Countdown (16 page)

The Callender Institute
New York City

Nellie found Fiske propped up in bed in a hospital gown. There was a new tension in the air at the Callender Institute. For one thing, the staff had changed, and some of the health care workers she'd passed in the hall looked awfully buff for nurses. When she opened the door to Fiske's room, his eyes widened in fear. He relaxed when he saw it was her. But she didn't like that first look on his face. What usually happened when the door to his room opened?

“Fiske, how are you doing?” She moved a chair next to the bed.

Fiske licked his lips. “Nellie, thank goodness . . .” His mouth seemed dry. He had trouble speaking.

“Want some water?” Nellie had brought some gourmet treats for him, but he didn't seem capable of eating, let alone enjoying them. She poured water into a paper cup. His hands shook so badly he could hardly hold it. “Here, let me help you.”

She held the cup while he took a few sips. She had never seen him so weak. He wasn't getting better at all. He was getting worse. “Fiske, I need to talk to you,” she said. “I need you to tell me anything you know about the serum. Anything at all . . .”

Fiske stared at the wall. Was he listening? Nellie followed his eyes, trying to figure out what was so fascinating. She couldn't see anything on the wall besides a painting of a seascape.

“It's a matter of life and death,” Nellie went on. “You see, Amy —”

He wasn't listening, she was sure of it. He gaped at the wall in horror, unable to tear his eyes away. “Fiske? What is it?”

He didn't answer, but he got that frightened look again. “Fiske?”

“There's a portal. Do you see it?” He pointed a shaky finger at the wall, which looked completely solid to Nellie. “A hole has opened up right there, leading to another dimension. . . .”

Nellie went to the wall, touched it, knocked on it. “I don't see anything. No portal, Fiske.”

“Grace! For heaven's sake, Grace, get away from that portal!”

Nellie ran back to Fiske's side. “I'm not Grace. I'm Nellie.”

“Shh! Hide, Grace. They'll hear you!”

He's hallucinating
, Nellie realized.

“Wait!” He leaned away from her. “You're not Grace!”

Good — he was coming back to his senses. “That's right, Fiske. I'm —”

“I know who you are,” Fiske hissed. “You're out to get me, aren't you? You're trying to kill me!”

“Fiske, no, I'm Nellie! I'm trying to help you!”

“Nurse! Nurse!” Fiske hit the call button and one of the buff nurses burst into the room.

“Is everything okay in here?”

Fiske didn't answer. He was shaking and confused. “Everything's fine,” Nellie said. “He got a little worked up over a joke I told him, but he's okay now.”

“He looks worn out. Visiting hours are over.” The nurse pulled Nellie to her feet and pushed her firmly to the door.

Nellie pushed back. “Wait, please. Just give me a few more minutes with him. Just a few more minutes.”

The nurse's biceps bulged as she crossed her brawny arms over her chest and frowned. “Five minutes. Then you're out of here.”

Nellie shut the door firmly behind the departing nurse. What was going on here? The Callender Institute was revered as one of the best hospitals in the world. And yet . . . Fiske's symptoms struck Nellie as eerily familiar: tremors, visions, paranoia, extreme mood swings. . . .

The serum.

Was Fiske taking the serum? Or was it being given to him? And if he was, how did the hospital get their hands on it? It didn't matter, Nellie decided. The main thing was to get Fiske out of there before he was poisoned to death.

She sat on the bed next to Fiske, who had calmed down a bit. She gave him more water. “Feeling better?”

He nodded.

“Fiske, I think they're testing the serum on you.” She didn't finish the rest of that thought — that the serum was killing him — and killing Amy, too. “I've got to get you out of here. Can we check you out? I'll drive you to Attleboro or take you somewhere else where you'll be well cared for. The main thing is you can't stay here.”

“Yes,” he rasped in a hoarse voice. “I want to leave.”

“Good. I'll talk to Dr. Callender and arrange it. I'll be back in ten minutes.” Nellie hurried through the busy halls. There were cameras every few feet, and more nurses' stations than most hospitals had.
Nurses' stations or security stations?

She found Dr. Callender's office. His secretary stopped her from going in, saying he was on the phone. Nellie waited, and a few minutes later the secretary said she could see him. The doctor smiled when Nellie walked in. “Ms. Gomez. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I've just been to see Fiske Cahill and . . . he told me he'd like to check out of here. Today.”

Dr. Callender's smile faded slightly and he touched the tips of his fingers together. “I see. Well, I'm afraid that isn't possible.”

“It isn't? He's here voluntarily, isn't he?”

“Yes, he was admitted voluntarily, and normally he'd be allowed to come and go as he pleased.”

“So what is the problem?”

“You say you've just been to see him. How did he seem to you?”

“Well . . .” Nellie hesitated. If she admitted that he seemed very sick to her, that would weaken her case for dismissal. “He seemed fine. The main point is, he wants to leave. So if you'll just give me the papers to sign or whatever we have to do —”

“Mr. Cahill cannot leave. I'm sorry.” Dr. Callender's grin was wide and wolfish now, and Nellie's pulse began to race. She sensed danger but wasn't sure why.

“He can and he will. I'm taking him out of here right now, and you can't stop me.”

“Ms. Gomez, Mr. Cahill is not mentally competent. Legally, I must hold him here if I deem him a danger to himself or others, and he is certainly a danger to himself, at the very least.”

It seemed impossible for that wolfish grin to grow wider, and yet it did. Nellie shivered. “He's perfectly fine,” she insisted. “I want a second opinion.”

“You're welcome to it. Any doctor who examines him would come to the same conclusion.”

He's right
, Nellie thought bitterly. Fiske was hallucinating — because they were drugging him. Her eyes fell on a paper in Dr. Callender's inbox. A report on the results of some drug research — from Dr. Huang at Trilon Labs. Nellie's skin prickled. Suddenly she knew.

He was in on it. In on the whole thing.

She couldn't breathe.

“And now, Ms. Gomez, if you would kindly leave?” Dr. Callender said. “Or would you like me to have one of the nurses escort you out?”

She was trembling, but tried to hide it. She couldn't trust anyone. Not even a famous doctor. She felt as if a noose were tightening around her neck. Fiske was being held prisoner, and poisoned in the name of research. Amy was four days away from death. And Dr. Callender was working for Pierce.

Dr. Callender pressed a button. “Marco, will you please show Ms. Gomez out?”

The door opened and a burly bald man in a security uniform stepped inside.

“That won't be necessary.” Nellie slipped past the man and out the door. “I can find the way myself.”

She shook the whole drive back to Delaware. She had to find a way to spring Fiske from Dr. Callender's Hospital of Death.

That would have made a good name for a punk band if it weren't so real.

If only Sammy were free, he could help her. But his work at the lab was too important. He was her only hope now.

She went into her office and checked her Level 1 account. Someone had sent her a recipe for chicken tagine. Weird. Who at this place even knew she liked to cook?

Sammy, that's who.

The recipe was a coded message. It had to be, because any dish that called for a cup of salt was not going to taste good.

Nellie set to work decoding the message. She recognized the recipe from her favorite Moroccan cookbook. She found the recipe online. It didn't call for a cup of salt, of course — it called for a teaspoon. There were forty-eight teaspoons in a cup of salt. Maybe this was a simple alphabet code. Nellie hoped so — coding was so not her strong point. She counted forty-eight characters from the numeral 1 in “1 cup of salt” and landed on a G. So maybe G equaled A? She tried decoding the message but it didn't quite work.

Come on, Sammy. Don't make this too hard for me.

But she knew he couldn't make it too easy — or too obvious — or he would get caught.

Then she noticed that Sammy's recipe called for two cups of butter — truly insane — and that the real recipe called for two tablespoons.

Aha.

There were sixteen tablespoons in a cup. Maybe the sixteenth letter was the equivalent for letter number 2, B?

Yes. Working through a few more kinks like that — three pounds of couscous gave her the equivalent for C — Nellie managed to decode Sammy's message:

Pierce knows about the antidote. He wants to use it to make a less lethal version of the serum. Forced me to switch gears and work on combining antidote and serum. If he succeeds, Amy's antidote will not work on Pierce's serum. We will have no way to stop him. We will be powerless.

Will try to sabotage. Once that's done, I want to blow this place. And leave nothing behind.

Nellie bit her lip. How did Pierce know about the antidote? There was only one way she could think of: Olivia Cahill's book. His men must have found it when Dan lost it in the jungle.

So they were in even more trouble than they knew. Amy was dying. They still had to find the riven crystal, and they'd lost the book that would tell them how to make the antidote. And on top of all that, Pierce knew that the kiddos had found a way to stop him.

The Attleboro boys had flown down to Guatemala to help Dan and Amy get the riven crystal and the book — which they thought was being held by blackmailers.
The whole thing was a trap. The book wasn't even there. And only she could warn them.

Tikal, Guatemala

“Shhh! Wait! Lights out!”

Hamilton Holt held out his arms as a signal to freeze. Jake clicked off his flashlight. A few yards ahead, one of the park guards crossed the causeway on security patrol. He was whistling, his rifle slung over his shoulder.

Jake held his breath. He and the others — Hamilton, Atticus, Ian, and Jonah — waited without moving until the guard's whistling faded, then disappeared. Once he was out of earshot, they relaxed. “Okay,” Hamilton said. “Onward.”

“That guy has no idea what's going down tonight,” Jonah said.

“Let's hope nothing does go down,” Jake said. “Let's find the crystal and get back as soon as possible.” He was anxious to find out if Amy and Dan had gotten the book back — and made it out of that trap alive. If they needed help, he wanted to be there, ready to go.

He flicked on his flashlight and shined it at the map Atticus held. Atticus was in charge of navigation — tracing the mirror image of their earlier trek to find the hidden temple that contained the riven crystal. The group had left at sundown to avoid being detected by the park guards. But the jungle seemed to be swarming with them.

“They're on high alert because of the poachers,” Atticus theorized. He studied the map and then pointed down a narrow path. “That way. It's not far now.”

They set out again, pushing the thick vegetation away from their faces. The night was humid and sticky, and mosquitoes buzzed in their ears. A full moon rose over the treetops, lighting their way but also lighting them up, making them more visible to the guards, or any enemies that might be waiting to pounce. Luckily, the trees made lots of shadows to hide in.

The path forked unexpectedly into two smaller trails. “Which way?” Jonah asked.

Jake looked from the map to the fork. “This way,” he said, aiming his flashlight at the trail on the right.

“No, mate,” Ian said. “You're reading the bloody map wrong. We're headed south — see?” He drew one well-groomed fingernail along the paper to the temple they were trying to find.

Jake was annoyed, but he tried to restrain himself. “I know how to read a ‘bloody map.' And I know this park pretty well by now. You just got here. We're taking the right fork.”

“Listen,” Ian said through gritted teeth. “I wouldn't make a fuss if Amy's life wasn't at stake. But every second counts.”

At the mention of Amy, Jake's muscles tensed. “I know Amy's life is in danger. That's why I'm here. If we hurry, we might get back in time to go after her and Dan —”

“They were told to come alone. If we show up, they could be killed.”

“They're probably going to be killed anyway,” Jake said. “And you're willing to stand by and let that happen?”

“I never said any such thing —”

Jonah stepped between Ian and Jake, who were glaring at each other in the dark. “Whoa, let's cool it now. We're all here for Amy. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong. All that matters is that we find this freaking crystal and get back to Dan and Amy in one piece. Hamilton, which way should we go?”

Jake sighed and let it go. Jonah was right. Normally, everything about Ian made Jake want to shove him into the messiest mud puddle he could find, just to watch him weep over his ruined designer shoes. Yet tonight, the smug expression seemed forced, more of a mask to hide what he was really feeling. He was the most arrogant person Jake had ever met, but he also cared about Amy. They all did. Maybe more than they'd admitted.

A lot more than they'd admitted to her.

Hamilton gaped at the map and shook his head. “This path winds around a lot, so it's hard to tell . . . .”

“Okay, Hamilton is stumped,” Jonah said. “Atticus?”

“The right path. I'm pretty sure that's the one on the map.”

“The right path it is.” Jonah led the way, taking the right fork. Jake and the others followed, Ian grumbling something about brothers sticking together.

“That's right.” Jonah stopped short and turned around to school Ian. “Brothers stick together. And we're all brothers in this. So we stick together. Got it?”

Ian nodded, and they continued down the path.
Tell him, Jonah
, Jake thought in silent satisfaction.

After trekking another half hour, Atticus stopped in front of a dense cluster of trees. “This is it.”

Jake strained to see. From where they were standing, the temple looked like a mound of green under the moonlight, but he could just make out the ruined remains of a pyramid near the top leaves.

“This temple hasn't been excavated yet,” Atticus explained. “The altar could be buried under tons of stone.”

“Or some of that stone could crumble while we're digging around in there,” Jonah said. “And crush us.”

“We won't know until we start.” Hamilton had already cleared away some vines until he found a round stone hole. He ripped off more vines. The hole began to take shape in the moonlight.

“It looks like — like a mouth,” Atticus said.

“A jaguar's mouth,” Ian added.

“With teeth,” Jonah finished.

They worked at clearing the vines away, removing fallen stones and clumps of dirt, until the hole became a long, dark tunnel. “Is that the way into the temple?” Jonah asked.

Atticus peered inside, nodding. “There are other ruins in the Tikal complex that have intimidating entrances, serpent's maws for doors, that sort of thing. But this looks pretty scary.”

“Who's going to go first?” Ian asked.

“I will.” Jake bent down and crawled into the tunnel, his flashlight in one hand. The others followed. Something brushed against his face. He recoiled, sat up, and hit his head on the top of the tunnel.

“Jake, what happened?” Atticus called from behind.

“Nothing. Just a spiderweb.” The tunnel seemed endless. It looped and turned like a maze. Every few feet, Jake's light caught a glint of white embedded in the wall. Bones? “Att, were people buried in this temple?” he called out.

“Probably. A lot of the temples were used for burial.”

“Great. Just checking.” He tried not to think about the fact that he was crawling on his hands and knees through a pitch-black tunnel of bones.

The tunnel gradually grew wider, until at last Jake could stand. He stepped through what might have been a doorway or the remains of a gate and found himself under the moonlight again.

“All that crawling just to get back outside,” Ian grumbled.

“The top of the temple must have caved in centuries ago,” Atticus observed.

Just as Att said, the temple had four standing walls but no roof. It was like a square or a clearing with a small step pyramid at one end. The trees were so dense that the moonlight barely reached through the branches, dotting the ground with jagged bits of light like pieces of broken glass. Jake shone his flashlight on the stone monolith in front of him. The top third of the pyramid inside the temple had crumbled and one wall had rotted away, leaving the structure open on one side. In front of him stood a stela with a menacing face carved in the stone: a large nose, squinting eyes, and mouth open in a roar, as if to shout,
Keep out!

He stepped over a pile of boulders to enter the pyramid. There was a stone floor, a row of broken stone benches, and at one end a high table that might have once been part of an altar. Cobwebs filled the corners, and a bat flitted over their heads.

“Creepy,” Jonah said.

“Yes, let's not linger,” Ian said. “Atticus, where do you think the altar was?”

“Here!” Atticus picked his way over the piles of rocks to the high table against the back wall. It was set into a kind of nave, with a niche carved into the wall behind it that might have held candles or sacred icons. The table was decorated with intricately carved Mayan designs that looked familiar to Jake. Some were abstract — mazes, stars, pyramids — but others showed men in strange poses wearing large Mayan headgear.

All the boys aimed their lights at the back wall. “Look for a stone with a different color or texture than the others,” Atticus told them. “Or something that might have been added on later.”

Jake moved the light methodically from stone to stone, but nothing looked unusual to him. Then he trained his beam on the front of the altar table. “Hey — what's this?” He brushed away some dirt and vines. There was a large, familiar carving. His heart started racing. He'd seen this in Olivia's book, he was sure. Almost sure . . . He swept away more dirt for a clearer view. The carving showed a man wearing a large headdress with three panels.
Please be what I think this is
, he prayed. All he needed was Atticus's confirmation.

“Hey, Att — I think this is the Lord of the Mirrors.”

Att hurried over to Jake. He ran his hands over the carving. Jake held his breath. “Well?”

“It is.” Atticus beamed. “The riven crystal must be set somewhere in this table.” Jake let out his breath in a sigh of relief. They were so close. . . .

The others ran over. They all aimed their flashlights at the table, searching for a piece of stone that looked different from the rectangular slabs of limestone. Jake found another glint, right under the Lord of the Mirrors. Set in the center of the thick table was a square stone, slightly darker than the others and smooth to the touch. “Att! I think I found the crystal!”

Atticus knelt down to examine the stone while the others crowded around. “This is it — riven quartz crystal.”

“Finally!” Jake said. “Let's take what we need and get out of here.”

Ian took a penknife from his pocket. “This blade should do.” He grinned. “We Lucians always keep our blades sharp.” With the practiced skill of a Lucian, Ian shaved off bits of stone into a box Atticus had brought.

“Make sure we get enough — at least an ounce.”

“I'm working on it,” Ian said. “Shaving rock isn't easy, you know.”

Jake looked up to see bats fluttering through the canopy of trees. “Hurry,” he urged. “We don't want to hang around here too long. You never know when we might be ambushed.” He stood very still and listened for any sign of intruders. Night birds screeched and monkeys rustled through the treetops, but he heard no footsteps and saw no lights.

“You got enough?” Jonah asked. Ian nodded.

“The coast is clear,” Jake said. “Let's go.” They'd completed their mission: They had the crystal at last. Jake's spirits lifted as they marched back toward the hotel. They were one step — one big step — closer to saving Amy.

But then the reality hit him, how many more steps they had to go, and his mood plummeted.
Four days
, he thought.
Four days.