Countdown (15 page)

Off the coast of Maine

A tall, burnished, brawny man stood in front of J. Rutherford Pierce, squirming. Pierce himself was desperately willing his left leg to stop shaking. He rested a hand on his knee to keep the leg from kicking out involuntarily. He wondered if this man standing before him, who gleamed with strength and health, was experiencing any of the symptoms Pierce was having. After all, Pierce was responsible for enhancing the man's strength. This was Morrow, the new chief of Pierce's henchmen. Pierce had been giving them daily doses of serum for weeks now. Perhaps Morrow was squirming because he, like Pierce, was having increasingly uncontrollable spasms in his arms and legs.

Or maybe he was squirming because he was in trouble.

Pierce had sent Morrow and his men to sabotage the Cahill kids in the Guatemalan jungle. Eight grown men, made superstrong, superfast, and supersmart by the serum, attacked four normal children, and didn't manage to capture or kill a single one of them.

“That is not acceptable,” Pierce said.

“I know, sir.”

“You know what happened to your predecessor.”

“I do, sir.”

The previous chief of security and his men had been given a slow-acting poison before being sent to Tunis to capture the Cahills. Had they been successful, Pierce would have given them the antidote to the poison. They had not been successful.

Their deaths were slow and painful.

Pierce tapped his chin, pondering the best way to punish this new wayward squadron of thugs, when Morrow set a briefcase on a chair and proceeded to open it and produce something in a plastic bag.

“I know that nothing can make up for our failure,” Morrow said. “But I hope this will help.”

Pierce took the bag and opened it. “What is it?”

“The boy dropped it in the jungle. I'm not sure what it is, but it looks important.”

It was a book — a very old book. Indeed, it was important. Very important.

“Thank you, Morrow. Good work. You are dismissed.”
Please leave
, Pierce thought, glaring at Morrow.
Please get out of here so my left leg can jerk in peace.

It was a terrible, embarrassing thought. Pierce would never let on to anyone that he had any weakness whatsoever. Still, the spasms were getting progressively worse. It was getting harder and harder for him to appear in public — and if he was going to be out on the campaign trail every day, he would need to get these symptoms under control. But how to do that without decreasing his dose of the serum?

Pierce turned his attention to the book.
Olivia Cahill's Household Book.
Some of it seemed trivial — recipes, grocery lists, chores — and some he didn't understand. There were charts, diagrams, drawings, and pages written in languages he didn't know.

Then he found a section that prickled the neatly trimmed silver hair on the back of his neck:
Perdites Civitates Codex
. He didn't know exactly what it was, but he recognized the places the Cahill kids had been to recently: Troy, Carthage, Tikal . . . and Angkor. That must be where they were headed next.

He'd go to Cambodia himself and beat them to whatever it was they were looking for. They seemed to be gathering rare ingredients: the whiskers of an Anatolian leopard, silphium, chips of riven crystal, and — aha — snake venom from Angkor Wat. But why? What were they up to?

The answer became clear as he studied Olivia's book more closely. Some of these “recipes” were more complicated than they looked. Olivia seemed to be working out ways to counteract the effects of the serum her husband had invented.

Then Pierce understood. Olivia Cahill had formulated an antidote to the serum. And Amy and Dan were gathering the ingredients to make it.

They were trying to take his power away from him. He must not allow that to happen. His bid to take over the world would be a failure.

J. Rutherford Pierce did not tolerate failure.

His men had let him down so far. But the kids wouldn't be able to fight them off forever. The Pierce army would fulfill its mission; the Cahills would die. And now it was more urgent than ever. But as he was thinking these grim thoughts, another realization began to dawn on him. He had recruited his brilliant friend Dr. Jeffrey Callender to dilute the serum, to find a way to make the side effects more tolerable. Dr. Callender and his team were working night and day on this project, but they hadn't come up with a solution yet.
Maybe
, Pierce thought,
the solution is right here in this book.
If his own labs could produce the antidote, it might be used to offset the effects of the serum.

He would be able to take the serum forever — without muscle spasms or any bad effects at all.

He could be unstoppable.

Trilon Laboratories Delaware

Nellie sat at her desk, trying to look busy while a worker glued a label to her door:

NADINE GORMEY

VICE PRESIDENT, BIOCHEMICAL RESEARCH

Hilarious. She — Nellie Gomez — was posing as someone who knew thing one about biochemistry — enough to boss around a staff of PhD chemists — and getting away with it. She would have had a good laugh about the whole thing if it wasn't so serious.

Had Sammy found the message she'd left on his microscope? Was he okay? And had he figured out how to slow Amy's symptoms? She hoped he'd find a way to get word back to her, somehow.

Dr. Stevens's assistant had sent her a memo entitled “Password for Access to Classified Files, Level 3,” with a password and instructions for logging into a top secret file-sharing system.

Interesting. So there was a top secret file-sharing system, and now that she was a vice president, she had access to it.
Why just Level 3, though?
That meant there was a Level 2 and a Level 1. And Nellie had a feeling that Level 1 was where she'd find the good stuff.

She logged into Level 3 and looked around. Not much there she didn't already know: They were ordered to work on reducing the side effects of a certain drug, but no one really knew exactly what that drug was. The names, contact info, and backgrounds of the chemists who worked under her were listed, but no mention of Sammy by name.

She forwarded the memo to Pony, asking him to hack into Level 1 and get back to her. She went to the coffee station for a refill, and by the time she got back to her desk, Pony had cracked it.

Use this password to log into Level 1
, he wrote, sending her a series of numbers.

Thanks
, she wrote back.
Any news from Attleboro?

Yeah — we're all on the Wizardmobile, flying down to Tikal. I'm set. Jonah's got a fridge stocked with Electroshock Caffeine Blast in every flavor, including ones I didn't know they made. Jalapeño Chocolate!

Good
, Nellie wrote, but she was frustrated. Amy had four days left to live. Nellie wanted to be there, too. Instead she was stuck in this sterile corporate lab . . . 
doing crucial work
, she reminded herself. Work that needed to be done to save her girl.

Using Pony's password, she logged into the Classified File System, Level 1. Now
this
was interesting. There were memos and research reports from various scientists she didn't recognize. There were a few bogus reports she
did
recognize. She'd managed to fake the atomic structure of some compound she'd never heard of by drawing the shape of her favorite Putt-Putt golf course. That was a highlight.

There was a lot of chatter about one particular researcher: a certain SM.

Sammy Mourad?

He was never mentioned by name, but the more she read, the more Nellie was convinced that this was Sammy. He reported on his findings, giving them a few tidbits —
I've found something close to the molecular structure we're looking for, just one molecule away . . . .
Even Nellie could tell it was bogus. He was stalling for time.

She wished he'd find a way to get a message back to her. She couldn't take this waiting any longer. She had to
do
something.

Fiske
, Nellie thought. He might know something about the serum that she could use, something that could buy some time for Amy.

She called his room at the Callender Institute. A nurse answered and said that Mr. Cahill was in therapy and couldn't come to the phone.

Therapy my toenails
, Nellie thought. She left her office, got into her car, and drove straight up to New York.

Tikal, Guatemala

Dan loved burritos, but every time he tried to take a bite his stomach clenched in protest. He was in a rare state: so nervous he could hardly eat.

Ian, Ham, Jonah, and Pony had arrived, and they'd all met for an early dinner to plan that night's missions. They had two goals: to get the riven crystal and to meet with the blackmailers to get Olivia's book.

It was going to be a big night.

Ian, Ham, Jonah, and Pony seemed uncomfortable, too, at first. Ian kept glancing at the bruises on Jake's neck, but for once was too shaken to comment. Jonah tried to act as if nothing was wrong. “What up,” he said casually, giving a solemn nod to Dan. He enveloped Amy in a bear hug and held her a second longer than usual, but he couldn't quite meet her eye, as if he didn't know what to say to her.

And on greeting Amy, who was still glowing as if she'd been trapped in a nuclear reactor, Ham was so surprised he blurted out, “Amy, you look amazing! You don't look like you're going to —” A kick to the shin from Jonah shut him up before he could finish that morbid sentence. But everyone caught the anguished look on Amy's face.

Pony shifted nervously, staring at his neon green sneakers. But as soon as he saw Amy he said, “Whatever I can do to help, just tell me. Anything you need.” He touched the top of his hairline with his index finger in a kind of chivalrous gesture of respect — at least, that was what Dan guessed he was going for — before getting fascinated with his sneakers again.

Dan got them down to business. Everyone agreed that the only way to accomplish everything in one night was to split into two groups. What they didn't agree on was who should go where.

“Ham, Jonah, Atticus, Jake, Pony, and Ian,” Dan said. “You go after the crystal. We've got a map to lead you there. You'll leave just after sundown.” Jake threw Ian a wary glance. Dan knew he didn't want to be grouped with Ian, but they'd just have to set their personal gripes aside for now.

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Jonah said. “Who's going with you and Amy?”

“You're walking into a trap,” Ian said. “It's a suicide mission.”

“What choice do we have?” Dan said. “Without the book —”
Without the book, Amy dies
, he thought, but he couldn't say it out loud.

“Fine,” Jonah said. “But you'll need backup.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Dan said. “But I can't let any of you do that for us. It's too big a sacrifice.”

“What?!” Ham protested. “This is our fight, too.”

“Ian said it himself: It's a suicide mission.” Dan glanced at Amy, who looked sad. He was beginning to understand the reasoning behind so many of her earlier decisions, the ones that had infuriated him, the ones where she'd abandoned him so she could go off and fight alone. “I can't ask that of any of you.”

“But I volunteer!” Ham jumped to his feet.

“So do I!” Jonah said.

“And I,” Ian added.

Jake and Atticus stood with them. Their voices rang out in the silence of the room. Pony looked around uncomfortably. Every boy was on his feet except for him. So he rose. “Me too.”

Amy blinked back tears. “You all have other jobs to do.”

“The blackmailers told us to come alone,” Dan said. “If they spot you, it could make things worse.”

“I can stay here and monitor communications with them,” Pony said. “I mean, you know, I volunteer to —”

“Thanks, Pony,” Amy said. “That's the perfect job for you. If we get into trouble, you can call the others.Dan and I will be okay on our own,” she continued. “We need all five of you to stay together. You could be sabotaged on your way to the temple, just like last time.”

Jake turned to Dan. “And you're going along with this?”

Dan pushed his plate away untouched. He was in charge now, and that made him so tense he lost his appetite once and for all.

“Amy and I discussed it, and we agree,” Dan said. “You guys need each other for protection. With her power, the two of us should be okay on our own.”

“Possibly,” Ian said. “But you don't know that for sure. In fact, you don't know what you're getting into at all.”

“Pony will be monitoring the lines of communication for signs of trouble,” Amy said. “We'll be okay — I promise.” None of the others looked satisfied with her word, but Dan sensed that they hesitated to challenge her as vigorously as they normally would. They didn't know how to behave around someone who was dying.

“We need that crystal,” Dan told the others. “I want the five of you to go into the jungle and find it tonight. And come back safely. Period.” Dan heard himself speak the words — giving orders to five boys who were older than he was — but it didn't feel real. He felt as if he were watching himself take charge from outside his own body. Watching some other boy, some boy who looked exactly like him but who had way more confidence than the real Dan would ever have.

But, to his surprise, everyone listened. He may have been faking it, but he was faking it real enough to make it work.