Seven Wonders Book 1: The Colossus Rises (18 page)

I
BARRELED STRAIGHT
into Marco. He was standing near the wall, just outside the umbrella of darkness, heading in my direction. Aly and Cass were close behind him.

He cocked his head curiously. “What were thossssse funky noisssessss? Dang, my s’s are back.”

“You heard them?” My voice was back. “Did you hear the music?”

“I heard sssomething weird, like a big old bird,” he said. “Cass and Aly have been tracking tunnels. Cass said he called you and you didn’t answer.”

“There’s a circle!” I stammered, pointing back into the darkness. “With…other circles in it, and carvings of the Seven Wonders—at least that’s what I think they
are—and they all play music! And when you get close, stuff happens to you. You lose your voice. And there’s this thing in the middle, a sword actually, or part of one, which I pulled out, and this huge white light came, and wind, and earthquakes…Just come with me!”

I sounded like a raving maniac. Grabbing Marco’s arm, I pulled him into the shadow. Dragged him directly toward the center. The glow of the circle loomed.

“Whoa…” Marco said.

“Calling M. Night Shyamalan,” Aly muttered.

The mist seeped forward, wrapping all of us. Cass said something to me, but it was as if the wispy tendrils were siphoning away the sound.

He crept nearer, staring intently at the carvings. I could feel Aly’s grip now. She was pulling me away. Marco was reaching for Cass.

I didn’t resist. Didn’t want to. They had seen it. Felt it. That was all I needed.

As we stumbled back into the light, Aly said, “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what Wenders saw. The center of Atlantis.”

“Seven circles,” Marco said. “For seven Loculi.”

“And Seven Wonders,” I added.

“What do they have to do with each other?” Aly asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Dude,” Marco said, “if this is the place where the Loculi come from, we’re going to have to return them here.”

“If we buy into Bhegad’s plan,” Aly said.

“His crazy stories are starting to make sense,” Marco pointed out.

“Over my dead body are we coming back here,” Cass said.

Marco smiled. “This,” he said, “is a no-dead-body zone.”

I didn’t know what to think.

We had found something real. Seven depressions in the earth. A crazy source of energy. A waterfall that gave life to the dead. A vromaski and a tapestry guarded by bat guano. Marco was right—we would have to come back.

But first we had to get out of here. And to make progress, we needed light.

A Swiss Army knife in Marco’s backpack had survived the fall. It was sharp enough to help me slice three branches from the tree in the caldera wall. I put two of them in my pack. Then I took some of Cass’s kindling wood and wove it into a tight ball, binding it with roots and small branches from the dead tree.

I inserted the branch through the center of the bundle and wrapped it all together with a jacket Aly had stuffed into her pack. Then I poured kerosene over the whole thing and set it aflame.

With a
whoosh
, the bundle became a makeshift torch. “I figure I can make three of these,” I said. “I’m not sure how long they’ll each last.”

Marco gazed at the flame in awe. “Dude. I quit Cub Scouts just before Webelos.”

“I’m thinking we want the second archway,” Cass said uncertainly. “But I’m still not one hundred percent.”

“Your instinct is good enough for me,” Aly said.

“Let’s move,” I said, stepping quickly into the tunnel.

The ceiling was low, trapping the smoke. We hiked as fast as we could, coughing like crazy. The tunnel wove and branched. We passed at least five openings, but they all looked way too small.

Cass led us. With our new energy, we were practically sprinting. The first torch lasted longer than I expected. When it burned down I made a second.

Then later, a third.

My shirt was soaked through with sweat. I had little sense of time. It seemed we’d been gone longer than it took to get in. I was sure we’d covered more ground.

Now the third torch had burned down completely. The handle itself—the last of the three branches I’d chopped off the tree—was on fire. In a couple of minutes I would have to drop it.

“Guys, wait,” Cass said nervously. “I’m tracing this path in my head, and I’m worried we may be heading toward the big fire. Maybe we should go back. Try one of those small openings.”

I stopped and turned. I knew Cass was doing his best.
We’d be spun around so many times there was no way he could be perfect. We were seconds away from darkness, with no more kerosene. “Sure, no problem,” I said. “In a couple of minutes we can travel by the light of my burning wrist. I wish you’d thought of this earlier.”

Marco had slipped by me. From a bend just a few yards ahead, he turned around. “Dude, chill.”

“Don’t tell me to chill!” I said. “That was the last of the kerosene!”

“No, I mean, chill, dude—check this,” Marco said.

The three of us turned. Marco was standing in the middle of the path, holding a machete high over his head. It looked like the one I’d lost in the chute. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

Marco pointed to the ground. “It was here. Someone must have dropped it.”

I ran to the bend. When the others were safely beside me, I dropped the torch to the stone floor. There the flame could die without sacrificing my hand.

The light was enough to illuminate the tunnel just ahead.

At the end of it was a mangled iron gate that had been forced halfway open.

“Torquin’s gate!” I cried out.

I ran toward it, the others close behind me. The bottom of the gate hung about four feet off the floor, warped and bent. “Wow, those guys are strong,” Cass said.

“We’re there!” Aly cried out, wrapping Cass in a big hug. “You did it! You led us back to the entrance!”

Marco was examining the bent iron. “Who invited Torquin to this party?”

I grabbed his arm and pulled him under the gate. “We’ll explain later.”

We raced around to the right, retracing our original steps. In moments the light from outside was illuminating the tunnel.

I felt the tickle of a faint warmish breeze. Marco fell in beside me, whooping at the top of his lungs. Cass and Aly were laughing and shouting behind us.

At the end of the path I burst into the open air, looking up to the sky and sucking in the moist, tepid jungle air. I had never tasted anything better. “Woo-hooo!” I screamed.

“Yrotciv!” Cass whooped, leaping in the air like crazy.

As Aly and Marco joined him in a screaming victory dance, I caught sight of a lump in the grass, just a few feet ahead near the pathway. The bent elbow of a rumpled white shirtsleeve.

“Professor Bhegad?” I cried out, running toward him.

The others followed close behind. The professor was on his side, fast asleep, his hands curled up under his head. His tweed jacket had been placed neatly underneath him, and his glasses lay folded in the grass just a few inches away, along with a handheld device showing something that looked like a radar screen.

Marco knelt and shook his shoulders. “Yo, Professor, ’sup? You okay?”

Professor Bhegad turned. He muttered something incoherent. Then his eyes focused, and his jaw nearly dropped to the ground. “Marco? Is that really you, my boy? But…how…?”

He sat up and wrapped Marco in a tight embrace. “Didn’t know I was immortal, huh, P. Beg?” Marco said. “Oh. Sorry. Not supposed to call you that.”

“You can call me anything you want,” Bhegad said through a broad grin.

Aly was patting Marco proudly on the back. Cass was dancing to his own inner happy tune. Bhegad looked like he was about to cry.

I had to admit, I wasn’t expecting that reaction.

Everyone began talking at once. Aly told the story of the rescue, the ceiling of guano, the healing waterfall. Cass described the pathway in detail. Bhegad listened in utter shock. He’d been expecting to see a corpse.

“Hey, what happened to Torquin and the Three Stooges?” Aly asked.

“They emerged without you,” Bhegad said softly. “It was the second time Torquin had lost you. I gave them a severe tongue-lashing and sent all of them back to KI …”

As they talked, my eyes were drawn to the professor’s handheld device.

I scooped it up and moved a few paces away, studying it. At the top of the screen was the word
Onyx
. Below that, pairs of letters that each were in different colors: a yellow JM, red AB, green CW, blue MR.

Jack McKinley, Aly Black, Cass Williams, Marco Ramsay
.

Most of the screen was occupied by a vaguely round shape with faint concentric bar lines, like the outline of a mountain on a topographical map. Inside the shape, traces of yellow, red, and green all spiraled into the center from the outside, added a blue line, and then went back out from the center on another path that eventually merged with the first.

When I looked up, Bhegad was hurrying toward me. His eyes were dancing. “The Circle,” he said. “Tell me about the Circle, Jack!”

I ignored him, looking over his shoulder toward my friends.

“Guys,” I said softly. “He’s been tracking us all along.”

M
ARCO AND
A
LY
stared at Professor Bhegad in disbelief.

“But—but that’s impossible,” Marco stammered. “How can I be tracked if I’m not wearing a tracker? You need an ankle bracelet or a special watch.”

“Please,” Bhegad said. “We can discuss this later. Tell me about the Circle!”

Aly took Bhegad’s device from me and examined it. “All four of us are here—time-lapse path—three going in, four coming out.”

“You knew the correct pathway into the maze beforehand?” Cass asked.

“No!” Bhegad said. “Not until we tracked your paths. But—”

“Where is the tracker, Professor Bhegad?” Aly demanded angrily. “Hidden in our shoes? Have you been following us all along?”

Professor Bhegad swallowed hard. “Part of the initial operation was to install tracking devices in each of you,” he said quickly. “Surgically. Not for any nefarious reason. For your own good.”

My mind reeled. “So when I tried to escape that first day…” I said. “And when we all attempted it, the next night…you knew where we were. The whole time, you were following us!”

Bhegad nodded. “Well…yes. But I thought you’d figured that out by now. How else would I have found you with the submarine?”

“You knew I wasn’t really at my treatment that night…” Aly said.

“You let us get onto that boat,” Cass added. “We almost drowned!”

“No, no, that’s not true,” Bhegad protested. “You did fool us for quite some time. I confess, your tricks with the looping camera footage and so forth actually worked rather well. It’s lucky that dear Torquin has a suspicious soul. After seeing a large fly crawl up Cass’s window in an exactly identical path seven times, he woke me up and we tracked you, but by then you were already at the beach.”

“What else aren’t you telling us, Professor?” I demanded.
“What exactly have you done to us?”

“Peace, brothers and sister,” Marco said, his voice unnaturally calm. “Let us not yell, but rather
show
him how we feel.”

He reared his arm back and hurled the device deep into the jungle.

“
No!
” Bhegad shouted. “Do you know how much those cost?”

Cass stood over Professor Bhegad, glowering. He looked like a different person. “Marco died for your mission. If he hadn’t fallen in the right place, his blood would be on your hands. You owe us, Professor. You owe us big.”

“Owe you?” Bhegad said, his voice rising with impatience. “My dear boy, we planted the tracker for
your
sakes. We did not want to risk losing you. There are other forces after the secret of the Loculi. You are not as safe as you think. Now, please, tell me everything you saw in there!”

“Wait—what forces?” Marco asked.

Bhegad took a deep breath. “The Scholars of Karai discovered this island. For a century we have been dedicated to restoring Karai’s lineage. He recognized the foolishness of creating the Loculi—of trying to control the great Atlantean power. But his quest to destroy them backfired. It angered Massarym. So Massarym stole them and took them off Atlantis—and that removal brought on the destruction and sinking of the great civilization. Karai somehow survived, and he devoted his life to finding what
his brother had taken. He searched the world for clues, going undercover, bribing people, until at last he finally found Massarym’s plans.”

“Do you have those plans here?” I asked.

Bhegad shook his head. “It was long ago. They’ve since been lost. We believe Karai wanted to return the Loculi to Atlantis. To restore the balance, possibly to raise the continent and start anew. But he was constantly thwarted by the Massa—a group of Massarym’s followers. They were in awe of the powers Massarym drew from the Loculi. They thought him a god, and he thrived on that. But after Atlantis sank, he changed. He regretted his decision to steal the Loculi. He realized Karai had been right—they were too dangerous and should not have been created in the first place. But Karai’s desire to return them to the island—this horrified Massarym. He feared another cataclysm, a global one. He thought Karai had lost his mind. He considered destroying the Loculi but worried about the release of energy. So he devoted the rest of his life to hiding them away for eternity.”

“These people—the Massa—are they still active?” I asked.

Bhegad nodded. “They are obsessed with finding the Loculi—and us. We believe they are close to locating this island. Our surveillance has picked up increased chatter.”

“Can’t we all just be friends?” Cass asked. “Work
together? We want the same things.”

“Most certainly not.” Bhegad shook his head. “The Massa have stayed loyal to the early aims of Massarym. They are about control. Domination. Ultimate power. We must find the Loculi before they steal them and figure out how to activate the powers.”

“If we let you sic us on the Evil Empire,” Marco drawled, “what do we get in return?”

“Your lives.” Bhegad glared at him. “If the Massa get the Loculi, you can’t return them.”

“Which means…we die,” Aly said.

Bhegad turned to me. “Now tell me about that Circle, Jack.”

I gulped. “It was carved into stone and there was a…
bowl
dug out of the middle, with writing in it. And this mist billowing out of a crack. Jammed inside the crack was a piece of sword,” I said. “And around that part were seven other bowls—”

“The Heptakiklos…” Bhegad said, his voice choked. “The Circle of Seven. Wenders was right. It’s here—the center of Atlantis! The place where the Loculi were stolen.”

“Each of the bowls had a carving,” I continued. “Statues and buildings that were totally recognizable—”

“Whoa. Pause button,” Marco said. “Behold the Immortal One. Marco who fell a billion feet without a scratch.” He stared around at us all, his eyes blazing. “Why are we
worried about G7W anymore? And treatments? We have the Magic Waterpark of Life!”

I sucked in my breath. In all the excitement, I hadn’t thought of that. The water had brought Marco to life. Maybe it had cured us, too. Maybe we were free to go home.

I looked at Aly and Cass and knew they were thinking the same thing. Bhegad pulled a small, finger-shaped object out of his jacket pocket. He took Marco’s hand and shoved the instrument onto his right index finger.

Marco flinched. “Yeow. Easy, P. Beg, the Immortal One is still sensitive to pain.”

“Blood sample.” Bhegad removed the instrument and fished a Band-Aid out of his pocket for Marco. We gathered around, watching in bafflement as the numbers changed on the instrument. When they stopped, Bhegad sighed. “Same enzyme levels, same signs of mitochondrial chaos.”

“In English, please,” Marco said.

“The waterfall regenerated your tissue,” Bhegad said. “But it had no effect on G7W.”

“You mean, if we skipped a treatment and started going haywire and then got dropped into the water…” Aly said.

“It would not do a thing.” Bhegad shook his head sadly.

That seemed impossible. I searched Bhegad’s face. He had lied to us before, and there was nothing stopping him now.

“Atlantis was about balance,” the professor continued. “Clearly some of the energy has seeped through the rift.
Powerful energy indeed, which is now trapped down there in the waterfall. But you are connected to Atlantis in a deeper way. Your ceresacrum needs that connection, that balance created between the Loculi and the forces underground. We must find them, Jack.”

“If Karai couldn’t do it, how can we?” I asked. “Especially with the Massa breathing down our necks?”

“You said there were carvings,” Bhegad said. “In each of the seven circles. Can you re-create them?”

“I can,” Cass volunteered.

“You don’t need to,” I said. “There was a statue over a harbor, a great lighthouse, pyramids, hanging gardens…. They were the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”

“By the Great Qalani…” Bhegad said, aghast. But before he could say a word, his phone let out a sharp beep. He glanced down and blanched.

The screen read
CODE RED
.

He flipped the phone up to his ear. “Bhegad here…A
what
?” His face darkened. “Are you sure? We’re on our way.”

“What happened?” I asked.

Bhegad was already heading back toward the compound. “Tell me. That blade you saw, in the middle of the Heptakiklos. Did you pull it out, Jack?”

“I put it back in afterward!” I shot back.

Bhegad went pale.

Before I could ask him to explain, an ATV crashed through the undergrowth with Torquin in the driver’s seat. “In!” he commanded.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The Karai Institute,” Bhegad shouted as he piled into the front seat, “is under attack!”