Countdown (9 page)

She'd nearly leaped over the water when she caught herself. It wouldn't work. She'd reach Dan halfway over the river, and they'd both be stuck. Half the zip line had been cut. Across the river, the strongman was chopping, chopping, chopping. The second wire weakened, sagging even more.

Dan's body dropped closer to the rushing water, the harness holding him like a noose.

Every nerve, every fiber in Amy's body strained over that river toward her brother. Her brain was on fire, rat-a-tatting,
save him save him how how how?

She scanned the ground for a life preserver, a float, something she could toss him that might break his fall, but there was nothing. The wire thinned. Dan's body dropped lower. He closed his eyes, his face a mask of terror.

The wire was hair-thin. It was about to break.

Behind her, the thugs were only yards away.

As if in a nightmare, Amy saw what was about to happen. She saw Dan's body fall into the river. She saw his head bash against the rocks, spattering them with blood as his limp, lifeless body washed downstream. . . .

If only he could climb back to her, back on the wire. But he wasn't strong enough to do that, and anyway, the thugs would be waiting for him there on her side of the river. Or if he could cling to the wire as it broke, and slide down slowly toward the river. But he'd have to be superstrong to do that, at least as strong as Pierce's men, maybe stronger.

A howl of anguish ripped from her body. He was her brother, and she couldn't help him! She was powerless, powerless, power . . .

Power.

In a flash an answer appeared to her. She had all the power she needed. Right there in her backpack.

The serum.

If she were superstrong, she could slide out to him, keep him from falling, ease him down the wire to the edge of the river. . . .

If she were superstrong, and if she acted fast.

The wire sagged lower. In ten seconds, maybe five, it would break. Dan struggled in the harness, trying to claw his way back along the wire toward her, but he wasn't strong enough. He was as helpless as a trapped animal.

Her little brother. Her Dan.

Save Dan, save Dan, save Dan. . . .
The words were a drumbeat in her mind. She couldn't think of anything else, couldn't think past that one idea.

She ripped open her pack and found the flask. She tore off the top and drank it down.

There was an agonizing instant when nothing happened, and then power like golden light surged through her veins, energizing her limbs, her hands, her brain. She felt strong, yet light. As if she could leap across the chasm, fifty yards, a hundred. No — she tried to put a brake on her speeding mind; she could jump far, very far, maybe thirty feet, but not that far, not yet. . . .

Concentrate.

Her mind immediately focused on Dan. The thugs surrounded her, but she jumped out of their reach, her legs springing her higher than she thought possible, and grabbed the zip line wire, the one that was being cut on the other side of the river.

Amy made her way along the wire, hand over hand. She reached Dan in a matter of seconds, just as the wire broke. He dropped toward the water as his harness slid off the broken wire. But instead of filling her with terror, the sight of her freefalling brother activated a surge of energy as her arm shot out, grabbing one of Dan's hands just before he fell out of reach.

“Hold on!” she told him. She strained all her muscles to tighten her grasp. The wire tore at the skin on her hand. The momentum of the fall swung them back over the river, back to the side where Pierce's men were waiting. She clung to the wire like Tarzan clinging to a vine. They swooped upward and crashed into the stunned goons waiting for them there, knocking them to the ground.

Dan stared at Amy in shock. “What — ?”

“Get on my back,” Amy ordered. The zip line wire now dangled down the cliff toward the rushing water. Dan clung to her back like a little kid. She shimmied down the wire, bracing her feet against the cliff.

“Amy, what are you doing?” Dan felt heavy, but she knew she wouldn't drop him unless he let go.

“I've got you. Just hold on tight,” she shouted. They made their way down the wire, rappelling against the cliff. She jumped the last twenty feet to the narrow river's edge. He slid off her back. Large rocks dotted the water from one side to the other. She stepped on the first rock, then the next. They were sharp, wet, and slippery. “To the other side! Come on!” she told Dan.

He struggled to follow her across the rocks. Her sense of balance was supersharp — she hardly had to hold on to the rocks as she leaped from one to the next. Dan crouched down, clinging to each boulder as he slowly made his way over the rushing water.

She helped him over the last few rocks until they landed on the other side of the river. Pierce's men watched them helplessly from above, unable to reach them. “What do we do now?” Dan asked. There was nowhere to go but up, nothing on that side but a sheer cliff about thirty feet high.

“We climb.”

“But what about — ?” Dan pointed at the man with the machete looking down at them.

Amy studied him. He had a machete, but there was only one of him. “We'll deal with him when we get there.” She hoisted Dan onto her back again and started scaling the cliff. She stretched to reach a jutting rock, clung to it while her foot found a sturdy hold, and slowly made her way up the face of the cliff.

About three feet below the top of the cliff was a narrow ledge of rock. “Climb off,” she told Dan. She left him perched on the ledge. Just above her, the man with the machete was waiting.

Amy hoisted herself to the top of the cliff. The thug raised the machete, ready to strike. She kicked it out of his hand. It fell over the cliff to the river, clanking heavily against the rocks. The thug's jaw dropped open in surprise. Amy knocked him flat with one swift kick to the gut. She reached down to Dan, hauling him up to the top of the cliff.

They ran through the jungle to the zip line center a quarter mile away, where Jake and Atticus were waiting for them. She had to hold herself back so Dan could keep up with her. She felt like a gazelle, as if she could breeze through the jungle for miles and never get tired.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked. “What took you so long?”

“We're fine,” Amy said. “We're great.” She wasn't even out of breath. She could have kept running, she could have run a marathon without getting tired. She bounced up and down on her toes.

“Amy.” Dan was gasping for breath.
“What just HAPPENED?”

“What do you mean?” The golden energy coursed through her veins. She knew what he meant; in the back of her mind she knew something was wrong, but she couldn't feel it, she could only feel the energy.

“You — you caught me before I fell,” Dan said, staring at her in disbelief, as if the strangeness of what had happened was just dawning on him. “You rappelled down a cliff with me on your back. You took on one of Pierce's thugs like it was nothing —”

“What?” Jake asked. “Amy — ?”

She stopped bouncing. She still felt the energy coursing through her veins, shining out of her eyes. But the voice in the back of her mind was getting clearer:
Something is wrong, something is very wrong. . . .

“I had to do it, Dan,” she said. “I couldn't let you die. . . .”

Dan's mouth opened, then closed.
He knows
, she thought.
He knows but he can't say it out loud.
“It was worth it,” she said. She was done letting him make her feel guilty for saving him. “I'd do it again.”

“What are you talking about?” Jake demanded.

Dan and Atticus stared at her with questions in their eyes, and fear. “The serum,” she told them in a confident voice she didn't recognize as her own. “I had a vial of it with me. Dan was about to die. I had to save him. So . . . I drank it.”

“You had it with you?” Dan asked. His features were frozen in shock. “All this time?” She nodded. “And you . . . you took it.” He looked down now as if the gravity of what had happened was beginning to weigh on him. “The full-strength serum.”

She nodded again. His eyes searched her face as if looking for something — or someone — he'd lost long ago.

Amy recoiled from the look on his face as if it were a blow, the confidence draining away as quickly as it'd appeared.
What have I done?

“I don't understand,” Jake said.

She looked at Dan, and his eyes filled with tears. He fell against her in a long, deep hug. She held him, never wanting to let go. Her little brother, safe in her arms.

Atticus stepped forward and put a small arm around each of them. “What, you guys? What is it?”

Dan just shook his head as if he couldn't speak.

“I took the Cahill serum,” Amy explained gravely. “That means I will be the strongest, smartest, most powerful person on earth. For one week.”

“And then?” Jake asked.

Dan started sobbing, soaking her T-shirt.

“And then,” she said slowly, the gravity of it finally sinking in, hitting her like a blow to the solar plexus, “I will die.”

Dan held on to Amy the whole way back to the hotel. He couldn't bring himself to let go. Tears streamed down his face and he couldn't make them stop.

His heart was breaking. He didn't even care how it looked, a thirteen-year-old boy with his arm around his sister's waist, sobbing uncontrollably. Nothing mattered now.

Amy had taken the serum to save him. And now she was going to die.

Maybe dying would have been better than this, the heavy guilt weighing on his heart like a lead blanket. It was his fault that the serum existed at all. His fault that Amy had been secretly carrying it around for safekeeping. His fault that she'd taken it . . .

His fault that she would soon die.

He could feel how the serum had changed her while they walked. Jake and Atticus stumbled down the path like zombies, numb with shock. But Dan could feel Amy holding herself back to keep from running ahead of him. Her skin seemed to hum with energy and power.

He couldn't hold on to her forever. He let her go.

She immediately sprang ahead, almost involuntarily. She hopped up onto a stone fence in one easy leap, then double-back-flipped off.

She turned back to Dan with a sad, apologetic smile. “I've always wanted to do that.”

Jake and Atticus watched her blankly, as if they couldn't quite comprehend what was happening. The Amy they knew was no gymnast — especially not at a time like this.

It doesn't seem real to her
, Dan thought.
She's feeling the power, the strength . . . but not the poison.

It didn't quite seem real to him, either.

Back at the hotel, Amy bounced around the room, trying to contain her energy. It might've been comforting — someone that full of life couldn't possibly be
dying
. But Dan could see the emotions playing over her face, bouncing around, too. One minute she looked giddy with power, the next overwhelmed by panic.