Seven Wonders Book 1: The Colossus Rises (5 page)

I
RAN DOWN
an empty, carpeted hallway. At the end was an exit sign pointing left, with a little graphic that indicated stairs. I took the corner at top speed.

I didn’t expect the stairs to be so close. Or to run into a card game in progress on them.

“Whoa, where are you going?” Aly cried out. She, Marco, and Cass jerked backward as I tripped over the steps.

Marco caught me midfall, but didn’t let go. “’Sup, Jack? Didn’t Bhegad explain everything?”

“You mean the part about him saving my life?” I said, struggling to pry myself loose. “Or turning me into a DC Comics hero?”

“Are you a DC guy?” Cass asked. “Emosewa!”

“Meaning
awesome
—Cass likes to talk backward,” Aly explained. “I’m a fan of the old-school
Superman
TV series…with George Reeves?”

They were all crazy. “Get me out of here! I want to see the head of this place!”

“You just did,” Cass said. “Well, he’s not the head of the whole thing…”

But Marco was already dragging me back toward the room. “Just do this, okay?” he said through clenched teeth. “Don’t be a pain in the butt.”

“
By the Great Qalani, what are you doing to him?
” Bhegad’s voice thundered as he came around the corner. “If he pops those stitches, we lose him!”

Marco loosened his grip. I shot upstairs and pulled open the door, to the sound of a piercing alarm.

Three guards pivoted on their heels and faced me, hands on their weapons.

I stopped in my tracks. I was trapped.

“Jack,” Bhegad said softly from the bottom of the steps, “I have PhDs from Yale and Cambridge. If you think I’m crazy, then you must think your three friends are, too. And Torquin and the guards. And seventy-nine world-class experts in genetics, biophysics, classical archaeology, geography, computer science, mythology, medicine, and biochemistry. Not to mention a support staff of two hundred and twenty-eight. The Karai Institute is the finest
think tank in the world. And we are patient. We can wait until you’re ready to listen. But you will not escape. So it’s either now or later. Your choice.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said.

Bhegad beckoned me to come down the stairs. “Marco, Cass, Aly—would you kindly turn your backs?”

Marco spun around first—and my jaw nearly dropped. Buried in his dark mop of hair was a white Λ.

Cass’s, too.

“Mine is under the dye,” Aly explained.

I swallowed hard. I took a couple of steps downward. The guards slammed the door shut. “So…you’re all…?”

“The lambda is a unique physical sign,” Bhegad explained. “We don’t understand the mechanics of it. The hair changes rather quickly, and at virtually the same age among all who have the condition. But we do know its significance. It is common to one group of people, whom we call the Select.”

“Select? What are we selected for, something good?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” the professor replied. “Each of you has a rare genetic marker. It is an extraordinary gift, but it also happens to be a ticking bomb. Jack, we were hoping to have five of you here—including a young man called Randall Cromarty. You know the name?”

I was about to say no. But the name did ring a bell. A
news item. A grainy video that had been circulating for the last week or so. Some kid rolling a gutter ball, throwing up his hands, dropping to the floor. The story Dad had sent me. “The kid who died in the bowling alley?”

Bhegad nodded. “At the age of thirteen, in Illinois. Cause unknown. Before him, a girl named Sue Gudmundsen fell into a fatal coma while in a San Diego mall—also thirteen. And Mo Roberts, playing catch with his little sister. In all cases, our medical team was too late. But we found you in time.”

“Torquin…” I said. “Dr. Saark…But how did they know?”

“For that, you can thank our IT staff,” Bhegad said. “After your last checkup, Dr. Flood made a note on your computerized medical records about the very beginnings of the lambda. Our tracking software picked it up.”

“You hacked my medical records.” My checkup had been about a week before the math test—a day before Dad left for Singapore. Had Dr. Flood mentioned anything about a mark on the back of my head? I couldn’t remember.

“
Hacking
is such an ugly word,” Bhegad replied wearily.

“So…what does the lambda mean?” I asked.

“Think of those nightly news headlines, the stories that float around social media like crazy.” Bhegad smiled. “An ordinary person lifts an entire car to free a trapped loved one! A kid considered mentally defective draws ornate
cathedrals from memory, to the tiniest detail! As humans, we access only part of our brain’s capacity. But these people have tapped into a vast unused area of the brain that we call the ceresacrum.”

“What does that have to do with us?” I asked.

“Some people breach the ceresacrum temporarily, in response to crisis,” Bhegad replied. “Some are born with a bit of access, not much. But what if the ceresacrum’s gate could be lifted? Not just the rare flash of genius or the momentary feat of strength, but total access? Imagine! In each of us lies the potential to do superhuman things. Feats of great physical daring, art, science. The ability to defy laws of nature. Am I clear, Jack?”

Aly, Cass, and Marco were grinning at me now. My mind was a big fog of duh. “No.”

“Some genes are buried deeply in our DNA,” Bhegad continued. “For example, we all possess the code for a tail…for gills! But these are not
expressed
, as we say. Nature has shut the mechanism, except in extremely rare cases. Being able to open the ceresacrum gate is like having a tail. The genetic ability is there, but ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the world’s people do not express it. You four” —he glanced slowly at each of us— “are the point zero zero zero one.”

Now it was becoming clear. And the clarity hurt. “You mean…we’re all genetic mutants?”

“Yes, in a good way,” Bhegad said. “You four possess what we call G7W. It’s a marker. A piece of genetic code. We do not understand how it works, but we know what it indicates. You are the elite. The top of the top. The ones whose ceresacrum can be cracked wide open. Millennia ago, this ability may have existed in many, if not all, humans.”

“Wait,” I said. “Evolution is survival of the fittest. So if you had dudes who were superhumans way back then, why wouldn’t they have survived to now?”

“Because those who die early are, by definition, not the fittest.” Bhegad leaned forward. “Jack, we ran a genetic map of Randall Cromarty’s DNA after he died. And Sue Gudmundsen’s and Mo Roberts’s. They all had G7W.”

I looked from Aly to Marco to Cass. Their faces were drawn. “So I’m—all of us—we’re going to die?” I asked.

“No one who has had this marker has lived past the age of fourteen,” Bhegad said. “For whatever reason, the gene kicks into action around your age—and its actions are too powerful to be withstood by the body. Which is why we brought you here. We have developed a treatment. The operation on your head was the first step. You will be required to undergo regular procedures every ten days or so. Your first will be in about seventy-two hours. But we cannot keep you alive forever. There is a point after which nothing can be done—a sort of expiration date we can read
in your genome. And that is what scares me. The fact that all our science is still not enough to keep you alive.”

I sank to the stairs. The carpet felt clammy. The walls felt cold. It was as if the stairwell itself were my coffin. I wouldn’t leave here without dying. I wouldn’t see my dad ever again. I might develop a power or two in the meantime. Maybe paint a cathedral or twirl a helicopter in my bare hands. And then…?

“So your job is to study us,” I said. “We’re your superhero guinea pigs. So what happens when we’re dead? Will you call our families and friends—or just have Torquin dump our bodies in the sea?”

“Yo, hear him out, brother,” Marco said.

“I’m not your brother!” I snapped. “Here’s a deal, Professor Bhegad. Call my dad. Give him your location. Let him come here so I can see him—”

“Jack, please,” Bhegad said. “Your father would snatch you back in an instant—the worst thing that could happen to you. Besides, it would be impossible to give him these coordinates. This place is not visible by ordinary means. Radar, sonar, GPS—none of them register here. There are forces on this island even we do not understand—”

“Then go get him and bring him here,” I said. “If he knows I need the treatments, he’ll stay. He’ll help!”

“We can’t risk that!” Bhegad shouted. “Your lungs
need air, your eyes need light—but your ceresacrum needs something here, in the earth itself. Eons ago, this island was a continent. Its people created grand architecture, made extraordinary music, governed with fairness and sophistication. It was protected by a curious flux point of natural forces within the earth—electromagnetic, gravitational, perhaps extraterrestrial. When the place was destroyed, the forces were, too.” Bhegad’s phone beeped. He snatched it angrily from his pocket and looked at the screen.

“Dude, man up to this,” Marco said to me. “We’re on what’s left of Atlantis. And we’re, like, great-great-great-to-a-zillionth descendants.”

“Atlantis? Very funny,” I said, attempting a laugh.

No one else laughed with me. I looked toward Professor Bhegad, but he was texting, his face lined with concern. As he snapped it shut, he said, “I must go. But, yes, Marco is correct. You are connected to Atlantis by blood. Your ceresacrum must feed off the ancient power in order to survive. But that power must be found.”

I swallowed hard. Aly and Cass were looking pale and frightened. “How?” I asked.

Bhegad stood. He pocketed his phone and began edging up the stairs toward the building’s exit. “We don’t know where it is now. The power of Atlantis was stolen. Broken
up and hidden all over the world. You must find what was taken. Your lives will be saved, Jack, if you locate all the elements of that power. You must bring them together and return it to Atlantis.”

Bhegad’s phone beeped again, and before I could say a word, he was up the stairs and gone.

I
FELT LIKE
I’d been run over by a three-ton tank. Or squashed by Torquin’s feet.

Aly, Cass, and Marco were all talking at once. Really loudly. We were walking out of the building and onto the path that ringed around the quad. They were telling me what a smart guy Bhegad was and how he was our only hope and how famous we would become.

Half of me felt like a caged orangutan in the zoo. The other half wanted to burst out laughing. Either Bhegad was going to save my life or I had been pranked by some island Yoda who was two sandwiches short of a picnic.

“Atlantis…” I muttered. “Superpowers…I’m supposed to believe this?”

Aly put her arm around me. “Hey, we all doubted it, too!” she said in a loud, affirming voice, like she was talking to someone at the other end of a room. “It’s a tough transition!”

I looked at Cass. “I think Bhegad is nuts. No offense, but I’m not sure about you guys either. You all don’t mind not seeing your parents?”

“Um, no.” Cass’s face clouded over. “Not really. Well, I do, I guess. I mean, I
did
.”

My heart dropped. I felt like an idiot for asking the question. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are they…?”

“No!” Cass shot back. “They’re not dead. But we…my family isn’t close.”

Marco ran ahead of us on the path. He grabbed a basketball that was lying against the side of a building and began dribbling.

“Trust us,” Aly said. “This is no
Truman Show
.”

“She likes old movies.” Cass stepped up onto the path’s narrow stone border, and began flapping his arms rhythmically. “Be grateful, Jack. Just think what would have happened if they didn’t find you.”

I had to admit that one. “Okay, I might have died. But I feel totally cured now. Do you really believe this skeezy story—they’re keeping us alive so we can find our inner superpowers, but only if we find the lost power of Atlantis?”

“I believe him!” Aly exclaimed.

“Brother Jack, we are surrounded by world experts,” Marco said, spinning the basketball on one finger. “Wicked smart people. If they just wanted goons to travel and find the Atlantean powers, they could get them. They got Torquin, didn’t they?”

I looked around. Teams were working hard, mowing lawns, repairing roofs, paving walkways. A group was wiring a small maroon half globe to the side of a building. It looked to me like the surveillance cameras in Dad’s old office building. They waved to us as we passed.

“I used to feel the same way you do, Jack,” Aly said, toning her voice down. “I was on a plane flight home from Washington, DC, watching
Citizen Kane
for like the thirtieth time, and just when I got to the election scene, I had a seizure—and then I was here. The only other person was Marco.
That
was depressing.”

“Thanks a lot.” Marco threw the basketball at her head, but she caught it. “One minute I’m about to break the scoring record in a middle school basketball game, the next minute I collapse on the court—and I wake up here. I was the first one.”

“You’re in middle school?” I asked. I’d been assuming Marco was at least fifteen.

“I’m thirteen. Big for my age. I think they almost flew me back home, just to get rid of me. But then I started getting the treatments.” Marco faked left, stepped across my
path, and quickly snatched his ball back from Aly. “I can’t wait to become invincible.”

Cass had veered off the path and was moving diagonally to the right.

“Where are you going, brother Cass?” Marco asked.

“Nowhere. Just trying to retrace the exact path I took at three o’clock or so.” Cass shrugged. “I committed my foot placements to memory. The patterns of the little pebbles in the blacktop. And the ssarg.”

“Ssarg?” I said, and immediately got it. “Oh. Grass.”

“Humor him,” Aly murmured. “He’s just that way with directions, trivia, you name it. World-class memory.”

“Just about the only thing I don’t remember is how I ended up here,” Cass said. “I was in a parking lot, and then I was here. Hey, tell me the name of the town where you live, Jack. And then name any other place in the United States.”

“Belleville, Indiana,” I offered. “And…um, Nantucket, Massachusetts.”

Cass stood stock-still for about thirty seconds. “Belleville. Take Route Thirty east to Fort Wayne; Route Sixty-nine north to Route Eighty all the way across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to the George Washington Bridge to the Cross Bronx; the Hutch to the Merritt, swinging down to Ninety-five via Route One at Milford; One Ninety-five in Rhode Island, Four Ninety-five to the
Cape, and Six to One-thirty-two to the ferry in Hyannis.”

“Which shipping channel does the ferry take?” Marco asked.

“Ynnuf ton,” Cass drawled.

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. “He’s right. I used to follow the route on a map on our vacations. That’s freaky.”

“The ceresacrum takes your biggest talent and makes it awesome,” Aly said. “The treatments allow G7W to do its thing.”

“What’s your big talent?” I asked. “Something to do with movies?”

“That’s just a hobby with her,” Cass said. “Often very gniyonna.”

“I sent cute kitten photos to the members of the National Security Council,” Aly said with a laugh. “Which doesn’t seem like much, except I hacked into their system to do it. Through a military-grade firewall and the highest level of encryption. I was bored after finishing my homework. It seemed like a fun project.”

“Did you go to jail?” I asked.

“I was nine years old.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know I was doing anything illegal. They didn’t arrest me, they hired me. To strengthen their system. And…” Her face darkened. “Also to do some other stuff. I was their youngest employee ever.”

“What other stuff?” I asked.

She ignored the question and jerked a thumb over toward Marco. “Believe it or not, Slacker Boy over here is good at something, too.”

Marco was staring at the basketball court at the other end of the quad, near the main building. He bounced his basketball twice, rocking on his feet. “The blindfold, please.”

Aly took a bandanna from Marco’s rear pocket and tied it across his eyes. Slowly he reared back with the basketball.

The court was half a football field away. It was like trying to hit an airplane with a snowball. Marco crouched, then let go with a loud grunt. The ball shot high into the air. Scary high.

Marco pulled off the blindfold and watched as the ball came down like a cannon shot. It ripped the net as it dropped through the hoop.

“Three points,” Aly said.

“Dang,” Marco said disappointedly. “It grazed the rim.”

My jaw nearly hit the ground. “I did not see that.”

Cass had photo recall and could speak backward at will. Aly was a hacker genius and movie expert. Marco was Michael Jordan on steroids, without the steroids.

I was chopped liver.

I sat in my room, glumly putting on a pair of khaki pants and a button-down KI-logo shirt. I didn’t have a talent. I was
eh
in school and sports. I could use computers but didn’t really know how they worked. I could set up a fake volcano to launch a plastic toy. Maybe that was my talent. Dumb contraptions. Maybe I’d be able to launch an SUV using palm trees.

I was the opposite of the Select. I was the Discard Pile. Not good at anything. Maybe my lambda mark was just premature aging. I was a mistake.

And now I was supposed to go to a dinner honoring me. Were they expecting me to show off, the way Cass and Marco had?

“Ready?” Aly called out from the hallway, knocking on the door.

I opened it. She was wearing a striped knit shirt and a black leather skirt. Her wrists were full of cool, jangly jewelry that matched her pink hair, and she was wearing some makeup. “You look emosewa,” I said.

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” she said.

She was smiling brightly, like we were about to go to the prom or something, which made me feel really uncomfortable. “I was…making a joke,” I said, “about Cass’s backward speak. Not that you don’t look it—emosewa. Er, awesome. You know.”

“Quit while you’re ahead, McKinley.” Aly took my arm
as we walked down the hall.

“Heeeere comes the bride…” Marco sang, emerging from his room.

Aly sneered. “Maturity is not part of Marco’s talent profile.”

We picked up Cass from his room, and Professor Bhegad met us outside our dorm. “Everyone is excited to meet you, Jack. Come.”

As he walked, his massive key chain banged against his hip like tiny cymbals. He pointed out the various buildings—a library with enormous windows, a state-of-the-art gym, a museum. People joined us as we walked, all wearing clothes that showed a KI insignia over the left breast pocket. Marco seemed to have a different secret handshake for each of them. Like he’d known them his whole life.

Strange voices called out to me: “Hey, Jack, how are you feeling?”… “Book club meets on Tuesdays!”… “yoga”… “spinning class”… “surfing club”…

Before we went into the dining hall, Marco stopped short. “Yo, P. Beg, I want to show Jack the media room.”

“It’s
Professor Bhegad
,” the old man said. “And I don’t think we have the time. The chef has prepared—”

“One minute, that’s all,” Marco insisted.

As Bhegad continued to protest, Marco pulled a plastic card from the protective pouch that hung from a big key ring on the professor’s belt. He quickly ran to a Colonial-style
brick building, threw open the door, and announced, “Welcome to utter coolness.”

Although the building looked old, the inside was amazing—long and rectangular, with a lofted area and a glass ceiling high above. Everywhere I looked there were consoles and monitors, game devices and arcade machines. The beeps and sound effects made it seem like some strange forest full of squeaking electronic rodents.

“Nerd Heaven,” Cass continued. “Including board games and jigsaw puzzles.”

“We’re getting a foosball table on Friday,” Aly said with relish. “And we’re having a Preston Sturges festival.
Hail the Conquering Hero
Saturday night.”

We?
I could never, ever think of myself and the Karai Institute as
we
.

“Dinnertime!” Bhegad said, heading back to the door. “Oh dear, where did that access card go?”

“I gave it back to you, P. Beg,” Marco said.

Now Bhegad was looking around the floor in frustration. “Achh. I’ve had this problem ever since I turned sixty. Honestly, I just lose
everything
! Ah, well, it will turn up. We mustn’t be late. We have a surprise for you, Jack. Come.”

As Professor Bhegad headed for the door, Cass and Aly followed. I turned to go with them.

Behind me, I felt Marco slipping something flat and rectangular into my pocket.