Seizure (22 page)

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Authors: Kathy Reichs

BOOK: Seizure
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His eye darted to mine. I read their message.
Hurry!
“Shelton! Hi! Help me decide!”
Terrified, we examined the levers.
“‘Choose thy faithful servant to release correct bridge,’” I repeated.
“But which one?” Hi said.
“Five of the handles are crossed!” Shelton exclaimed.
“Good!” I said. “‘Thy faithful servant’ must be another Christian reference.”
I stared at the five candidates, willing the correct choice to announce itself.
None did.
“Check the proportions,” Hi said. “The horizontal bar on this lever is too low for a traditional cross.”
I froze. Why did that seem important?
“Same with those two!” Shelton squeaked. “And that one’s too high!”
“This one!”
My mind spun. What? What?
Hi pointed to a central handle. Even in the dim light of our lantern, it was clear that better care had gone into its carving. The lever formed a perfect cross in exact, eye-pleasing proportions.
Still I hesitated. Something in my lower centers was clamoring for attention.
“Tory!” Hi exclaimed, “It must be the center one!”
“Footsteps!” Ben hissed.
“Pull it!” Shelton urged.
I locked up. Something was terribly wrong.
“I’ll get it!” Shelton reached for the knob.
What? What?
Shelton’s fingers curled around the handle.
“NO!”
My hand shot forward and slapped Shelton’s away. He jerked backward, startled by my sudden move.
“Bonny called it ‘thy faithful servant!’” I rushed. “‘
Thy
!’ Hers! We need to look for Anne Bonny’s cross!”
“The symbol from the map!” Hi was with me.
I grabbed the treasure map, held it before the levers.
At first, nothing was obvious.
Then I saw.
The rightmost lever had a high crosspiece, making it tall and skinny, just like the curious little illustrations. I shoved my nose close. Details zoomed in with laserlike clarity.
There. The upper tine curved
ever so slightly
to the right. Nearly imperceptible, unless one was looking for it.
Bonny’s bent cross. Her calling card.
Thy faithful servant
.
I pointed.
“Together?”
Hi and Shelton nodded excitedly, then reached for the dusty stone handle.
I called a heads up to Ben. “One! Two! Three!”
The cross arced down slowly, groaning after centuries of disuse. Finally, it could descend no further.
Fearfully, we pressed our backs to the cavern wall.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Ropes snapped. Pullies creaked. Iron chains screeched as they released their centuries-old payload.
Overhead, the massive stone slab began to descend.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
The rock suddenly halted. A rumbling sounded behind the wall at our backs.
I tensed. Something was wrong.
Crack! Boom!
The slab above us shivered, then dropped in an avalanche of dirt, pebbles, and mouth-coating grit. It struck with the power of a train crash.
The noise thundered in my canine ears. I covered them, yelping in agony.
SNUP.
For seconds, all was chaos. I couldn’t see or think. Choking and gasping, I tried to breathe through my shirt.
After what seemed an eternity, the dust storm settled.
I surveyed the scene.
“Oh no.” Ben pointed across the abyss, his eyes their normal black-brown.
Upon impact, the stone slab had shifted sideways, leaving only one corner on the opposite ledge. It teetered, threatening to slip into the chasm at any moment.
“We have to go now!” I jammed our lantern and the map into my pack. “Before it falls!”
“I can’t cross that!” Shelton was almost crying. “I lost my flare!”
“You have to!” I hand-cupped his cheeks. “Remember, you’re a Viral. You can do anything.”
Screwing his face into a determined mask, Shelton spun and shot over the bridge, never slowing until he slammed into the opposite wall.
“Ooof!”
Hiram and I inhaled sharply. Shelton crumpled, but gave a woozy thumbs-up.
“Unreal!” Hi croaked. “Here goes nothing!”
Hi stormed forward, wailing the entire way. Then he collapsed next to Shelton. The two exchanged a shaky fist bump.
“Go!” I said to Ben.
“You next. I’m heaviest.”
I squeezed Ben’s arm, then fired across.
The platform wobbled wildly as I dismounted. A low grinding filled the cavern.
“Now Ben!” I screamed. “Hurry!”
As Ben raced for the bridge, a shadow appeared in the opening behind him. I barely noticed. My eyes were locked onto Ben, who seemed to move in slow motion.
The grinding amplified.
Crrrreeeeeeeaaaaaaaaak!
Ben pounded across. With each step, the bridge wobbled more. Then the end slipped from the ledge and the slab plunged downward.
“BEN!
”
I watched in horror as the bridge dropped from beneath his feet.
Ben threw himself forward, arms out-thrust.
Time froze. My heart stopped.
Ben’s forearms caught the cliff ’s edge. His fingers clawed for purchase. Then his body slammed the rock face, causing his grip to falter.
Six hands shot out and seized Ben’s arms, hair, shirt, and neck. As one, we pulled him to safety.
“Thanks,” he wheezed. “I was a little short.”
“Anytime.” Shelton. Doubled over.
“I still owe you one,” Hi panted. “And that’s just tonight.”
Crack! Crack!
Bullets smashed the rocks above our heads.
“Move!” I shouted.
We charged into yet another black passage.
CHAPTER 35
W
e tumbled down a ramp and landed in a tangle of arms and legs.
Everyone lay still, too overwhelmed to move. My thoughts were firing in short jagged clips.
We’re alive. Unharmed. The shooter can’t follow.
Slowly, my panting subsided and my pulse decelerated. Disengaging myself from the others, I rose and looked around.
The current chamber was circular, the size of a classroom. A waterfall poured from a hole in the roof to a pool in the center of the floor. I guessed the pool’s diameter and depth at about ten feet each. The water swirled, eventually draining through a chute at the bottom.
The effect was beautiful, like a graceful garden fountain. The rest of the room was empty.
“This must be ‘the dark chamber’s sluice,’” I said. “We made it!”
My gaze scoured the walls, snagged on a platform jutting from the rock. Roughly a yard square, the platform held nothing. Deep gouges marred its otherwise smooth stone surface.
My shoulders slumped in dismay.
Something heavy had once rested there.
Like a chest.
No.
“What’s that gibberish?” Shelton pointed to black letters chiseled into the wall directly above the platform.
“Another riddle?” I said. “But that’s definitely not English.”
The characters were recognizable, but I couldn’t place the language. Beside the lettering was the now-familiar symbol. Bonny’s signature bent cross.
My heart sank into my socks.
She took it. The treasure isn’t here.
“No!” Hi slapped his forehead. “Tell me this isn’t where the treasure’s supposed to be. Please.”
I couldn’t meet his eye.
“It’s
gone
?” Shelton wailed. “How? Nobody’s been in here before us! Those tunnels would’ve been front-page news. And the skybridge! That never came down until tonight!”
I shook my head. I couldn’t agree more.
Then the pieces fell together. I’d been a fool.
Hi must’ve read my expression.
“What?”
“They moved it.”
“Who?”
“Anne Bonny. Her people.” I punched the air in frustration. “
Why
didn’t I think of this before?”
Shelton waved his arms. “Explain! Right now!”
“Bonny’s crew busted her out of the dungeon, right?”
“Yep,” Shelton said. “We crawled down that god-awful hole ourselves.”
“She must’ve worried the Brits would discover her escape route.”
“But they didn’t,” Hi argued. “If they had, everyone would know about these tunnels. Her crew must have resealed the dungeon like we found it.”
“But Bonny couldn’t be sure that would work,” I said. “She
had
to worry that the tunnels could be compromised.”
Hi and Shelton groaned.
“So she and her crew removed the treasure themselves,” Hi said, “reset the booby traps, and took off. Mother—”
“Come
on
!” Ben’s bellow echoed loudly in the small space. “Why can’t we catch one stinking break!”
My eyebrows rocketed up in surprise. “What?”
“What do you mean,
what
?” Ben spread his hands. “Look around, Victoria! There’s no way out of here!”
I spun a three-sixty. Ben was right.
No doors, no tunnels, no cracks, no fissures. We were stuck in a subterranean aerie with no outlet.
“So no treasure?” Hi whined. “I thought we had it!”
“It’s gone,” I said. “Bonny moved it somewhere else.”
Hi sat and dropped his head between his knees. Shelton slumped beside him and grabbed one ear.
Ben started tapping the walls, searching for an exit. Clueless what else to do, I removed the treasure map and my pen. As Ben circled the room, I copied the foreign words from the wall onto the back of the map.
Ben and I finished at the same time.
“Nothing,” he said. “The only way out is how we came in.”
“That won’t work,” I said.
“Maybe the waterfall?” Ben levered himself up on the empty platform and stepped toward the wall.
Click.
Ben froze. Pulled his foot back. Looked down at the platform. Swore.
Rumble. Pop! Pop!
Shelton and Hi sprang to their feet.
“It’s a pressure switch!” Ben shouted. “I tripped it!”
Somewhere close, water gurgled, like a giant flushing toilet.
The chamber shook, then went deathly still.
“I think we might—”
“Look!” Hi pointed frantically at the ramp we’d tumbled down moments before.
An enormous boulder now blocked the opening.
“Oh no!” Ben gestured at the roof.
A sluice gate opened overhead. The waterfall surged.
The room began to flood.
Fast.
CHAPTER 36
W
ater started overflowing the basin.
My eyes darted, searching for escape. Found nothing but solid stone walls.
“What should we do!?” Shelton yelled.
“Stay together!” I said. “We may have to swim out!”
“How!?” Hi shouted. “Where!?”
I tried to concentrate. There
had
to be a way!
Ben leaped from the platform, hands outstretched, and caught the waterfall’s edge. Incredibly, though pummeled by the flow, he held and tried to pull himself up.
No good. The deluge loosened his grip and washed him to the floor. Ben popped to his feet and yelled in frustration.
We weren’t getting out that way.
“I don’t wanna drown!” Shelton wailed.
I looked down. Water swirled like a vortex inside the pool. If the roof was impossible, that left the floor.
Maybe.
I jumped into the pool and fought my way to the bottom. Water was draining through an opening no wider than a Hula-Hoop. Just not fast enough.
We could squeeze through, but there’s no turning around.
I kicked to the surface and crawled out of the basin.
“What are you doing!?” Shelton screamed.
“I have a plan.” As calm as possible.
The boys gathered close, eager for something, anything.
“We swim out through the bottom of the pool,” I said.
“What!?” Shelton was nearing full-blown panic.
Hi looked at me as if I’d proposed we grow wings and fly. Ben stood motionless, dripping, neck veins bulging.
“It’s our only chance. The drain must lead somewhere.”
“What if there’s no air?” Hi yelped. “We could drown!”
“The pool might empty into the chasm,” Ben warned. “Straight shot, right into the abyss.”
I blinked back tears. “I don’t have another idea.”
The group stood, paralyzed by indecision. The water was up to our shins, heading for our knees.
“We can’t just wait here to die,” I said.
“Fine,” Ben said. “Let’s go for it.”
“Just like a waterslide.” Hi. Shaky.
“Don’t put me last.” Shelton’s voice cracked. “I won’t be able to do it.”
Ben tapped us, one by one, then himself. “Tory. Shelton. Hi. Then me.”
“I took skin-diving lessons,” Hi said. “Well, one. To maximize oxygen intake you take two deep breaths, then hold the third and go.”
Ben nodded. “Don’t exhale until you have to, then release the air slowly. And don’t panic. Just keep swimming no matter what.”
Inside my backpack was a Ziploc bag. I folded the treasure map, zipped it tight, and crammed the baggie in a pocket.
“Our flashlights are supposedly waterproof.” I didn’t say more. No point.
“I’ll take the lantern,” Ben said.
We’d come down to it. No one wanted to move, but we’d run out of time. The water was at waist level.
I hugged each of them. “I’ll see you in a few seconds!”
Grim faces.
I couldn’t hesitate any longer. If I did, we’d all lose our nerve. Maybe our lives.
I stepped to the pool’s edge and whispered a prayer.
Inhale. Exhale.

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