READING ABOUT THE DANGERS of this city was one thing. Heading into one of its worst areas was another. It scared me, but it didn’t stop me any more than it had stopped the others. I guess when you know your days are numbered, the boundaries you’ve held for most of your life don’t matter anymore. Of course, that didn’t mean my nerves weren’t on edge, especially when I knew everyone was depending on me. Yes, I had a supercharged brain, and I’d acquired an aging disease that my mom thought was already making me look older, but I was still only eight years old.
To Simon’s disappointment, we’d left the fancy hotel, even though I’d prepaid for a full week’s stay. We’d crowded into a taxi at the stand outside, figuring it was a safe spot to catch a ride. The car was clean. More importantly, the driver was friendly. An hour later, after stopping at a crowded shopping mall that sold just about anything you could imagine, he dropped us off in one of the older districts of the city.
“Not very upscale,” Simon said as the taxi drove away.
Rows of three- and four-story buildings stretched down both sides of the street, each one connected to its neighbor, the individual properties distinguished by a variety of pastel colors that framed the windows and adorned the brick and stone surfaces. It was an older neighborhood containing both residential and commercial structures, where roll-up doors were as common as wooden front doors with decorative accents. Most of the lower windows had bars over them, but there were also well-tended flowers trailing from some of the upper balconies. Families lived here and worked here, and I wondered what life was like for them, especially after nightfall.
Strawberry looped her thumbs under her backpack straps to adjust its position. Like the rest of our packs, hers bulged with stuff we’d purchased earlier. “It doesn’t look so scary to me,” she said, surveying the neighborhood. An old man rode past on a bicycle. He waved at a woman walking along the opposite sidewalk carrying shopping bags, not far from where a couple of boys kicked a soccer ball back and forth.
Ellie stood beside me. She’d insisted on holding my hand from the moment we got out of the taxi, and from her tight grip I sensed she was plenty scared. She wore dark sunglasses, and had one of Strawberry’s scarves wrapped around her head.
“Maybe not scary while the sun’s up,” Deondre said. “But remember what that driver told us? Thirty murders in Bogota every week, and most of them occur in this area.”
I shivered. It would be dark soon and we needed to get off the street. “This way.” I led Ellie and the others past a dimly lit garage that housed a number of motorcycles in various states of repair, and a few used ones that appeared to be for sale. An old man in grimy overalls knelt next to one of the cycles, holding a wrench. He cast a disapproving look as we walked past, as if he knew we shouldn’t be in this neighborhood.
The building where I believed Jazz was being held was around the next corner. It was an old residence of some sort. We planned to do some surveillance from a building across the street, which had an entrance on the road we were now on.
Ellie pointed at an orange three-story building that wrapped around the upcoming corner. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” I said, seeing the sign on the brick wall beside the green door. It had a childlike drawing of a cottage with a pine tree next to it. The international symbol for a youth hostel.
“That artwork is lit,” Simon said, using the slang word for awesome. He pointed at the colorful mural painted along the first story of the hostel’s curving wall. It was a modern depiction of Colombian youth in a mountain village. It was intricate and beautiful. Unfortunately, parts of it were blemished by graffiti, but Simon seemed to see past that as he ran his hand along the imagery, getting lost in the detail as he neared the intersection.
Deondre grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Who do think you are, Salvador Dalí? Don’t be an idiot. Remember, if we step past the corner they could see us.”
“Oh, yeah,” Simon said sheepishly. “Sorry.”
I’d discovered the target building had two exterior cameras, and we couldn’t afford to have our images captured, especially Ellie.
At least not yet.
Simon stopped short. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said, looking at Deondre. “You know who Salvador Dalí is? One of the most famous surrealist painters ever born?”
Deondre flushed. “Whatever.” He pushed open the hostel door, causing a small bell to jingle. The rest of us followed. The tiny lobby, if you could call it that, consisted of a check-in counter on one side, and three loaner bicycles on the other. The five of us barely fit in the space between. The walls were weathered and the place had a damp smell, but the tile floor looked freshly mopped and there was no dust on the counter.
A short woman wearing an apron waddled down the hallway. “Hello, hello,” she said in a singsong voice that made me smile. She had silver hair, crooked teeth, and deeply etched laugh lines. She stepped behind the counter. “You called, sí?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Deondre said. I’d not heard that respectful tone from him before, and it was nice to see him embrace his role.
“Good, good. I have rooms ready. I am Magdalena. But all kids call me Momma Magda.” Her accent was thick, and the way she grinned after each sentence made me think she was proud of her ability to speak English. Ellie and Strawberry were smiling, too.
“Also, dinner. Soon, sí?” Magda said.
Simon was nodding before she finished speaking. “Yes!” he said with a grin.
“Okay. All good. Forty-five thousand each room. Two rooms. Yes?”
“Um, yes,” Deondre said. “Third floor facing west?”
“Sí, sí, like spoke on phone. No problemo. Breakfast free, dinner extra. Ten thousand.” She pointed at each of us as she head counted and then held up five fingers. “Cinco, five, sí?” She sucked her lower lip deep into her mouth as she grinned and waited for an answer.
This time even Deondre couldn’t resist smiling back. “Perfect,” he said with a chuckle. “Yes, we’d like to include dinner.”
“Now, card for deposit?”
“How about cash?” Deondre said. He pulled out his wallet and counted out 420,000 pesos. That was enough for three nights, breakfast and dinner included. It seemed like a ton of money, but it was only a hundred and forty dollars.
Magda beamed. “Oh, sí, yes. Cash good.” She stuffed the bills in her apron pocket, then turned around and retrieved two keys from the cubbies mounted on the wall. “I show you.” She shuffled down the hallway, her large bottom swaying. We followed.
“And then dinner, right?” Simon asked.
***
“Can’t you smell that?” Simon asked. The five of us had used the common bathroom to clean up, and were now gathered in the room assigned to us three boys. The room was small but clean, with two bunk beds, closet, and a dresser. Simon opened the hallway door and the enticing aroma of Momma Magda’s dinner drifted in.
“Whoa,” Deondre said, tilting his nose upward. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.” He moved toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I need a couple minutes.” I was sitting at a small desk at the window. Strawberry stood beside me, watching as I donned my Spider and woke up the tablet. Ellie was at the window, peeking through a slit in the curtains at the three-story building across the street.
“We’ll wait with Alex,” Strawberry said. “Get us a good table.”
“Better hurry,” Simon said. “Or there won’t be anything left!” He and Deondre left, closing the door behind them.
“A car just pulled up,” Ellie said.
Strawberry reached out to pull the curtain back, but I grabbed her arm. “Turn off the lights first,” I said as I dimmed the screen on the tablet.
“Duh,” Strawberry said, shaking her head as if to scold herself. She quick-stepped to the door and flicked off the overhead light. With the room darkened, Ellie pulled open the curtain. The three of us watched as the driver and passenger doors of a dark-colored Mercedes opened and two men exited.
Ellie drew in a breath. “It’s them!”
I leaned forward to get a good look. They were the same two federal policemen whose images I’d captured earlier. Ellie had identified the taller of the two as the one in charge. When she’d first met them in the hospital, they’d introduced themselves as Lieutenant Garcia and Sergeant Sánchez. I’d entered the car’s license plate number and the men’s faces into the tracking program, and between traffic and storefront cameras, and especially the two cameras outside the building across the street, it had been easy to track them to this location. The men entered through the front door, and two other men were in the foyer waiting for them. They looked tough. The bigger of the two inside men stepped outside and glanced in both directions before following the others back inside and closing the door behind them.
“She’s got to be in there,” Ellie said.
“Of course she is,” Strawberry said, pulling a pair of cheap binoculars from her pack. It was one of the items she’d purchased earlier. “My Gammy used to use a pair of these to check for critters outside the house.” She and Ellie took turns scanning the building’s windows with the lenses. From their sighs, I knew they didn’t see anything helpful. It was up to me to find out what was happening inside that building.
Dad said I had the ability to process information ten times faster than other people. I’d read that nature had a way of creating balance, and I wondered sometimes what price I would have to pay in return for my gifts. Now I knew I was going to pay the ultimate price. In less than six months. It wasn’t fair. But as I admired the determination of my new friends, who had even less time than I did, I realized life was rarely fair. That’s why it was so important to make the most of it. To grab hold of every precious moment you have left and make a difference. I intended to do just that. Right now that meant figuring out how to save Ellie’s sister from a group of very bad men.
I thought back to my hesitation on the suspension bridge in the jungles in China, when I could have used the powers of Dad’s alien pyramid to stop—to kill—the drug lord and his men who were chasing us. Instead, my lack of conviction had cost Timmy his life. I’d promised myself that would never happen again, and I’d later kept that promise when I’d…done what was necessary to save my family and friends. I’d do nothing less now.
A familiar vibration tickled my brain. My eyes slammed shut as my consciousness was hijacked and sent to the fog-shrouded cavern in the Brazilian jungles. The vision tugged at me, even more urgently than before, to find my way there, and my heart pounded as a presence entered my mind.
You must come.
The voice was formidable, and a cold shiver rocked me backward. I wanted to run but the invisible grip wouldn’t let go—and that’s when I felt my dad. It was like he was sitting right next to me, and my body tightened as I once again flashed on the midair collision that had killed him. Then I smelled his musky scent and everything changed. It was as if my collapsing world was reborn again, because in that moment I realized my father was alive.
“Dad?” I said, swinging my head around and opening my eyes, and for an instant I saw a shimmering view of his face. It was different, twisted somehow, but that didn’t matter. Even as the image vanished, I sensed the life force coming from him and embraced the words he spoke in my mind.
I’m coming.
Bring him, the voice said, and I realized the presence was speaking to my dad. By some alien miracle I’d been summoned to listen in.
Time is running out, the voice added. This time it seemed more like a plea than a demand.
Then I was released, and when I turned back, Ellie and Strawberry were both staring wide-eyed at me.
“Are you okay?” Ellie asked.
The crooked smile I’d inherited from my dad was firmly in place. “Am I okay? Oh, yeah, I’m okay. Like never before.”
Strawberry said, “For a second there your face went so white, it looked like you’d seen a ghost.”
My smile broadened.