PUZZLE PIECES
Josh tore out of the cottage. In his right hand, he clutched the three claws, and in his left, the plastic tube. One word pounded in his head with every step: Fake. Fake. Fake.
He raced over the connecting bridge and into Atlantis, heading toward the Coral Palace. He saw Toad almost immediately and sprinted toward him.
“Where’s Milo?” Josh said.
“Still asleep,” said Toad. “You know he doesn’t surface much before lunch.”
The comment surprised Josh. “No. I didn’t know.”
Toad grinned. “It’s good to be the King.” His smile faded as he registered Josh’s expression. “You okay? You look a little weird.”
“Yeah, I’m okay. I just have to talk to him.”
Toad shrugged. His eyes strayed toward Josh’s right hand, which was nervously opening and closing around the claws.
“Whatcha got?”
Josh tightened his grasp.
“Nothing. Some stuff I found for the kids.”
“Yeah?” Toad said, his eyes popping with curiousity. “Like what?”
“Just junk,” said Josh. “Listen, I gotta go find Milo.”
“Your funeral,” said Toad, dragging his gaze up from Josh’s hand. “And good luck waking him.”
Josh ran toward the Palace, then climbed the stairs to the third level, a hexagon-shaped landing that contained Neptune’s Chambers. As the Atlantis settlement grew larger, the VIP rooms had been subdivided into smaller units, housing about five or six Islanders each. Similar, smaller rooms on the second level were home to about twenty more Atlantans.
Milo knocked on the door of the King’s Suite, the largest of the chambers. There was no answer. He knocked harder and heard a mumbled obscenity. Josh flinched. Maybe Toad had been right.
“Hey, Milo. It’s me. Josh.”
“Josh.”
There was more muttering, and a moment later the door swung open. Milo stood in the doorway, eyes puffy from sleep, long hair matted against his skull.
“Hey, man. What’s up?”
“I gotta talk to you. You alone?”
Milo pointed a thumb behind him. Josh looked over his shoulder and saw a girl padding across the floor, struggling into a shirt. Her head finally popped through the collar.
“Hey, Josh,” she said. It was Aiko.
“Hey,” said Josh weakly. He looked at Milo, who raised a lazy eyebrow and shrugged.
“So what do you need?” he asked.
Josh dragged his thoughts away from the girl and shook his head. “It’s private.”
Milo’s pale blue eyes fixed on him, and Josh saw a flicker of irritation. But then it vanished. “Yeah. Okay.” He turned toward Aiko. “Why don’t you go get something to eat, Kiki? I’ll meet you there in a minute.”
“Sure,” said Aiko. She smiled again at Josh—proudly, he thought—and headed out the door. Josh stared after her, then looked at Milo.
“What can I say?” said Milo, his expression smug. Josh tried to laugh past his discomfort, wondering if Moira knew what was going on.
“So,” Milo said. “What’s so important?”
Josh squeezed his right hand and felt the plastic claws dig into his palm. For some reason, he couldn’t say anything. His brain was trying to shout something at him, something he didn’t want to hear. As he tried to organize his scrambled thoughts, Milo’s face clouded.
“Jeez. What is it now? Someone break into the supplies? Or wreck another building on Timescape?”
“No. No, nothing like that.”
“So that means your girlfriend found something else to complain about, right?”
“What?”
“Zoe hasn’t caused trouble for a couple weeks. She’s due.”
“No. I mean, she’s not complaining about anything.”
“Then what’s wrong?” Milo snapped, his hands bunched into fists. “Sometimes I feel like we’re just babysitting a bunch of spoiled brats.”
Josh gaped at him. After a moment, Milo blinked.
“Sorry,” he said. “Guess I haven’t gotten over the last couple of weeks. I mean, I thought I had, but …” Milo made a visible effort to calm himself. “So what’s up?”
“Nothing big,” said Josh, searching for a lie that Milo would believe. “Just another run-in with Caleb. But I’ll take care of it.”
“Yeah. Sorry I bothered you.”
“It’s okay. Sorry I acted like an ass.”
“No prob. Catch you later, okay?”
“Okay. And Josh, if you still have trouble with Caleb, let me know. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks.”
Josh left the Palace, bumping into Toad again on his way out. The boy grabbed hold of his arm and spun him around, staring at his rear.
“Hey,” said the boy. “There’s still only one.”
“What?”
“I mean, Milo didn’t rip you a new one.”
Josh tried to laugh. But he was barely seeing or hearing anything.
“Look, I gotta go,” he mumbled. “Late for work.”
Toad looked at him curiously, but nodded. And Josh headed over to the Living Oceans, hoping it would give him time to sort out his thinking.
He spent the rest of the morning chopping up vegetables and small fish to feed to the turtles. But as he cut and diced, his mind kept spinning, and by midday break, he was going crazy. He needed someone smart to talk to, someone he could trust. Someone who could help him figure things out, or else tell him he was nuts.
He needed Zoe.
After checking the assignment board, Josh tracked her down in the recycling area underneath Inspiration Island. She was with a half dozen other kids, each wearing a stained olive-green jumpsuit and sorting through the previous day’s output of garbage. Certain materials, like plastic utensils and aluminum foil, were being pulled out for re-use. The rest was sorted a second time and sent either to the landfill or to the central incinerator, which fed into the Island’s energy system.
Zoe glanced up as he approached. She froze, then pasted a smile on her face.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said, giving no indication that the previous night had even happened. Josh wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“Nice outfit,” he said finally, pointing to the jumpsuit.
“Thanks. I like it.” She smiled again—a too-bright smile that completely unnerved him. It was like the girl he knew had been sucked out of her skin and replaced with someone else. Like in some old body-snatcher movie.
“So why are you here?” she asked. “Slumming?”
“Not exactly. Listen, Zoe. I gotta talk to you.”
The smile disappeared. “Anything wrong? The kidlets okay?”
“Yeah, they’re fine. Listen. I found something I need to tell you about. But not here.” Josh glanced at the other workers, some of whom were only a few feet away. He lowered his voice. “It’s about the Outsiders.”
Zoe shook her head, and Josh felt an invisible wall slam down between them. “No. I don’t want to hear any more about the Outsiders. I don’t want to hear anything about anything for a while.” She turned, and Josh found himself talking to her back.
“Zoe, this is important.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The Outsiders aren’t what they looked like. They were wearing makeup or something. It was all fake.”
She didn’t respond, didn’t even acknowledge that she’d heard him.
“Come on, Zoe. I need your help figuring this out.”
“Leave me alone.” She moved a few steps farther away, to where one of the pneumatic tubes was spitting refuse into a large metal bin.
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.” He felt like punching her, suddenly sick of her dramas. But then he realized he had an option. Turning abruptly, he headed for the exit. But he couldn’t resist one last shot.
“Enjoy your garbage, Zoe. Maybe Tish still cares what happens to us.”
That night, Josh waited until after Memory Time, then asked Maddie and Devon to watch the younger kids. He told them he was meeting Tish about some science lessons she’d be doing in the marine labs at Atlantis. They agreed a little too quickly, and Josh knew that the snack stash would be down by half when he returned. He said good night to all of the kidlets, gave Maddie an extra hug, then went out the door and headed toward Digital Dimensions, where he’d arranged to meet Tish in her classroom.
For some reason, he felt nervous, certain he was being followed. He kept glancing backward, peering into every shadow and crevice along the way.
“Stop it,” he told himself. “If there were any Outsiders around, they wouldn’t be after you.”
Finally, he reached the TV studios. He looked around to make sure no one was watching, then slipped through the main door and headed to Tish’s classroom. She was already there, waiting just outside the studio door, a small flashlight in one hand.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey. Thanks for meeting me.”
“You kidding? After what you showed me? I’ve been going nuts all day. And look.” She reached into her own pocket. “I went back to my place and looked around. Lucky I hate cleaning.” She pulled out her hand again, revealing another one of the plastic claws and a thin piece of latex with a fake scar running across it. “Guess whoever it was used the wrong glue.”
They headed into the studio and down the stairs, leaving the room in darkness except for the dim glow of lights that edged the stage. They sat cross-legged together on the game floor, just in front of the contestant podiums.
“Okay,” said Latisha, keeping her voice low. “Here’s what I’m thinking. We’ve been trying to keep the Outsiders from coming here and taking our stuff, right? Maybe some tribe out there had the same idea. They knew we’d taken down the barricades. And we know …” She hesitated. “We know they saw the Scouts. So what if they wanted to stop us before we saw what they had? Decided to make us afraid to leave the Islands?”
A familiar voice came from above them.
“Nice thinking. But there’s another possibility.” Zoe was sitting in one of the studio seats, about a dozen rows from the top.
“Hey,” said Josh. “You came.”
“Nothing gets past you, Captain Obvious.”
Josh felt relief wash over him. That was the Zoe he knew. “So what changed your mind?”
She shrugged and started down the stairs. “I started feeling crummy that I didn’t listen to you. I mean, you listened to me, about the Glow. Kind of.” She reached the edge of the stage, where the other two now stood waiting.
Tish was beaming.
“Good to see you again, girlfriend.”
“Thanks,” said Zoe, not meeting her eyes. “Sorry I’ve been—”
“Forget it.”
The two stood awkwardly for a moment. Then Tish jumped forward, yanking Zoe into a hug. Zoe squeezed back tightly.
Josh felt a weight lift off him.
“So. Zoe. You said you had another idea?”
She nodded. “Yeah. But you’re not going to like it. In fact, maybe you better sit down again.”
Josh glanced at Tish. They sank to the floor, and Zoe started pacing like a wolf in a cage. “Okay. As soon as Josh came this afternoon and said that the Outsiders were fake, I couldn’t turn off my brain. I came up with a lot of ideas, including the one you just said, Tish. But none of them made any sense.”
Tish leaned forward, prompting her. “And then …?”
“Then I realized that there’s another group that doesn’t want us to leave the Islands.” She looked hard at Josh, and he knew she’d reached the same conclusion he had, the one he’d been trying not to let surface in his mind.
“It’s the only way everything makes sense,” she said softly. He nodded, feeling sick.
“What?” asked Tish. “What makes sense?”
Josh was still looking at Zoe. “She’s talking about the Core,” he said. “She thinks that they’re the ones behind all this.”
“What?”
“And so do I.” As the words came out, he felt like something had been ripped from his chest.
Tish gaped at them.
“That’s pretty wild, guys.”
“Maybe,” said Zoe. “But if they aren’t behind it … Well, if they aren’t, then explain a couple of things to me. We have all these sentries, right? How did the Outsiders get in without anyone spotting them?”
“We’ve been here a long time,” said Tish. “Maybe they just weren’t being as careful as at the beginning.”
“Or maybe the Outsiders used the stairways in the Under-Ground. Popped up exactly where they needed to. And here’s something else: why did they go only to Enchanted Island and Inspiration Island?”
“Because they wanted the kids, and that’s where most of the kids are.”
“Right. But how did they know that?”
Tish had no answer.
“Plus,” Zoe continued, “they acted like their brains were rotten, but they were smart enough to wrap us up with duct tape, and to light fires as a distraction, and to bring the hoods.”
Josh’s brow furrowed. “What hoods?”
“Remember? Sam and Giz said they had hoods on their heads from the time the mutants took them until they were back at Neptune’s Theatre. It just didn’t make sense.”
“And now it does?” asked Tish.
“Yeah. With the hoods on, the kids didn’t know where they really went, or what really happened. They could even have been in Neptune’s Theatre the whole time.”
“You’re right,” said Tish, nodding slowly. “It would’ve been like the old shows my folks used to listen to on satellite radio, all sound effects and illusion. Like, maybe the splashes the kids heard weren’t really Outsiders being thrown into the lagoon. The Protectors could have just been throwing stuff into the pool.”
“That guy Alex would have been good at figuring all that stuff out,” said Zoe. “And did you notice he moved to Atlantis a few weeks ago?”
“Wait a minute,” said Josh, knowing she was right, but needing to be one thousand percent sure. “What about the lights we saw on the tracks. Remember? When Milo stopped us from going after the kids, we could see the Protectors moving toward the barricades.”
“Just part of the show,” said Zoe. “Set up to throw us off.”
Josh nodded. It made sense. And everything else seemed to fit, too. No one except the Core had questioned the Outsiders, who had conveniently escaped before they could be punished. And Moira, so good at making things up, so terrific with words, was the one who’d posted the information about what they’d said.
Zoe’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh, God,” she said.
“What?” asked Tish.
Zoe looked sick. “Hamim. Hamim and the other Scouts. If the Outsiders weren’t Outsiders, if the Core planned everything else …”
Tish gasped as though she’d been punched, and Josh felt the blood drain from his face. Then something inside him finally rebelled.
“No,” he said. “No matter what else, the Core wouldn’t hurt someone. Couldn’t kill someone.”
“Maybe they couldn’t,” said Zoe. “But what about the Ghoulies? Remember how I said I saw some of them around the Palace at night? And remember who the last person was to join the Scouts?”
“Shadow,” murmured Tish.
Zoe clenched her hands. “He was part of this, I know it. Sick, twisted creepazoid.”
They fell silent.
“So what do we do now?” asked Josh. “We can’t just go to the Core and tell them what we know.”
“No,” said Tish. “And whatever we do, it can’t be just three of us. We’ve got to let a few others in on this, people we can trust. Then, at the next Council, we’ll all go.”
“Right,” said Zoe. “And accuse them in front of everyone.”
“No. That’ll just make us sound like our brains have rotted.”
“So what, then?”
“We just act innocent, tell everyone what we found. Take the Core by surprise. And then we keep asking questions, the same ones we asked ourselves. If we do it right, everyone will start thinking the way we did, start getting suspicious. The Core’ll be squirming up on stage like worms on a hook. And then things will take care of themselves.”
Zoe smiled grimly. “I like it. So who else do we tell?”
“We can tell Miguel. A few of the other Teachers, too. They’re smart. They’ll believe us.”
Josh thought. “And the O’Bannion Boys.” Since their brother’s disappearance, Kyle and Matt had become ghosts of themselves, haggard and silent. They deserved a piece of revenge.
Tish nodded. “Matt and Kyle, yeah. And we can ask them who else from Timescape would be good. Like Greg, maybe.”
“What about Lana and Ari?” asked Zoe. “I trust them.”
“No,” said Josh. “Leave them out of this. They’ve got all the kids to take care of.” He hesitated. “Or maybe we tell them just a little. Then, if something goes wrong, they’ll be there to take care of our kidlets.”
Tish and Zoe went silent. And Josh knew that, like him, they were suddenly realizing the enormity of what they were about to do. No matter what happened at Council, everything about their lives was going to change.
They continued to talk, identifying a few other Islanders whom they thought could be counted on to keep the secret and support them at Council.
“We’ll have to work fast,” said Zoe. “We’ve got just two days until the next meeting.”
“We’ll contact everyone tomorrow,” said Josh. “Then we’ll meet tomorrow night, plan what we’re going to say.”
There was a rustling above them. They stared at each other, terrified, and Tish clicked on her flashlight, shooting the beam up into the darkness.
Nothing. Josh grabbed the light from Tish and ran up the steps, pointing it down every aisle, into every corner. Finally, he gave up, but as he moved back down the stairs, he felt a prickling on the back of his neck.
“What do you think?” asked Tish nervously.
“I don’t know,” said Josh. “But if someone was up there, we’re in big trouble.”