Countdown (12 page)

Tikal, Guatemala

Amy marveled at Atticus. The boy knew his stuff, and he wasted no time. That afternoon he led them to a group of structures just south of the Mundo Perdido, or the Lost World, the oldest part of Tikal. “This is called the
Mural de los Jugadores
,” he explained, showing them an excavated mural from about 370
B.C.
“
The Ball Players Mural
. It depicts an epic ball game between two sets of characters in Mayan mythology: the Hero Twins and the Lords of the Underworld.”

The western sector of the mural showed three men in ceremonial dress facing some brick-like patterns that Atticus thought represented a ball court. The figures on the eastern sector of the mural were damaged, so that only their feet were visible.

“This is one of the Hero Twins.” He pointed to a man in the mural wearing a headband and ornaments made of bones. “The Lords of the Underworld were painted on the damaged side of the mural, so we can't see them. But one of them was called the Lord of the Mirrors.”

“Mirrors,” Amy said. “Like in Olivia's book.”

“I suspect that glyph was once part of this mural — on the damaged side,” Atticus said. “And in terms of decoding the map that leads to the riven crystal, it fits with the
pok-a-tok
theme.”

“But what does it mean?” Dan asked.

“I think it's code for
opposite
,” Atticus said.

“Like a mirror image,” Amy said.

“Right. If I redraw the map as it would look in a mirror, it would send us to the opposite side of the park,” Atticus said.

“To another unexcavated temple —” Jake added.

“— where the crystal should be,” Dan finished.

“Let's go find it.” Amy barked the words like an order.

“I think Atticus should redraw the map first, so we don't get lost,” Jake said.

“We won't get lost. I can see it all in my head — the whole park.” Amy's mind was supercharged, thinking a thousand miles a second. She passed through the entrance to a house in the Mundo Perdido, shaped like a serpent's maw, muttering to herself, thinking out loud, twirling in place to let the others catch up.

“Amy, you're making me dizzy,” Dan said with worry in his voice. “I feel like I'm on the teacup ride at Disneyland.”

“I'm thinking,” Amy replied, but the truth was she couldn't stand still. The serum was coursing through her veins, energizing her, calling her muscles to action. Her muscles demanded something to do. It was a strange feeling for a girl who could normally sit reading in a window seat for hours without pausing to look up.

She felt a twitch in her pinky finger and stopped twirling. She stared at the finger. It twitched again. Strange, but nothing to be too worried about . . .

But then, suddenly, her stomach churned. Probably from spinning around and around the way she'd been doing. She stood perfectly still, trying to calm her nerves.

“You stopped twirling, finally,” Dan said. “Thank you.”

She swallowed and nodded. Dan's face blurred. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. His skin, his hair, his eyes — everything looked yellowish, as if she were gazing through a yellow lens. Or was that her imagination?

“Amy, what's wrong?” Atticus asked.

She blinked again, and her vision cleared. The yellowing and blurring were gone. She touched her pinky with the other hand. Steady. “I'm fine,” she said. “Perfectly okay.”

But everyone knew she wasn't fine. She had six days to live. And the side effects that would kill her had begun.

“Shake it off, Amy,” Jake said with the same mix of fear and irritation that had colored everything he'd directed toward her since she took the serum, as if all she had to do to stop dying was “put her mind to it.” Her supersharp mind picked up the angry flash in his eyes, perceived the way they lightened for a split second from gray blue to azure as clearly as if it had happened in slow motion.

“Shake what off? I told you I'm fine.”

The three boys stood awkwardly around Amy, afraid to touch her. She was at once very strong and very delicate, as if an accidental jostle might break her, or one wrong word could set her off, make her snap at them with a fierceness she couldn't quite control.

“The crystal,” she reminded them. “We're going to go find it tonight.”

“What about Pierce's men?” Atticus asked. “What if they're spying on us? What if they ambush us again?”

Poor Att. He'd been through a lot for a little kid. Being chased around the world by Pierce's men must have felt like living in a bad dream where the bogeyman was always after him.

Her brain suddenly lit up — she could actually feel the neurons firing — with a brilliant idea.

Pierce's men were always in the way. Always the obstacle that kept Amy from her goal. The answer was obvious. Get rid of them.

Amy turned to face the boys. “We'll set a trap.”

Jake looked alarmed. “Set a trap for who?”

“Pierce's men.” Amy stalked forward again, barely giving the others a chance to keep up. “Think about it. They're trying to kill us. We spend a lot of time and energy fighting them off, running away from them, just trying to stay alive. If we didn't have to do all that, we could make the antidote a whole lot faster.”

“I wish they'd shrivel up and crawl into a hole, too,” Dan said. “But that's not going to happen. Those dudes aren't going anywhere.”

“That's why we have to trap them — the ones who are here in Tikal, at least. Then we'll be free to find the crystal and the book without worrying and watching our backs all the time.”

“Trap them how?” Atticus asked.

“I'm working on that,” Amy said. “I'm thinking some kind of cage, or a pit . . . a very deep pit, so deep they'd never get out.” She jumped up on a high wall, walked along it as if it were a balance beam, and jumped off as neatly as a gymnast, all without giving it a thought. Her mind seemed to work better if her body was kept busy this way.

She turned to see how far behind her they'd fallen. They'd stopped, all three of them. They were standing in the middle of the path, staring at her as if she were a lunatic. “Nothing will go wrong,” she insisted. “We do away with them. It makes sense. It makes
more
than sense.” That was how things seemed to Amy then, bigger, better, more. . . . It was part of the way the serum acted on her. Brilliant ideas flew through her mind so fast she barely had time to catch them. There were so many! It was amazing, but it made it hard to relax. Impossible to relax, actually. Luckily, she never felt tired. She started walking again, but the three boys still didn't move. “What?” she demanded.

“You want to trap people in a pit?” Jake asked. “A pit so deep they can't climb out?”

“If they fell into a pit that deep, they could break their legs,” Dan said.

“And then what?” Jake prodded. “You'd leave them there in the pit? With no food or water, and possibly broken legs . . .”

“ . . . to die in the jungle?” Dan said. She could hear the real question in his voice:
Amy, are you in there?

Atticus said nothing. He just held back, as if he were a little bit afraid of her.

Now she knew why she'd never thought of this plan before.

It was murder.

She started to tremble. Atticus walked slowly up to her and put his arms around her the way a lost child hugs his mother. “Oh, Att,” she whispered, stroking his hair. “I don't know what's happening to me.”