“Translate, please,” I said.
“Mirage,” Cass replied. “The soil is full of silicate particles. The same stuff glass is made of. When it’s so bright and hot like this, the sunlight reflects off all those particles. At a sideways angle, it looks like a big, shining mass—which resembles water!”
“Thank you, Mr. Einstein,” I said, scanning the horizon. Directly ahead of us, across the yellow-brown desert, was a line of low pine trees that stretched in either direction. The heat-shimmer coming up from the ground made the trees look as if they were rippling in an invisible current. “That’s where Marco’s signal is coming from. The Euphrates.”
Marco was so close!
I checked over my shoulder. Torquin and Nirvana were struggling to lift Professor Bhegad out of the chopper and put him in a wheelchair.
“This is going to take forever,” Aly said. She darted toward Torquin, pulled the tracking-signal detector from his gadget belt, and bolted toward the river. “Come on, let’s start!”
“Hey!” Torquin cried out in surprise.
“Let them go, we have our hands full here!” Nirvana said.
Our footsteps made clouds of yellowish dust as we ran. Closer to the river, the ground was choked with scrubby grass and knots of small bushes. We stopped at the thicket of pine trees that stretched in both directions.
The ground sloped sharply downward. Below us, the Euphrates slashed a thick silver-blue S like a curved mirror through the countryside. To the north it wound around a distant settlement, then headed off toward mountains blurred by fog. To the south it passed by the Babylonian ruins before disappearing into the flatness. I scanned the riverbank, looking for signs of Marco.
“I don’t see him,” Aly said.
I held up the tracker. Our blue dot locator and Marco’s green one had merged. “He’s here somewhere.”
“Yo, Ocram!” Cass shouted. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Rolling her eyes, Aly began walking down the slope toward the river. “He might be hiding. If he’s playing a prank, I will personally dunk him in the water.”
“Unless he throws you in first,” I said.
I glanced quickly back over my shoulder to check on the others. Nirvana was struggling to push Professor Bhegad’s wheelchair across the rocky soil. He bounced a lot, complaining all the way. Torquin had taken off his studded leather belt and was trying to wrap it around Bhegad like a seat belt, causing his own pants to droop slowly downward.
I started through the brush. It was dense and maybe three to five feet high, making it hard to see. As we moved forward, we kept calling Marco’s name.
We stopped at the edge of a rocky ridge. None of us had seen this from the distance. It plunged straight downward, maybe twenty feet, to the river below. “Oh, great,” Aly said.
I looked north and south. In both directions, the ridge angled downward until it eventually met the riverbed. “We’ll be okay if we go sideways,” I said.
I went to the edge and looked over. I eyed the tangle of trees, roots, and bushes along the steep drop. Since Marco had taught us to rock climb, steep embankments didn’t scare me as much as they used to. This looked way easier than climbing Mount Onyx.
“Maybe there’s a shortcut,” I said. Quickly I stepped over the edge, digging my toes into a sturdy root. I turned so my chest would be facing the cliff. Holding on to a branch, I descended another step.
“Whoa, Jack, don’t,” Cass said.
I laughed. “This is ea—”
My foot slipped. My chin hit the dirt. I slid downward, grasping frantically. My fingers closed around branches and vines. I pulled out about a dozen, and a dozen more slipped through my hand. I felt my foot hit a root and I caromed outward, landing at the bottom, hard on my back.
Aly’s face was going in and out of focus. I could have sworn she was trying to hold back a smile. “Are you hurt?”
“Just resting,” I lied.
“I think I’ll look for a path,” Cass called down.
I closed my eyes and lay still, my breath buzzsawing in my chest. I heard a dull moan, and I figured it must have been my own voice.
But when I heard it again, my eyes blinked open.
I sat up. Aly and Cass were just below the crest of the ridge, trying to make their way down. They were both shouting. But my eyes were focused on a thick, brownish-green bush, maybe ten yards away.
A pair of shoes jutted from underneath.
I ran to them, grabbed the ankles, and pulled. The legs slid out—Ohio State Buckeye sweatpants—and then a ripped-up KI polo shirt.
From above, Fiddle shouted at me to give him CPR. How did you do CPR? I wished I’d taken a course. All I could think about were scenes in TV shows—one person blowing air into another’s lungs.
As I lowered my mouth carefully, his eyes flickered open from a deep sleep. “Jack? Hey, bro. I didn’t know you cared.”
I sprang back. “What the—how—you were—we thought—” I stammered.
“Spit it out,” Marco said, sitting up. “I’ve got time. I’ve been waiting for you. It gets boring here all alone.”
He was fine. Resting in the shade, that’s all! I helped him up and bear-hugged him. “Woooo-hooo!”
Footsteps pounded the dirt behind me. Aly and Cass ran down a path from the lower side of the ridge. They had taken the long way around.
“Dudes!” Marco yelled. “And dudette.”
As they jumped on him, laughing, and squealing with relief, I stepped back. My initial joy was wearing off as quickly as it had come. Our reaction seemed somehow wrong.
I watched his face, all pleased with himself, all happy-go-lucky returning hero. Everything we’d been through, all the hardship in Rhodes, the abandonment, the awful visit to Ohio—it all began to settle over me like a coat of warm tar. I flashed back to the last time I saw him, in a room at a hotel in Rhodes. With Cass lying unconscious on a bed.
He’d skipped out on us. As if flying off with our only chance of survival was some kind of game. He hadn’t cared about anyone at the Karai Institute. Or how many lives he’d turned upside down.
“Brother Jack?” Marco said curiously, staring out at me from the hugfest. “’Sup? You need a bathroom?”
I shook my head. “I need an explanation. Like, when did you come up with the idea to find a Loculus by yourself? Just, whoosh, hey, I’ll go to Iraq and be a hero?”
“I can explain,” Marco said.
“Do you have any idea what we’ve been through?” I barked. “We just got back from Ohio.”
“Wait. Did you—go to my house?” he asked, his eyes widening.
I explained everything—our trip to Lemuel, the visit to the house, the expressions on his mom and dad and sister’s faces. I could see Marco’s eyes slowly redden. “I … I can’t believe this …” he murmured.
“Jack, maybe we can talk about this