THE MAN’S VOICE WAS NOT SO CHEERY THIS TIME. INSTEAD, IT WAS stern, scolding. Threatening.
Your infiltration of Omega City has been noted. Steps will be taken to neutralize any damage you may have done during your visit, and/or any attempts you may make to alert our enemies to our presence. At the count of five, a canister of nerve gas will be released into this chamber. You will all be dead in thirty seconds.
If you have received this message in error, please press the cancellation key now.
“Cancellation key!” Nate shouted. “Find it.” We all started frantically searching the control panel, as if the Cyrillic letters would suddenly make sense now that our lives were on the line.
Five.
“This one says stop in Russian,” said Howard. “That’s similar to cancel.”
“Good enough!” cried Nate.
Four.
“No!” I screamed, yanking back his arm before Howard could push yet another button. “Just stop, Howard! Think! This is a trap built for Russians. Why would he make it something the Russians would do? That button will probably release the gas right away.”
Three.
“What are our options, Gills?” Eric asked as both the Nolands glared at me. “English speakers trapped in this thing are just going to press random buttons. They have no idea what any of them say.”
“We’re going to die, we’re going to die,” breathed Savannah.
Two.
Random buttons. I stared at the panel. Exactly. I shoved Howard aside and slammed my whole arm against all the buttons, making sure to cover every one.
Ooooonnnn . . .
The voice trailed off. I waited for the hiss of nerve gas. Would we smell it before it killed us? Had I just sentenced all five of us to death in a metal box hundreds of feet below the earth?
Well, at least we didn’t have to worry about burial.
Seconds passed. Ten, fifteen . . . all the way past thirty, while we all stood there, cringing.
“I think you stopped it, Gills,” Eric said at last.
I did? That seemed . . . convenient. Maybe it was a slow-working nerve gas. Maybe we’d all drop dead in twenty minutes.
And if we didn’t, could I still kill Howard for getting us all into this mess?
“I think she stopped everything,” Nate said. “We aren’t moving anymore.” He pried open the elevator doors a crack and peeked out. “Yep. Dead stop.”
“I can try to get it moving again,” Howard suggested, turning back to the control panel.
“Don’t touch anything!” I screamed at him. “You and your buttons! You sent us down here! You almost got us killed! Stop pressing buttons! What’s wrong with you, you freak!”
Howard flinched as if I’d hit him, then backed as far into the corner of the elevator as the space allowed. Savannah and Eric were gaping at me. Nate was staring daggers.
I swallowed thickly. “Howard, I’m sorry—”
He said nothing. His brother just snorted at me. “Forget it. He’s not going to say another word.”
“Howard . . . ,” I tried again. I felt like that decontamination shower must have washed away all my good sense. A few days ago, I thought Savannah had been out of line to call him a freak, and here I was doing the same exact thing.
Then again, here he’d almost gotten us all killed.
I closed my eyes. No. I was the one who’d almost gotten us all killed. I was the one who wanted to find Dr. Underberg’s treasure. Howard may have pushed the button but before he did, we were just trapped inside a boulder, waiting for Fiona to catch us. If people were going to be mad at someone, it should be me.
Because I was following a crazy old man’s directions into the center of the Earth. Who was the freak now?
“Gillian’s right about one thing,” said Savannah, breaking the silence. “We shouldn’t touch anything else. There could be more traps.”
“So what, you want to just sit here?” Nate asked. “Forever?”
Eric peeked out of the open door. “I think we can climb down. We’re only about three stories up. There’s a utility ladder on the side of the rail here.”
I shuddered, and not just because I was still soaking wet. Climb three stories straight down to a cement platform? On a ladder? In the dark?
All at once, Howard pushed away from the wall and climbed out the door.
Nate reached for him but he jerked out of his brother’s reach, stepped onto the ladder, and carefully started climbing down.
I bit my lip as Nate turned back to me. “You’re next, boss lady,” he said, clearly still angry.
I guess I deserved that. I couldn’t blame Howard for getting us into this mess. After all, coming out here had been my idea.
The rungs of the ladder were sturdy and wide, and if you didn’t look farther than the next step, you could almost pretend you weren’t swinging over your death-by-cement-floor. Eric came down after me, then Savannah, and finally Nate. By the time we got to the bottom, we were all out of breath. Eric splayed out on the concrete floor in the glow of the floodlights, and the rest of us did the same. Howard kept a little way away from us, staring up at the fake starry sky.
“My cell phone’s useless,” Nate said at last. “Maybe it was the shower, maybe it’s the fact that we’re a mile underground.” He groaned and rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I can’t believe this.”
Neither could I, but for a whole different reason. I looked up into the blackness. This was Dr. Underberg’s—all of it. And Dad didn’t know about it. No one did. Maybe no one had been here in decades. Maybe this—not the battery—was the reason the government turned on him. And sure, it was super creepy and obviously deadly and awfully cold. But Omega City was his—it was where all his inventions must be hidden. Waiting. I could feel it.
I felt a tug on my ponytail. “Hey.” I turned my head to see Nate beside me. “Look,” he said softly, his expression tired. “I need to talk to you.” He drew me a few feet away and lowered his voice. “I know he’s not the easiest person, but Howard . . . he doesn’t handle stress like other people. He shuts down. And we can’t afford that right now.”
“That wasn’t stress,” I said. “That was a Cold War booby trap built for Soviet spies. And I handled it a lot worse than Howard.”
Nate chuckled. “True. But on the other hand, you did save our lives.”
I snorted and gestured to our surroundings. “Saved them for what?” Like he’d said, we were buried alive. Right now, our only option was to go back up to the boulder and confront Fiona.
And her guns.
“Is there anything I can do to make up with Howard?” I asked Nate. If anyone would know, it had to be his brother.
Nate cocked his head and looked at me, his hair falling down over his cheek and shading his brilliant green eyes, and I suddenly understood why Savannah got all weird whenever he brought us pizza.
“No one has ever asked me that before,” he said. “I wish more people would. It’s better when you figure out how he works.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “How his brain works. My father—he can’t understand, because he can’t make Howard care about what he thinks he should, but as soon as you try to see things from Howard’s perspective, you see it’s not worse or better, it’s just . . . different.”
“Space.” I nodded. “He likes to talk about space.”
“Yeah,” said Nate with a weak smile. “You pretty much can’t go wrong with space.”
Space I could do. I stood up, hating the way my damp jeans felt sliding across my legs, and went over to Howard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Savannah and Eric at the edge of the water. Eric was nudging something with his foot.
“Hey, Howard,” I said as I sat down next to him. He didn’t move or acknowledge my arrival in any way. I stared up at the fake sky. “What constellations do you see?”
“Why does your brother call you Gills?”
I blinked. That was unexpected. But any words were good words, I guess. “Um, it’s a nickname.”
“No,” he replied. “A nickname is like Nate for Nathaniel, or Howie.” Howard frowned. “My dad likes to call me that.”
“I’m sorry?” Okay, so he didn’t always want to talk about space. “I’m also sorry for what I called you. I didn’t mean it. I was just scared. And taking it out on you.”
“Gills is not a nickname of Gillian,” he said as if he hadn’t heard. “It doesn’t even make the same gee sound.”
“That’s actually how it started,” I said. “Someone called me Gill-ee-an instead of Jill-ee-an, and Eric thought it was hilarious.”
“Also,” Howard continued, “it makes you sound like a fish.”
I sneaked a glance at him. He was grinning.
“Are you making fun of me?” I asked.
He looked directly at me for possibly the first time ever. His eyes were green too, just like his brother’s. “You deserve it.” Then, just as quickly, he looked back up at the ceiling. “I wasn’t looking at the constellations,” he said. “I was looking at the comet.”
“The comet?” I narrowed my eyes.
He pointed. “See? It’s moving. Down.”
I followed his finger and found a new light in the sky, brighter than the others, swinging a bit and definitely moving down the side of our elevator shaft. I stared in horrified fascination as it got closer and brighter.
“Howard,” I whispered. “That’s not a comet.” It was a figure, all in black except for a head lamp, and it was rappelling down the side of the shaft.
“Kids!” said the comet. “I’m coming down to get you.”
Savannah jumped to her feet. “Yay! We’re saved!”
The floodlights veered in wild arcs and zeroed in on the figure.
Just then, I heard a massive whirring sound, and a few seconds later, a strong wind wafted over my face, lifting the ends of my still-damp hair. I looked at Howard, who raised his hands in defense.
“I didn’t touch anything this time.”
Far above us, the comet started careening around. Whoever it was had clearly lost his footing on the elevator shaft, and was swinging from his rappelling rope.
“What did you do!” he cried. It was definitely a he.
“Clint!” Fiona’s voice echoed down from the ceiling.
The wind had increased to a roar, blowing my hair around and plastering my wet clothes to my skin. I had no idea where it was coming from. Above us, Clint—or whoever he was—slammed back against the elevator shaft. He was close enough to see now, as he gripped the shaft and his safety line with his legs and one hand, while with the other he started fumbling with something strapped to his waist.
“Are you okay?” I screamed above the wind.
“Don’t move,” Clint cried, and pulled out his gun. “Or I’ll shoot.”