Lost in Babylon

by Peter Lerangis

  I crept up to the door. Under the ivy was an intricate carving. It was hard to catch the detail. Marco was moving the torch erratically. But as I got closer, I felt my heart pounding. The carved symbols on the door told me we had found what we were looking for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  LAMBDA

  I RAN BACK to Cass and Aly, dropping to my knees. “Cass, if you can move, we need to get to that door. I think it’s where the Loculus is hidden.”

  They both leaped to their feet. Cass touched the bandage on his arm. “I feel . . . good,” he said. “What did you do to me?”

  “Rebel painkiller,” I replied. “Keep it there. And remember to thank Zinn.”

  “Yeaaaah!” Marco screamed.

  We turned. He was staggering backward. One of the vizzeet had got him in the face. His knees buckled, and a couple of arrows fell from his quiver.

  I raced up behind him and grabbed his bow and the vial of oil, which hung from his belt. Scooping one of the arrows off the ground, I poured oil over the tip, thrust it into the flame, and inserted it in the bow.

  I pointed it at one of the vizzeet. With a screech, it spat at me, just missing my eye. The glob of goo landed on the ground behind me with a loud tsssss.

  I drew the arrow back and released it. The flame arced through the blackness like a comet, directly toward the slavering beast.

  I missed. The arrow embedded itself in a tangled thicket of vines that hung from above. Flames shot upward, licking at the feet of the retreating creatures.

  The vizzeet were shrieking now, clawing one another to climb higher . . . away from the fire.

  Marco stumbled toward me, holding the torch with one hand and his face with the other. “Once on the chin and once above my right eye,” he said.

  “Hold still.” I pulled the other healing strip from his calf, ripped it in half, and pressed each section to a wound. “Can you see?”

  “By the dawn’s early light,” Marco replied.

  A sudden whoosh made us all turn. An enormous bush, on the second level of the Hanging Gardens, had burst into flames. “This whole thing’s about to go up!” Cass cried out. “We have to get out of here.”

  I was about to destroy one of the Seven Wonders of the World. And if this thing went up in flames, the entire royal gardens wouldn’t be far behind. Our chance to find the Loculus would be lost.

  Water.

  We needed lots of it. And fast. I took Marco’s torch and held it high, lighting the second level of the Hanging Gardens. A grand stone stairway to our right, now overgrown with weeds, led directly upward. “Marco, follow me,” I said. “Cass and Aly, get yourselves to the bottom of the Archimedes screw. Find whatever makes it turn, and do it hard. Now!”

  Marco and I raced to the stairs and took them two at a time. Already I could hear a deep, metallic cranking sound. Just to the other side of the banister, the Archimedes screw was slowly starting to turn.

  I held the torch over the banister and saw Cass and Aly working a huge bronze crank below. Water began flowing upward. Just above our head, on the Hanging Garden’s second level, it spilled into a tilted basin that fed a clay gutter that ran through the flowers. “Take a gutter, Marco!” I said to Marco. He looked at me blankly. “Can you shake that gutter loose?”

  He put two hands around one of the curved waterways and pulled. At the third pull, the thing came loose in a shower of clay dust.

  Around us the flames were catching on to the ivy and some nearby bushes. “We need to break the screw!” I shouted.

  Marco nodded. “Hold this,” he said, handing me the gutter.

  The thing weighed about a hundred pounds. I nearly dropped it to the ground but balanced it on the stone railing. Marco was kicking the side of a trellis, knocking loose a decorative carved-bronze border from one for the supports. As the mangled hunk of metal fell to the ground, I shouted, “Give it to me—and hold this thing!”

  I grabbed the bronze shard and began hitting the screw. Its sides were curved upward, cupping the water on two sides, keeping it in place as it rose. I battered the outer side until the water was spilling out. “Faster, guys!” I shouted down. “Turn it faster!”

  The water began spattering outward. I took one end of the gutter and tipped it so that the high end would collect the flowing water and deliver it on the other end to the burning bushes. Marco slid in to help. We moved the gutter back and forth like a fire hose. “This is crazy!” Marco said. “We’ll never get enough water!”

  “Cass and Aly—turn harder!” I called down.

  “Hold tight, Jack,” Marco said, letting go of the gutter. “I’ll be right back.”

  I held on as Marco ran downstairs and commandeered the crank.

  The screw began gushing now, dousing the bush. The fire was already spreading downward, snaking along the ivy toward the ground. I lifted the gutter up and down, sending a shower far down the railing. Cass and Aly were behind me in a moment, with two wooden buckets they’d found among some garden tools.

  They held the buckets under the gutter, collecting water. Racing down the railing, they chased the growing flames, pouring bucket after bucket until the fire was out.

  It took a long time. Too long. I couldn’t imagine why no one had caught us. Drenched in sweat, Cass came to my side, resting the bucket on the ground and wiping his forehead. He glanced at me in disbelief. “That was awesome, Jack.”

  “Dudes,” Marco called from below. “The vizzeet are getting restless. Come on!”

  As I raced down the stairs, I looked into the distance, toward the inner wall. Where were the guards? Even this far into the royal gardens, surely they’d seen the flames. “Hurry,” I said, racing to the door. “We have to get in here!”

  Marco was at my side. He held the torch to the door and smiled at the sight of the carving. “Mary had a little lambda. Amazing. Okay, hold this.”

  He gave me the torch, then leaned into the metal latch handle. It wouldn’t budge. He pounded on the door. After waiting a moment, he drew back and lunged at it. His shoulder collided with a dull, pathetic-sounding thud, and he bounced back with a cry of pain.

  From behind the ivy was a dull rattling sound, like knuckles rapping on wood.

  I yanked aside the leaves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE NUMBER SEVEN

  “LOOKS LIKE THE barrel of an old-time machine gun,” Marco said.

  “Or a Heptakiklos with a hat,” Cass remarked.

  “A spinning roulette wheel,” Aly said.

  My mind was racing. “It could be a code. Think. When we entered the maze at Mount Onyx . . . when we were stuck at the locked door in the underground cavern . . . both times we were able to get in.”

  “Because of hints,” Aly said. “Poems.”

  “The poems were all about numbers,” Cass pointed out. “Mostly about the number seven.”

  Aly grabbed one of the cubes hanging by twine. “There are seven of these things. They look like doorbells.”

  She began pulling them, but nothing happened.

  “This is a carving, not a poem,” Marco said.

  “Yeah, but it’s the Heptakiklos, Marco,” I said. “The Circle of Seven. Seven cubes. Whoever did this knows about the Loculi! It’s got to be in there. I hear the Song.”

  I stepped back. It was impossible to think. My brain was clogged with the sound. My ears were pricked for the screeching of the vizzeet, the guards. Where were the guards?

  Numbers . . . the patterns of decimals . . .

  “Aly, do you remember that weird thing about fractions and decimals?” I said.

  She nodded. “Put any number over seven—one-seventh, two-sevenths, five-sevenths, whatever. Turn that into a decimal, and the numbers repeat. The exact same numbers. Over and over.”

  “I hate fractions,” Marco said.

  “Oot em,” Cass added. (Which he pronounced oot eem—me too.)

  I tried to remember the pattern. “Okay, one over seven. That’s one divide
d by seven. We used that pattern to open a lock.”

  “Torchlight, please. Now.” Cass knelt and began scratching in the sand:

  “Dude, you remember how to do long division?” Marco said. “You never got a calculator?”

  “Point one-four-two-eight-five-seven!” Cass said. “And if you keep going, you get the same numbers. They just keep repeating.”

  “Okay, I’ll do them in order.” Aly immediately yanked on the first cube, then kept going. “One . . . four . . . two . . . eight . . . five . . . seven!”

  “Voilà!” Marco said, pulling the handle.

  Nothing happened.

  In the distance I could hear voices. They were faint but clearly angry. “We’re not going to get out of this alive,” Aly said.

  I shook my head. “The guards should have been here already,” I said. “I think they’re afraid. With luck, that’ll give us extra time.”

  From under a nearby rock, I saw a sudden movement and jumped back. A giant lizard poked its head out, and then came waddling toward us. Leonard, who had been sitting at the bottom of Cass’s pocket, now jumped out into the soil. “Hey, get back here!” Cass shouted.

  As he bent to scoop his pet off the ground, a shadow swooped down toward us.

  Zoo-kulululu! Cack! Cack! Cack! Wings flapping, the giant black bird descended to the ground. It landed in the spot where Leonard had been, its talons digging into Cass’s mathematical scratching. With a screech of frustration, it jumped on the Babylonian lizard, missed, and flew away with an echoing cry.

  The voices outside the wall stopped. I could hear the guards’ footsteps retreating.

  “He ruined my equation,” Cass said, looking at the talon prints in the sand.

  Those, my boy, are not bird prints. They’re numbers.

  In my mind I saw Bhegad’s impatient face, when he was trying to cram us with info. I looked at the top of the Heptakiklos again:

  “That’s not a hat,” I said. “Those are cuneiform numbers. Bhegad tried to get us to study them. But I don’t remember—”

  “Ones!” Aly blurted out. “Those shapes are number ones.”

  “Okay, there are two of them,” Marco said.

  “Two over seven!” I exclaimed. “Two-sevenths!”

  Cass quickly wiped away his division and started again:

  “The same digits,” Cass said. “In a different order. Like I said.”

  Carefully I pulled the second cube. The eighth. The fifth. The seventh. The first. The fourth.

  With a loud clonk, the handle swung down, and the door opened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ECHOES OF NOTHING

  “HELLO?” I CALLED out.

  Marco swung his torch into the room. It was nearly the size of a gymnasium, and totally empty. Bare walls, stretching out on all sides. “Nothing,” he said.

  Aly leaned in. “All this for a bare room?”

  I took the torch from Marco and held it to my right. “Yo! Anyone in here?”

  Cass, Aly, and Marco followed close behind. The echo made our footfalls sound like an army. The Song of the Heptakiklos was pounding in my head now. “It’s deafening now,” I said. “That song. The thing has got to be near.”

  “Maybe the Loculus is underground,” Aly said.

  Marco stomped on the floor. The thumps echoed loudly. “It’s hard packed. We’ll need tools.”

  A loud sssssshish went from left to right. “Yeow!” Aly screamed. She fell to the ground, cupping her hand over her left ear.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “I think I’ve been shot!” she said.

  We all dropped beside her. “By what?” Cass asked.

  “Let Dr. Ramsay take a look.” Marco pulled her hand away from her head. Her palm was covered with blood, but he used the edge of his tunic to wipe gently at her ear. “You’re lucky. It just grazed you.”

  “What just grazed me?” Aly said. “Owww!”

  I moved the torch to the left. Nothing and no one. I moved it to the right, in the direction the whooshing sound had gone. Floor and wall. I crouched, slowly standing up.

  Ssshhhhhish! Ssshhhhhish! Ssshhhhhish!

  I felt something whiz by my ear. My shoulder. My chin. “Get down!” Cass shouted.

  His voice caromed around the room as I dropped back to the ground. “What’s going on?” Aly shouted.

  I looked at the wall for a hole, some indication of an inner room, where someone could take potshots through a crack in the surface.

  But I saw nothing. Whatever was shooting at us was completely invisible.

  “Stay low,” I said. “The shots happen when we stand up.”

  “J-Jack, we need to get out of here,” Cass said.

  “Crawl,” I said.

  We dragged ourselves slowly toward the door, keeping close to the dusty floor. But the song was boxing my ears, telling me where to go.

  In the back . . .

  “Guys, we need to head to the rear wall,” I said.

  “Are you nuts?” Aly snapped. “With you and what armor?”

  “Maybe we can do it if we keep low,” I said, veering off in that direction.

  “Got your back,” Marco said.

  I held the torch high. As Marco and I pulled ourselves like turtles across the floor, Cass and Aly looked on in silent dismay. The song grew louder. “We’re almost there,” I said to Marco.

  “You mark the place,” he said. “Then we’ll get some picks and shovels.”

  My nose began to twitch. I sneezed. Then Marco did, too. My eyes stung and began to tear, and I stopped to wipe them with my sleeve.

  That was when I heard a low, persistent hiss . . .

  “I—I can’t breathe!” Cass cried out. Behind him, Aly was coughing.

  Marco collapsed to the floor, his hand over his mouth. “Gas . . .” he said.

  I could see the tendrils of smoke now, but my eyes were swelling. They rose upward, collecting at the ceiling. “Stay low!” I said.

  I was losing consciousness. Coughing. I put my hand over my mouth, as close to the floor as I could go without biting it. I tried to suck in something that felt like oxygen.

  Now.

  With my last burst of strength, I reached out to Marco and yanked him back. Toward the doorway. Toward air.

  With the strength remaining in his legs, Marco pushed hard against the floor. We tumbled over each other in a tangle of limbs, bowling into Cass and Aly. Both of them were choking, holding their necks.

  I was still positioned farthest into the room. I pushed the other three toward the door. My vision was clouding, and I could feel myself losing consciousness. A breeze from outside wafted in and I gulped it down as best I could.

  “Breathe . . .” I said. “Almost . . . there . . .”

  An image flashed through my brain, something I’d seen on a flight with Dad to Boston: an airline flight attendant with an oxygen mask, smiling placidly, tying the mask around her mouth. Secure your own mask first, before attending to children.

  I was losing it. Having ridiculous hallucinations. I ignored this one, preparing to push my friends again.

  And then I stopped.

  I knew what that image was about. I had to get the fresh air first. Because I was the one who could. I was one who had some strength left, who had not breathed as much gas as the others. If I could revive myself, just a little, maybe I could save them.

  I scrambled around the clutch of bodies, their three backs jerking up and down with racking coughs. Rising upward, I froze.

  Stay down.

  The bullets—or darts, or arrows, or whatever they were.

  I dropped to a crouch. But nothing had been fired. Had the shooter gone away? Or run out of ammo?

  Or was he lying in wait, trying to fake me out?

  I crab-walked toward the door, gulping in air. Carefully I set the torch down, just outside the door. In that position, it would keep the vizzeet away and also provide light. I would need two hands for what I had to do. I co
uld see Marco struggling to drag Cass and Aly toward the door. Good. He was reviving, too.

  My body was cramped, my lungs tight. I breathed again. I had a little more strength, I could feel it. This would have to do.

  I turned toward my friends, ready to pull them to safety. But the room began to shake. From above came a heavy metallic sound. The bare ceiling cracked in a couple of places. With a resounding clang, the entire floor bounced.

  I fell backward. As I hit the floor I spun toward them again. I reached forward, focused on their rescue.

  But my hand jammed against something hard. Metallic. Something I could feel but not see.

  Gripping Cass’s tunic in one hand and Aly’s in the other, Marco lunged for the door. But his body seemed to freeze in midair and he cried out in agony, abruptly falling to the floor.

  I reached forward, grabbed his arm, and pulled. I could only get a few inches before something stopped me. Dropping Marco, I felt around desperately, my hand traveling up and down what felt like metal bars—but looked like thin air.

  I held one of the bars and shook. But it was useless.

  Cass, Aly, and Marco were trapped in an invisible cage. And I was on the outside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  INVISIBLE BARS

  “JACK . . .” ALY MOANED. She flopped onto the floor, her eyes fluttering.

  “Get out get out get out!” I cried, shaking the invisible bars. They were stuck solid. Not budging.

  Inches from me, Cass was trying to cradle Aly’s head, but his hands were twitching. I couldn’t keep my eyes from crossing. My lungs screamed at me. I turned and tried to gulp more fresh air. When I turned back, Leonard was crawling groggily out of Cass’s tunic pocket. In the light from the torch outside the door, I could see the glint of a tiny silver shard caught in the lizard’s claw.

  A gum wrapper.