The Colossus Rises. Peter Lerangis

       CHAPTER TEN

      SECRET MESSAGE

      MARCO HADN’T SAID a word. Hadn’t even looked at me.

      What was I doing with the card key? I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be caught with it. Was this Marco’s plan—to get me in trouble? Why?

      I tried to look at him, to get some sort of indication. He was sitting across a crowded table from me, stuffing food into his mouth and carrying on a conversation with some young female staff member whose name tag said Ginger.

      The banquet table was enormous, running the length of a vast octagonal room. Chairs were packed close together, and it seemed like the entire Karai Institute was here—fat old men with ZZ Top beards, hipsters in narrow glasses, all kinds of people. Many sported intertwining-snake KI tattoos on their arms. They all seemed to know each other well, their laughter and conversation hovering like a cloud of sound.

      The place was called the Comestibule. Professor Bhegad said it meant “cafeteria,” and he didn’t answer me when I asked why they didn’t call it a cafeteria. Its walls, paneled with blond wood, rose dizzyingly upward to a kind of steeple. All around us were portraits of stern-faced scientists, who seemed to be staring at me like I owed them money.

      A great chandelier, made of curled glass tubes that resembled Medusa’s head of snakes, flooded the room with LED light. Across the rafters hung a banner that stretched nearly the length of the room:

      WELCOME TO YOUR KARAI INSTITUTE HOME, JACK!

      Professor Bhegad had made a big deal about the chef preparing quail for dinner. The thought of it made me sick.

      Cass leaned over to me and mumbled a long stream of words that made absolutely no sense. “Dude, stop it,” I said. “I can’t do that backward-speaking thing.”

      As Cass stared at me, looking annoyed, Marco’s voice boomed out toward a passing waitress. “Excuse me, you got any more food? There isn’t much meat on these things.”

      “If you eat one more quail, sir, you’ll fly away,” the girl answered.

      “Take mine,” I said.

      Marco reached across and vacuumed my plate away.

      I kept expecting people to ask me about my Big Talent, but no one did. Fortunately, they all seemed pretty normal. Friendly.

      A clinking sound rang out, and Professor Bhegad was on his feet. “Ladies and gentlemen and Scholars of Karai! Our Comestibule is a place of great joy today. We have saved a young life and we continue our adventure with renewed strength and hope. Tonight and over the next few weeks you will all have a chance to meet our newest young genius, Jack McKinley!”

      “Speech! Speech!” Marco yelled through the applause.

      My heart was ping-ponging. I still couldn’t get used to this. Weeks? Here?

      I felt an elbow in my side. “Hey, wake up, dude,” Aly muttered. “You’re getting a standing O.”

      All around the table, people were rising to their feet and applauding. Staring directly at me. All except Cass, who was doodling on a napkin.

      “Stand up!” Aly said.

      My chair was heavy and hard to push back. I felt like a dorkus maximus. I waved awkwardly and sat again.

      “That was inspiring,” Marco said, his mouth full of quail.

      As I sat, I noticed a paper napkin and a pen lying on my chair. “Is this yours?” I asked Cass.

      His eyes widened. He glanced up at the Medusa chandelier. I looked into the crazy swirl of glass tendrils, but I couldn’t tell what he was acting so weird about.

      Not weird. Scared, maybe. His face was tense and his fingers had the tremors.

      I flipped the napkin over and saw a scribbled note. A bunch of numbers.

      “The banner is cool!” Cass blurted out. “‘Welcome to your Karai Institute home, Jack!’ Man, I never had something this fancy. I’d remember those words forever. Wow. ‘Welcome to your Karai Institute home, Jack!’”

      He was trying to tell me something. I glanced at the note and figured I needed to read it in private. “I—I think I’ll wash my hands,” I said, pushing my chair back.

      The men’s room was outside the dining room, across a small hallway with a view of the kitchen. I bolted inside, ran into an open stall, and latched it shut. Carefully I spread the napkin on the wall and looked at the message.

      They looked like Lotto numbers. What did they mean? Could it be some kind of code? Maybe an alphabet-number substitution thing. Like A = 1 and B = 2.

      Nope. Didn’t work. Some of the numbers were greater than twenty-six, and there were only twenty-six letters in the alphabet.

      I sat back with a sigh. What was it Cass had been telling me? The banner is cool…I’d remember those words forever. He’d read it aloud. Twice.

      Weird.

      I wrote the banner’s message across the top of the napkin: WELCOME TO YOUR KARAI INSTITUTE HOME, JACK.

      Staring at it, I wondered if he meant it was connected to the code. I started numbering each of the letters in the banner message.

      The first number on Cass’s coded message was 6. That mapped to the M in the banner message.

      I went one by one with each of his digits: 6, 27, 2, 8, 23, 20, 30, 15, 13, 4, 11, 21, 13, 5, 11, 30, 8, 28, 16, 2, 31, 15, 6, 1, 7, 13, 25, 20, 15, 1, 17, 10.

      MEETINMARCOS

      ROOMTHREE

      AMWERUNAWAY.

      Meet in Marco’s room. Three A.M. we run away.

      I took a deep breath. Then I ripped up the napkin and flushed it into oblivion.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      THREE A.M.

      AS MY BEDROOM door clicked open, I snapped awake. I didn’t know what time it was. My brain had been dipping in and out of sleep for hours. The night had spooked me. I didn’t trust the smiling, squeaky-clean faces at dinner. Or Professor Bhegad.

      “It’s Marco,” came a whisper. “Time to get up.”

      The little glowing clock on my bed table read 2:56. My foggy brain was awakening. Three A.M. we run away.

      “You’re early,” I mumbled.

      Marco stepped inside. His backpack was slung across his shoulder. “Just wanted to be sure you got up. I’m kind of a control freak. But you probably figured that out. Come on before it’s too late. Aly disabled the bugs.”

      I turned to face him. “The what?”

      Marco gestured toward the banner with the KI symbol. “Wake up and smell the coffee, Jethro. They’ve got a recording device in that banner. And in a few other places, too. Just sound, out of respect for privacy, I guess. The cameras are on the outside of the building. Now come on. Don’t make me carry you out of here.”

      I was on my feet. I hadn’t changed out of my clothes