shone my light into the room. Tables lined all four walls, with another long table stretching across the middle of the room. Cables lay strewn about like dead eels, chairs were upended, and trash littered the floor. No computers, no files, nothing.
“Looks like there was more hurrying than worrying,” I said.
“It’s impossible,” Aly said, shaking her head numbly. “There were hundreds of people here. It was like a city.”
Her voice echoed dully in the silent hallway. The Massa were totally gone.
A TRICK.
It had to be.
No one cleared out of a space this large in such a short time, for no apparent reason. They were up to something, I knew it. “Be careful, guys,” I said, ducking back into the hallway.
“Should we contact Torquin?” Aly asked.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
If the Massa were luring us in, Mom knew about it. And Mom would make it all work out. Despite everything, I had to believe that.
As we tiptoed deeper in, the burning stench became stronger, more acrid, until we emerged into a familiar-looking corridor. This one was wider and brighter than the entrance hallway. Like much of the HQ, it had been built in modern times, for a modern organization.
“We took this route when we escaped,” Cass said, peering around. “Remember? We went toward an exit to the right. That was where we found the Loculi. To the left was the huge control room …”
His voice trailed off as he looked left. The hallway was lit by a dull yellow-orange glow. We stuck close to the wall. I checked my watch—seven minutes since we’d left Torquin. He would be coming after us soon.
We rounded a bend and stopped short. The main control room’s thick metal door was hanging open. Days ago, the place had been a hive of activity, Massa workers at desktop consoles and laptops, in consultations, shouting to one another across a vast circular space. An enormous digital message board hung from the domed ceiling, dominating the area.
Now the board was in pieces on the floor, engulfed in flames. Shattered glass lay everywhere, and tables had been reduced to splinters.
“It’s like they … vaporized,” Cass said.
Aly ran to a keyboard of a computer console near the wall. She upended a fallen chair and sat at the desk. “This one’s working!” she exclaimed, her fingers dancing on the keys. “Oh, great. It’s being wiped clean right now. Military-grade overwrite, every byte replaced with zeroes. They must have started this a few hours ago. I may be able to recover some data. I need a flash drive!”
Cass began rummaging in his backpack. I looked around for surveillance cameras. “Mom!” I cried out, my voice echoing in the cavernous dome. As Cass pulled a flash drive from his pack and gave it to Aly, I ran to the other side of the room, looking for clues. I peered through the doorway at the opposite end, which led to yet another empty corridor.
Numbly, I stepped in. A dim blue light pierced the hallway’s blackness. It was shining from a room to my right. I walked closer, focusing my flashlight on the open door.
Its panel said SECURITY. I could hear a soft but insistent beep inside.
Slowly I walked in.
“Faisal?” came Cass’s voice from behind me.
I jumped. “We don’t need the disguises,” I said. “She’s not here.”
“Who’s not?” Cass asked.
“Mom. None of them. They’re not anywhere near.”
My eyes focused on a flickering light shining from the wall to my left—a rectangular pane of glass with bright blue letters, flashing to the rhythm of the beep.
Beep.
FAILSAFE MODE: 00:00:17 …
Beep.
FAILSAFE MODE: 00:00:16 …
I snapped to and grabbed Cass’s arm. “Out—now! The whole place is going to blow!”
Aly was already in the hallway. I pushed her back the way we’d come. Together we sprinted up the hallway toward the exit. At the base of the stairs we ran into Torquin, which was like running into a small building. “Turn around and go!” I shouted. “Now!”
Torquin’s face went taut. He scampered up the steps and out the door with the speed of someone one-third his weight.
I felt the floor shake. I smelled sulfur.
The boom shook the walls, its blast hitting me square in the back.
“PKKAAAACCCH!” I COUGHED and spat as my eyes teared up from the dust.
I was outside, on the ground. Alive. My back rested against Torquin’s rented car, which meant I was about thirty feet from the Massa entrance.
I opened my mouth to call out, but instead I sucked in another lungful of sandy dirt. Spitting, I struggled to my feet. Everything hurt. My pants had been torn at the ankle. “Cass!” I finally called out. “Aly!”
“Torquin,” a familiar voice rumbled behind me. “Forgot Torquin.”
The big guy’s silhouette came out of the cloud, coated brown gray from head to toe, as if he’d been created from the dirt itself. With his right hand, he dragged Cass by the scruff of his neck. Cass’s face was blackened, his limbs slack. His floppy hat and glasses were gone.
“What happened?” I slumped toward them as fast as my scraped-up legs could take me.
In a moment, Aly was beside me, holding a grimy pair of glasses. “I found these. Is he …?”
“Chest moving,” Torquin said, setting him on the ground. “Need to find help.”
Aly and I dropped to our knees beside Cass. “Please, please, please, be okay …” I whispered, slapping his face gently. “Hey, Cass, come on. Don’t forget to be emosewa.”
“This can’t be happening …” Aly said, yanking a canteen from her pack and spilling some water on Cass’s face.
No reaction.
A team of KI soldiers surrounded us now. “We’ve got EMTs coming,” one of the KI men
