Читать книгу The Curse of the King - Peter Lerangis - Страница 13

“WAIT, THEY JUST flew together and joined in midair,” Aly said, “like snowflakes?”

Her hair was purple now, her face pale on my laptop screen. Belleville, Indiana, may have been overcast, but the Los Angeles sunshine was pouring through Aly’s bedroom window.

“It was more like massive colliding spacecraft,” Cass said. “Only … tiny. And not in outer space.”

I held up the joined sections. Together they formed one larger shard. “You can’t even tell where they were separated.”

“That’s awesome,” Aly replied, as her face loomed closer to the screen. “Absomazingly ree-donculous. It means that—” Aly turned away from the screen and let out a loud sneeze. And then another.

Cass’s eyes widened. “Are you okay?”

“A cold,” Aly said.

“Because Jack and I were wondering, you know, about the treatments,” Cass went on. “It’s been a while since your last episode …”

“It’s a cold, that’s all,” Aly said, clacking away at her laptop. “Let’s get down to business. I’ve been doing research. Tons. About the Seven Wonders. About Atlantis.”

“Why?” Cass asked.

“Because what else am I going to do?” Aly said. “I know you’re feeling bad, Cass. But I refuse to give up. We start by trying to get back in touch with the KI. They’re lying low, but I’m betting they’ll want to be in contact with us. Which means we need to protect our alibi. So I pretended to be, like, an evil spy searching for clues to break our story. All kinds of things didn’t add up. That doctor friend of your dad’s? His employee records showed he was in Mexico the day he supposedly treated Cass. And the convenience store where Marco was last seen? Its video feed showed a seven-foot-tall, red-bearded barefoot guy who bought three peanut butter sandwiches and a dozen doughnuts. The owner was suspicious, so he sent the feed to the local cops, who ran a primitive facial ID scan. They came up with three hundred and seven possible suspects. Including one Victor Rafael Quiñones.”

“Who’s that?” Cass asked.

“Tor from Victor, quin from Quiñones,” Aly said. “I’m figuring Torquin is a nickname.”

“Wait. His name is Victor?” Cass said.

“So of course I deleted the footage of Torquin from the FTP servers,” Aly said. “Even the backups. And I altered the doctor’s hospital records, too. I even hacked into his Facebook account and deleted the pictures of Mexico. I am covering our tracks so the alibi is clean. But the point is, I can’t do everything. Things can go wrong. What if there are off-line copies of the originals? Arrrrrghh!” Aly shook her fists in frustration. “Okay. Okay, Black, stay calm and hack. I will try to locate Torquin or anyone who seems connected to the KI.”

“Is that possible?” Cass asked.

Aly shrugged. “Anything’s—” She broke off in a fit of coughing, swinging away from the screen. All we saw now was her bookcase.

“Aly?” Cass said.

Something thumped. I heard a choking noise. A pounding on the floor. “Mo-o-om!” came Aly’s voice.

A blur passed across the screen—a woman with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She passed from top to bottom, falling to her knees and out of the screen. “Aly? Aly, wake up!”

I was on my feet now. “ALY!”

The image on the screen juddered. And then all went black.