clipping Aly on the jaw. “Do what?”
“That!” Aly cried out in surprise, falling backward.
Cass turned away, retching a glob of wet sand. “Ewww, that needed a little purys elpam.”
Holding her jaw with one hand, Aly managed a huge smile. “I will buy you a gallon of it when this is all over.”
As two KI operatives approached with a stretcher, Cass’s eyes were trained on the Massa headquarters. The entrance shack was a pile of twisted metal.
Another muffled explosion shook the earth. The structure groaned loudly, tilted, and vanished into a widening black hole.
Cass sprang to his feet. We ran for our cars, leaving the stretcher empty on the ground.
* * *
“Corrupt … gibberish … broken …” Aly muttered. She was in the copilot seat of Slippy, the KI retrofitted stealth jet, her fingers flying across the keyboard of the tablet that was built into the arm of her seat. Torquin was our pilot, and for once he wasn’t making the plane do barrel rolls. He just focused on flying us back to the KI while Aly tried to get some usable information off Cass’s flash drive.
My eyes were fixed on the sea below. The water was silvery and bright on a cloudless day. I don’t know what I was looking for, maybe a big ship with a Massa flag blowing in the wind. I was kind of rattled, obsessed with only two thoughts:
We’d gone to find Mom.
We’d walked into a trap.
No warning about the evacuation. No hint about the time bomb. What if I hadn’t noticed the readout? What if we hadn’t gotten that far into the headquarters? What if we’d been a few seconds late? Did Mom know we would be going back?
How could she have let that happen?
Aly massaged her forehead, sitting back from the tablet. “If only we’d gotten there a few minutes earlier. Those jerks managed to overwrite just about everything. Maybe I can take apart the remaining data packets, but I’ll need better equipment.”
“You can do it,” I murmured. “You’re Aly.”
Aly sighed, turning away from the tablet. “How’s Cass?”
I turned toward the back of the compartment. Cass was lying against the bulkhead just behind my seat, on a narrow platform covered with layers of foam and blankets. He’d been asleep most of the way. Now he was blinking his eyes and grimacing. “What’s that smell?”
“No smell,” Torquin said. His face turned a slightly deeper shade of its natural red, and he held his arms superclose to his sides.
“Thank you for choosing KI Air,” Aly said. “Each seat is equipped with an oxygen mask for use in case of toxic Torquin armpit or fart odor.”
“Oow!” Cass groaned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It hurts to laugh,” Cass said. “Where the heck are we? And don’t say anything funny.”
“We’re over the Atlantic,” I said. “You survived an explosion with some cuts and maybe a mild concussion. We left mainland ops and now we’re headed back to the KI.”
“Mainland who?” Cass said.
“The KI has mobile operatives all over the Mediterranean,” Aly said. “Their job is to stay there and provide backup when necessary. Torquin has been telling us about them. See all the news you miss when you’re asleep?”
“Where were the mainland ops when we needed them in Rhodes and Iraq?” Cass asked.
“We were incognito in Greece, and they had no clue where we were,” I said. “But you did see some of them in Iraq. Remember those teams that took those shifts along the Euphrates?”
Aly swiveled in her seat and reached out to touch Cass’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was just run over by a knat,” Cass replied.
“Knat?” Torquin grunted.
“Backwardish for tank,” Aly said. “Which means he’s feeling better.”
“I’d feel even better with some ice cream,” Cass went on. “Actually, any food.”
Torquin held up a greasy paper bag. “Iguana jerky. Cajun spice flavor.”
Cass groaned. “Any food except that.”
I saw a distant, shining, metallic cigar shape on the water below. A tanker, maybe, or cruise ship. It glinted in the sun, sending up sparks of light. For a moment I thought someone was trying to send us Morse code. Rubbing my eyes, I looked away. I needed to get some rest.
“I can’t figure it out,” Aly said. “How did the Massa escape? Where did they go?”
“And why didn’t my mom tell us we were heading into a trap?” I added. “She could have sent a message to her own phone. She knows I have it.”
“But she’s one of them!” Aly said. “Her mind has been turned.”
I glared at her. “I’m her son, Aly! Parents care about their kids. It’s … it’s just built in.”
“Well …” Cass muttered.
We glanced back to where he was lying.
Cass, who hadn’t seen his parents in years. Because they were in jail. Because they had abandoned him to a life of orphanages and foster parents.
I took a deep breath. “Hey, I—I’m sorry.”
But Cass’s eyes were wide with fright. The plane had begun to shake. We dropped like a roller coaster. My seat belt cut into my gut and I gripped my handrests.
Aly let out a gasp. “Does this mean we’re getting close?”
Torquin nodded. “Entering KI territory.”
“You’re doing that on purpose!” Cass said.
“Magnetic forces,” Torquin said with a shrug.
“Something extremely gross will fly out of my stomach and magnetize to the back of your neck if you don’t fly better,” Cass replied.
I saw Mount Onyx first, rising like a black fist from the water. In a moment we saw home—our new home, an island undetectable by even the most sophisticated instruments.
“What the …?” Aly said.
My eyes locked on the location of the Karai Institute campus, where I expected to see the lush green quadrangle, surrounded by brick buildings.
In its place was a giant plume of black smoke.
