Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon (34 page)

A lump of brownish goop flew through the air, saturating the camera. “Promise me that if we get out, we'll come back for him,” Cass said.

“Promise,” I replied.

Without looking at me, he headed for the door. I grabbed the first things I could get my hands on and threw them into a plastic bag: a knife, a flashlight, a canister of pepper, a bottle of vegetable oil, and another tub of ice cream from the freezer.

I glanced back into Marco's room one last time. His back rose and fell.

Silently, I slipped out after Cass.

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“I
DON'T LIKE
this,” Cass whispered. “It's too quiet.”

“We're in an enclosed stairwell,” I said. “Stairwells are quiet.”

I jammed the kitchen knife into a small, square metal door on the wall, about eye level. The lock wouldn't give, but the door bent outward enough for me to peer under it with the flashlight. “Circuit breakers,” I said.

Cass nodded. “Aly might be able to hack into their system,” he said, “but you're MacGruber.”

I slipped the knife into the box, said a prayer, and began sliding it right to left. The angle was bad, the torque was weak, but I managed to flip most of the switches from on to off. “Either I just shut off some lights,” I said, “or I disabled the washing machines.”

We pushed open the door from the stairwell to the hallway. It was pitch-dark. “Hallelujah,” I said. “The security cameras won't pick us up. I think we'll be okay if we stick to the light of the phone.”

Cass eyed the map app, staring down the long hallway. “At least I know the dimensions of this hallway. I memorized them. The map is showing a lot of closets in this area of the compound. Small rooms. Mostly supplies, I'm guessing. We're far away from the main corridors—the control rooms and all. That's also where the exits are. I'm thinking we can wind around back, where it looks like there's a delivery exit.”

Cass led the way. We wound our way through darkened hallways, zigging right and then left twice. The reach of the circuit breakers ended there. We were entering an area lit by fluorescent lights above. I looked around for overhead cameras and saw nothing here. “We go right next, and we'll be close,” Cass said.

But as we neared the next hallway, I heard footsteps.

We plastered ourselves against the wall. At the end of the corridor, where it came to a T, voices were talking in Arabic. They were close.

My back was against a door. At eye level was a sign labeled in several languages. The third line read
SUPPLIES
in English. Under it was a simple keypad with numbers from one to nine.

In these bright yellow uniforms, there was no hiding. We looked like two giant bananas. Cass turned to me, his eyes wide with fear.
Run
, he mouthed.

But I was thinking about the workers who had to get in and out of this supply closet. And about the German soldiers who had to code the secret-message machines.

I turned toward the door. I thought fast.

Massa
.

That equaled 13-1-19-19-1.

I pressed each digit. Nothing happened.

Cass was pulling me away.
Simplicity
, I thought.
Something easily remembered. A number they would all know
.

On a hunch, I keyed in five digits.

Click
.

The door opened. We hustled inside and pulled it shut behind us.

I willed my heart not to fly out of my chest. We listened for the guards. Their conversation was growing more animated. But they were staying put. They hadn't heard a thing.

Cass flicked on an overhead light. “How did you do that?” he whispered.

“Smart guessing,” I whispered back. “Remember the code for ‘com'—three-one-five-one-three? It's a number palindrome, the same back and forward. Easy to recall. Something they probably all see on their cell phones. So I tried it.”

“I don't believe this,” Cass said. “I can't wait to tell Aly.”

I glanced around. The shelves contained all kinds of caustic liquids. I jammed small bottles of bleach and ammonia into my bag.

Cass was eagerly taking down a pile of neatly folded uniforms from the top shelf. Massa uniforms. Brown and institutional. They looked exactly like the things Brother Dimitrios and his goons were wearing here.

Cass's eyes were saying exactly what I was thinking. We would be much less noticeable wearing these.

We each took one that seemed about the right size and changed into them. Another shelf was stocked with matching baseball-type caps, each embroidered with a lambda.

Perfect. With these outfits, especially with the hat brims pulled low, we could pass for employees. Well, from a distance. A long distance, where no one would notice that we were thirteen.

“I have another route,” Cass whispered, staring at the phone. “Left at the intersection, then right at the fork. There's a big room we have to go through. On the other side of that room, we're pretty close to the exit.”

Slowly, silently, we opened the door and stepped out. We stepped quickly down the hallway, passing a lounge arrangement like the one we'd just been sleeping in. Then an intersection.

“What fork?” I said. “This is a four-way!”

Cass was fingering the screen like crazy. “Sorry. There are all these levels. They overlap. Maybe the fork is on the level above us. Or—or below . . .”

“Pick one!” I said.

“Straight,” Cass shot back.

We headed down a long passageway toward a big, domed room. Some kind of control center. No door, just an archway. We could hear humming, beeps, shouts, an occasional burst of something in English—but even that was gibberish.
Sector Five atmospheric control . . . waste systems redirecting to path 17B . . . clearing air traffic . . 
.

A man burst through the opening, tapping furiously on a tablet. He was heading right for us. If he looked up, we were toast. Two kids who happen to exactly match the descriptions of the recently captured Select.

I pulled Cass toward me, pretending to show him something on the phone. We hunched over the screen, our backs to the guy.

The guy rushed past us without even looking up.

“We are so close,” Cass whispered. “But this room—it's huge. Like some kind of command center.”

“Keep your head down,” I said. “Pretend you have something important to do. Don't run. When we get to the other side—”

“Wait,” Cass said. “You want us to walk straight through
there
? We can't do that!”

“They don't know we're missing yet,” I said. “This is the last place they'd expect to see us.”

“But—”

“Think about Aly,” I insisted. “She did the exact thing no one expected. It takes guts. Which is what we need right now.”

Cass looked into the room and swallowed hard. “I hope you're right.”

We barged inside, keeping our heads down. The place was crawling with people. Most of them looked like they'd just awakened. From the walls, enormous monitors glared down at us like the schedule boards from airports. They showed hallways and rooms, lounges and storage spaces, satellite maps, cross-sections of pyramids. An enormous Jumbotron-type screen loomed over everything, tiled with all the different views of the compound, inside and out. It was their security center.

I scanned the room quickly. Best to stick to the shadows as much as possible. I pulled Cass to the wall, where the traffic was lightest. We made our way around, hugging the wall as close as we could. I could see an archway at the other end. It led into another corridor that looked no different from the one we came from. I let Cass lead. Cass knew the route.

He was picking up the pace. As long no one was looking for us, we would be fine. We were just about to the archway.

Boooweep! Booooweep! Booooweep!

The sound was more like a whack to the head than an alarm. It shrieked through the room, pounding our ears, blotting out all other sound. Cass jumped nearly three feet. Startled workers turned from their screens to look up at a huge Jumbotron-type screen. It blared two words in bright red letters against a white background:

SECURITY BREACH!

Under it were photos of Cass and me.

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“G
O
!” I
SHOUTED
.
“Just go!”

We bolted through the archway, out of the room and into a wide, more modern corridor. Workers were hurrying curiously toward the control room. Some of them were checking their phones.

We ducked into a restroom and hid in two adjoining stalls. A guy raced out from the stall next to ours, muttering under his breath. We waited until the footfalls died down, then sneaked out.

“Second left!” Cass said, eyes on the phone. “Looks like there's an exit at the end of the hallway there.”

“I'll scope it out first!” I sprinted ahead to the second corner. Before making the turn I stopped, back against the wall, and peered around.

Cass was right. The corridor just around the corner from us ended in a doorway, about fifty feet away. But standing in front of it were Brothers Dimitrios and Yiorgos. They were yelling in Egyptian at two hapless-looking guards.

I sprang back. “We're busted.”

“What are they saying?” Cass whispered.

“How should I know?”
I replied.

It wasn't until then that I realized my head was buzzing. And not just because of the chase.

It was the Song of the Heptakiklos. Near us. Very near.

“Do you—?” Cass said.

I nodded. Cass peeked at our phone. Then he looked across the hall at a door on the wall across from us. A door like a bank vault, thick and ornately carved.

“Jack?” he whispered. “How much room do you have in that sack?”

He held out the phone to show me our GPS location. The room opposite us, behind the vault door, showed as a rectangle.

In that rectangle were two glowing white circles. “This person who owns the phone,” I said, “is definitely trying to tell us something.”

We walked closer. “Where's the handle?” Cass hissed. “Vault doors are supposed to have big old-timey handles, like in the movies.”

“Ssh,” I said.

Dimitrios was still talking. I focused on a smooth black panel, where a doorknob might once have been. It glowed black and red. “It's a reader,” I said.

“Fingerprint, like at the KI?” Cass said, his face tense. “Or maybe a retinal scan.”

“RS” was the name of the app—it meant Retinal Scan.

“Cass, you are a genius!” I said.

I snatched the phone from him, and he flinched. Both of our hands were way too sweaty. The phone slipped out, clattering to the floor.

Dimitrios's voice stopped. We froze.

I scooped up the phone, fumbling with the controls. I pressed the control button to get the app grid. I swiped too hard, scrolling past three screens.

“Who's there?”

Dimitrios.

I scrolled back until I found the one I was looking for.
RS
.

I pressed. The eye filled the screen. I could see myself reflected in it. My chest contracted.

There was something about this eye, something that seemed familiar.

Do it. Now!

“Jack, they're coming!” Cass shouted.

I turned the phone and held the eye up to the black sensor.

Beep
.

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