CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

INTO THE ABYSS

“NO-O-O-O!”

I watched the two figures falling, weightless, like rag dolls. I couldn’t breathe.

The thing about horror—real-life horror, not the kind you see in movies—is that it is so silent. No screaming sound track, no fancy camera angles. Just two bodies vanishing into the shadows. Gravity doing its work.

And then it hits you. Rips into your soul.

Aly leaned forward, screaming, reaching with her arms as if she could wave him back up. Cass froze and then began rocking back and forth, staring at the dirt. “This didn’t happen, this didn’t happen, this didn’t happen…”

I turned away and looked back, staring into the abyss. I don’t know why. Maybe I was hoping to see him. Hoping these horrible few minutes, like the vromaski itself, were part of a dream.

But Marco was gone.

He had told us to scatter. He had faced the beast alone. He had taken one for the team.

Marco, the slacker jock. The show-off. The goofball.

He had given his life. For us.

I leaned over, my head in my hands. Tears ran down my cheeks and dropped onto the sandy crags below. A cry welled up from my gut, echoing into the chasm. “Marco…”

But all that came back was a hot, dry wind.

“He was attacked by a what?” Bhegad looked at us as if we were speaking in Gaelic.

We were gathered in his cramped office, on the second floor of the lab building. The windows were grimy, the walls a dingy shade of beige. At least seven stacks of files rose against the wall, joining at the top into one solid phalanx of paper that nearly touched the ceiling. Newspapers were stacked on the other side, paper clips marking pages that were yellowed with age. An old metal fan jutted out from where it had fallen, stuck between a file cabinet and a wall. The blades were so dusty they seemed to be made of gray felt.

Aly and I were standing. I’d given Cass the only available seat, a butt-high pile of magazines topped with New England Journal of Medicine, July 23, 1979.

“He’s dead, Professor Bhegad!” Aly said. “That’s what matters. You didn’t tell us that…thing would be there! It was a vromaski—a real one. Saber teeth, horrible snout. Just the way I dreamed it. How did that happen, Professor? What aren’t you telling us?”

“I didn’t know.” Bhegad was wiping off his glasses. His eyes were red, his skin flushed. “There are no animals at the top of the volcano. It is barren there.”

“Barren?” I exploded. “Tell Marco he was killed by an imaginary animal!”

“We didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye,” Cass said.

Aly shook her head in despair. “Or thank him.”

“But…how did you get here?” Bhegad asked. “How on earth were you able to get back down so quickly?”

“Because he told us how,” I snapped. “He explained how to rappel down the mountain while the animal was attacking him.”

“Extraordinary…” Bhegad leaned heavily forward on his elbows. A pile of papers shifted, sending a small alarm clock to the floor. “…Pushing the physical envelope under attack. Teaching…imparting skills. Fantastic.”

“One of us dies and you call it fantastic?” I shot back.

“That is really cold, Professor,” Cass said.

“Oh my, I meant that only as a—a tribute to this extraordinary young man,” Bhegad said, rummaging through his desk. “Tragic, tragic.”

I hated his response. After what had just happened, I detested everything about the Karai Institute. Bhegad had made it seem like they cared. Like their biggest concern was our lives. Like G7W and possible superpowers were these great gifts from them to us.

They didn’t care about Marco. Marco’s death was another way to gather information. His murder was a new data point.

Well, I didn’t care about them anymore. Or my supposed salvation.

The institute wasn’t the reason I was alive right now. Not the operation or the treatment. Or the fact that I happened to be born with some fatal but magical gene marker. My life could have ended with the snap of a jaw. I was alive because of a friend’s sacrifice. No matter how many more years I had left, I would have to live with that.

“We have to find his body,” Cass said. “Send us down there with Torquin in his helicopter.”

“I daresay Torquin is still on his way back,” Bhegad said. “He radioed me. After he lost you on the mountain, he turned back. He thought you’d fallen asleep or some such. By the time he reached the top of Mount Onyx, it was long after you’d…left. And, my boy, we can’t send a chopper into the caldera. We’ve tried it before. The volcano has been dormant for thousands of years, but still, there are strange updrafts that will knock a helicopter into the side walls.”

“Then we’ll go by foot,” I said. “I’m with Cass. We can’t just leave him there.”

“Jack, the idea is sheer folly,” Professor Bhegad said. “We have no tunneling equipment.”

“There is a way into the volcano.” I pulled the second half of the rock from my pocket. “We found what we were looking for, Professor Bhegad. The second part of Wenders’s message was on Mount Onyx. It talks about an entrance.”

Bhegad peered at the stone. “Random numbers…I fear this is the writing of a madman.”

“The first part of the code made sense,” Aly pointed out. “What makes you think this doesn’t? All these years studying the island, and you have no idea what Wenders was talking about?”

He sank back into his chair, wrapped in thought. “A hundred years ago, a subgroup of Scholars—the Onyxians—hypothesized the center of Atlantis was inside the caldera. There is a mythology of a labyrinth, you know. A maze. Modern theorists know that this is unlikely within the sides of a volcano. The maze must refer to the winding paths of the castle itself, which is certainly underwater. But I will ask a team to investigate—”

“If anybody goes to try to find our friend,” I said, “we’re going with them.”

As he reached for the phone, Bhegad shook his head. “Absolutely not. I sent you on a simple hike and you turned it into an alpine rock climb. You separated from Torquin and lost one of your closest friends. One of the Select. I plan to place you under the strictest house supervision!”

He shot us all an accusing glance, picked up the phone, and pounded a number. “Torquin? You are to assemble a search team, pronto. It will include you, me, and your three best people.”

A tear made its way down Aly’s cheek. Cass put his arm around her. As Bhegad moved to hang up the phone, Aly let out a sniffle.

“Now get out of here!” the professor shouted. But his voice had lost its bite and his glasses were fogging up.

None of us moved.

Bhegad’s eyes flickered briefly and he coughed. Yanking the phone back to his ear, he barked, “And, Torquin…you will include the three remaining Select…No, you do not have a say in this. And, no, Torquin, I do not believe they need to be taught a lesson. I will see you in a half hour, or I will force you to work for a full month straight…in shoes.”

I grinned. He wasn’t such a lizard after all.

“Thank you…” Aly said.

Professor Bhegad put the phone down and hung his head. He flipped through a messy leather datebook and ran his fingers along today’s date. “Don’t thank me yet. We can’t start this until break of day tomorrow. And at midnight the day after that, Cass is due for his next treatment.” He looked at Cass. “I cannot send you, my boy.”

The color drained from Cass’s face. “But that’s two whole days!” he protested. “We’ll be back in time.”

“Professor Bhegad, even your best people are no match for Cass’s sense of direction,” I said. “We can set a limit. If we don’t reach the center by a certain time, one of the team can take Cass back.”

“No to that,” Bhegad said, drumming his fingers on his desk. “I have responsibilities.”

“Marco used to call me brother Jack,” I said. “It annoyed me. I teased him about it. Told him it made me sound like a monk. But now I understand. He really did see me—and Aly and Cass—as his family.”

Cass nodded. “We have a responsibility, too, Professor. To our brother.”

“To your—but that makes no—” Bhegad sat wearily in his chair, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. His brow was knotted in a way that broadcast no, but his eyes were soft. “May the power of Atlantis,” he finally said, “be always with you.”