sammy. He reported on his findings, giving them a few tidbits — I’ve found something close to the molecular structure we’re looking for, just one molecule away . . . . Even Nellie could tell it was bogus. He was stalling for time.
She wished he’d find a way to get a message back to her. She couldn’t take this waiting any longer. She had to do something.
Fiske, Nellie thought. He might know something about the serum that she could use, something that could buy some time for Amy.
She called his room at the Callender Institute. A nurse answered and said that Mr. Cahill was in therapy and couldn’t come to the phone.
Therapy my toenails, Nellie thought. She left her office, got into her car, and drove straight up to New York.
Tikal, Guatemala
Dan loved burritos, but every time he tried to take a bite his stomach clenched in protest. He was in a rare state: so nervous he could hardly eat.
Ian, Ham, Jonah, and Pony had arrived, and they’d all met for an early dinner to plan that night’s missions. They had two goals: to get the riven crystal and to meet with the blackmailers to get Olivia’s book.
It was going to be a big night.
Ian, Ham, Jonah, and Pony seemed uncomfortable, too, at first. Ian kept glancing at the bruises on Jake’s neck, but for once was too shaken to comment. Jonah tried to act as if nothing was wrong. “What up,” he said casually, giving a solemn nod to Dan. He enveloped Amy in a bear hug and held her a second longer than usual, but he couldn’t quite meet her eye, as if he didn’t know what to say to her.
And on greeting Amy, who was still glowing as if she’d been trapped in a nuclear reactor, Ham was so surprised he blurted out, “Amy, you look amazing! You don’t look like you’re going to —” A kick to the shin from Jonah shut him up b
efore he could finish that morbid sentence. But everyone caught the anguished look on Amy’s face.
Pony shifted nervously, staring at his neon green sneakers. But as soon as he saw Amy he said, “Whatever I can do to help, just tell me. Anything you need.” He touched the top of his hairline with his index finger in a kind of chivalrous gesture of respect — at least, that was what Dan guessed he was going for — before getting fascinated with his sneakers again.
Dan got them down to business. Everyone agreed that the only way to accomplish everything in one night was to split into two groups. What they didn’t agree on was who should go where.
“Ham, Jonah, Atticus, Jake, Pony, and Ian,” Dan said. “You go after the crystal. We’ve got a map to lead you there. You’ll leave just after sundown.” Jake threw Ian a wary glance. Dan knew he didn’t want to be grouped with Ian, but they’d just have to set their personal gripes aside for now.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Jonah said. “Who’s going with you and Amy?”
“You’re walking into a trap,” Ian said. “It’s a suicide mission.”
“What choice do we have?” Dan said. “Without the book —” Without the book, Amy dies, he thought, but he couldn’t say it out loud.
“Fine,” Jonah said. “But you’ll need backup.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Dan said. “But I can’t let any of you do that for us. It’s too big a sacrifice.”
“What?!” Ham protested. “This is our fight, too.”
“Ian said it himself: It’s a suicide mission.” Dan glanced at Amy, who looked sad. He was beginning to understand the reasoning behind so many of her earlier decisions, the ones that had infuriated him, the ones where she’d abandoned him so she could go off and fight alone. “I can’t ask that of any of you.”
“But I volunteer!” Ham jumped to his feet.
“So do I!” Jonah said.
“And I,” Ian added.
Jake and Atticus stood with them. Their voices rang out in the silence of the room. Pony looked around uncomfortably. Every boy was on his feet except for him. So he rose. “Me too.”
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