Lost in Babylon

by Peter Lerangis

  The Ishtar Gate was looming closer. One of the moat walls had cracked, and a crocodile was climbing out onto the rubble. It eyed Cass and Aly as they took a wide berth around it. The turrets of the gate were empty. One of them had partially collapsed. As we sprinted through the gate’s long passageway, we had to shield our heads from falling pieces of brick. We burst out the other side into utter chaos. The stately paths of Ká-Dingir-rá were now choked with fallen trees. Boars, fowl, and cattle ran wild, followed by guards with bows and arrows. I saw mothers scooping up children and running into houses with broken doors, teams of wardum carrying the injured away from harm.

  “Daria,” I shouted as we ran, “you have to leave this city! It’s not safe any longer.”

  “This is my home, Jack!” she replied. “And besides, I can’t—Sippar will stop me.”

  “The mark on your head—we have it, too,” I said. “It gives us special powers. We can take you through Sippar. To safety!”

  We were approaching Etemenanki now, the turnoff to the wardum houses. I felt Daria let go. “I must help Nitacris and Pul!” she shouted.

  “You can bring them with you!” I said, following after her. “And your other friends—Frada, Nico. If they hold on to you and don’t let go, they can come, too!”

  She stopped. “Go, Jack. You must think of yourself. We will follow if we can.”

  “You have to come now,” I insisted. “Later may be too late!”

  She shook her head. “I cannot leave them, Jack. As you can never leave Aly and Cass.”

  It hurt to hear her leave out Marco’s name. And it hurt more to know I could not change her mind.

  “You promise you’ll follow later?” I asked.

  I felt Cass pulling me from behind. “What are you doing, Jack? Run!”

  “Go out the nearest gate,” I shouted to Daria. “Keep going until the trees begin, then head for the river. Look for the rocks arranged like a lambda—the shape on the back of your head. When you dive in, head for a glowing circle and swim through to the other side! Anyone who is touching you can come through with you. Will you remember that?”

  A loud boom knocked us to our knees. The top of Etemenanki tilted to one side. A crack ran from the top level downward, slowly widening, spewing dried-mud dust. I could see courtiers racing out of the building.

  “Jack! Cass!” Aly’s voice cried out.

  “You must leave, Jack—now!” Daria shouted.

  “Promise me you’ll remember what I just said!” I shouted.

  “I will,” Daria replied. “Yes. Now go!”

  Now Aly was pulling me, too. I shook her and Cass loose. Daria was running back to her quarters. For a moment I thought of running after her.

  “Jack, they’ll be all right!” Aly said. “I don’t believe Brother Dimitrios. Either Shelley will work, or Daria will come through the portal.”

  “How can you be sure?” I said.

  She drew me closer. “You and I have a lot to do still. If the Massa gets ahold of the Loculi, there will be more deaths. Us, for example. I will not lose you, Jack. I refuse.”

  I looked over my shoulder. Daria had disappeared around the corner. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s book.”

  We raced through the city streets. By now they were a catalog of damage and destruction—roofs blown off houses, milk cans strewn about, injured animals screaming. I saw an old woman sitting against the side of a house, cradling a man in her arms. I had no idea if he was dead or alive.

  When we arrived at the river edge, Brother Dimitrios and the Massarene were already there. They seemed fewer in number, thanks to the actions of the rebels. But as far as I was concerned, one Massa was too many.

  The Loculi had been packed in two satchels. The Massa had them now. We had lost, and we would have to deal with it.

  “I’m going to bring these guys through, two by two,” Marco said. “It’ll take a few trips. Or you guys can help me.”

  Aly, Cass, and I stood on the riverbank with our arms folded.

  “I will stay for last,” Brother Dimitrios said, giving us a stern glance. “To make sure all goes as planned.”

  With a shrug, Marco held out his arms. Brothers Yiorgos and Stavros held on tight. Together they ran into the water.

  I don’t remember much of the trip, except that I burst through to the other side near one of the monks Marco had apparently just pulled through. He was gasping with panicked high-pitched squeals, like a little kid. “Okay . . . I’m okay . . .” he kept saying.

  I could see Cass, Aly, and Marco bobbing on the river, not far away. I trod water, catching my breath. Testing my body for symptoms of sickness. What if we were to collapse right now, the way we had last time we came back from Babylon? Where was the KI?

  I looked downstream, to where I knew the compound would be. All I saw were piles of blackened canvas and debris.

  On the riverbank, Brother Stavros had sidled over to keep an eye on me. “What did you do to the KI compound?” I demanded.

  “We had to take action,” Brother Yiorgos shouted.

  “Action?” My stomach sank. The water temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. I scanned the shore but saw no signs of life. “Are they alive?”

  “Never mind,” Yiorgos said. “Come to shore.”

  Professor Bhegad . . . Torquin . . . Fiddle . . . Nirvana. What had happened to them? Had they escaped? Been taken prisoner?

  I didn’t want to imagine the worst. I never thought I’d feel so much for the people who’d captured me in the first place. But compared to the Massa, the KI seemed like a bunch of happy aunts and uncles.

  We were near a stretch of riverbank, barren but for a dusty, new-model van. “I would advise you to swim with us,” Brother Dimitrios called out. “The vehicle is very comfortable on the inside. And quiet. We will have much to discuss.”

  Yiorgos was swimming toward me, looking suspicious, as if I were going to swim away—to what? No one was there to rescue us now. “I’m coming,” I grumbled.

  Marco was already near the shore, holding tight to Cass. Aly wasn’t far behind. I swam hard against the current. Each time my face lifted out of the water, I noticed the empty, peaceful opposite shore. It was hard to imagine that right now, in a dimension we could not see, a ziggurat was falling in super slow motion. The earth was opening up, fires were spreading, and an entire city was on a crash course with destruction.

  After Sippar busted up, what would happen to Babylon? Would it be pulled apart like taffy, exploded like a bomb—or just vanish into space? We knew that time had split almost three millennia ago. But how did time de-rift?

  And where was Daria?

  I glanced backward. If she took an hour to reach the shore in Babylon, she would show up a week and a half from now. I’d be long gone. She would emerge into a world beyond her most bizarre imaginings.

  If she came.

  “Brother Jack!” Marco shouted. He and the others were walking in waist-deep water now. As I let my body drop and my feet touch the sand, I could see three more Massarene on the shore. They looked almost laughable in their brown robes and sandals, carrying rifles in hand. But no one was smiling.

  “If we run away, what will you do?” I said. “Shoot us? How will you explain that?”

  “Dear boy,” Brother Dimitrios said, “you do not want to find the answer to that, and neither do we.”

  “Give these guys a chance, Brother Jack,” Marco urged. “You might be surprised.”

  Cass was staring at the remains of the camp downstream. Tears inched down his cheeks. “Brother Jack . . .” he said, practically spitting the words. “What do you know about brotherhood, Marco?”

  Aly put her arm around his shoulder. The two of them turned to the van. I was in no hurry. My face felt funny, my chest as if it had expanded a whole other size. I looked back over the water, scanning the surface against all logic for another face. Hoping to hear another voice, accented with Aramaic, calling my name.

  But I saw nothing.
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br />   Someday, I knew, I would have to forget. But I would never forgive.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  AN EXPLANATION OF SORTS

  TRAITOR.

  Two-faced liar.

  Monster.

  The words tumbled through my brain each time I looked at the back of Marco’s head. He was in the front seat of the helicopter, sitting between Brother Dimitrios and Stavros, who was the pilot. A sack and a box rested on the ground between Marco’s feet, each containing a Loculus. To my right, in the backseat, were Yiorgos, Cass, and Aly. We were flying at breakneck speed. Stavros was a better pilot than Torquin, but not by much.

  I was numb. I fiddled with the bracelet Brother Dimitrios had slapped on my wrist, secured with an electronic key. We all had them, bands that contained iridium alloy. The KI—whoever was left of them—would not be able to track us. I didn’t really care anymore. All I could think about was the look on Daria’s face the last time I saw her. The concern for the sick little boy, Pul. Like nothing else mattered. Like her world was not going to vanish after two thousand seven hundred years.

  Marco was talking. Explaining. But his words drifted through the noisy chopper as if they were in some alien language. Now he was looking at us, expecting an answer. “Brother Cass?” he said. “Aly? Jack?”

  Cass shook his head. “Didn’t hear it, don’t want to hear it.”

  “We trusted you,” Aly added. “We risked our lives with you, and you were working for the enemy.”

  Brother Dimitrios turned to us. “I’m afraid we took you from the enemy, children,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Crazy old Radamanthus and his pointy-headed Karai groupies . . . they have infiltrated your mind, haven’t they?”

  “Did you tell them about the KI, Marco?” Cass snapped. “Did you give up their secrets? You sold them out, too?”

  “We still don’t know their location,” Brother Yiorgos said. “We can block the tracker signals—that’s easy—but decrypting them is beyond our capabilities. Marco couldn’t figure the KI location. But he said you might be able to.”

  “He was wrong,” Cass said.

  “I knew Bhegad, long ago,” Brother Dimitrios said. “He was my professor at Yale. Not a good teacher, I’m afraid. He disappeared in mid-semester, leaving behind an odd note. He was going away to a secret think tank to determine the fate of the world! Genetic and historic consequences! Most scholars deemed it flat-out loony. It seems that while studying the works of Herman Wenders, Professor Bhegad came across the diary of Wenders’s son, Burt. A deluded boy, feverish and about to die, who believed his father had found a secret island, the remnant of Atlantis. Legend has it that Wenders and his people set up a permanent base there, which only they could locate. It became the home of a secret Karai cult. The Dark Side.” He chuckled. “Until now, I believed it to be a fiction. I thought old Radamanthus was dead.”

  “If they’re the Dark Side, what are you?” Aly grumbled.

  “Tell me, what did Bhegad say?” Brother Dimitrios went on, ignoring Aly. “That you will die unless the seven Loculi are returned to the Circle of Seven? Hmm?”

  He knew about the Heptakiklos, too! “Did Bhegad leave that info in his note at Yale, or did a little bird tell you?” I asked bitterly.

  Marco’s face blanched.

  “Before you were captured,” Brother Dimitrios said, “back in your hometown, you’d begun experiencing tremors— fainting spells caused by your genetic flaw. Then Bhegad whisked you away to this secret hideout. He keeps you alive, correct? He’s devised some . . . procedure. Something that keeps you healthy temporarily. But alas, the cure comes only after all seven Loculi are returned. Am I right so far?”

  His eyes bore into mine. All I could do was nod.

  “And he’s told you a story about a fair, golden-haired prince named Karai,” Brother Dimitrios continued. “His mother, Queen Qalani, played god by isolating the sacred energy source into seven parts. This upset the balance, creating havoc in the land. So the good prince Karai sought to destroy the seven Loculi. But his evil brother Massarym—a dark young man, of course, because dark is the color of villains, yes?—stole them away, causing the entire continent to implode. Something like that, was it? And you believed this?”

  “Think about it, dudes,” Marco pleaded. “Think about how we felt when Bhegad told this story. Each of us tried to escape—and then we all tried together. But they were on to us. They brought us back and wore us down. So yeah, of course we came around—but not because we trusted him. For survival. Because we really didn’t have a choice.”

  Cass and Aly were looking at the floor. None of us had a good response.

  “Perhaps Prince Karai wasn’t such a saint after all,” Brother Dimitrios said. “Perhaps he was a foolish young man with a temper. Imagine if the saintly Karai had succeeded. He would have destroyed the Loculi, and the continent would have vaporized in an instant. Massarym took the Loculi away—for their protection.”

  “Marco already gave us this line,” Aly said. “There’s one problem with it. Atlantis was destroyed!”

  “Destroyed?” Brother Dimitrios snapped. “Really? You saw the Heptakiklos, no? Marco took the waters there. He came back from death. You know very well that a part of Atlantis remains today. It was not vaporized. The Karai Institute colonized it. Our rightful home!”

  “Massarym saved Atlantis from totally being eighty-sixed,” Marco said. “Because he took the Loculi away. He hid them away for the future. For a time when people would know how to use them. Like now.”

  “Bhegad has lied to you,” Brother Dimitrios said. “To him, people are a means to an end, that’s all. Like this supposed cure? If he were concerned about a cure, he’d set out to make one. Like our scientists did.”

  “You have a cure?” I asked skeptically. “You’ve only known us since we kicked your butts in Rhodes!”

  “No, we don’t have a cure,” Brother Dimitrios said simply. “I will not lie to you. I will always be direct. But we are working on one, and we’re very hopeful. And we may indeed have just learned about you in Rhodos, but you must remember that the Massa have been around for a long while. Although we had not met any Select personally before you, we have always known about G7W.”

  Marco nodded. “These guys are the real deal.”

  “I don’t care if they’re Santa Claus and his elves,” Aly snapped. “You broke our trust, Marco.”

  “We were family,” Cass said softly. “We were all we had. And now we have nothing.”

  He was on the verge of tears. Aly was looking out the window in a cloud of funk.

  But I was sifting through Brother Dimitrios’s words in my brain. I had to admit, against all of my emotions, they made some tiny bit of sense.

  I sat back in the chair, my head spinning. Was I being brainwashed?

  Sleep on it, Jack. A problem that seems unsolvable always looks different in the light of a new day.

  Dad’s words. I don’t have a clue how old I was when he said them. But they were stuck in my brain like a sticky note with superglue.

  I glanced out the window. We were flying across the Arabian Peninsula, with the sun at our backs. Underneath us, the desert gave way to a great forked waterway. “There’s the Red Sea,” Yiorgos said. “We will stop soon to refuel.”

  “It’s the ruins of Petra, to be accurate,” Cass muttered. “Passing due west from Jordan to Israel . . . Yotvata . . . An-Nakhl . . . So I guess you’re putting us on course for Egypt.”

  “Very impressive,” Brother Dimitrios said. “Egypt is correct. The Karai are not the only ones with a secret headquarters. Theirs, apparently, is where the search for the Loculus ends. Ours is where it begins.”

  “And ours is actually in one of the oldest of the Seven Wonders,” Yiorgos said proudly. “The oldest.”

  “The only one that still exists,” Brother Dimitrios added.

  Cass, Aly, and I shared a look.

  We were heading for Giza, for the site of the Great Pyramid.r />
  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  HEADQUARTERS

  THE GRAY JUNKER of a Toyota pulled to a stop. We had reached a small parking lot at the end of an access road that led from the highway. A sign at the turnoff read CAIRO: 14 KM. Behind us was an old minivan full of Egyptian Massarene. The security detail.

  “Home sweet headquarters,” Brother Dimitrios said with a smile. “I think you’ll like Giza.”

  Aly, scrunched into the backseat between me and Cass, was drenched with sweat. Some of it was probably mine. Egypt was even hotter than Iraq. Out my window was a cemetery of modest tombstones that stretched to the horizon, disappearing into the desert. We had just passed a village of modern, squarish buildings.

  Could we escape there? I sized up the distance. It would be a long run.

  Brother Yiorgos opened the passenger door and I stepped out. I’d been so focused on escape I hadn’t seen what was on the other side of the car.

  The Valley of the Pyramids was nothing like the photos we’d seen in school. The stone structures were mountainous, higher than the Hanging Gardens. Their simple, no-nonsense lines made them somehow more powerful. They looked as if they’d heaved up from the sand by some violent force of nature. It made sense that this was the location of the only remaining Wonder. The pyramids seemed indestructible.

  Three main ones towered over the desert landscape, their surfaces seeming to vibrate in the sun’s heat. Smaller versions dotted the landscape, along with acres of rubble and ruins. In the distance, three tour buses were pulling into a parking lot, and throngs of camera-toting tourists made their way toward the Big Three. The Sphinx, to the right, sat quietly looking away, content to ignore it all.

  “Monuments, like skyscrapers—all built for the pharaohs’ corpses!” Brother Dimitrios said, getting out of the car. “Imagine! They make you into a mummy. They load you into an ornate chamber inside the pyramid, filled with treasures. There you stay forever, your spirit properly pampered. Because part of that spirit, the ka, was thought to remain behind in the real world. And it needed to be comfortable.”