The Forbidden Fortress

by Diana Peterfreund

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Howard blinked. “That has to be more than a hundred feet. She must be trained. Or dead.”

  She’d kept her form the whole way down. I doubted she was dead.

  “I’ve never seen anyone do that for real,” Howard went on. “Eric will be so mad he missed it.”

  Eric’s disappointment at not seeing death-defying acts of cliff diving was the least of my concerns. “Where did she go? She has to come up sometime, right?”

  Another ten seconds passed, but there was no sign of her in the water. The last thing I ever expected was to be caught by a Shepherd . . . who then ran away.

  But at least we had one question answered. “You were right, Howard. It is someone close to Ms. Mero.” As Elana’s assistant, Dani would have complete control over what information reached her boss’s ears. She’d also be able to issue orders in Elana’s name. She could find a way to sneak all kinds of Shepherd equipment to this supposedly “abandoned” island without anyone being the wiser.

  “Who is ‘him’?” Howard asked. “Miss Alcestis said she told ‘him’ we were idiots. But she couldn’t have been talking about Dr. Seagret.”

  “It must be Anton Everett,” I replied. “You heard him at dinner last night. And he’s a vice president at Guidant. If he’s a Shepherd, too, it makes sense that he could run experiments here behind Elana’s back. He could have been the one to build the geodesic dome for the chimps. He could have been the one to—”

  “Steal the space chimps and their remains,” Howard finished. “I can’t believe everything I’ve read about them—about what happened to them—was a lie. Instead they were trapped here, subject to more experiments. . . .”

  “Yeah.” More lies.

  “I hope Savannah’s wrong, and there’s something we can do to help them.”

  “My dad will know.” That is, if Dad ever spoke to me again after everything I’d put him through today. One thing was for sure, I was in big trouble for tossing my cell phone. I didn’t know how I planned to explain that one.

  Sorry, Dad, but when you started freaking out about us not being trackable by cell phone and saying it was better for us to be safe than to be free, I thought you’d been kidnapped and brainwashed by Them.

  “Let’s find Eric and Savannah,” I said. “You look for them down that side and I’ll look over here, in case they turned around at the cliff and headed in our direction.”

  I scanned the ground beneath us for the telltale glint of their Omega City utility suits, feeling even more stupid as I did. They might be invisible to infrared cameras, but shiny silver suits stuck out like a sore thumb against green underbrush and brown rocks. The Shepherds would be able to spot us a mile away.

  “Gillian!” Howard called from behind me.

  “Did you find them?” I turned around, but Howard wasn’t on the other side of the peak. Instead, he was inside the tiny broadcasting station. I followed him inside the dingy cinder-block hut. There wasn’t much to see: a folding chair and card table topped by a radio, a microphone, and a set of headphones. No wonder Dani hadn’t been able to hear us at the door.

  “You’re supposed to be looking for the others.”

  “Check this out.” He handed me a stack of papers covered with the familiar-looking square code charts we’d spent the last two days working on. “These are all the messages. Look, here are the ones we decoded yesterday.” He handed me encryption sheets for “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” “And here are a few more. I was right, by the way. The key is always the first five-letter word with no repeating letters in the rhyme.”

  I examined the papers. Next to the codes we’d already broken were several more. Well, that at least solved the mystery of the messages. They were being broadcast from here, and the woman’s voice? It was Dani all along.

  One code was for “Little Bo Peep.”

  Seagrets accepted invitation to speak at Guidant. Please advise.

  At the sight of our name on this message, my blood ran cold. The Shepherds had known we were coming the whole time. All this time, I’d been so excited to come with Dad to Guidant, and I’d been leading us right to his worst enemy.

  Another was for “Little Boy Blue.”

  Need confirmation of Capella data tampering. Expect counterattack.

  I frowned. “Capella . . . that’s the satellite program we saw today. The one looking for near-Earth asteroids.”

  “Yes.” Howard nodded.

  “Why would the Shepherds tamper with the data? Wouldn’t that put us in danger?”

  “If there was an asteroid coming and they made it look like there wasn’t, yeah, it would.” Howard said.

  “Well, of course!” I cried. “What else would they do?”

  Howard shrugged. “The other thing. If an asteroid wasn’t coming and they made it look like there was.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Who would do that, pretend like an asteroid was going to hit the Earth?”

  He rolled his eyes, too, but on him it looked ridiculous. “Gee, Gillian, isn’t that what you think the aliens or the Russian military or whatever did at Tunguska? Blow something up and then pretend it was just an airburst as a cover-up?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “You’re right. But why would the Shepherds want to do that? Dad said they wanted to lead us, to help us survive. Like building Omega City with Dr. Underberg.”

  “Yeah,” said Howard. “But Omega City is gone. And if the Earth was destroyed by an asteroid, Omega City wouldn’t be much use, anyway. It’s like Anton said last night—we should have colonies on Mars.”

  “Howard! Of course!”

  “What?”

  “If you thought an asteroid was going to destroy the Earth, what is the first thing you’d wish for?”

  “That I’d gone up in that rocket with Dr. Underberg when I had the chance.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Howard looked at me, expectant. “I want that anyway.”

  “Well, if an asteroid really was coming, the whole world would agree with you. We’d all want to get off the planet.”

  “And go where?” Howard asked. “There’s not much room on the International Space Station.”

  “Right. There’s not much room anywhere . . . yet.” That’s exactly what Anton and Dani had been saying at dinner last night. That there was nothing protecting humanity, should a big rock from outer space try to smash us into smithereens.

  “What about this last one?” Howard asked, showing me the final sheet, which went to something called “Tender Shepherd.”

  Infinity Base is not secure. Prepare for evacuation.

  “What’s Infinity Base?” Howard asked. “The island?”

  “I guess so. Or some other Shepherd base.” Honestly, I hadn’t a clue. “Take all of it. The more evidence we have of the Shepherds’ work, the better.” Hopefully Dad could figure out what these mysterious phrases meant, or what the Shepherds were even doing here.

  Or why they cared so much about us.

  We left the station and made another circuit around the perimeter of the peak, searching for Eric and Savannah. Finally, close to one of the metal struts of the tower, we saw them scrambling over the rocks at the base of the cliff.

  “Savannah!” I shouted. The tiny figures paused and turned in circles as if seeking the origin of the noise. “Up here!”

  They looked up for a moment, and then they turned and ran.

  A few seconds later, I saw why, as several guards swarmed over the boulders in pursuit.

  Howard and I shrank back from the edge. I clutched his arm. “Oh, no. The Shepherds found them.”

  Wait. Technically, they’d found us, too. At least, Dani had. And she’d been the one to run away.

  I hoped that was a good thing. It meant Dani was afraid of Elana. If we could hold out until Elana and Dad sent someone to fetch us, maybe we could still stop . . . well, whatever phase two and all the rest of this stuff was.


  I bit my lip, watching helplessly as the tiny silver figures darted across the landscape, chased by the guards in black. This was awful. Back in Omega City, I’d been forced to sit and listen to Eric and my friends crawling through the air tunnels as they were chased by Fiona’s goons. And now there was nothing I could do from all the way up here but hope for the best.

  All of a sudden, we lost sight of them.

  “I think they went into that building down there,” Howard said, pointing at one of the three vine-covered outer buildings near the sheep paddocks. “At least, I think they did. But the Shepherds went into the woods. I think they lost them.”

  “We have to get down there.”

  “And get captured, too?”

  “We’re no safer up here,” I pointed out. “And Elana is sending help. If we get to Eric and Sav, at least we’ll all be together when help comes.”

  “Right.” Howard went over to one of the support wires stretched between the base of the cliffs and the tower struts and plucked it. “Seems secure.”

  “What do you mean?” I took two steps back.

  He shrugged and started digging in his pockets. “Do you know how long it will take us to reach them if we go back down the path?”

  I shook my head as my throat closed up. “No. No way. You want us to climb down the wire?” My voice was shrill.

  He pulled out a couple of metal climbing hooks. “No. Not climb. Slide. We’ll use these carabiners to make a zip line.”

  I let out a squeak of pure terror.

  “Come on, Gillian.” He threaded one of the carabiners through his utility-suit belt. “My brother taught me how.”

  No way. Also, what else did he have in his pockets? The code book, carabiners . . . Didn’t it all get heavy?

  “This is just like the grappling hooks,” he went on, “but in reverse.”

  “The grappling hooks were a matter of life or death,” I whispered hoarsely. My voice was no longer working. “We were escaping an exploding rocket ship.”

  Howard hooked his belt carabiner onto the wire. “Okay. Pretend there’s a rocket ship exploding behind you.”

  I shook my head wildly.

  He frowned. “I’ll help.” He leaned in, eyes wide. “Boom. Boom.”

  He sounded so ridiculous that I couldn’t help it. I covered my mouth with my hands and giggled.

  Howard hooked the other carabiner onto my belt.

  “No,” I cried as Howard secured our belts to each other with the carabiner. I reeled back. “No, no, Howard, I can’t.”

  He grabbed me in a bear hug. “Here we go. Don’t scream.”

  I couldn’t make promises, though I knew that might bring the Shepherds running.

  “Oh, and better tuck back your braid.”

  I gulped and shoved the end of my hair deep inside my suit. “How are we going to brake at the bottom?”

  “We’ll use our feet.”

  “We’ll break our legs!”

  “Hmm.” Howard pulled off his sneakers and fitted them over his hands. “Okay, let’s try this. Hold on tight.”

  Try? I clung to Howard for dear life, and he pushed us off the edge of the cliff.

  17

  CREEPY CRAWLERS

  Don’t scream, don’t scream, don’t scream.

  Even though we were attached to the wire with carabiners, it still felt like free fall. Wind whooshed by my ears, and I ducked my head into the zippered collar of my utility suit, barely registering the scenery as it grew larger and larger beneath us. I could hear Howard’s labored breathing as he fought to keep hold of the wire between his sneaker soles. The smell of burnt rubber stung my nostrils, and I wondered what would happen if the friction burned through his sneakers entirely.

  “Brace yourself!” Howard called.

  I dared to look. We were about thirty feet off the ground and falling fast.

  “Howard! Brake!”

  “I’m trying,” he gasped. But it wasn’t enough.

  We flew through the air and the ground rushed up to meet us. I was too frightened to scream. We were going to crash!

  Desperately, I swung my legs up and hooked my legs around the wire, bracing myself for the stinging bite as the metal cut through the thin silver material of my suit.

  A humming, metallic zing filled my ears as the suit rubbed the wires, but we slowed. A second later, we hit the ground hard, tumbling to a heap on the rocky surface at the base of the outcrop.

  “Uff!” I grunted from underneath Howard. “Get up!”

  “I’m getting us unhooked.”

  “Up!” I moaned, and shoved at him. “We have to hide in case anyone saw us on the zip line.”

  We disentangled ourselves from the wire, and Howard shoved his feet back into his sneakers. The soles were completely rubbed through in the center. I checked out the backs of the knees on my utility suit. Where the wire had rubbed against them, the silver was even brighter, and hot to the touch, but otherwise undamaged.

  “Wow,” I said. “Someday, we’re going to have to find out what this stuff is made of.”

  “I’ve been trying all summer,” Howard said. “I know you and your dad are fans of the battery, but I can’t wait until they start making this suit.”

  I stared up at the outcrop, marveling at how far we’d come in seconds. It wasn’t flying up through the fiery depths of a rocket-ship silo, but it was still quite the ride.

  Now that we were down on the ground, I felt disoriented. Which building was the one we’d seen Eric and Savannah disappear into? They all looked the same—boxy slabs of concrete overgrown with tangled green vines. I didn’t even see doors on them.

  “Come on.” I urged Howard forward. “Let’s get out of here before the Shepherds find us.”

  I started off, but Howard stopped me. “They went that way.” He pointed to the right-most building, and together, we headed in that direction.

  Even up close, where the dull walls were visible beneath the matted ivy leaves, it looked impenetrable. Why would someone make a building with no windows and no doors? I thought about the drones that had fed the sheep. “What if the entrances are on the roof? For drones or helicopters or something?”

  Howard looked up the sides. “I’m not climbing this ivy.”

  Me neither. I might smell like a chimpanzee, but that was as far as it went. Still, Eric and Savannah had gone somewhere. We started circling the building, looking to see if there was a door or window we’d missed.

  “Gills,” said Eric’s voice. I spun around, but saw nothing.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Howard.

  “Gills!” Eric cried again. “Watch out!”

  The last thing I saw as the greenery beneath my feet gave way was a pair of hands shooting up through the leaves.

  I dropped through the ground in a tangle of dead leaves and dust. Twigs scratched the bare skin of my face and vines snagged on my arms and legs. I twisted and writhed, fighting against the vines and the hands reaching out of them.

  “Let go!” I cried, swinging wildly at whatever had me in its grip. “Let me go!”

  I fell hard onto a debris-ridden concrete floor about four feet below the surface.

  “Geez, Gills, try not to knock out my fake teeth, too.” Eric pulled back, brushing bits of vine off his arms, and I realized he’d only been trying to break my fall.

  I stood, shaking my head and looking through the shadows at the dusty faces of Eric and Savannah, who was sitting with her back to one of the far walls, a sheaf of paper on her lap. We were alone in a small, concrete depression in the earth. To one side was a narrow band of windows leading into the basement of the nearby building. This well must have been built to allow light into the basement. A rusty ladder led down from one of the concrete walls, and the entire surface above our head was covered with a carpet of vines.

  “Gillian?” Howard crouched over the hole I’d just made in the overgrowth. “Hey. What are you all doing down there?”

  “Hiding,” said Eric. />
  “Howard!” Savannah beckoned to him. “Get down here quick, and let’s get covered up again.”

  Howard hopped down beside us, and Savannah and Eric worked to prop up the edges of the vines to make the space look undisturbed.

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “Safe,” said Savannah. “Or safer, at least. Were you guys chased, too?”

  “No,” I said. “In fact, it was kind of the opposite.” Quickly, I explained what had happened up at the tower.

  “So Dani was the one sending those messages?” Savannah blinked incredulously at me. “Do you think she’s the one running the show here?”

  “Her,” I said, “or Anton. Maybe when Elana decided to move Guidant off the island, he moved the Shepherds in.”

  “And you think Anton has the Shepherds tampering with the Capella data to make it look like an asteroid is going to hit the Earth?”

  “You heard him at dinner!” I exclaimed. “All that stuff about how we need backup colonies of humans all over the solar system in case the world gets destroyed.”

  “Hmm,” Savannah said. “But he also said we don’t have colonies and stuff. It’s not like he can say we’re going to get hit by an asteroid, and so we all pack up and move to Mars tomorrow.”

  “Well the other option is we are going to get hit by an asteroid, and he’s hiding the data that warns us.”

  We all looked up through the vines at the sky. I hoped that wasn’t the case, either.

  “I want to hear more about how Dad called Mom and told her to get back here,” Eric said. “Maybe she can stop this flood of crazy that’s happening.”

  “Oh, I told Gillian she was acting crazy,” said Howard. “Back when she said Elana was a Shepherd.”

  “And I am on your side now,” I replied. “We caught Dani red-handed.”

  “Dani,” echoed Savannah. “Elana’s assistant.”

  “Believe me, she’s not a huge fan of her boss,” I said. “She jumped off a cliff when we said we’d called Elana and she was coming to get us.”