Lost in Babylon

“Excuse me?” The man turned slowly, his eyes narrowing.

I quickly stepped in front of him. “I’m a friend of Marco’s,” I said. “And I was wondering—”

“Then how come I don’t recognize you?” Mr. Ramsay asked suspiciously.

“From … travel soccer,” I said, reciting the line we had prepared for just this occasion. “Please. I’m just concerned, that’s all. This is my uncle, Thomas. And two other soccer players, Cindy and Dave. We heard a rumor that Marco might be in the area. We wondered if he came home.”

“The last time we saw him, he was at Lemuel General after collapsing during a basketball game,” Mr. Ramsay said. “Then … gone without a trace. Like he ran away from everything. Since then we’ve heard nothing but rumors. If we believed them all, he’s been in New York, Ashtabula, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila, and Ponca City. Look!” He grabbed a basket of snapshots off a nearby table and thrust it toward me.

“I—I don’t understand,” I said, sifting through pixelated, blurry shots of jockish-looking teens who were definitely not Marco. “Why would people lie about seeing him?”

“People want the reward,” Mr. Ramsay replied wearily. “One hundred thousand bucks for information leading to Marco’s return. It’s supposed to help. Instead, we’re just bombarded by emails, letters, visitors. All junk. So take my advice, kid, don’t trust rumors.”

As Marco’s dad took the basket back and returned it to the table, two people emerged from inside the house—a trim, red-haired woman and a girl in sweats. The woman’s slate-blue eyes were full of fear. The girl looked angry. They were both focused on Torquin. “I’m … Marco’s mother,” the woman said. “And this is his sister. What’s going on? If this is another scam, I’m calling the police.”

“They’re just kids, Emily,” Marco’s dad said reassuringly. “You guys have to understand what we’re going through. Today it was a repair guy. Flashed some kind of ID card, said he was going to inspect the boiler. Instead he snooped through our house.”

“Bloggers, crime buffs,” Mrs. Ramsay said. “It’s like a game to them. Who can find the most dirt, post the most photos. They have no idea what it is … to lose …” Her voice cracked, and both her husband and daughter put arms around her shoulders.

Torquin’s phone chirped, and he backed away down the stoop. Aly and Cass instinctively followed. Which left me with the three Ramsays, huddled together in the semidarkness of their living room.

The feeling was too familiar. After my mom died, Dad and I hardly ever left each other’s sides, but each of us was alone, locked in misery. Our faces must have looked a lot like the Ramsays’.

I was dying to tell them what had really happened to Marco, the whole story of the Karai Institute. Of their son’s incredible heroism saving our lives, of the fact that he could swoosh a shot now from clear across a campus lawn.

But I also knew what it was like to lose a family member. And if Cass was right, if Marco’s tracker silence meant he was dead, I couldn’t get their hopes up.

“We … we’ll keep looking,” I said lamely.

As I began backing away, I felt Torquin’s beefy hand on my shoulder, pulling me down the stairs. His face, which wasn’t easy to read, looked concerned. “Thank you!” he shouted. “Have to go!”

I stumbled after Torquin, Cass, and Aly. Soon we were all running down the street toward our rented car, top speed. I had never seen Torquin move so fast.

“What’s up?” Cass demanded.

“Got … message,” Torquin said, panting heavily as he pulled open the driver’s side door. “Marco found. Get in. Now.”

“Wait—they found him?” Aly blurted. “Where?”

Torquin handed the phone to her. Cass and I came up behind, looking over her shoulder as we walked:

TRACKER ACTIVE AGAIN. RAMSAY NOT IN OHIO.

STRONG SIGNAL FROM LATITUDE 32.5417º N,

LONGITUDE 44.4233º E

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“It can’t be …” Cass shook his head.

“Cass, just tell us!” Aly said.

“Marco,” Cass replied, “is in Iraq.”

“What?” I cried out.

But the other three were already at the car, climbing in.

Quickly, while they weren’t looking, I pulled out my note to Dad. And I tossed it down a storm drain.

(#ulink_372c0fb4-a1a0-53fa-9a5d-87490f671577)

were so loud, I thought they’d shake my brains out through my ears. “Are you sure you read the tracker right?” I shouted toward the front seats.

Professor Bhegad didn’t even turn around. He hadn’t heard a word.

We’d met him and Fiddle at the airport in Irb

l, Iraq. They’d flown separately from the Karai Institute when Marco’s signal was finally picked up. Now the whole gang—Bhegad, Torquin, Fiddle, Nirvana, Cass, Aly, and I—was crammed into the front seat of a chopper winging over the Syrian Desert. Our shadow crossed a vast expanse of sand, dotted by bushes and fretted by long black pipelines.

The cabin was stifling hot, and sweat coursed down my face. Cass, Aly, and I huddled together in the backseat. On the long flight from Ohio, we’d had plenty of time to talk. But the whole thing seemed even more confusing than ever. “I still can’t understand why he would come here!” I said. “If I were him, I’d go home. No-brainer. I mean, we all want to see our families again, right?”

I could practically feel Cass flinch. He had bounced from foster home to foster home; he didn’t have a family to go back to. Unless you counted his parents, who were in prison and hadn’t seen him since he was a baby. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that …” I said.

“It’s okay, Jack ‘Foot-in-Mouth’ McKinley,” Cass replied with a wan smile. “I know what you mean. Actually, I’m happy Marco is alive. I just was wondering the same thing you were—why Iraq? What’s there?”

Professor Bhegad slowly turned, adjusting the heavy glasses that slid down his sweating nose. “It’s not what is there, but what was there,” he said. “Iraq was the site of Ancient Babylon.”

Cass’s eyes widened. “Duh. The site of one of the Seven Wonders—the Hanging Gardens!”

“He decided to go on a rogue mission to find a Loculus all by himself?” Aly said. “Without my tech skills, or Cass’s human GPS? If I were Marco, I’d want to do this as a foursome! All of our lives are at stake. Going solo makes no sense. Even to an egotist like Marco.”

“Unless,” I said, “he isn’t trying to go solo.”

“What do you mean?” Cass asked.

“I mean, he may not know that his tracker is busted,” I said. “Maybe, when he left Rhodes, he figured we’d pick up the signal and follow him. Maybe he just wanted to force things, to speed the mission up.”

Aly raised an eyebrow. “How do we know he didn’t disable and re-enable it on purpose?”

“You’d have to be a genius to do that!” I said.

“I could do it,” Aly said.

“That’s my point!” I replied.

Aly folded her arms and stared out the window. Cass shrugged.