A door down the hall leads to a surveillance room. He walks up to a light switch near the front door and flicks the switch while leaning down and placing his face close to it. A faint blue light scrolls over his eyes and the computers come to life. Retinal scan. Cool, very cool. Clearly, Sandor was able to set up a high-tech security system. There are a dozen computers and even more monitors. We’re tapped into every camera in the John Hancock Center, all one hundred floors of it, plus what seems to be every camera around the city that’s controlled by the Chicago Police Department. Nine touches something on a keyboard and the largest screen in the room comes to life, showing a photo of a muscular man in a black Italian suit, its beautiful cloth and perfect cut apparent even in the grainy picture. He has black hair and a thick beard, and he’s holding two laptops. I look at Nine, wondering why he’s showing me this.
‘That’s Sandor,’ Nine says after a minute. His voice is different. I hear less bravado. He turns to me. I hear vulnerability. ‘Come on. You have a decision to make, an important one.’ He pauses for dramatic effect. ‘Which room will you choose to stay in? There are a few of them to check out. Take your time. The pizzas won’t take long.’
15
Crayton steps between Marina and Ella to get a closer view of the lines carved into the mountainside. He presses his palm in the center of the outlined door, then pulls his hand away. ‘That’s interesting. It’s warm. And what, exactly, do you mean when you say it’s a door to the far corners of the Earth?’
‘Here’s the deal,’ Eight explains. ‘At best, I can teleport two hundred feet. Maybe two-fifty. And the farther I go, the worse my accuracy is. One time I was aiming for a treetop a couple of hundred feet away and I landed in between a mountain lion and her cubs. That got ugly, fast. This teleporting Legacy is truly brilliant and has been incredibly useful so many times, but it’s not as easy as it looks. From inside this cave, though, I can teleport around the world.’
I place my hands on the mountainside and I can feel the warmth move through me. ‘How?’
Eight moves out of the way so Ella and Marina can touch the door. ‘My best guess is that this is an ancient Loric cave, or maybe one of the Loric headquarters, and I was just lucky enough to find it, and I was even luckier to figure out what I could do here. Whatever it was, I am definitely not the first Loric to visit this place.’
His words are barely out of his mouth when I feel a surge of adrenaline and fear shoot through me. I know Crayton has the same thoughts when he whips his head back to look in the direction we came from, and then over at me. I do what he’s about to ask, and move quickly down the passage, listening for movement. If this is an ancient Loric cave it would’ve been under surveillance by the Mogadorians. There could be soldiers waiting for us, or devices set to alert them about our arrival.
I turn to Eight. ‘Are you out of your mind? Have you completely lost it? Actually, maybe we’re the ones who’ve lost our minds. We’re the idiots who blindly followed you to a known Loric hideout! This place could be crawling with traps!’ As what I’ve just said sinks in, Marina and Ella move closer to us.
‘Hey, hey! Look, I’m sorry,’ Eight says, dropping his Chest. ‘I’ve been here so many times without anything happening that I didn’t think there was any risk.’
‘Let’s not waste time apologizing or criticizing,’ Marina says, stepping forward. ‘Just show us how to open it up, so we can get to the rest of the world. Or, at least, someplace else!’
Crayton nods, still glancing around suspiciously. ‘Yes. Let’s get in there, where we’re less vulnerable.’
Eight pulls his pendant over his head. He reaches up to the blue triangle. ‘Wait till you see what’s next,’ he says, smiling. Then he holds his pendant to the blue triangle.
Nothing happens at first, but after a tense moment the carved lines begin to deepen and spread towards each other. Eight lets the pendant drop down to his chest. Dust shoots into the passage and we move back a few feet. When all the lines touch and there is a perfect outline of a door, the right edge separates from the face of the cavern, and swings open. A blast of warm air hits us, and we all stand still, mesmerized by a blue glow coming from inside.
The energy I feel coursing through me is overwhelming and I become completely and utterly calm. ‘What’s the blue light?’ I finally ask.
‘That’s what makes me able to teleport around the world,’ Eight responds, as if this were the simplest concept to grasp.
Ella walks towards the opening. ‘I feel weird inside.’
Marina says, ‘Me too.’
With a smile, Eight ducks through the doorway; Crayton and Ella are quick to follow. I bring up the rear. As we climb up another staircase Eight talks.
‘A couple of years ago, as my Legacies grew, I started having these very vivid dreams, like the ones I’m having now with Setrákus and Four. I learned more about Lorien, and about the Elders. Learned about our history here on Earth, how we helped the Egyptians build the pyramids, how the Greek gods were actually Loric, how we taught the Romans military strategy, and so on. In one of the dreams, there was all this stuff about moving around on earth, and how the Loric used to do it. This mountain was in my dream. We’d already moved to India and I recognized it. After the dream, I came up here and started looking around. That’s when I found all of this.’
‘That’s amazing,’ says Marina.
The stairs end in another room. The ceiling is domed and several jagged columns hold it up. I realize we’re inside the peak of the mountain. The room is empty except at its very center, where an intricate set of rocks form a whirlpool-like pattern, radiating out from one central blue stone that’s the size of a basketball.
‘Loralite,’ Crayton whispers. He walks towards the center of the cave and sets Marina’s Chest down. ‘That is the biggest Loralite stone I have ever seen.’
‘Is the Loralite the reason you can go anywhere you want?’ Marina asks, turning to Eight.
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Eight sighs. ‘I can’t go anywhere I want. More like six or seven far-off places. It took a lot of messing around and landing in places I didn’t mean to before I figured out I can only teleport where there’s another one of these big Loralite rocks around.’
‘So where can we go?’ I ask.
‘Well, so far I’ve gone to Peru, to Easter Island, to Stonehenge, the Gulf of Aden near Somalia – but I really don’t recommend that one for a lot of reasons – and I’ve ended up in the desert in New Mexico.’
‘New Mexico,’ I say immediately, turning to Crayton. ‘If we go there we could be across the country and with John in less than a day. We know we can move around easily once we are in the U.S.’
Crayton walks over to the wall, looking around at some markings on it. ‘Wait. You’re saying you can’t control where you go? That’s not as promising as I had hoped.’
‘No, but if we end up somewhere besides New Mexico – if that’s where we want to go – we just teleport again until we get there. It’s not so bad,’ Eight says.
‘And do you know if you can take all of us with you?’ I ask. ‘If it’s anything like my Legacy of invisibility, we may have a problem. I can only turn other people invisible if they’re holding my hands.’
‘I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve never tried to bring anyone else,’ Eight admits.
‘Maybe you can take two trips,’ Marina suggests.
‘These drawings are amazing,’ Crayton interrupts, motioning us over to the cave walls. ‘Maybe there are some clues for us here.’