Unstoppable: Breakaway Part 7

"I guess that's what other people don't get. That people who are gone aren't really gone."

"No," Ian said. "They never are."

A lump grew in Amy's throat.

"Yo, Ian!"

Amy could hear a scuffle for the phone.

"Jonah! Unhand me!"

"Go get me a spot of tea, old man," Jonah said in his best Ian impression. "Gotta holler at the boss a minute."

Amy heard Ian harrumph and then Jonah's swaggering voice filled her ear.

"Yo! Amy K-to-the-Hill."

"Hi, Jonah," Amy said. "How are things there?"

"Never mind that. This is wisdom-dropping time. What those two said on TV was cold."

"I really don't want to -"

"I know. I know. I'm not here to discuss your feelings. I'm here to make a knowledge deposit."

"Oh, yeah, and what's that?"

"All those people crowding around you with cameras and little notebooks? Those reporters." Jonah said the word with obvious disgust. "They are nothing but dogs looking for a bone to chew on."

"Well, unfortunately that bone is us."

"Yeah, but it doesn't have to be. See, all a dog wants is something between its teeth. It doesn't care what it is. Reporters are the same way. All they're trying to do is make a buck by keeping a lot of bored people entertained."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that if you want a dog to drop one bone, all you gotta do is give him a new one."

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

"When I want to get reporters off my back, I call in an anonymous tip that Justin Bieber is getting a crew cut on the other side of town."

"Somehow I don't think they're going to buy that over here."

"I don't know, Cahill, that little dude gets around."

Amy surprised herself by laughing. "All right. Thanks, Jonah. I'll see what I can do."

"Hard-won knowledge, Amy. Hard. Won."

Amy said good-bye to Jonah and then stared at the door. She couldn't hide in here forever. Amy got dressed, then stood with her hand on the doork.n.o.b listening to the quiet shuffle of Dan and Atticus and Jake on the other side. Her stomach did flips as she remembered the sound of her voice as she barked orders at them.

You did what you had to do, Amy told herself. What you should have done long ago.

Amy caught her breath and forced herself through the door. No one said a word, but every head in the room turned as Amy stepped through the door. Jake was down on one knee by the bed, stuffing clothes into a gym bag. Dan sat by the window, watching her with a kind of guarded interest. The way you'd look at a stranger before you've decided if they're friend or foe.

"I didn't call the plane," he announced. "We don't have the right to tell Jake and Atticus to go."

"But don't worry, Your Leaderhood," Jake said. "We're leaving. Atticus and I will stay at Dad's place while we keep looking for him. You and Dan can find the silphium. When something comes in from Pierce on Dad, Dan will forward it to me."

All Amy could do was nod. This was what she wanted, wasn't it? She caught a glimmer of gla.s.s on the rug by the TV, and the buzz of nerves in her stomach swelled.

"I've been going over Olivia's journal," Atticus said. He sat by the door, Olivia's notebook in front of him, his own bag at his feet. He turned the notebook around and showed it to her. He pointed at a shiny smudge at the top corner of one page.

"You remember we were eating lunch? Well, that's the last grease smudge from his thumb, so this is where Dad stopped right before he ran out. I thought maybe he saw something about the silphium but . . ."

Amy studied a jumble of what looked like names. Critias. Timaeus. Hermocrates. At the bottom there was a single sentence. The twentieth Hafsid claims to keep the testament of the failed strategoi.

"What does it all mean?"

"Well, the sentence is gibberish to me," Atticus said. "But the first three are names."

"Who are they?"

"n.o.body," he said. "Like literally n.o.body. They're characters Plato used in his dialogues."

"Dialogues?" Dan said. "This guy was a playwright?"

"No, Plato was a cla.s.sical Greek philosopher around the fourth century B.C. The dialogues were a literary form he used. Instead of him writing a book explaining his ideas, he'd create characters and have them discuss stuff. These three were the main speakers in a projected trilogy of dialogues."

"Projected?"

"Plato completed the first one, called Timaeus. The second one, Critias, was half done. Hermocrates was supposed to be the third, but he never wrote it."

"Makes sense," Dan said. "Sequels are never as good as the original."

Amy couldn't help but smile. She looked back at Dan, but he turned away as soon as their eyes met.

"So why'd your dad get so freaked by it?"

"No idea," Atticus said. "And I don't see any connection to silphium, either. Plato's dialogues never mention it, and they never even talk about Carthage."

Jake grabbed his bag and turned to Atticus. "Come on, bro. We should get moving."

Atticus handed the notebook over to Amy and then slung his bag over his shoulder. "Good luck," he said. "See ya, Dan."

"Yeah," Dan said, fighting back the emotion Amy could hear in his voice. "See ya, Att."

It's for the best, Amy thought. One day they'll understand.

Jake and Atticus started to go, but before they could leave, there was a crisp knock on the door.

"Excuse me, please," came a harried man's voice from the other side of the door. "This is the hotel manager. I am most embarra.s.sed but we have just been informed of a small fire on the top floors of the building. We must ask that all residents evacuate immediately."

"A fire?" Dan said.

Jake quickly backtracked to the window. "Guys," he said. "Look."

"Just a moment!" Amy said to the manager, and crossed the room.

Jake pulled aside the curtain and nodded out into the dark. "I'm not from around here," he said. "But those sure don't look like fire trucks to me."

Several nondescript cars and a large minivan loitered below. All were black and seemed to have more than the usual amount of antennas and lights. Bulky men in suits stood around smoking cigarettes and keeping a sharp eye all around.

"If there's one thing I've learned in the last year," Jake said, "it's that no matter where you go, cops pretty much look the same."

"That's all for us?" Dan asked.

"We're the Cahill kids," Amy said. "International criminals."

"Stealing that boat probably didn't help," Jake said.

Dan looked at Amy. "You guys stole a boat?"

"It's not just cops, either," Amy said.

She pointed to another cl.u.s.ter of men. They were mixing with the Tunisian police but they were Westerners, broad shouldered and lean with crisp military haircuts. Official-looking badges hung around their necks, but Amy knew they weren't the Feds.

"Pierce's men?" Dan asked.

Amy nodded. "Probably pretending to be FBI or US Marshals."

"Excuse me!" the manager called again, his accented voice slurring with panic. "Miss! It is most important that you come down to the lobby immediately. This fire, it is very dangerous!"

"What do we do?" Atticus asked.

He looked to Amy and something locked up inside of her. "Maybe . . . maybe we go with him. Once we're out we slip away, go out the back . . ."

"The other hotel exits will be covered by now," Jake said. "Besides, he's probably got cops standing right next to him. Atticus, block the door and get our things!"

Atticus stuck a chair under the door handle and grabbed their backpacks. Jake hit the light switch and the hotel room went dark.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked.

"Dan, give me a hand!"

Jake pulled the window shades open and then Dan rushed over to help. The window was heavy, but with a giant yank, it flew open and a hot gust of wind blew into the room. There was a thin concrete shelf just below the window that encircled the building.

"Miss, please!" the manager pleaded. "The fire, it is quite big now!"

There was a click as the manager unlocked the door, and then a thump as he tried to open it. Jake grabbed the windowsill and climbed up onto the ledge.

"Jake, wait!" Amy said. "We can't!"

But Dan was already following him out, with Atticus close behind. A wall-shaking boom came from behind her as someone began trying to break the door down. There was no other choice. Amy leaped up onto the windowsill and out into the night.

Pony was deep in the jungle and there were tigers everywhere.

He could feel their eyes on him at every turn, crouching at the edge of firewalls and lurking, ravenous, within system registries. Pony had no doubt that he was one of the very best, but Founders Media had withstood years of attacks from everyone from Anonymous to Mafiaboy and possibly to April May herself. It wouldn't give up its secrets without a b.l.o.o.d.y fight, hence the tigers - sentries made of code ready to pounce if he made one wrong move.

As soon as Pony had seen the last news story from Founders Media, he knew he had to try something. He started by reaching into relatively unprotected file servers and deleting articles and photo and video files. They always came back, though, sometimes within minutes.

His newest gambit was to delve deep within Founders Media's internal servers. He wasn't quite sure what the endgame was - maybe to find info to implicate Pierce in the attacks against Amy and Dan. Maybe do deep and serious damage to his network. First, Pony needed to get in. And that was proving much harder than he'd thought.

Pony pushed the keyboard away. His head was pounding. His eyeb.a.l.l.s ached. There was only one cure for what ailed him. Pony left his station in the command center and walked back to the kitchen in a post-hacking haze. Around him, Hamilton, Ian, and Jonah were bent over books and computers of their own, poking at a hundred different mysteries.

"Hey, Pony," Hamilton said.

"Pony Boy!" Jonah said. "You staying gold?"

Pony still couldn't quite believe that Jonah Wizard was actually talking to him.

"Just taking a break. How's the research going?"

Jonah swiveled around in his chair. "Huge! Me and Ham here broke this whole thing wide open."

"No way."

"Check it out," Jonah said. "We learned that the desert outside Tunis was used as a primary location for the first Star Wars movie. And not only that, so was Tikal in Guatemala."

"And," Hamilton said, "Angkor Wat was used as a model for a planet briefly mentioned in Revenge of the Sith."

Pony looked at them blankly. "So?"

Hamilton leaned forward. "So we have to ask ourselves," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "have we fully considered George Lucas's role in all of this?"

Pony rolled his eyes. "You two need anything from the fridge?"

Hamilton shook his head.

"Big gla.s.s," Jonah said. "Half ginger ale. Half root beer."

"Ian?"

Ian ignored him, which was no surprise. He'd barely said a word since they'd gotten back to Attleboro. He sat in a dark alcove staring at a computer screen or pacing angrily downstairs. Pony figured that being benched must be driving him crazy.

Pony rooted around in the fridge until he found his magic elixir. Electroshock Cherry Limeade Caffeine Blast. Pony didn't bother with a gla.s.s; he upended the two liter and let it slosh out of the bottle and down his throat. He imagined his life bar go from caution red to yellow to a glowing electric green. He grabbed a second two liter and Jonah's drink, then headed back to his station.

"What's up, Pony?"