Shouts rang out. I jolted up and hit my head on the bunk with a painful whack.
Lo Chez hauled me out. “They’re on to us!”
Sleepy-eyed, I stood up. Sam must have turned me in!
“You!” Lo Chez grabbed me, his nose touching mine. “New boy. You told!”
“No, it wasn’t me.” Terror ran through me. “I swear!”
“Bunk four hundred and two, get over here.” Hekate’s voice crawled over us.
Lo Chez’s frown fell, and he let me go.
Hekate stood outlined in the light from the entrance as Lo Chez made his way to her. No, don’t go!
The other kids stood in the silent dark.
“You think you can take me down, Reeker?” Hekate said, her voice rising. “I’m older than you know and have more power than you can imagine.” Two guards stood beside her. I shrunk into myself, wishing to be anywhere but here.
She grew taller, as if by a magical spell, her shadow rising like a monster on the wall behind her. “Who helped plan your takeover?”
Lo Chez shook his head. “N-no one.”
“Liar!” The guards pointed their vapes at his head as the lights flickered, casting ghastly shadows across their faces. The panting of hundreds of kids pulsed around me, and I pressed my fingers into the bunk bed frame, waiting for death to strike.
Hekate held her hands high.
Blue light blazed and the air crackled with electricity and smoke. When it cleared, Lo Chez still stood there.
“Back to your bunks, Reekers.” Hekate’s shrill voice pierced the air. “No rest for anyone tomorrow unless those involved in this escape plan confess.” She turned and left. The guards remained standing at the entrance.
There would be no prison break. The kids skulked back to their beds as I clutched the wobbly bedpost, waiting for Lo Chez to return. He shuffled toward me as his large body moved in and out of the light behind him. Strange moans carried to me. What had she done to him?
Finally, he stood before me, his hands covering his face. Then he clutched my arms. That’s when I saw the nightmare that he’d become.
His mouth was gone.
His eyes bulged out with the scream he couldn’t voice. It sucked me into a deeper world of horror and held me frozen in its image. His nose flared and he shook all over, shaking me with him. Tears spilled down his cheeks, his mouthless flesh working with silent sobs.
I wrenched away from Lo Chez and fell on my bed, hiding my own face in the scratchy mattress. He crawled on the top bunk, groaning from somewhere deep inside. I felt bad for reacting the way I did, but his monster face freaked me out. There was no comfort here, only work and punishment … death.
Just then, a face popped out from under my bunk. I almost yelled when a hand pulled me by the shirt, yanking me to the floor.
It was Charlie.
And Sam was with him.
Sam put his finger to his mouth. Charlie nodded, then Sam disappeared. I looked to see where he’d gone and felt a cool breeze. A sweaty hand pulled me down into a dark hole under the bed, and Charlie followed close behind.
Our hideaway was dank and damp. My eyes soon adjusted to see a slant of light glowing above. There was a soft creak and a click, and I got a whiff of dead and rotting things as near total darkness covered us.
“What’s happening?”
“Shh,” Sam whispered back, just an outline before me. “We’ve got to run. Quick!”
He shot off into the dark with a sack over his shoulders, but I pulled him back by his shirt and handed him my pen flashlight from home, grateful it still worked after my ‘shower’—and grateful my mother’s photo was laminated and didn’t get ruined. Sam hesitated, then took the flashlight from me and moved it around, casting light on the walls as if fascinated, then motioned for us to follow him with his new toy. Charlie shrugged at me from across the shadows, and we ran after our rescuer—if that’s what he was.
The dark tunnel seemed to move in and out on either side as we ran. I reached my hands out to the cool walls for balance. Bits of earth brushed off, and who knows what other slimy, squirmy things came with it.
Remembering the crystal, I felt for it in my pocket. It warmed my hand and glowed blue when I pulled it out, like the first time. Charlie bumped into me and gasped when he saw it.
Sam turned around and gasped too. He reached his fingers out toward the crystal, then pulled them away. “A lightning orb!”
I was scared of dropping it now, afraid it would explode like a grenade. Sam’s eyes were huge in the blue glow the crystal shed as clouds moved across its tiny space, rolling angry and stormy inside the glass. A spark flared. Charlie backed up and the blue light cast long shadows down his face, which bobbed like a ghost before me.
Sam pointed at my crystal. “How’d you get one?”
I decided to change the subject. “What’s in the bag and how’d you get us out?”
Charlie nodded, still staring at the crystal … or lightning orb.
Sam shook the bag. “Food to keep us going. And I put you and Charlie in the two bunks with secret tunnel doors under them. They’ve been sealed shut for a long time, but I re-opened them and got your friend for you.” He stepped closer then, his eyes widening. “By the gods, I’ve never seen a lightning orb though, just heard of them. They have great power.”
Bo Chez had said so, but how would he have gotten hold of it?
Then Sam added, “Storm Masters from our Sky Realm carry them.”
My gut cramped. Storm Masters were real? “Sky Realm?”
That’s when he said something even stranger. “Zeus rules there. It’s where he created the lightning orbs, after he left Mount Olympus.”
I bounced from foot to foot, my legs eager to flee while my thoughts paralyzed me. Mount Olympus was real, too? But it couldn’t be. In school that was mythology, which means “not real.”
“Non! Vraiment? Mount Olympus like the Greek gods?” Charlie stuck his jaw out as he echoed my thoughts.
Sam nodded, his eyes white moons in the dark. “Vray-what?”
“Vraiment. It means ‘really’.”
“Then, vraiment, the Greek gods.”
“What can the orb do?” I really didn’t want it blowing up in my hand.
“I don’t know,” Sam said.
Big help.
“Did you steal it?” Sam tilted his head at me.
“From my grandfather.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about Bo Chez now, and the fact that this orb—this weapon—had been in our house. This thing from another world—from the Greek gods! They were supposed to have superhuman powers, and this orb of theirs had just been on a shelf over our fireplace.
Sam peered about as if expecting guards to burst upon us any second. “Enough for now. Let’s move!”
I pulled him back. “Wait, you need to help me find my other friend, Finn, but I don’t know where he is.”
“No time for that,” Sam said. “I got Charlie here for you as asked.”
“Then we don’t go with you.”
Charlie nodded, following my lead, and crossed him arms. “I’m here because of Joshua and his friend. We can’t just leave him.”
Sam glanced back and forth between us then sighed. “Fine. We’ll find him first. There’s only a few places he could be anyways, but time is not on our side.”
This all sounded good, but I still didn’t know whether to trust him. “Why help us at all?”
“My days are numbered here, and I need a new home.”
“New home?”
“I want you to help me escape, too,” Sam said.
I glanced at Charlie and then back at Sam. “What do you mean help you escape?”
“To a new home with you on Earth.”
“But we don’t know how to get back.”
That’s when Sam surprised me even more by saying, “I do.”