The Curse of the King (23 page)

“Saw explosion coming . . . ran . . . too late . . .” Torquin said. “Blew me into bushes. Woke up and walked to street, flagged taxi . . .”

“You got a taxi?” Cass said. “I wonder if it was the Massa spy?”

“No spy,” Torquin said. “Driver saw me and ran away. Torquin drove cab to airport.”

“So you got here with Slippy!” Aly said. “You slipped under the detection.”

Torquin nodded, glancing around the woods. “And you found rebels?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“They're here somewhere, Torquin,” Mom said softly. “They operate at night with tiny acts of sabotage—setting fires, stealing food and equipment, disabling security. I don't know how they are surviving or how many there are. The Massa have not mounted a full-scale search for them yet, but it will happen soon, now that Dimitrios is back on the island. He suspects they're somewhere near Mount Onyx. But the place is surrounded by video feeds and nothing has ever been detected.”

“We have to find them, Mom,” I said. “And we have to get those shards. We have the missing piece, and it will fuse
with the others. We can make that happen.”

“The Massa have the Loculi of Invisibility and Flight, too,” Aly said. “If we can get them, we'll have three.”

“There's a fourth Loculus, too,” Cass said warily, “but a god ran off with it. Long story.”

“Can you get them for us, Mom?” I said. “The two Loculi and the shards of the third one? We need to get them and meet up with the rebels, and we have to do it all before darkness. If we're not back by then, they'll start coming for us.”

Mom exhaled, looking back toward the compound. “It won't be easy. If they catch me, it will change everything. They will kill me.”

“They can't catch you,” I said. “Not after all these years, Mom. Promise me, please. Promise me they won't catch you?”

Mom met my glance levelly. She looked as if she'd aged just in the last few minutes. “I guess I need to make up for lost time, don't I? I promise, Jack. I have gotten very good at avoiding detection.”

I nodded, but I felt as if someone had turned me inside out.

Torquin turned and blew his nose, sounding like the horn of an eighteen-wheeler.

“I will return to this spot as quickly as I can and give this signal—” Mom stuck two fingers into her mouth
and let out a raucous, three-note whistle. “Torquin, I will need you to come with me. There's one person I have to extract—someone the Massa may use as a hostage. She's a bit of a handful, but we can't leave her behind.”

“Who is person?” Torquin said dubiously.

“Her name is Eloise,” Mom said.

“What?”
Aly blurted out.

Cass's face drained of color. “No. Absolutely not. Number one, she's disgusting. Number two, she's bratty. Number three, she's obnoxious and gross—”

“Number four, Cass,” Mom said with a sigh, “she's your sister.”

A
FTER
C
ASS FINISHED
cackling, he picked himself off the ground and wiped off clumps of jungle leaves. “Oh, thanks,” he said. “That is hilarious. I like your mom, Jack. She doesn't take life too seriously, even at times like this.
My sister! Ha!
”

Mom's expression was dead steady. “Cass, I need your cooperation on this.”

A laugh caught in Cass's throat. “Hrm. So you—I mean, this is a—you can't . . . um, Mrs. McKinley, you don't know me, but I can assure you I don't have a sister. I'm an only child.”

“And I'm a geneticist,” Mom said. “Your parents gave birth to a girl when you were four years old. At the time,
you were in foster care. Like you, she became a ward of the state.”

Cass nodded. “I was with the Hendersons.”

“They called you Li'l Runt,” Mom said. “You slept in a room by the laundry machine. There were four other children.”

“You didn't have to remind me of that,” Cass said.

“G7W runs in families, Cass,” Mom said. “It's not so surprising she has it.”

“She does look like you,” Aly volunteered.

“She speaks Backwardish,” I added.

Cass put his head in his hands. “Won em toohs.”

As we walked toward Mount Onyx in search of the rebels, my head throbbed and my ankles looked like the surface of a pizza. I felt like we'd walked into a flash mob of mosquitoes. I'd slapped my own face so much I nearly dislocated my jaw. Above us a team of monkeys took turns dropping nuts on us and screeching with hilarity.

“Ow!” Cass flinched. “Why is it they always seem to hit
me
?”

“Shhh,” Aly said. “We have to hear Jack's mom's whistle.”

“Tell that to the monkeys!” Cass said.

I looked at my watch. 4:43. “We have to be patient.”

“Right. She and Torquin have to deal with my sister the monster,” Cass said, as another fistful of nuts rained around him. “Maybe she's actually up there with her look-alikes.”

A high-pitched whine sounded in the distance, and we stopped. It grew louder like a police siren. “An alarm,” Aly said. “You mom mentioned there were—”

She was interrupted by the crack of a gunshot. Shrieking, the monkeys almost instantly disappeared.

“Th-that was from the direction of the compound,” Cass said.

The blood rushed from my head.
If they catch me, it will change everything,
Mom had said.
They will kill me.

I began running toward the noise. “Mom!”

“Jack, what are you doing?” Aly shouted. “Come back here!”

I ignored her, racing through the jungle. My bug-swollen ankles scraped against thorns and branches. The sun was beginning to set below the tops of the trees, darkening the path. In a moment I could hear Cass and Aly running behind me, shouting.

Another shot rang out. I was off course. Too far to the north. As I shifted my path, I could hear a thrashing in the woods.

A shrill, three-note whistle pierced the air.

Mom.

“Over here!” I bellowed.

A shadow materialized between two trees, and in a moment, I saw Mom's face. At first it looked like she was wearing a half mask, like the Phantom of the Opera,
but when I got close I realized the left side of her face was coated with blood.
“Mom! What happened?”

She held up her left hand, which was wrapped in a bloody towel. “The safe . . . was booby-trapped,” she said, gulping for breath. “My hand got stuck . . . I wiped it on my cheek. Face is fine, but the hand will need some TLC. I'll be okay, Jack.”

“Did they see you?” Cass asked.

“I don't think so,” Mom replied. “I wore gloves. No prints. But I can't be sure.”

As Cass and Aly ran up behind me, I realized Mom had a giant sack slung over her shoulder. She swung it around, letting it thump heavily on the ground. “There are three steel boxes inside,” she said, “with the two Loculi and the shards. Each box is secured with an encrypted electronic lock. We will have to worry about that later.”

“You're the best, Mom,” I said. “But I'm worried about you.”

“Don't be,” she said. “You guys don't have the time to—”

YEEAAAAARRGHH!

A roar like an angry lion blasted through the jungle. As we all spun toward it, a different voice wailed, high-pitched and nasal:
“Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew—that tastes disgusting!”

Torquin crashed through the underbrush, stepping into the clearing. His browless eyes were scrunched with pain and even in the dim light I could see a crescent-shaped
red mark on his right arm. Yanking his arm forward, he dragged Eloise into sight. “She bit me,” he said.

Cass looked at Mom's belt pouches. “You have a rabies shot in there, by any chance?”

“
Rrrrrraaachhh, ptui!
When was the last time you took a bath, Hulk?” As Eloise spotted Mom, then us, the agony on her face vanished. “Sister Nancy? What's going on?”

Mom took Eloise by the arm and brought her forward. “Eloise, dear, come meet your brother.”

“I don't have a brother,” she said.

“Sweetheart, you do,” Mom said. “This is Cass.”

Eloise's face fell. “The dorky one?”

Cass waggled his fingers. “Sorry.”

“I feel sick all over again,” Eloise said.

“Well, that's a touching reunion,” Aly said.

Mom knelt by Cass's sister, looking her in the eye. “Eloise, the Massa took you from your foster home and told you a lot of things—”

“They said
you
picked me!” Eloise replied. “They told me I had no mom and dad.”

Mom nodded sadly. “The Massa have forced both of us to do things we never should have done. They are keeping many truths from you. Before they brought you here, they did some horrible things to the Karai Institute, the people who first settled this place.”

“Those were the rebels, the bad guys . . .” Realization
flashed across Eloise's face. “Sister Nancy . . . you're a spy?”

“Do you trust me, Eloise?” Mom asked.

“Yes! You're—you're amazing,” Eloise replied. “You're the only one who's nice to me, but—”

“Do you believe I'm telling you the truth?” Mom pressed.

Eloise nodded silently.

“It's a long story, dear,” Mom said, “and there will be time to tell it someday soon. Jack is my son. I was forced to leave him, too. Please, stay with him and your brother. These people have your best interests at heart. Not the Massa.”

Eloise stared at her feet for a few seconds. Cass moved toward her. He looked like he wanted to put his arm around her, but finally he just stood by her side.

When Eloise spoke, her voice was barely audible. “Okay,” she said. “I believe you, Sister Nancy. But—I did something really dumb.” She glanced up at Torquin. “When this guy came to take me, I set off the alarms all by myself.”

“Wait—
you
set those off?” Mom said.

“I'm sorry!” Eloise looked like she was going to cry.

“No, no, that's all right, dear,” Mom said.

She looked at me, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. If the alarms hadn't been tripped by Mom—if they were focused on another area of the compound—then maybe she hadn't been seen after all. A smile flashed across her face. “I can't hang around. But promise me you'll stay with your brother?”

“Where will you go, Sister Nancy?” Eloise asked.

“Back to the Massa. But I'll be watching, from a safe place,” Mom replied. “As much as I can.”

The words hit me hard. “Come with us, Mom.”

“I—I wish I could,” Mom said. “But the Omphalos does not forget or forgive. If I joined you I wouldn't last long, Jack. As for the Massa . . .” She let out a long sigh. “I'm hoping they don't suspect me. If they do, I'll need to go into hiding.”

“No!” I blurted out. My face was boiling hot. I could barely see Mom through a surge of tears, as if she were already beginning another slow fade into memory.

She touched my chin with her bandaged hand. “You're beginning to look so much like your father.”

“He misses you, too, Mom,” I said. “A lot. Just as much as I do. What if we never see each other again? If the Massa catch you . . . or the continent is raised and floods the coasts? What happens if I turn fourteen before—”

Mom wrapped me in a hug and whispered into my ear. “I failed you, Jack. I was going to find the cure, but I didn't. Now it's your turn. You'll have to figure it out. You and your friends are the only ones who can. Take care of the Loculi.”

With that, she released me and ran off into the jungle.

I watched as the darkness swallowed her up.