Cautiously, we retreated through the woods to the buildings, sneaked past the open area around the sheep paddocks, made a wide berth around the geodesic dome in order to avoid any more issues with flying monkey turds, and arrived at the base of the rocky outcropping. Above us, earth and boulders rose several stories in the air, topped by the crisscrossing metal struts of the radio tower. At the base of the tower I could just make out the corner of the boxy little hut that I hoped was the broadcast station.
“How do we get up there?” Savannah asked. “Fly?”
She was right. There were no steps or anything I could see, and the sides of the cliff were too steep for climbing. “They have to get up there some way.”
“They have drones,” Howard said. “Or helicopters?”
“Maybe there’s a hidden door behind the rocks,” Eric suggested. “Like the one Dr. Underberg built over Omega City.”
“That’s a great idea!” I said.
Savannah cast a skeptical glance at the cliffs. “You guys do realize how many rocks there are on this hill, right? This will take forever.”
“Then we’d better split up. You and I can go this way, and Eric and Howard can go that way.”
Savannah made a face. “Actually, I’ll go with Eric.”
“With me?” Eric asked, incredulous. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Sorry, Gillian. You really stink.”
Ugh, did I? I’d been wearing monkey poop for almost an hour now. I guess I’d gotten used to it. I turned to Howard, who was the only one of the four of us still wearing his hood up.
“I don’t smell a thing,” he said. “Though it might actually be a problem with the suit, to be missing an entire sense. What if there’s a gas leak or something?”
“Or what if you fart in your suit?” Eric asked. Howard snickered.
Gross. I didn’t have time for this. I clapped my hands to get their attention. “We’ll keep the hill on our left, and you guys keep it on your right. If you find the entrance, hurry around to meet us.”
“And if we run into the Shepherds?” Eric asked.
I told him the only thing I could think of. “Don’t.”
AFTER AN HOUR of scrambling over the rocks and searching for a way up the tower, we figured out the flaw in our plan. On the far side of the island, the land dropped away to sheer bluffs, all the way down to the water, far below. I had assumed the hill sloped down to smooth, flat land on all sides. Instead, there was nothing beyond our feet but sheer, golden rock and pounding surf. Far above us, the lights of the radio tower blinked infuriatingly.
“Huh,” said Howard. I could only imagine what Savannah and Eric were saying, trapped on the other side of this cliff.
I balled my fists at my side. “I messed up. We never should have come here. I was so full of myself. Like we could figure out the Shepherds’ plan just because we found Omega City?” Omega City had been an accident. I thought I was looking for a battery, not a place. But this island was dangerous, guarded. Even the animals wanted to hurt us. I dropped my face in my hands and got a huge whiff of monkey poop. “Ugh. Stupid, Gillian.”
Howard stood beside me, silent. For once, I was glad he never looked people in the eyes. At least he wouldn’t catch me if I started to cry.
Howard reached out and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Gillian.”
“It’s not okay,” I replied. “We’re trapped here.” I sat on the edge of the cliff, defeated. “And it’s my fault.”
“How is it your fault?” Howard sat down beside me. “We all came out here.”
“It was my idea. I didn’t even have a plan. I just . . . I don’t know. I wanted to know the truth.” Eric was right. I was just like Dad, willing to sacrifice everything to get to the bottom of a mystery.
“I wanted to know, too. I still do. I want to know why they are breeding sheep, and whether those are really the remains of the space chimps. And Savannah really wants to know what they are doing to the chimps in the habitat. We all came here, not just you.”
“And Eric?” Could I at least take responsibility for getting my little brother into this mess?
Howard thought for a moment. “Well, Eric wanted to take the boats.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Okay, we’re all to blame. Now what?” I gazed down at the abyss at my feet, then narrowed my eyes. From this angle, the cliff shadows solidified, making the rocks look almost painted with long, zigzagged stripes.
I peered closer. Or a ledge. A nearly invisible ledge, switching back and forth down the side of the cliff. I pointed, following the switchback path up the cliff to where it passed about five feet above our heads. “I think there’s a path up there.”
Howard arched his neck to look. “You’re right. Should we go tell the others?”
I thought about this. It had taken an hour to get this far. Another hour to get back to the others, then get back here, then get up the path . . . and every minute we dallied here meant the Shepherds might find us. “I don’t think we have that long. If we get to the top, we’ll be able to signal to Eric and Sav from up there.”
Howard boosted me up, then scrambled up behind me. As soon as I got onto the ledge, I realized my error, as a wave of dizziness washed over me and I clutched at the wall for support. Not again. This hadn’t happened since Omega City. Back then, I’d been underground, and Nate had said I was claustrophobic. But that wasn’t it at all.
I was just afraid of getting trapped.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. All I had to do was walk. One step in front of the other. Just like walking on the ground. I did that without even thinking about it.
The ledge was only a few feet wide, and the path spiraled steeply upward, but if you pressed your back against the cliff wall and kept your focus a few steps in front of you, you could almost forget how high you were climbing.
Almost.
We kept moving up and I glanced down from time to time, hoping to see Eric and Savannah far below us on the ground. Finally, we reached the peak of the outcrop. It was a tiny plateau, baked dry by the sun and barely big enough for the diamond-shaped footprint of the radio tower. Each metal strut was bolted deep into the ground, supported by a series of giant metal Xs crisscrossing up to the top, where a red beacon gleamed. Huge cables anchored into the support beams traversed down the sides of the cliff to help steady the tower. I looked to see where the other end of the cable went to, but the sight of the wire disappearing into the abyss made me dizzy.
At the base of one of the struts was the broadcast station, a tiny, windowless hut built of cinder blocks and painted the same color as the rocks. Set into the wall was a door.
Finally. I sprinted to the door and turned the handle.
Locked.
“Find a rock,” I called to Howard. “A piece of metal. Something!” This was our last hope. Our only hope. We had to get a message out. “Check your pockets.”
He did. “I’ve got a bottle of water and the code book. Actually, I’m pretty thirsty, so make that half a bottle of water.”
I rolled my eyes and started searching my own pockets. My Omega City flashlight, loaded with the Underberg battery, a bottle of water, and my cell phone. Which had . . .
“Howard,” I breathed, as I stared down at the screen. “Look.”
Reception.
16
TRUE BELIEVERS
DAD’S PHONE RANG SIX TIMES AND WENT TO VOICE MAIL. I TRIED AGAIN: voice mail.
“Leave a message,” Howard said. “It’s better than nothing.”
I nodded.
“Dad, it’s Gillian. We’re on the island—the one in the middle of Eureka Cove. Dad, the Shepherds are here. We tried to call you but you didn’t pick up. . . .”
I should have tried harder to convince him about the messages before he left us this morning. I should have called him the sixteenth time. I should have thought about this before jumping in.
“Anyway, we kayaked out here. They
have these weird sheep experiments going on—we don’t know what they are or why, but the sheep are really, really small and woolly. Um . . .”
I looked at Howard for help.
“Tell him about the space chimps.”
“Oh yeah! There are these chimpanzees—”
The call waiting beeped in my ear. I checked the readout: Dad! I pressed the speakerphone.
“Dad! Are you okay?”
“Gillian?” His voice sounded worried. “Gillian, honey, where are you? We’ve been looking everywhere.”
He was okay! I was torn between feeling relieved and wanting to blurt out everything we’d discovered.
“We’re on the island, Dad!”
“I know,” he said. “Where on the island? Half the Guidant security team is looking for you. They found your boats—”
Howard and I looked at each other, confused. “Guidant security? No, we only saw the Shepherds! Dad, the Shepherds are here! On the island!”
“Gillian?” A woman’s voice broke in on the line. “It’s Elana Mero. What are you doing out there? I know from your father’s book that you make it a habit to go off exploring, but like I said, the island is abandoned. Everything there is falling to pieces. I would hate for you kids to get hurt—”
“It has not been abandoned!” I shouted into the phone. “You lied to us!”
“What? Just tell us where you are.”
“Tell us what these chimps are doing out here!” I shot back.
“These what?” She sounded utterly baffled.
“Chimpanzees. Monkeys.”
“Apes,” Howard corrected.
“You have a whole geodesic dome full of monkeys and people are kidnapping them and doing experiments on them.”
“And skeletons of the space chimps,” Howard said. “Or at least, that’s what they say they are.”
“Yeah!” I added, though that seemed like a relatively minor crime.
For a second, there was silence on the line. “I have no idea what they’re talking about, Sam. There’s nothing out there but some broken-down buildings and a lot of weeds. Monkeys? That’s ridiculous.”
“Dad!” I cried. “Dad, listen to me.” Not her. I’d seen the chimps with my own eyes.
“Gillian, tell us where you are,” Dad said. “We’ll send someone to pick you up.”
“Not necessary, Sam,” Elana interrupted again. “We just tracked their signal. They’re at the cell phone relay.”
“It’s a radio tower,” I insisted.
“Gillian,” Dad said sternly. “This isn’t funny. You’ve caused a lot of trouble today. I had to call your mom to come back, she had to get Nate from his college tour . . . you just can’t pull these kinds of stunts, kiddo. We’re guests at Eureka Cove. Ms. Mero was very upset to learn that you’d wandered off the grid.”
I gasped. Upset we were off grid? He’d practically invented the concept. What had happened to all his arguments about privacy and liberty? He didn’t even sound like my father right now. “Dad, listen to yourself! We have every right not to be tracked.”
“This isn’t about freedom,” he said. “It’s about being safe.”
“Quite right,” said Elana in the background.
I stared down at the phone in disbelief. Then I did the only thing that made sense in that moment: I drew back my arm and tossed it off the cliff.
Howard watched the tiny silver box fly into the blue sky, then tumble down, down, down, and disappear.
“Well,” said Howard. “That was interesting.”
No, that was terrifying. My mind raced with possibilities. My father was brainwashed. Or he was being forced to say those things. Or maybe that wasn’t Dad on the phone at all? Maybe she’d just . . . recorded his voice or something.
Could be anything.
“We have to get out of here,” I said. “They’re coming for us.”
“Wasn’t that the idea? That your dad would come and get us?”
“Not anymore!” I shouted. “Not when he’s under the influence of Elana. Didn’t you hear her? She’s one of them!”
Howard was silent, considering this; then he reached up and unzipped his hood. He stood there, staring down for a second, then lifted his head and looked me in the eye.
“Gillian, you’re very smart, and I tend to think that you know what you’re doing. But Eric and Savannah aren’t here right now, and they’re the ones who usually tell you when you’re acting crazy. So I have to.” He took a deep breath. “Throwing away that phone was really crazy.”
“They were using it to track us!”
“So? You told them where we were already. And we could have used the phone to call your mother. Or my mother. Or Nate.”
The afternoon sun beat down on our heads, but beneath the neckline of my utility suit, cooling setting three, I hardly felt it. Still, I was burning up inside.
“And what if Elana Mero is telling the truth?” he went on. “Maybe she believes what she’s telling us—that the messages are a school project, that the island is abandoned and in ruins . . . she has a big international company to run. How would she know what’s happening on every square inch of this campus?”
But nothing else added up, most of all Dad. “These experiments didn’t just spring up out of nowhere, and it couldn’t have happened behind her back. You saw that chimp habitat! You think they built that place for an agricultural experiment? Those alcoves, those skeletons, those plaques?”
Howard’s forehead furrowed. “Right.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. Why would she have us here if she was a Shepherd? Why would she offer Dad a job, or promote his book about Omega City?” I shook my face and gestured to the complex below us. “But look at this place. It’s crawling with Shepherds. It’s impossible that she doesn’t know.”
“Okay . . .” Howard thought about this. “So she’s lying.”
“Yes,” I said. “Like Fiona.” Except that didn’t feel right at all, and judging by the look on Howard’s face, he knew it, too.
“Or maybe it’s someone else at Guidant,” he said. “Someone high up enough to get all this stuff done without the boss knowing.”
“Like who?”
Just then, we heard a sound from the broadcast station hut. We turned just in time to see the door open. The person inside took two steps into the sunlight and stopped dead as she saw us.
Black pants, black boots, and a jacket emblazoned with the Shepherd symbol, but the first thing I noticed was her pretty, sculpted bronze hair. Dani Alcestis. And she was a Shepherd.
The expression on her face was one of shock as she looked from me to Howard. “How did you get up here? How—how did you get here at all?”
Howard stepped closer to me, even as I was flooded with relief. Dani clearly hadn’t expected to see us here, which meant her boss hadn’t sent her. Which meant maybe Elana Mero was telling the truth. That my dad was safe.
Meanwhile, we were in real trouble.
“You kids need to leave, right now.” Her face was full of fear. That faker.
What a perfect cover! As Elana’s assistant, Dani had access to all kinds of resources, and she could easily hide the truth from the rest of the company.
“Don’t worry,” I snapped. “Your boss is sending someone for us.”
“You called Elana?” Dani asked, frantic. “From here? What did you tell her?”
“Everything!” Howard broke in. “About the sheep and the chimps and everything.”
She rolled her eyes and snorted. “Oh, so that’s everything, huh? Idiots. I told him you were idiots.”
“Told who? My dad?” I asked, confused.
Dani just shook her head in disgust. “And now you’ve ruined our last chance.”
“Good!” I cried. “You have a bunch of scared chimpanzees in a lab made of broken glass. Whatever you’re doing here deserves to get ruined.”
“You’re right about that,” she shot back. “But no matter what you think y
ou discovered, you haven’t even scratched the surface of what is going on here, and it’s way too late to explain it all now.”
“Why, because of phase two?”
That got her attention. She glared at me. “What do you know?”
“Oh, so we’re not idiots anymore?” I scoffed. “We know the numbers station isn’t a school project like you told Elana it was. We broke your stupid code.”
Now she really looked scared. “What do you mean, you broke it?”
“It wasn’t that hard,” said Howard. “Not with Dr. Underberg’s book.”
Dani trained her laser focus on him. “What’s this about Dr. Underberg?”
“He gave me a book on how to break number ciphers.”
“He did what?” she asked, furious.
“And we used it to figure out your Shepherd messages,” I broke in.
Dani looked from me to Howard and back again, a strange, puzzled look on her face. “Wait. Shepherd messages?”
“Yes,” I shouted triumphantly. “And we told Dad and Elana exactly what they said.”
Dani’s whole demeanor changed. She jerked backward, and her mouth snapped shut as she seemed to come to some sudden realization. “You told . . . you told Elana Mero what my messages said?”
“You’ll never get away with it now!”
Dani snorted. “Yes, you’ve made that nearly impossible. Brilliant job,” she said, sarcastic. She looked up at the blue sky. “What in the world am I supposed to do now?”
The sky didn’t answer, but I did.
“Elana said she and my dad were coming to get us.”
“Elana is coming here?” She stared down her nose at me. “Kid, if I were you, I’d run. Far.”
Before we could respond, Dani took off, sprinting at full speed toward the edge of the cliff. When she reached the end she leaped out over the void, ducking her head between outstretched arms. Howard and I hurried after her, only to see her drop like a diving bird toward the water far below. My breath seemed to catch in my throat as she fell, a dark spot against the bright waves, and then she vanished beneath the surface with a smooth, tiny splash. We waited for her to bob back up, but there was no sign.
The Forbidden Fortress Page 13
