CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

THE AWAKENING

THE BRIGHTNESS WAS like a punch. Squinting, I fell back. Marco and Aly were yelling at me, but I couldn’t make out the words. The hum was excruciating. It snaked into the folds of my brain like a liquid.

The sides of the bronze flame peeled downward. Inside, a giant globe of plasma rose. It circled slowly over the piles of rubble, which began to swirl. Pieces flung themselves away against the glass, as if being thrown by an invisible hand. As we ducked to the ground, the greenhouse wall began to shatter.

Some of the shards—maybe one in a thousand—had a different fate. They rose more slowly.

One by one, they were sucked right up to the plasma ball. They stuck to its side like skin grafts. They were forming a shell, whipping upward and locking into place like a jigsaw puzzle solving itself, until an entire sphere had formed—a sphere of bronze, about half again as large as a basketball. It hovered above the remains of the flame.

“The Loculus!” I said.

“We’re supposed to take that thing?” Aly asked.

Marco moved closer. “Earth to Jack and Aly. Don’t just stand there. Grab it!”

He began climbing one of the piles. The sphere was whirling around the greenhouse now, faster and faster, whipping the mass below into a cyclone.

“Marco, get down from there!” Aly screamed.

A flying piece of stone clipped the side of his head and he toppled downward. Aly and I ran to his side.

“Have no fear!” Marco sat up, shaking his head. “The Immortal One takes a minor tumble. This Loculus has a mind of its own. It’s going to fly off to Pluto before we can figure out how to get it to—”

A shadow passed across his face and he fell silent.

We all looked up toward the glass dome. And we heard the griffin’s keening, bloodthirsty caw.

“How did it get loose?” I asked.

As it descended, I could see the mangled pickup door around its neck. It had torn it loose from the truck.

“Run!” Aly shouted.

As we scrambled toward the exit, the greenhouse roof exploded.

The red beast plunged downward. Its body seemed to fill the airspace. It flapped its wings frantically, cramped by the four walls. The door had dug into its skin and formed a nasty, featherless ring around its neck. The griffin’s yellow, segmented eyes were lined with black. They settled on Marco, and the beast growled.

I tried to shield Marco with my body, but he lifted me off my feet and ran me to the door as if I were a football. Aly was already through, and she pulled at Marco’s arm.

The griffin smacked against the door frame. It was too big to fit. Weakened by the battle with the pickup truck, it fell backward.

And the flying Loculus whacked it on the head.

The beast seemed finally shocked out of its rage. It glanced up at the object it had been trained to protect.

The glowing orb rose higher over the debris. The rocks below swirled furiously, battering against the griffin. The lion-bird rose again, roaring in pain.

With a burst of light, three gleaming bronze shards shot up from the pile and fused in midair. Then four more, then a dozen, until the walls echoed with a fusillade of sound.

High above us, the Loculus stopped moving. The cloud of bronze shards spun around it like planets orbiting the sun. I caught sight of the Colossus’s flame among them, still opened like a blooming lily.

The griffin, looking broken and confused, perched on an edge of the jagged roof to watch.

The air itself seemed to have become a shade of bronze as pieces vacuumed upward with impossible speed. They slammed against one another, fusing into shapes.

A base began to form at the bottom of the flame. It grew steadily downward, sucking up pieces large and small. It sprouted a handle, and then fingers to twine around it, followed by a palm. A wrist. A forearm. Shoulders.

At the bottom of the vortex, two enormous bronze feet expanded upward—from toes to heavy sandals to ankles and calves. Thighs became a torso, and slowly the top and bottom began to fuse together.

A gargantuan warrior of bronze, easily a hundred feet tall, stood over us. It was pocked with holes that were filling quickly as shards of bronze found their places. Its head rose higher than the shattered glass dome. Slowly it gained a face—a chiseled warrior’s face with closed eyes, as if asleep on its feet.

“By the great Qalani…” Marco murmured.

In moments the work was complete. The Loculus zoomed upward, and for a moment I thought Marco had been right—it wouldn’t stop until it reached the outer limits of the solar system. But it stopped abruptly, somewhere in the afternoon sky above the statue.

Then, slowly, it lowered itself into the flame atop the torch. Which began to close.

At that—at the sight of the Loculus disappearing—the griffin howled. It lunged off its perch toward the statue. Extending its talons, it attacked.

“What’s it doing?” Marco asked.

“It wants the Loculus,” I said. “Its job was to protect it—way back before the destruction of Atlantis. It doesn’t know about the Colossus. It thinks the Colossus is the enemy.”

Claws clanked against the statue’s bronze arm and the griffin bounced back. The weight of the truck door around its neck was playing tricks with its balance. It flailed its wings, trying to steady itself in midair. It landed on a broken splinter of glass that stuck up from the wreckage of the wall. The glass buried itself deep in the bird’s side.

At the sound of the beast’s deathly cry, the Colossus’s eyes opened.