Balance Keepers #1: The Fires of Calderon (15 page)

“We need someone with good balance!” Albert yelled.

He looked at Birdie, but she was busy fighting with Mo for a barrel, and didn’t look like she had heard Albert. Leroy was way too tall to have great balance, wasn’t he?

“I’m not doing that!” Leroy shouted. His glasses were askew on his face. “No way! I’ve already reached my limit for today!”

Albert took a deep breath, and nodded.
Looks like it’s gonna be me.

The barrels were going even faster, speeding up as the challenge wore on. Around and around they went, tangling into one another. Just as Albert was about to jump, he heard a terrible crash. Mo had finally knocked Birdie off of the barrel, and she was falling.

“Birdie!” Albert screamed. He stretched his free arm for her, but he wasn’t quite close enough.

He watched, sick to his stomach, as Birdie hit the floor of the Pit. She cried out at first, but after the Pit had bounced her up and back down two more times, she lay still, crumpled on the floor.
No! She has to be okay. She has to!

Albert almost leaped from his barrel, but before he could do anything, Professor Flynn rode down in his mechanical cage, scooped Birdie up, and hauled her to the observation level.

Across from Albert, Hoyt’s team was laughing, pointing at Birdie as she stepped out of the cage on wobbly legs, then crumpled back down to the floor. Trey helped her up and led her away. At least she was on her feet, out of there safely. That made Albert focus again. He was angry, upset at Mo for hurting his friend, and even more upset at Hoyt for making such a show of her.

Okay, Albert. Now’s your chance.
Let’s do this, for Birdie.

“Go for it, Albert!” Leroy shouted. He was pointing at the Copper Peak. “You can do this!”

Albert waited for the right opportunity. A burst of blue fire shot out of the volcano, and as it cleared, Albert prepared to jump. Slink’s barrel was just behind Albert’s, and Albert watched in horror as Slink stretched his foot out and kicked Albert’s barrel, knocking him into a tailspin. There was nothing he could do.

“Nice try, sucker!” Slink yelled. He pulled a yellow Tile out of his pocket and waved it in Albert’s face. It had a triangle on it with a sphere balanced perfectly on top. He slipped it around his neck and leaped. He landed on the narrow path with surprising precision, and started to make his way to the top of the mountain.

How was Albert supposed to compete with Slink without one of his own Balance Tiles?

Albert wasn’t going to lose another simulation. There was
no way
he’d let that happen, especially with Birdie out and possibly injured. Another cable on his barrel snapped. He almost tumbled off, but he held strong.

Albert took a deep breath, readied himself for the jump, and pushed off the barrel. While he leaped, an image popped into his head. It was that strange Balance Cat that Lucinda had given to Leroy when they first entered the Core. He wished he had that now. In midair, something happened to Albert. He had a strange feeling, like he’d just chugged down an entire fizzy soda. He felt lighter, like he was almost completely weightless.

When he landed on the path that wound around the mountain, he was only a few feet behind Slink. At first, Albert felt like he was going to fall right back off. The path was only a few inches wide, thinner than thin, and cool, green ooze flowed down the copper mountainside like neon lava, making the way even more slippery and dangerous. But instead of slipping, his feet felt rooted to the spiral pathway. It felt quite strange, really. There was no time for observations, though—Slink was already a few feet ahead of him. Albert turned sideways, placing his back toward the mountain’s side, and began sliding up as fast as he could.

“It’s a close race!” Albert heard his dad say, but he was too focused to listen to the rest.

Albert’s eyes fell on Hoyt on a barrel across the Pit. The guy was laughing, pointing at Leroy falling from his barrel. For a second, as Hoyt shot past, Albert caught sight of his Tile.

A sideways zigzag symbol.

Focus, Albert. No time for distractions!
And as Albert continued forward, desperate to catch up to Slink, he was suddenly
there.
Right behind the guy, in two seconds flat! He had moved fast like Hoyt! Yet here he was, still balanced like Slink. This time, Albert could feel it in his bones. This was his Tile at work, and whatever the reason, it was allowing him
two
skill sets at one time. It should have been impossible, but there was no time for wondering why. Now he had to get around Slink.

All right, Tile,
Albert thought.
I need to jump like those Jackalope things, like I did in the second simulation.
He pictured himself leaping high and wide, and as he did, he felt like he’d been plugged into a light socket and powered up. He bent his knees, dodged a ball of cool fire from Hoyt’s barrel as it flew by, and jumped.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion. One second, Albert was in midair over Slink’s head, and the next, he’d landed sideways on the pathway, perfectly balanced.

“No way!” Hoyt screamed from below. “He’s cheating!”

“Hey! Don’t accuse my teammate of cheating!” Leroy shouted, and the two got into an argument as they circled round and round.

I’m doing it!
Albert thought. He scurried along the side of the wall, making his way closer to the top. Now the Peak was pouring green slime in channels all around him, but Albert expertly moved around every challenge.

And there it was: an acorn the size of a basketball, sitting on the pathway in front of him, right near an opening at the top of the Peak.

Albert scooped the acorn up and carried it with one hand. The barrels seemed to sense that he’d taken the prize, because they all started shooting fireballs in his direction. He ducked and dodged, sometimes leaping to avoid them. One final leap and he was right at the edge of the opening, standing on the last little bit of pathway, looking down as green sludge continued pouring out. Albert risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Slink was only a few feet away now. But what was he supposed to do with the acorn? Just toss it in? Crack it open like they did in Cedarfell? Where was Leroy with his Synapse Tile when Albert needed him? Three more steps and Slink would be on top of him. Time to make a decision. Three, two . . .

Albert cracked the acorn on his own head, and out poured the milky liquid into the Peak’s opening.

“Noooooo!” Slink screamed, knocking the acorn shell out of Albert’s hands. One second later, both Albert and Slink had grabbed onto the edge of the opening—the mountain was shaking like a volcano about to erupt. For a moment, Albert thought maybe he’d gotten it all wrong, and without another thought, he turned and leaped, grabbing onto a barrel as it raced by. Slink did the same. Albert rode the barrel once around the Peak, and then jumped, landing on the spongy floor of the Pit next to Leroy. The floor down here was shaking, too.

It was like a science experiment on caffeine.

“Uh-oh,” Leroy said, “I think it’s gonna blow.” Half a second later, the Peak spewed the brightest blue water Albert had ever seen. It doused the fireballs that shot from the barrels and put out the flames bursting from the walls.

Albert was quickly getting soaked, but he turned to Leroy. “Did we just—”

“Hydra wins!” Professor Flynn shouted into his MegaHorn.

The crowd erupted into a roar of cheers, and the water explosion stopped as quickly as it had started. Leroy leaped into the air, tackling Albert with a big bear hug, then started wringing out his baseball cap. Albert shook himself off like a dog coming in from the rain. Across the way, Hoyt groaned and started yelling at Slink and Mo, blaming them for their loss.

Albert and Leroy made their way to a platform, wringing out their T-shirts. When their platform arrived at the top, Professor Flynn was there to celebrate with them.

“Well done, boys! Well done! You’ve just logged your very first victory in the Core.”

“Where’s Birdie? Is she okay?” Albert and Leroy asked together.

Professor Flynn pulled out three copper Medallions and passed them to Leroy and Albert. “One for Miss Howell,” he said. “You can visit her in the Infirmary after late lunch, down tunnel three. She’s banged up, but she’s tough. Birdie will be fine.”

“For Birdie,” Albert said, holding up his Medallion.

“For Birdie,” Leroy agreed.

After the last meal of the day, the boys found the Infirmary. It was a small, warm room with real lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. An old man with one eye in the middle of his forehead scurried about, tending to several wounded Balance Keepers. A boy lay asleep in one of the beds, his leg in traction. He clearly wouldn’t be doing any Competitions for a while. It struck Albert as he walked around: This is serious business. People get hurt in the Core.

Birdie was propped up in a bed in the back of the room, practicing playing Tiles. Farnsworth was there, his head on her lap, his eyes droopy and sad. There was a white bandage wrapped around Birdie’s head. A Floppywhippet flew around the bandage, chirping a little song, as if to make Birdie’s wound all better. When she saw Albert and Leroy, she groaned.

“It’s totally my fault we lost,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been so careless.”

Albert smirked and nudged Leroy. “No worries, right, Leroy?”

“Yeah,” Leroy said. He pulled out a Medallion and flipped it onto Birdie’s lap. “Maybe you can use this to buy some chocolate or something.”

At the sight of the Medallion, Birdie’s eyes went wide. “You guys won? If this is a bad joke, I’m
so
gonna pummel you both!”

“It’s real,” Leroy said. “Made of copper, which is a chemical element, and its symbol on the periodic table is . . .”

“Quit nerding out and hug me already!” Birdie screamed, pulling both boys in.

She scooped up the Medallion and the one-eyed cyclops nurse arrived at the side of the bed.

“Are these boys bothering you?” the old man asked.

Birdie smiled. “No, sir,” she said. “I’m the best I’ve been in days!”

The cyclops nurse turned to Albert and Leroy and pointed at them one at a time. “I’ve got my eye on you two.”

No one could stop giggling when the nurse walked away. Leroy and Albert spent the rest of the evening telling Birdie the story of how they’d won. When Leroy got to the part about Albert’s megasuperhero moves, Birdie gasped. “I can’t believe I missed that! It’s your Tile, Albert! It has to be! I think it’s finally kicking in, big-time, just like it did the other day when you swam like me!”

Albert nodded. “I think you’re right. I’ve been going over the simulation again and again. It’s like my Tile reacts to my thoughts or something.”

“What do you mean?” Leroy asked. He plucked a cup of applesauce off Birdie’s bed table and peeled open the lid, then wolfed it down.

Albert shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes, when I want something
really
bad, and I sort of picture it happening, it just happens.”

“So you wanted to swim like me, and suddenly you just could? That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Birdie said. “Maybe you’re just a better swimmer than you thought you were.”

“No—I could breathe underwater like you can. Nobody can do that without magic. And I definitely can’t run as fast as Hoyt does, but that happened, too, in the Pit today, while I was balancing like Slink. I asked my dad about it the other night—if my Tile could give me multiple powers at once. He said it was impossible.”

“Well, it looks like maybe your dad’s wrong, doesn’t it?” Birdie replied. “We’ll just have to try harder to figure this out ourselves.”

“But my dad’s a professor. He’s the one who helps everyone pick their Tiles out of the Waterfall of Fate. If anyone knew something, it would be him. I think he knows something . . . but he’s not saying it, for some reason.”

“Well then, like I said, we’ll just have to figure it out ourselves,” Birdie said. Then she turned to Leroy, who was sneaking another cup of applesauce from a nearby sleeping patient. “Leroy! Don’t think I didn’t see you take mine, too!”

The two of them started arguing like brother and sister. Albert, overwhelmed by them, turned his attention to the corner of the room, where an old TV was playing news from the outside world. Farnsworth hopped down from the bed and joined Albert in front of the screen.

It crackled with fuzz, but Albert gave the TV a good slap, and the image cleared.

It was New York City.

“Guys! Come here and look at this,” Albert called over his shoulder.

“It’s been showing the same story for the past couple of hours,” Birdie said. “Looks like trouble.”

Leroy helped Birdie out of bed, and they settled down in front of the TV screen.

“The volcanic ash clouds have taken over Staten Island,”
the reporter said.
“It seems the ash is coming right out of the Atlantic. All of New York City has shut down for the remainder of the week.”

“That’s not good at all,” Birdie said. “Albert, I thought your mom said everything was fine?”

“She probably didn’t want to scare me.” Albert leaned forward to get a closer look. There were snowplows in the streets of Manhattan, scooping up piles and piles of ash. Cabs were stuck in the middle of the streets. Hot-dog stands were covered, and you couldn’t even see the fire hydrants anymore. This
definitely
wasn’t okay.

The reporter continued:

“If someone doesn’t find a solution to this, and fast, the residents of New York City could be in serious danger. Evacuation of the city is imminent.”

“It’s Calderon,” Albert said. “We’re going to have to figure out the Means to Restore Balance, and soon. Or who knows what could happen up there?”

“Grey, Aria, and Terran must be exhausted.” Birdie nodded. “We’ve barely seen them recently. And it’s only getting worse.”

Leroy said what they were all thinking.

“We need to be ready if the First Unit fails.”

T
he next morning after breakfast, Albert, Leroy, and Birdie made their way through the cave to Professor Flynn’s office for a specially scheduled lecture.

They passed by the Waterfall of Fate, and Albert felt cool droplets of water on his face. The last time Albert had been here, he’d been completely disappointed by his Tile. But today, he felt like he was walking a little taller. Whatever his Tile actually did, it was starting to work. Maybe not all the time, but when it did, it seemed that it could make Albert do
anything.
And that made Albert feel stronger, like he was really becoming a Balance Keeper.

As they rounded the Waterfall, about fifty or so students came into view. They were all seated on the floor in front of Professor Flynn’s desk. When he saw Albert, Professor Flynn winked.

Albert smiled. His dad looked like he was still really proud of him for yesterday’s Pit win.

“So, anyone know what this is about?” Birdie asked, as the three of them settled down in the back of the crowd. Petra was there, a big smile on his face, and a fat notebook on his lap.

“Professor Flynn’s going to give us
even more info
on Calderon!” Petra squeaked. He had his pencil poised at the ready to take notes.

“That’s exactly what we need,” Leroy said. “If there’s a chance we might be going into Calderon, we’ve gotta know
more
.”

Albert grinned. “Yeah, and with you here, Birdie and I don’t even need to pay attention. You’ll remember everything.”

Birdie rapped Albert across the shoulders anyway and narrowed her blue eyes. “Class is starting. We should
all
pay attention.”

“Good morning, students. I’m glad you’re all here. Balance Keepers—as you know, it’s getting more and more likely the Calderon First Unit will need backup in Calderon. The information I’m sharing today will be vital if you have to enter the Realm. Other students—the Core is your home as much as it is the Balance Keepers’; you deserve to know this stuff, too.”

Professor Flynn started off by showing them a hand-drawn map of Calderon. “We can’t take photographs there, of course. Most technology doesn’t work in the Realms.”

Albert craned his neck to see better. It was a huge world, entirely different from his own. Calderon looked like it was laid out in giant rings, starting with a jungle around the edge, then an open field, then, judging by the big, black portion on the map labeled the
Forest of Thorns
, a rather scary forest—Leroy groaned when he saw that—and finally, in the middle, Calderon Peak.

“In the Pit simulations, you’ve seen only a portion of the things a Balance Keeper might see in the actual Realm,” Professor Flynn said. He started talking about all the creatures the Balance Keepers might encounter—Hexabons, Hissengores, and some strange bird the size of a horse that would attack on sight.

“I just love birds,” Birdie whispered to Albert and Leroy.

“Not that kind of bird. No way!” Leroy shook his head.

Albert laughed. It felt amazing to have these two friends by his side. Petra smiled at Albert and gave him a thumbs-up.

Okay, three friends.

He exhaled, and turned his focus back on Professor Flynn. His dad was just starting to tell the class about his first time in Calderon, when the alarm bell went off.

The noise came so loud and strong that Albert had to clap his hands over his ears. He looked right at his dad, hoping this was just another drill.

But by the look of horror on Professor Flynn’s face, Albert knew it wasn’t.

Trey appeared, running around the Waterfall of Fate. His face was red, as if he’d been sprinting across the Core.

“Professor! We need you at once in the Realm. It’s a class-four alert!”

“What’s happening?” Leroy asked, or at least that’s what Albert thought he asked. The alarm was extremely loud and reading lips wasn’t his strong suit.

“This is bad. Really, really bad!” Petra yelled. He stood up and ran from the room without another word.

Albert got up and watched as his dad reached into his desk and pulled out his Tile. Professor Flynn strung it over his neck and stood up tall.

“Class dismissed!” he said. “Trey, escort them back to their dorms at once.”

Albert tried to break through to the front of the crowd, but everyone was pushing and shoving.

“Dad!” Albert yelled as he watched Professor Flynn and Trey speaking to each other, the expressions on their faces quite grave.

If Professor Flynn was going in, it meant the First Unit couldn’t handle whatever was happening on their own. And it meant they might need a training unit to go into the Realm soon, too. This was the worst of the worst. Albert’s heart was slamming in his chest, out of control.

“Dad, wait!” Albert called out again, hoping to get a word with him before he left.

Professor Flynn stopped at the sound of Albert’s voice. He turned, looked Albert in the eyes, and gave Albert one curt nod. Then he disappeared behind the Waterfall of Fate and out of sight.

As Trey called the students to order, the alarm bell finally stopped. The room fell into a hush. No one said a word, but Albert could see the looks on his friends’ faces. At that moment, a horrible thought snuck its way into Albert’s mind.

What if he never saw his dad again?