Lost in Babylon

“Um, Torquin?” Aly said. “Easy on the steering wheel, okay?”

“What is neelps?” Torquin asked.

“Spleen,” I explained. “You have to spell it backward.”

Luckily the Jeep reached the end of the winding jungle path and burst onto the tarmac of a small landing field. We were finally at our destination. Before us, gleaming on the pavement, was a sleek, retrofitted military stealth jet.

Torquin braked the Jeep to a squealing stop, doing a perfect one-eighty. Two people were inspecting the plane. One of them was a pony-tailed guy with half-glasses. The other was a girl with tats and black lip gloss, who looked a little like my last au pair, Vanessa, only deader. I vaguely remembered meeting both of these people in our cafeteria, the Comestibule.

“Elddif,” Cass said groggily. “Anavrin …”

The girl looked alarmed. “He’s lost the ability to speak English?”

“No, he’s speaking his favorite language,” Aly replied. “Backwardish. It’s a form of English. That’s how we know he’s feeling better.”

“Those two people …” Cass muttered. “Those are their names.”

I sounded out the words in my head, imagined their spelling, and then mentally rearranged the letters back to front. “I think he means Fiddle and Nirvana.”

“Ah.” Fiddle looked toward us with a tight smile. “I have been rushing this baby into service. Her name is Slippy, she’s my pride and joy, and she will hit Mach three if you push her.”

Nirvana drummed her long, black-painted nails on the jet’s wall. “A vessel that breaks the sound barrier deserves a great sound system. I loaded it up with mp3s.”

Fiddle pulled her hand away. “Please. It’s a new paint job.”

“Sorry, Picasso,” she replied. “Anyway, there’s some slasher rock … emo … techno … death metal. Hey, since you’re going back to the States, might as well play the tunes that remind you of home.”

Going back.

I tried to stop shaking. People back home would be looking for us 24/7—families, police, government. Home meant detection. Re-capture. Not returning to the island. Not having treatments. Not having time to collect the cure. Death.

But without Marco’s Loculus, we were toast.

Death. Toast. The story of our lives.

But with no signal from Marco, what else could we do? Searching for him at his home just seemed like the best guess.

As we stepped out of the Jeep, Torquin let loose a burp that made the ground rumble.

“Four point five on the Richter scale,” said Nirvana. “Impressive.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, guys?” Fiddle asked.

“Have to,” Torquin said. “Orders from Professor Bhegad.”

“Wh-why do you ask?” Cass said to Fiddle.

He shrugged. “You guys each have a tracker surgically implanted inside you, right?”

Cass looked at him warily. “Right. But Marco’s is busted.”

“I helped design the tracker,” Fiddle said. “It’s state of the art. Unbustable. Doesn’t it seem weird to you that his stopped working—just coincidentally, after he disappeared?”

“What are you implying?” I asked.

Aly stepped toward him. “There’s no such thing as unbustable. You guys designed a faulty machine.”

“Prove it,” Fiddle said.

“Did you know the tracker signal is vulnerable to trace radiation from four elements?” Aly asked.

Fiddle scoffed. “Such as?”

“Iridium, for one,” Aly said. “Stops the transmissions cold.”

“So what?” Fiddle says. “Do you know how rare iridium is?”

“I can pinpoint more flaws,” Aly said. “Admit it. You messed up.”

Nirvana pumped a pale fist in the air. “You go, girl.”

Fiddle dusted a clod of dirt off the stepladder. “Have fun in Ohio,” he said. “But don’t expect me at your funeral.”

(#ulink_c478fad3-5129-57b4-86fb-ac12b9f3925d)

dog on fire and wipe the floor with rags made of the memories of everything I ever did with yooooouu …!”

As Nirvana’s mix blared over the speaker, Torquin’s lips curled into a shape resembling an upside-down horseshoe. “Not music. Noise.”

Actually, I kind of liked it. Okay, I left out some of the choice words in the quote above, but still. It was funny in a messed-up way. The tune was taking my mind off the fact that I was a gazillion feet over the Atlantic, the plane’s speed was pushing me back into my seat, and my stomach was about to explode out my mouth.

I looked at Aly. Her skin was flattening back over her cheekbones as if it were being kneaded by fingers. I couldn’t help cracking up.

Aly’s eyes shone with panic. “What’s so funny?”

“You look about ninety-five years old,” I replied.

“You sound about five,” she said. “After this is over, remind me to teach you some social skills.”

Glurp.

I turned away, awash in dorkitude. Maybe that was my great G7W talent, the superhuman ability to always say the wrong thing. Especially around Aly. Maybe it’s because she’s so confident. Maybe it’s because I’m the only Select who has no reason to have been Selected.

Jack “The Mistake” McKinley.

Fight it, dude. I turned to the window, where a cluster of buildings was racing by below us. It was kind of a shock to see Manhattan go by so fast. A minute later the sight was replaced by the checkerboard farmland of what must have been Pennsylvania.

As we plunged into thick clouds, I closed my eyes. I tried to think positively. We would find Marco. He would thank us for coming, apologize, and hop on the plane.