Fire the Depths by Peter Lerangis

Author:Peter Lerangis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

24

“THIS is impossible,” Alex said. “Maybe it’s 1863 BC.”

“There was no C to be B,” Max pointed out.

“Say what?”

“BC means ‘Before Christ,’ but how could you know you were before Christ, if Christ hadn’t been born yet?” Max said. “It’s not logical.”

“There’s got to be an explanation,” Alex said. “Maybe they were originally on land . . . and the land sank in 1863.”

“Then we would have heard about it. It would be in the history books. Like the fall of Rome. The volcano at Pompeii. Columbus. The American Revolution.” Max looked around, thinking. “Alex, Niemand has been talking about this crazy plan. Niemand Cities. People living in self-contained bubbles. It’s his obsession.”

“Max, no! That’s not what this is,” Alex said. “Bubble cities are sci-fi. We don’t even have those in the twenty-first century.”

“What if there was one, in 1863?” Max said. “And Verne discovered it. In his book, he called it Atlantis. But that was a cover-up, to make it sound mystical for his readers. Imagine if he tried to claim it really existed back then. No one would have believed him. That’s the whole point of The Lost Treasures. He left that to us, to discover the truth. Now.”

“Why?” Alex asked.

“Niemand’s ancestors hated Verne,” Max said. “I think Verne discovered something they really wanted. And they went after him. They converted his nephew—”

“His nephew shot him!” Alex said. “If the bad guys wanted Verne’s secret, why would they kill him?”

“He wasn’t shooting to kill—he wounded Verne in the foot,” Max said. “Alex, listen to me. Just outside the gate, I found tons of broken material. The pieces were flat, like chunks of a wall. They didn’t feel like stone. More like some human-made substance. Like plastic. This was a city under a dome!”

Alex let out a crazy burst of laughter. She looked up at the statue. “And this guy . . . with his pocket protector? Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Max said. “The architect? The head scientist? The president?”

But Alex was walking toward the figure slowly. “Max, look at his hand.”

With her hook she reached up about eye level and brushed off seaweed from the statue’s hands, which were resting on a stone armrest.

Max walked closer to the left hand. All the fingers lay flat on the armrest, except for the pinkie. The knuckle was bent upward like a tent. “The sculptor kind of messed up on the pinkie,” Max said.

“No, he didn’t,” Alex said. “Think. The note from Verne. ‘Upon reaching the great unruined chamber . . . be guided by the camptodactyl of the king . . .’ Max, back when I translated this, I looked up that word.”

Max nodded vigorously. “It has to do with finger, right? Because of dactyl.”

“How do you know that?” Alex said.

“I have a model of a pterodactyl. Ptero means ‘wing’ and dactyl means ‘finger.’”

“And campto,” Alex said, “means ‘bent.’”

Max walked toward the statue. “Be guided by the bent finger . . .”

He turned toward Alex. Even through the thick glass of her helmet, he could tell she was grinning.

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