The Shadow Cipher

by Laura Ruby

  “That platform doesn’t seem big enough to unload more than one person at a time,” said Jaime.

  “Doesn’t even seem finished,” Tess said. “Maybe they abandoned it before it was done? The city does that.”

  “Why would they build a platform so high up anyway? They’d need forty escalators to get everyone back to earth,” said Jaime.

  “Or solarpods.”

  “Or parachutes.”

  There was a brief shudder beneath them. Theo grabbed for Tess and Tess grabbed for Jaime. They all held their breath, sure that the train was about to take off again, heading straight up to the moon.

  But no. The train didn’t move. A faint whish sounded from below.

  “The doors,” Tess whispered.

  As they watched, the metal caterpillar scuttled from inside the train out to the narrow platform.

  “What’s it doing?” Jaime said.

  The caterpillar stopped. It rose up on its hind legs, scanning, or sniffing, or . . . ?

  It seemed to be looking right at them, swaying just a little. Then it scuttled its way across the narrow platform toward a lone metal lamppost missing a bulb, skittering up the post till it reached the empty socket at the top. Somehow, it attached itself to the socket, leaving most of its metal body dangling like a streamer in the wind. More faint noises—the scrape of metal against metal, the clicking of dozens of tiny feet—more twitching.

  “What’s . . . what’s wrong with it?” Jaime said.

  Its metal skin seemed to be rippling somehow, as if it were made of liquid and not metal. It expanded, then contracted, expanded again, rounding into a great silvery ball. But cold metal couldn’t do that.

  Could it?

  The ball that once was a caterpillar quivered and clanged against the pole. A thin buzz cut through the air, a buzz that turned into a high-pitched whine that made Theo’s teeth ache.

  “What the—” Tess began.

  The ball burst in a shower of sparks. They mashed their faces against the top of the train as fine bits of metal rained down like glitter. When the whining and sparking and raining subsided, Theo risked a peek.

  Where the caterpillar had been, a sphinx moth the size of an eagle perched. It rested for a moment, cooling its molten metal wings, then took off toward Manhattan in a fluttering, silvery blur.

  “It’s official,” Jaime said. “Things have gotten really weird.”

  “And scary,” said Tess. “Those stairs look like the only way to get down from the platform.”

  “Scary or not, I’m not staying up here another second.” Jaime carefully slid down onto the platform, walked over to the flimsy staircase, and tested his weight on the first step. When it held, he started down. Tess and Theo followed. Theo focused on his hands gripping the rails and his feet connecting with the treads; he didn’t look left or right, up or down. He didn’t focus on the ground or how far away it was.

  They’d been zigzagging for what seemed like forever and had almost reached the street when a cop’s angry, reddened face appeared between the treads below.

  “Sweet peanut butter and jelly! What in the name of Starrbucks do you kids think you’re doing up there?”

  It had been a while since Theo and his sister had been in police car.

  He remembered it being more fun. That last time, Tess and Theo had been around nine years old. His mother and her partner, Syd, drove them around Manhattan, telling them wild stories about crazy crimes, like the guy who tried to use a burrito to beat up his cousin, or the woman who got caught dragging a big blue mailbox down the street, or the car thief who crashed into a news van, or the teenager who tried to steal a Roller only to get rolled to the nearest police station, or the burglar who fell asleep on the couch of the apartment he was attempting to burgle, with the family’s fer-otter curled up on his chest.

  This time, there were no stories. Just a lot of questions that they really didn’t want to answer. The three of them sat in the backseat with one officer crouched in the open door on one side of the car, and his partner crouched in the open door of the other side.

  “So,” said the red-faced officer, whose name was Clarkson. He was white and doughy and blond. “What you’re telling me is that this train was a runaway train, and you three were stuck on it alone? And the only way you thought you could escape was by jumping off that train onto the top of a building?”

  “Yes,” said Tess.

  “And you’re telling me that you saw a man, a Guildman no less, jump off the top of the train onto the top of a building?”

  “Yes,” said Tess.

  “Except we checked with the guild,” said Clarkson’s partner, a small, lean Asian officer named Chin. “And they tell us that this particular train has been waiting on that particular abandoned track for repairs since last night. Hasn’t been in operation all day. And to their knowledge, no GM, and I quote, ‘would be so stupid as to jump off a moving train,’ end quote.”

  “Huh,” said Theo.

  “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?” said Clarkson.

  “Just thinking,” said Theo.

  “Thinking of a better story?” said Clarkson. “Because this one’s full of applesauce.” Clarkson was making Theo hungry. He continued, “Are you kids going to tell us what the butterscotch you were doing up on top of that train or do we have to take you down to the station?”

  Jaime wriggled between them. If they sat here with the two officers, there was a good chance their parents would be called. If they were taken to the station, their parents definitely would be called.

  Chin added, “Look, we know who you are. At least, we know that you and this girl over here belong to a certain member of New York City’s finest. You think she’d be happy to hear about this?”

  Tess blurted, “It was a dare.”

  Theo turned to stare at her.

  “Theo is always talking about how much stronger and braver and more adventurous he is than me, just because he’s seven minutes older.” She stared back at him. “It’s not true.”

  Theo pressed his lips together. He’d never said he was more adventurous, just smarter about choosing his adventures. There was a difference.

  She said, “We were coming home from our aunt’s house and we saw this empty train just sitting on the tracks. So, we got off the train, circled back, and climbed one of the service ladders to the tracks. We just wanted to see the train. We weren’t going to do anything else.”

  The lies rolled off her tongue so smoothly that even Theo believed her. He hoped the cops did.

  “Please don’t tell our mom,” Tess said. “We’ve never done anything like this before, and we’ll never ever do anything like it again.” She shuddered as if reliving the horror, and Theo knew she wasn’t faking that. Theo rubbed the wrist that Tess had held—the skin burned raw—then stopped doing it when he saw Tess’s slight shake of the head.

  Clarkson looked across at Chin; Chin gave a one-shouldered shrug.

  “All right, listen,” said Clarkson. “I don’t want to get you guys in trouble, and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to spend the next two hours doing a bunch of forking paperwork and babysitting a bunch of kids. But don’t let me catch you or even hear of you doing something so cornnuts ever again, okay? Because if I do, I’ll have to tell your mom what happened here, and then we’ll all be in a whole lot of hot mustard.”

  “We won’t do anything like this again, sir, we promise,” Theo said. As long as the Cipher didn’t demand it.

  It probably would.

  The cops drove them to the nearest Underway station. Theo, Tess, and Jaime waited a few minutes to make sure the cops had left, then walked right back to the curb to hail a cab.

  They got back to 354 W. 73rd Street so exhausted that the word exhausted seemed inadequate (maybe Officer Clarkson would have a better substitute—cream-cheesed? roasted?). Theo’s wrist ached. His shins and knees were bruised where he’d banged them against the train. He hadn’t fallen off the train, but he felt a
s if he had.

  “My arm is killing me,” Theo said, rubbing his shoulder.

  “I can’t even feel mine anymore,” said Tess. “Are they still there? Or did I leave them in the taxi?”

  Theo’s whole body winced. “Um, about that.”

  “If you’re going to thank me, don’t, because the shock would be too great,” said Tess.

  Jaime said, “Thanks.”

  Tess said, “Thank you. You pulled me up when I fell off first.”

  Jaime put out his hand, maybe to touch one of the arms Tess couldn’t feel anymore; Theo didn’t know. But Jaime dropped the hand and shoved it in his pocket. Theo liked Jaime’s hand in his pocket better than on his sister’s arm. And then he wondered why he was thinking about Jaime’s hand or his sister’s arm (beyond the obvious and undeniable fact that she had saved his life with that arm).

  Jaime cleared his throat and pressed the elevator button. “What do you want to do about the next clue?”

  “I love clues,” said Tess. “Except right this second. Right this second, I love aspirin. And food. And then I will love sleep, if I can ever sleep again. Tomorrow, I will love clues.”

  The elevator drifted up, the left, then down, then up once more, as if giving them some time to gather themselves before they had to go to their respective apartments and start lying to their family members about how they had spent their day. Theo didn’t think “Oh, I was dangling from a runaway train while my sister kept me from hurtling to certain death” was going to cut it. And though Tess could lie as smoothly as she could tell the truth, Theo couldn’t. Especially not to his mom.

  “What happened to you two?” Mrs. Biedermann said as soon as they walked into the door.

  Theo froze. Tess said, “Frisbee in the park. I’m starving. What’s for dinner?”

  Mrs. Biedermann frowned at Tess. “What’s wrong with your arms?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “You’re holding them funny.”

  Tess laughed. She held her arms out in a T. “Maybe they’ve just gotten longer. Because of the Frisbee.” She dropped her arms her sides again. “Dinner?”

  “Your dad’s picking up falafel and kabobs. Oh, and don’t make any plans for tomorrow. Aunt Esther is coming.”

  “Aunt Esther? Why?”

  “We’re going to load up some of these boxes in her van and take them to her home in Queens,” said Mrs. Biedermann. “So I really do hope your arms are okay, both of you. You’re going to need them.”

  Theo was dreaming of a bald man with no face on his face when his dad yanked on the shade and it snapped up with a clatter.

  “Your aunt’s just called,” Mr. Biedermann said. “She’s on her way.”

  “What time is it? Five a.m.?”

  “Try eight,” said Mr. Biedermann. “And try getting out of bed, lazybones.”

  Theo attempted to rise, flopped back down when every single one of his lazy bones shrieked in protest. Apparently, his whole body was broken. Which wasn’t convenient.

  “Are you all right?” said his dad.

  “Peachy.”

  He had just hauled himself into the kitchen and flopped down next to Tess when Aunt Esther arrived.

  “Greetings, Biedermann family!” she announced, marching into the apartment with a box of doughnuts and a container of hard-boiled eggs. “I have brought carbohydrates and protein.” She set the food on the table and sat. Nine immediately jumped onto her lap and started purring.

  Theo picked a chocolate doughnut. Tess reached for one, winced.

  Aunt Esther said, “I have also brought tiger’s balm. But not for the tiger,” she said, scratching Nine between the ears. She reached into the large bag she referred to as a “pocketbook” and pulled out a tube of ointment. She slid this to Tess.

  “Why does she need tiger’s balm?” said Mrs. Biedermann.

  “I found tiger’s balm to be very soothing back when I was working for the post office,” said Aunt Esther.

  Mrs. Biedermann said, “She hasn’t carried any boxes yet.”

  “A preventative measure,” said Aunt Esther. “You should select a carbohydrate before Theo eats them all.”

  Aunt Esther was pushing seventy, but she didn’t look it. She was medium height and sturdy, with short brown hair and a no-nonsense manner a little like his mother’s but not quite. As far as Theo knew, Aunt Esther had never married, but she had done just about everything else. Each time he saw her, she mentioned some piece of her past that he’d never heard before, as if she were just remembering it herself. Or making it up.

  “When did you work for the post office, Aunt Esther?” Theo asked.

  Aunt Esther stroked Nine’s striped back. “Right after I managed the game preserve in Botswana. Tiger’s balm?”

  It took hours to load up Aunt Esther’s van and another one his dad had rented, so many hours that they stopped to eat lunch before they left. If Theo’s body was broken, he couldn’t imagine what Tess’s felt like, but she seemed too tired to complain. She slumped against the window of the van as they drove along the Hudson River, crossed the Bronx on the Cross Bronx Expressway, and curled south toward Flushing and Aunt Esther’s house. Theo wondered if Tess was thinking about the moth, what the moth was supposed to mean, what they were supposed to do next, how they were supposed to find the map that the Guildman talked about. His mind was as tired as his body; he had no idea what to think.

  They arrived at Aunt Esther’s house forty-five minutes later and spent the next couple of hours carrying the boxes from the vans to the house and then trying to find places to store them. Aunt Esther’s home was tiny, with more rooms than it had a right to, each of them painted a different color—purple, red, yellow, green—and decorated with ornate masks, creepy puppets whose gaze seemed to follow them around the room, and a stunning array of knives and swords. Aunt Esther also liked plants, and the house was riotous with them, twisting vines pinned up along the moldings, potted trees so tall they bent where they met the ceiling, slack-jawed orchids gaping from the top of a dusty piano. Tess once said it reminded her of the lair of Poison Ivy, if Poison Ivy had been a senior citizen fond of toys, cardigans, and sensible shoes.

  After they were done unloading the boxes, Aunt Esther mixed up a batch of iced tea with lemon and brought the pitcher to the living room with the announcement: “I have brought you some iced tea and some Fig Newtons.” They sipped their drinks as Mrs. Biedermann took a work call out on the front porch.

  “I have already cleared out the attic for Tess and Theo,” Aunt Esther said. “I will clear out the red room for you and Miriam by the end of the week.”

  “Thanks, Esther,” said Theo’s dad. “I know this is a lot of trouble, and we really appreciate it.”

  “Trouble can’t always be avoided,” said Aunt Esther. “Right, Tess?”

  Tess, who was rubbing her shoulder, said, “What?”

  “Have a Fig Newton. I think your blood sugar is low.”

  Theo grabbed a cookie for himself. There were a lot of strange things moving around Aunt Esther’s apartment, not least the numerous mechanical spiders that pruned and watered the plants and the mechanical ladybugs that ate the real aphids.

  No moths the size of eagles, though.

  He should have been pondering the Guildsman’s riddle: To read the map, you’ll have to look into the lights. He should have been asking himself: What map could the Guildman have been talking about, and what lights? But he was more intrigued by another riddle: How could a caterpillar made of metal—a robot whimsically designed to look like a natural creature—have the kind of transformation that only flesh-and-blood caterpillars can have? How could a robot be . . . alive?

  This was not adorable.

  Not adorable at all.

  Which was why, for the first time since they’d started on this quest to solve the Cipher, Theo was convinced they’d stumbled onto something important, really important. Along with the mystery of the Cipher, here was a real mystery, a scientific mys
tery. And maybe one that hinted at the real power of the Morningstarrs. Because he didn’t think the Guildmen were men at all. And he didn’t think the Morningstarr Machines were just machines. The Morningstarrs’ creations were alive.

  And they were thinking for themselves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jaime

  When Theo shared his theory with Tess and Jaime—that he believed the Guildmen were actually Morningstarr Machines come to life—Jaime thought it was the most awesome thing he’d ever heard. But then he remembered that, machines or not, the Guildmen had probably tried to kill them so they couldn’t solve the next clue. And then he realized that they had no idea how to solve the next clue anyway. They went over the riddle a million times—To read the map, you’ll have to look into the lights—but they didn’t know which map the Guildman was referring to or where to find it. And though they racked their brains, looked in books, and searched the internet, they didn’t know which lights they needed to look into. Did it refer to a Morningstarr invention? Some forgotten inventor?

  Maybe it was the “condemned” notice posted on the glass doors downstairs or the creeptastic presence of Stoop and Pinscher, who continued to chisel off tiles and doorknobs and light fixtures with increasingly sadistic glee, but the rest of the residents of 354 W. 73rd Street weren’t consumed with an incomprehensible clue; they seemed to be afflicted with packing mania. At all hours of the day or night, doors were propped open and the occupants inside could be seen sorting clothes, stacking up books and dishware, stuffing bags full of sheets and towels, sitting on suitcases just to get them to close. Tess and Theo were dragged to and from their aunt’s apartment in Queens.

  While they were gone, Mima gave Jaime a new job: remove all the photographs from the walls, wrap each carefully in brown paper, and set them in a box. They had hundreds of photographs on every surface of their place, and it would have taken Jaime forever to finish the job even if he’d been moving quickly. But he wasn’t moving quickly. He was so used to seeing these photographs every day that, except for his few favorites, he had never taken the time to stop and look at them. Until now. Here was his great-grandfather Daniel, astride a motorbike in Havana in 1949, dark and brooding and mustachioed. Here was his grandmother Mima, then just Estefanía, posing with a group of grinning girls in downtown New York City. Here was his father, dark brown, muscled, hard-hatted but shirtless—fearless—standing on top of the skeleton of a Mexican solar plant. And here was his mother, Renée, as a doctoral student at T&T University, long ’locs coiled so tall on the top of her head that she looked like some kind of scientist-queen.