Lost in Babylon

by Peter Lerangis

  “Either com, net, or org,” Cass said.

  I nodded. “The first number after the dot is a three. The third letter of the alphabet is c. So I’m thinking that’s a com.”

  I grabbed a pencil and paper from a desk drawer and quickly wrote down a key:

  “Com is three, fifteen, thirteen!” Cass blurted out.

  “Give me a minute . . . ” I said, trying to match all the numbers to letters. “Aly could probably do this in her head. I mean, you don’t know for sure about these double-digit letters. Like a one next to a seven. That could be the first and seventh letters, AG. Or it could mean the seventeenth letter, P. Hang on . . .”

  “Baaron . . . Baddison . . . Salicia . . . Sanna?” Cass said.

  “I’m thinking the B stands for Brother and the S for Sister—like Brother Aaron and Sister Alicia,” I said. “Monkish names.”

  “Sounds like the way Marco normally speaks,” Cass said. “He’s made for this place.”

  “The person who left this wanted us to see it—but why?” I exited out of the app and kept tapping other ones. Each was password-protected. “Great. Can’t open any of these.”

  “Any other great insights from World War Two?” Cass asked.

  Finally I tapped an app marked RS. It opened to reveal an image that made us both jump back:

  “Whoa,” Cass said. “Big Brother is watching.”

  “I guess someone was trying to take a picture but pressed the button that turns the camera backward,” I said, flipping back to the maps app. “Let’s use this and see where it leads us.”

  Cass took the phone, examining the map. “Where do we go if we do escape?”

  “We try to find Aly, if she’s nearby,” I said. “We hack off the iridium arm bands, and hope that the KI finds us before the Massa.”

  Cass’s expression darkened. “You mean, if the KI still exists. . . .”

  “We can’t think about what happened at the Euphrates camp,” I said. “But you heard Brother Dimitrios. He still doesn’t know the location of the island. Whatever his people did to the camp, the KI will be fired up. And the geeks will be trying to find us.”

  “So best-case scenario, we leave this prison and go to a nicer one,” Cass said glumly. “I guess I can live with that.”

  I took a deep breath. “It’s all we’ve got. Think about what Dimitrios did, Cass. He knew what would happen when we took the Loculus. He didn’t care about all those people. About Daria. She gave her life for us. At least Professor Bhegad tried to do something. Shelley didn’t work, but he spent time and money to create that thing. Both organizations have lied to us. But for all its weirdness, only one cares enough not to kill innocent people. And that’s the one I plan to stick with.”

  Cass’s eyes wandered out to the common area. “Okay,” he said softly. “I’ll go wake Marco.”

  “What?” I grabbed his arm. “No, Cass. Not Marco. He’ll rat us out.”

  “He won’t,” Cass said. “Seriously. He brought us here. He knows we’re a family. He wants us to stay together.”

  “Cass, I’m sorry, but you are in a fantasy world—” I said.

  Cass jerked his arm away. His face was beet red. “Fantasy? Is that what you’d say if I told you, weeks ago, you’d be trying to find the Seven Wonders? Real is real. We break up and we die. Nothing is more important than staying together, Jack—nothing!”

  From inside Marco’s room, I heard a sudden snort. I leaned in to look. He was fast asleep on his back, snoring.

  “Cass, listen to me,” I hissed. “When this is over, we will go back to different places. Yeah, maybe when we’re old we can move to the same town. But maybe not. Because you make new families when you’re old. Real families. This is about survival, Cass. If we tell Marco, we’re giving up. Betraying Aly. Deciding to stay here and become the kind of zombie that they’re making Marco into. If that’s your definition of family, you can have it. But give me a chance to escape on my own.”

  Cass’s eyes burned into mine. The sides of his mouth curled downward and for a moment I thought he was going to spit, or scream.

  Instead, his eyes rose to a small, spherical camera wedged into a corner of the ceiling.

  He grabbed the container of Chubby Hubby ice cream that had been sitting out all night. Taking off the top, he heaved the container toward the glass.

  A lump of brownish goop flew through the air, saturating the camera. “Promise me that if we get out, we’ll come back for him,” Cass said.

  “Promise,” I replied.

  Without looking at me, he headed for the door. I grabbed the first things I could get my hands on and threw them into a plastic bag: a knife, a flashlight, a canister of pepper, a bottle of vegetable oil, and another tub of ice cream from the freezer.

  I glanced back into Marco’s room one last time. His back rose and fell.

  Silently, I slipped out after Cass.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  HACK ATTACK

  “I DON’T LIKE this,” Cass whispered. “It’s too quiet.”

  “We’re in an enclosed stairwell,” I said. “Stairwells are quiet.”

  I jammed the kitchen knife into a small, square metal door on the wall, about eye level. The lock wouldn’t give, but the door bent outward enough for me to peer under it with the flashlight. “Circuit breakers,” I said.

  Cass nodded. “Aly might be able to hack into their system,” he said, “but you’re MacGruber.”

  I slipped the knife into the box, said a prayer, and began sliding it right to left. The angle was bad, the torque was weak, but I managed to flip most of the switches from on to off. “Either I just shut off some lights,” I said, “or I disabled the washing machines.”

  We pushed open the door from the stairwell to the hallway. It was pitch dark. “Hallelujah,” I said. “The security cameras won’t pick us up. I think we’ll be okay if we stick to the light of the phone.”

  Cass eyed the map app, staring down the long hallway. “At least I know the dimensions of this hallway. I memorized them. The map is showing a lot of closets in this area of the compound. Small rooms. Mostly supplies, I’m guessing. We’re far away from the main corridors—the control rooms and all. That’s also where the exits are. I’m thinking we can wind around back, where it looks like there’s a delivery exit.”

  Cass led the way. We felt our way through darkened hallways, zigging right and then left twice. The reach of the circuit breakers ended there. We were entering an area lit by fluorescent lights above. I looked around for overhead cameras and saw nothing here. “We go right next, and we’ll be close,” Cass said.

  But as we neared the next hallway, I heard footsteps.

  We plastered ourselves against the wall. At the end of the corridor, where it came to a T, voices were talking in Arabic.

  My back was against a door. At eye level was a sign labeled in several languages. The third line read SUPPLIES in English. Under it was a simple keypad with numbers from one to nine.

  In these bright yellow uniforms, there was no hiding. We looked like two giant bananas. Cass turned to me, his eyes wide with fear. Run, he mouthed.

  But I was thinking about the workers who had to get in and out of this supply closet. And about the German soldiers who had to code the secret-message machines.

  I turned toward the door. I thought fast.

  Massa.

  That equaled 13-1-19-19-1.

  I pressed each digit. Nothing happened.

  Cass was pulling me away. Simplicity, I thought. Something easily remembered. A number they would all know.

  On a hunch, I keyed in five digits.

  Click.

  The door opened. We hustled inside and pulled it shut behind us.

  I willed my heart not to fly out of my chest. We listened for the guards. Their conversation was growing more animated. But they were staying put. They hadn’t heard a thing.

  Cass flicked on an overhead light. “How did you do that?” he whispered.

 
“Smart guessing,” I whispered back. “Remember the code for ‘com’—three-one-five-one-three? It’s a number palindrome, the same back and forward. Easy to recall. Something they probably all see on their cell phones. So I tried it.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Cass said. “I can’t wait to tell Aly.”

  I glanced around. The shelves contained all kinds of caustic liquids. I jammed small bottles of bleach and ammonia into my bag.

  Cass was eagerly taking down a pile of neatly folded uniforms from the top shelf. Massa uniforms. Brown and institutional. They looked exactly like the things Brother Dimitrios and his goons were wearing here.

  Cass’s eyes were saying exactly what I was thinking. We would be much less noticeable wearing these.

  We each took one that seemed about the right size and changed into them. Another shelf was stocked with matching baseball-type caps, each embroidered with a lambda.

  Perfect. With these outfits, especially with the hat brims pulled low, we could pass for employees. Well, from a distance. A long distance, where no one would notice that we were thirteen.

  “I have another route,” Cass whispered, staring at the phone. “Left at the intersection, then right at the fork. There’s a big room we have to go through. On the other side of that room, we’re pretty close to the exit.”

  Slowly, silently, we opened the door and stepped out. We stepped quickly down the hallway, passing a lounge arrangement like the one we’d just been sleeping in. Then an intersection.

  “What fork?” I said. “This is a four-way!”

  Cass was fingering the screen like crazy. “Sorry. There are all these levels. They overlap. Maybe the fork is on the level above us. Or—or below . . .”

  “Pick one!” I said.

  “Straight,” Cass shot back.

  We headed down a long passageway toward a big, domed room. Some kind of control center. No door, just an archway. We could hear humming, beeps, shouts, an occasional burst of something in English—but even that was gibberish. Sector Five atmospheric control . . . waste systems redirecting to path 17B . . . clearing air traffic . . .

  A man burst through the opening, tapping furiously on a tablet. He was heading right for us. If he looked up, we were toast. Two kids who happen to exactly match the descriptions of the recently captured Select.

  I pulled Cass toward me, pretending to show him something on the phone. We hunched over the screen, our backs to the guy.

  The guy rushed past us without even looking up.

  “We are so close,” Cass whispered. “But this room—it’s huge. Like some kind of command center.”

  “Keep your head down,” I said. “Pretend you have something important to do. Don’t run. Walk like a grown-up. When we get to the other side—”

  “Wait,” Cass said. “You want us to walk straight through there? We can’t do that!”

  “They don’t know we’re missing yet,” I said. “This is the last place they’d expect to see us.”

  “But—”

  “Think about Aly,” I insisted. “She did the exact thing no one expected. It takes guts. Which is what we need right now.”

  Cass looked into the room and swallowed hard. “I hope you’re right.”

  We barged inside, keeping our heads down. The place was crawling with people. Most of them looked like they’d just awakened. From the walls, enormous monitors glared down at us like the schedule boards from airports. They showed hallways and rooms, lounges and storage spaces, satellite maps, cross-sections of pyramids. An enormous Jumbotron-type screen loomed over everything, tiled with all the different views of the compound, inside and out. This place was their security center.

  I scanned the room quickly. Best to stick to the shadows as much as possible. I pulled Cass to the wall, where the traffic was lightest. We made our way around, hugging the wall as close as we could. I could see an archway at the other end. It led into another corridor that looked no different from the one we came from. I let Cass lead. Cass knew the route.

  He was picking up the pace. As long as no one was looking for us, we would be fine. We were just about to reach the archway.

  Boooweep! Booooweep! Booooweep!

  The sound was more like a whack to the head than an alarm. It shrieked through the room, pounding our ears, blotting out all other sound. Cass jumped nearly three feet. Startled workers turned from their screens to look up at a huge Jumbotron-type screen. It blared two words in bright red letters against a white background:

  SECURITY BREACH!

  Under it were photos of Cass and me.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  THE EXIT AT THE END OF THE HALL

  “GO!” I SHOUTED. “Just go!”

  We bolted through the archway, out of the room and into a wide, modern corridor. Workers were hurrying curiously toward the control room. Some of them were checking their phones.

  We ducked into a restroom and hid in two adjoining stalls. A guy raced out from the stall next to ours, muttering under his breath. We waited until the footfalls died down, then sneaked out.

  “Second left!” Cass said, eyes on the phone. “Looks like there’s an exit at the end of the hallway there.”

  “I’ll scope it out first!” I sprinted ahead to the second corner. Before making the turn I stopped, back against the wall, and peered around.

  Cass was right. The corridor just around the corner from us ended in a doorway, about fifty feet away. But standing in front of it were Brothers Dimitrios and Yiorgos. They were yelling in Egyptian at two hapless-looking guards.

  I sprang back. “We’re busted.”

  “What are they saying?” Cass whispered.

  “How should I know?” I replied.

  It wasn’t until then that I realized my head was buzzing. And not just because of the chase.

  It was the Song of the Heptakiklos. Near us. Very near.

  “Do you—?” Cass said.

  I nodded. Cass peeked at our phone. Then he looked across the hall at a door on the wall across from us. A door like a bank vault, thick and ornately carved.

  “Jack?” he whispered. “How much room do you have in that sack?”

  He held out the phone to show me our GPS location. The room opposite us, behind the vault door, showed as a rectangle.

  In that rectangle were two glowing white circles. “This person who owns the phone,” I said, “is definitely trying to tell us something.”

  We walked closer. “Where’s the handle?” Cass hissed. “Vault doors are supposed to have big old-timey handles, like in the movies.”

  “Ssh,” I said.

  Dimitrios was still talking. I focused on a smooth black panel, where a doorknob might once have been. It glowed black and red. “It’s a reader,” I said.

  “Fingerprint, like at the KI?” Cass said, his face tense. “Or maybe a retinal scan.”

  “RS” was the name of the app—it meant Retinal Scan.

  “Cass, you are a genius!” I said.

  I snatched the phone from him, and he flinched. Both of our hands were way too sweaty. The phone slipped out, clattering to the floor.

  Dimitrios’s voice stopped. We froze.

  I scooped up the phone, fumbling with the controls. I pressed the control button to get the app grid. I swiped too hard, scrolling past three screens.

  “Who’s there?”

  Dimitrios.

  I scrolled back until I found the one I was looking for. RS.

  I pressed. The eye filled the screen. I could see myself reflected in it. My chest contracted.

  There was something about this eye, something that seemed familiar.

  Do it. Now!

  “Jack, they’re coming!” Cass shouted.

  I turned the phone and held the eye up to the black sensor.

  Beep.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  DEAFENING SILENCE

  THE DOOR CLICKED open. We pushed it hard and slipped inside. The thing weighed a ton.

  “Stavros?
Is that you—finally?” Dimitrios’s impatient voice bellowed.

  Click.

  The door made an oddly delicate sound as it shut.

  We held our breath. A different voice shouted from the right, the direction we had just come from. “Nowhere, Brother Dimitrios! Vanished from their rooms. Both of them. But they can’t go far.”

  Brother Yiorgos.

  Now the voices met, directly in front of us. “The trackers?” Dimitrios demanded. “If they escape—”

  “They’re wearing the bracelets,” Yiorgos said. “The KI will not be able to find them if they escape. Which they will not do.”

  Dimitrios made a sound of disgust. “I want every exit out of this place sealed,” he said.

  I could hear his footsteps thumping away from us. We stood still in the ensuing silence, not daring to move. The room was pitch black. A string, connected to an overhead lightbulb, tickled the top of my head. My chest felt like a rabid hamster had been let loose inside.

  I knew a Loculus was in here. Maybe both Loculi. The Song was deafening. I stared at the sliver of light under the door. It flickered as guards raced past. Now random shouts were echoing loud and fast. Voices I didn’t recognize. Languages I didn’t know.

  When this wave of sounds was gone, I reached upward and pulled the string. The bulb clicked on, flooding the room with greenish-white light.

  The rear side of the door was a slab of metal, undecorated. At the spot opposite the sensor was a thick iron latch, which had opened when we’d used the retina.

  I turned into the room. It was empty, save for an old, sturdy-looking wall safe with a rusted panel:

  “Try the pattern!” I said.

  Cass started with 142857, then went on to 428571 and 285714. “They’re not working!” he said.

  “Stop,” I said, staring at the panel.

  Simplify.

  The number keys looked old. Some of them were faded. If people had been opening this safe for years, their fingers would wear off the numbers.

  The wear and tear showed a pattern.