As he snored, Yasmin realised something awful. Her name was on the passenger list! If Jackal had gotten access to it, then he’d know not only the train she had boarded but which carriage she was in and even which seat she occupied.
With the train slowing as it came to a suburban station, Yasmin suddenly felt very vulnerable.
She had to find a place to hide.
As soon as they had finished filming their apology, Andy brought up the Games Thinker website.
Every muscle tensed, the boys stood together and watched the website countdown run out.
‘It’s freaky knowing there might be another attack somewhere,’ Andy said, ‘and not being able to do a thing to stop it.’
Dylan swallowed hard.
Without missing a beat, the screen changed.
‘The Second Sign?’ Dylan mused.
Equally puzzling was the new message that had appeared above the timer.
Before Andy could reply, his and Dylan’s phones vibrated with incoming texts.
The boys eyed their screens nervously.
‘I’ll go first,’ Andy said. ‘Open text.’
‘Another symbol?’ he said.
‘Open text,’ Dylan said.
‘What are they?’ he asked when his symbol was revealed.
‘I don’t know,’ Andy said. ‘But the pattern’s repeating—countdown, phrase, symbols. It’s what the website says: The Second Sign.’
As the train rattled through the night to Alexandria, Yasmin huddled behind a menu in the dining carriage. This wasn’t any sort of hiding place but at least she wasn’t a sitting duck in her assigned seat.
‘Miss, can I take your order yet?’ a tired waiter asked. ‘These tables are for paying customers.’
‘Still deciding,’ she said, smiling apologetically. ‘Just another minute, OK?’
The man sighed and, with a backwards glance, attended to another table.
Yasmin’s phone vibrated in her pocket as it received a text. Imagining all sorts of horrible threats from Jackal, she couldn’t bring herself to look at it.
Instead, she jumped up and pushed past the waiter with a quick ‘sorry, not hungry’. She rushed into the next carriage. Every seat was filled. There was nowhere to hide. Sleepy passengers blinked as she hurried past them. Ahead of her, at the end of the carriage, a uniformed porter pushed a big trolley of suitcases to a baggage room. This was her chance! Yasmin crept up on him. When the porter unlocked the door, she weaved around him, slipped inside and ducked down behind a big crate. Not daring to breathe, she listened as the man arranged luggage. Yasmin didn’t exhale until he’d left and turned the key in the lock.
In the darkness, she finally dared to check her phone.
‘Oh, no.’ She gazed at her screen in shock. ‘Oh, no.’
What she saw wasn’t a taunting text from Jackal. It was far, far worse.
The meaning of the symbol was impossible to miss. Death.
Yasmin went to the Games Thinker website, and saw the new countdown and message.
The Second Sign? It was starting all over again! What was this diabolical game? She had no idea. But what was clear was that in just over a dozen hours there’d be another deadly attack somewhere in the world.
‘Call DARE Award winners,’ she whispered.
Soon all seven were linked up.
‘I got another symbol,’ Zander said, ‘right at the moment the clock went to zero. Did everyone else get one, too?’
Yasmin nodded.
‘This,’ she said softly, sharing the terrifying skull image, ‘is what I got.’
Their eyes widened as it hit their phones.
‘What did everyone else get?’ Yasmin asked.
Everyone shared theirs quickly.
‘The new message on the Games Thinker site,’ Dylan said. ‘Does it mean anything to anybody?’
‘Events for you as mind peace, you even dream of past since,’ JJ said. ‘Combining them sounds like a song lyric. Anyone know it?’
‘It sorta rhymes,’ Isabel said. ‘But no.’
‘I’ll keep trying,’ JJ said.
‘The symbols,’ Mila said, ‘does anyone know what is the meaning of theirs?’
‘Mine is obvious,’ Yasmin said, trying to keep the fear from her voice. ‘Death.’
‘I think mine’s a moon, as in Moon-day, Monday,’ JJ said. ‘That’s when the timer runs out.’
‘Mine looks like a No Right Turn sign,’ Andy said.
‘Mine looks like a bird,’ Mila observed.
‘Mine could be a clock,’ Dylan added.
‘The others?’ Yasmin asked.
‘I don’t know,’ JJ said. ‘And there are no coordinates to help figure out which order they go in.’
‘Andy,’ Isabel said, ‘have you told your dad yet?’
‘I’m about to,’ he replied, with a sideways glance at Dylan. ‘Things here have been complicated.’
Zander shook his head, as if he’d expected such an answer, before he turned a concerned frown to Yasmin. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Hiding in the baggage room on the train to Alexandria,’ she whispered.
‘Hiding?’ he said. ‘Is that crooked cop still after you?’
Yasmin gulped and wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘I don’t know. But …’ She choked back a sob. ‘H-h-he killed a security guard right in front of me at the railway station.’
Her friends gasped.
Yasmin’s brown eyes shimmered. ‘I think he’s—’
She didn’t dare breathe. There were voices outside the baggage room!
‘I’m a detective,’ Jackal was saying just on the other side of the door. ‘I’m looking for a dangerous female who might’ve just stabbed a man at the station.’
Yasmin wanted to scream. Instead she set her phone to silent.
She had seconds to find a concealed spot.
‘I’m not allowed to open this for anyone,’ the porter protested outside the door.
‘But I’m not just anyone,’ Jackal said. ‘This is official police business. Give me the key and get out of here.’
Jackal slipped inside and closed the door behind him. He shone his flashlight around the dim room, over suitcases and boxes. Finally, the beam came to rest on the crate.
‘Yasmin, Yasmin, Yasmin,’ Jackal said. ‘I saw your name on the passenger list. Since I caught up with the train, I’ve searched every carriage. This is the last place left. So … out you come.’
The night air whipping around her, Yasmin peered down through the skylight. Jackal was directly beneath her. If he looked up, she’d be caught. But she was too scared to let go of the skylight frame and move farther along the carriage’s roof. At this speed, she’d be killed if she fell from the train. Just climbing up the shelves and pushing her way out here had taken every bit of courage she had.
Answered with silence, Jackal prowled around the crate. Yasmin heard him curse in frustration. A moment later, he started opening bigger suitcases, as though she might’ve tucked herself in among a stranger’s clothes. He let out a whistle when he found rings and a necklace in one bag and swiftly pocketed the jewellery. Just over his head, Yasmin hoped this score was enough to satisfy his greed.
It seemed to be because, after a final look around, Jackal left and closed the door behind him.
Yasmin was building up the courage to climb down through the skylight when she saw the baggage room door swing open again.
Beneath her, Jackal stepped back into the room.
He shone his torch at the shelves. She saw his grin in the glow of his flashlight.
Yasmin knew what he was looking at. She’d left dusty footprints on the shelves when she’d used them as a ladder to get to the skylight.
Jackal looked up and saw her peering down.
‘Hi, Yasmin,’ he said. ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Cairo–Alexandria train,’ the Signmaker said, ‘find and zoom in.’
In a split second, the HoloSpace showed a satellit
e image of the train racing through the Egyptian night. There were two figures on the roof of a middle carriage.
‘Acquire heat signatures and zoom.’
The images showed Yasmin backing away from Jackal’s gun as the countryside whizzed by. The Signmaker had saved the girl once, sending that AutoDrive car into the cop’s motorbike back on the Cairo bridge, but that effort would’ve been in vain if she died now.
There were only seconds to do something—and it would have to be something drastic.
‘Access signals and rail network.’
The command went out and a moment later the Signmaker had control of the Cairo–Alexandria Express from the security of the golden-lit secret headquarters.
‘Digitise voice to Yasmin Adib. Disengage Yasmin Adib silent phone function.’
Yasmin knew she was going to die. Either she’d jump to her death or Jackal would shoot her.
‘This could’ve been easy,’ Jackal growled, pistol aimed right at her heart. If he was afraid of falling, he didn’t show it as he staggered towards her. ‘You could’ve lived. Things didn’t have to be this way.’
Jackal seethed, touching his fingers to his face. ‘Look at what you did to me. Just look!’
By the moonlight, Yasmin saw where the skin around his eyes was red and puffy. As wrong as it was to hurt anyone, she silently wished he’d suffered more chemical damage. If she had really blinded him, he wouldn’t be about to kill her.
Mouth dry, heart hammering, Yasmin glanced away from Jackal to the dark countryside blurring by on either side of the speeding train. If she jumped, her body would be broken beyond belief. It was horrible, but it would deny the man the satisfaction of killing her.
As if reading her mind, he stepped closer. ‘There’s nowhere to hide this time.’ Squinting through burning eyes, Jackal chuckled humourlessly. ‘You’re going to die.’
Anger surged through Yasmin. This was so unfair. In just hours, she’d gone from being a DARE Award winner, whose life was to be filled with adventure and opportunity, to a desperate fugitive, with her life being measured in seconds. Only one word echoed in her mind: Why? Why had Jackal really been sent at the same time she and her friends had received the mysterious symbols? Why had Egypt been attacked? There had to be a connection. She had to know the truth. Why did she have to die? But when Yasmin opened her mouth to demand an answer, the only sound was the loud ringtone of her phone bleating at top volume in her pocket.
‘Ha!’ Jackal said. ‘Yasmin can’t answer the phone right now because—’
But she didn’t need to. Her phone had accepted the call and switched to speaker.
‘Get down and hold on!’ a computerised voice commanded loudly. ‘Now!’
Yasmin didn’t stop to think.
She dropped to the roof, hands grabbing the pipes on either side of her.
‘Hey, what—’ Jackal said.
Whatever he said after that was lost in the screech of brakes as the train shuddered beneath them.
Jackal screamed as he shot forwards, crunching into the carriage roof before being flung away into the darkness.
For a moment, Yasmin wondered if he’d survived.
Then all she knew was she was losing her grip on the pipes as the train began to buck off the tracks beneath her.
Published by Scholastic Australia
Pty Ltd PO Box 579 Gosford NSW 2250
ABN 11 000 614 577
www.scholastic.com.au
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Sydney · Auckland · New York · Toronto · London · Mexico City
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First edition published by Scholastic Australia in 2016.
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Australia Pty Limited, 2016.
E-PUB/MOBI eISBN: 978-1-925065-52-7
Text copyright © Michael Adams, 2016.
Cover design by Blacksheep Design Ltd UK.
Cover photography: Pyramids, Giza, Egypt © plainpicture/Design Pics - Chris Coe.
Cover copyright © Scholastic Australia, 2016.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, unless specifically permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 as amended.
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