The Shadow Cipher

by Laura Ruby

  “The stories were true,” said Jaime.

  Theo’s eyes were glazed and shocked. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “Wait here,” said Jaime. “There’s a flashlight over there.” He hefted himself through the hole and walked cautiously over to the flashlight. He picked up the light and shone it toward the entrance of the tunnel. He had walked only a few steps when there was a new noise.

  The tapping of numerous tiny feet.

  Four Rollers clicked and clacked toward the dark form of Edgar Wellington slumped on the ground. Whatever he had done, or almost done, Jaime didn’t want to see him Rolled like garbage. But instead of turning around, they backed up, and two of the Rollers heaved the limp form onto the backs of the other two. And then the four Rollers made a solemn procession through the tunnel, past Theo and Tess and Jaime, and out the way the giant beast had gone, vanishing into the underbelly of the city.

  Jaime didn’t know what to feel. His chest was like the tunnel, dark and filled with rubble. This was not the way it was supposed to go; this was not the way things were supposed to be. Things like this happened in comic books and movies, not in real life. He couldn’t imagine what Theo was feeling. That was a man they thought they could trust. A friend.

  Jaime tried to see into the tunnel the beast had made. “Where do you think they took him?”

  Theo’s voice was high and thin. “I wonder if we’ll ever know.”

  “Come on,” Jaime said. “We have to get your sister out of here.”

  They tried to wake her, but it was no use. They picked her up again and started back toward the entrance of the tunnel. The suitcase lay on the ground, half buried in a pile of rocks. So, it hadn’t been crushed; it hadn’t been scooped up with Edgar’s body. Jaime hooked it with his foot, flipped it up onto his wrist, but could feel no happiness, just a grim satisfaction that made him wonder about the world, that made him wonder about himself.

  They got moving again. The ground felt unsteady, his knees bending this way and that. More strange rumbling sounded throughout the tunnel. Thunderstorm? No, they were too deep to hear a storm. The earth beneath his feet seemed to hum somehow. Small stones dropped from the walls next to them.

  Jaime said, “My feet are vibrating.”

  “I don’t know if this tunnel is stable anymore.”

  “Maybe that one monster isn’t the only monster down here,” Jaime said. “Hurry.”

  They walked faster. Jagged cracks unzipped the stone walls beside them; above, rocks punched from the surface by an unseen force. They gathered Tess closer and half hobbled, half ran. Small stinging stones cut Jaime’s skin, and the clouds of dust choked him, made him cough. Flailing and coughing and close to blind, arms burning, they made it to the stairwell. They stumbled up the stairs and raced for the ladder that would take them to the street level. Theo shoved Jaime toward it. When he protested, Theo shouted, “Help me from the top!”

  Jaime left Theo with his sister, climbed the ladder, the suitcase tucked under one arm making his movements slow, too slow. The thundering grew louder, like a thousand digging monsters behind ready to chew them up and spit them out. Jaime reached the manhole cover and pushed, but it was like trying to move a mountain. He ducked his head, pressed his back into it, and heaved with everything he had. The cover lifted and then fell over into the street, but he wasn’t the one who had moved it, at least, not alone. He looked up.

  A woman like a human stick bug held out her hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tess

  The world spun around and around and around, like the Rollers were rolling her through the tunnel. And maybe they were. She saw nothing but blacks and blues, a kaleidoscope of nowhere. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. Where are we going? she asked the Rollers.

  Home, they said.

  And she said, Yes, but where is home now?

  “Come on, Tess!” someone shouted. “This whole street is going to go.”

  Tess fought the fuzzy feeling in her head, the tumbling and the spinning, the blue-black nowhere. She opened her eyes. Three faces floated above her. Theo, Jaime, and . . .

  “Delancey DeBrule?” Tess said. “What . . . what’s going on?”

  “Where’s Edgar?” said Delancey.

  Theo just shook his head. Delancey stared one moment, then set her mouth. “Get her on her feet.” Theo and Jaime had just pulled her upright, half walked, half carried her to the sidewalk, when the entire street seemed to shake itself off and caved in right down the middle. Parked cars slid sideways into the trench, people pointed and screamed, dogs everywhere erupted in a frenzy of barking, a pipe burst and sent a plume of water into the sky. Sirens sounded in the distance.

  Now it hurt. Tess gritted her teeth against the throbbing in her head. Delancey said, “Keep walking. Priya’s waiting in the car on the next block.”

  “Priya?” said Tess.

  “Yes. Who did you expect?”

  “I didn’t expect any of this,” said Tess.

  They walked around the block, rushing against the tide of humanity pouring past them. Here was something big enough and strange enough and inconvenient enough to surprise even the unsurprisable New Yorkers, and they all wanted to see it for themselves.

  Priya Sharma was at the wheel. Once they’d gotten into the solar-winged car and were on their way, Theo said, “How did you know where we were?”

  Priya drove grimly, deliberately, hand over hand, in a hurry but trying hard not to look it. “Auguste told me.”

  “The bird told you?” Tess said, then winced, rubbing her head. From the front passenger seat, Delancey rummaged in her bag and handed back a tissue so that Tess could dab at the blood still trickling from her wound.

  “Edgar’s been acting very strange the past few months, staying late at the archives nearly every night,” said Priya.

  “Things have been going missing from the collection,” Delancey said. “At first I thought . . . I thought maybe your grandfather had walked away with them. Without knowing what he was doing, of course. But then Edgar got so secretive.”

  Priya said, “I decided to stop by the archives to see if Edgar would talk to me, tell me what was going on. Instead, Auguste did. I drove right over here with Delancey to see if I could find him.”

  “And you found us,” said Tess.

  Delancey said, “Something else that Auguste told me: Edgar was convinced that your grandfather had finally figured out the Cipher on his own but got sick before he could share the information with the society. What happened down there?”

  Tess pressed the tissue harder against her wound. “Why should we trust you?”

  Priya and Delancey were quiet for a moment. Then Priya said, “I was your grandfather’s friend for a long time. But so was Edgar. So you shouldn’t trust me at all. Or her.” She nodded at Delancey. “You should trust no one.”

  Trust no one.

  Tess looked at Jaime and Theo. “It’s okay. You can tell them what happened.”

  Jaime and Theo told Delancey what they thought they could, which wasn’t very much. Only that they’d found something among Grandpa Ben’s papers, and then gone exploring in the tunnel. Only that Edgar was certain they knew more about the Cipher than they did, that the tunnel collapsed when he threatened to leave them there.

  Numbness spread throughout Tess’s body. “So . . . so Edgar is dead?”

  Jaime shook his head. Theo said, “Maybe. We can’t be sure.”

  Tess leaned back in the seat. What kind of world was this, anyway? Where your grandfather could get sick and slowly lose bits of himself until he couldn’t remember the people he loved? Where a man you trusted, a man you called Uncle, your grandfather’s friend, wanted to keep you trapped in an underground tunnel so he could find a treasure?

  It was an awful kind of world. A blue-black nowhere of a world.

  Priya said, “I’m going to take you back to the archives. You’ll stay there overnight just like you planned so that no one is suspiciou
s.”

  Delancey said, “I can take a better look at your head there, anyway. I’m a little worried you have a concussion.”

  “What can you do about it?” Theo said, apparently still annoyed with Delancey for her attitude back at the archives.

  Delancey’s mouth quirked up on one side. “When I’m not researching ciphers, I’m a doctor. Just like Edgar is.”

  “Oh,” said Theo.

  “If Edgar doesn’t . . .” Priya hesitated, then began again. “If Edgar is really gone, I’ll report him missing in a couple of days. The story is that he was with us till the morning, and then he went out, okay? We don’t know where he went and we haven’t seen him since.” When none of them answered her, she said, “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Tess and Jaime said together. Jaime only nodded.

  “I guess you’ll want to take a look inside this suitcase, too,” said Theo. “Uncle . . . I mean, Edgar said that he had special tools to open it.”

  Again, Priya’s dark eyes flicked to the mirror. “No. The Cipher couldn’t have stayed unsolved for as long as it has unless there were very powerful forces in play that didn’t want it to be solved. But I think your grandfather was right about the Cipher, that it solves you as much as you solve it. It meant for you to find it, and it meant that only you should open it, if that makes any sense.”

  “How could that possibly make any sense?” said Theo.

  Priya’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “I don’t think the Cipher is much concerned about making sense or not.”

  They did exactly as Delancey and Priya advised: they stayed overnight at the archives, barely sleeping a wink; Delancey checked Tess for dilated pupils, slurred speech, numbness, nausea, and about a million other things, and then shook her awake every hour, which made Tess so nervous she was a twitching mess. In the morning, Priya drove them back to 354 W. 73rd Street armed with alibis about Edgar, about the book that fell off the shelf and hit Tess in the head, leaving a small cut, about the extra suitcase that Edgar figured might come in handy for packing up their stuff, about Edgar telling them he’d see them again soon.

  But they needn’t have worried about alibis. Every person in the building over the age of thirteen was so distracted by packing and apartment hunting that they probably wouldn’t have noticed if Tess, Theo, and Jaime had sprouted antennae and wings and turned into butterflies themselves. That made it much easier to sneak up to Grandpa Ben’s apartment with the suitcase in order to open it in private.

  If only they knew how to get it open.

  Which they didn’t.

  But by the time they were settled in Grandpa’s squashy, comfortable furniture, ready to wrestle with the suitcase, the strange and horrible night caught up with them; they all fell asleep, waking only when Tess and Theo’s parents charged in and started banging things around.

  “What? What?” said Tess, sitting up so fast that Nine slid off her lap.

  “You are supposed to packing up here,” said Tess’s mom. “And instead I find you all asleep like . . . like . . . like”—she gestured to Nine—“like a pile of kittens! You promised that if I let you stay overnight with Uncle Edgar, you wouldn’t stay up all night and you’d be ready to help today. This doesn’t look like helping.”

  Tess rubbed her eyes. “We were helping. We will help.”

  “Are you going to tell me that you didn’t stay up all night?”

  Tess opened her mouth, shut it. She didn’t want to lie to her mom, she didn’t, but Mrs. Biedermann was a little too angry. They’d been betrayed, they’d witnessed the death of someone they thought was a friend. Grandpa’s friend. After that, falling asleep for a couple of hours wasn’t a crime. And if they could only figure out the Cipher, no one would have to leave this place. That was the whole point. The reason why they had risked so much.

  “You’re not even listening to me,” her mother said.

  “I’m listening!”

  Mrs. Biedermann put her hands on her hips and glared. The fact that she was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt that said “I found this humerus” with a picture of a bone did not make her any less intimidating. Even Mr. Biedermann’s normally calm and placid expression was angry, his hair in weird little ropes like the snakes of Medusa.

  “We just—” Tess began.

  Mrs. Biedermann put up a palm. Stop. “What were you thinking?”

  “You know what we were thinking,” said Theo quietly.

  “No, I know what you were doing, I have no idea what you were thinking. There’s a difference. My children should not be up all night on a wild-goose chase!”

  Tess said, “It’s not a wild-goose chase, it’s a—”

  “I know what it is. It’s a stupid puzzle that some people invented a million years ago. It’s a stupid puzzle that obsessed my own father. And you know what? That’s fine. I like puzzles. Who doesn’t like puzzles? But this is enough. It’s enough.”

  “Mom,” Tess began.

  “No. I will not listen to any more of this. It was one thing when we weren’t about to be tossed from our home. But now we have more important things to think about. We all have more important things to think about. We have to pack up and we have to get our stuff over to Aunt Esther’s and we have to find a new place to live. That’s the beginning and the end of the story.”

  Despite the fact that they weren’t to trust anyone, this was her mom! And she should understand. “Mom, we found—”

  “More clues?” said Mrs. Biedermann. “That’s amazing. That’s wonderful. I’m so glad to hear it. In the meantime, we are being evicted from this building. We are leaving, with all of our stuff, which will be entirely packed up in the next week. Do you understand me?”

  Tess shut her mouth.

  “Do you?”

  Tess nodded; so did Theo. Even Jaime nodded, and this wasn’t his mother talking.

  “I took the week off,” Mrs. Biedermann said. “And that means you and you will be here in this apartment every day packing along with your father and me. And every night, you will go to bed at a reasonable hour and you will stay in bed till you get up in the morning and do it all again.”

  Tess couldn’t help it. “But—”

  Her dad said, “No.”

  “Dad, please,” she said.

  “We shouldn’t have to beg for your help here, Tess,” he said, his voice low and even. “We shouldn’t have to beg you to be responsible.”

  Tess thought of the movie they had watched together, the one about the man whose life was just a computer-generated dream, and how he had to be brave enough to release himself, face reality. “What about the black box, Dad?”

  The angry expression dropped off her father’s face. He knelt in front of her, took her hands. “Tess, honey. I’m sorry. This is your black box.”

  They ate breakfast, they packed. They ate lunch, they packed. They ate dinner, they packed some more. And every second they could spare, they tried to open the suitcase. They tried to pick it with a paper clip. They tried to pry it open with a screwdriver. Chisel it open with a chisel. Crack it with a hammer. Nothing worked.

  The hours and the days ticked by—July 23, 24, 25. Priya Sharma, Imogen Sparks, Ray Turnage, and Omar Khayyám carted away books and maps and artifacts from Grandpa Ben’s penthouse, sometimes stopping by the Biedermanns’ for lunch or for dinner, trying to make small talk, even mentioning Edgar’s mysterious and sudden disappearance. When small talk got too hard for everyone, Mrs. Biedermann turned on the radio. And when Darnell Slant came on the radio, talking to reporters about progress, talking about making the city even greater than it was already, Mr. Biedermann kicked the wall so hard he left a hole.

  No one bothered to patch it.

  July 26, they ate breakfast, they packed, they soaked the suitcase in a bath. July 27, they ate lunch, they packed, they threw the suitcase down the elevator shaft. July 28, they ate dinner, they packed, they tossed the suitcase under the wheels of a delivery truck.

  And still they couldn’t
open it.

  Every minute, they were consumed with erasing all the evidence of the life they had lived in this building, and the passing of every day felt like a hand around Tess’s heart, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. But time would not stop ticking away.

  July 29

  July 30

  July 31

  Till there was no time left at all.

  On their very last day at 354 W. 73rd Street, two burly men took four hours to load the couches and the chairs, the beds and frames, the dressers and end tables, the shelves and the filing cabinets from the two Biedermann apartments, all in a hot, rainy mist that made it hard to see. And then the apartments were completely empty except for a few boxes they would have to cram in the van. The Biedermanns ate a dinner of calzones while sitting on the floor. Nine didn’t know where to sit, what to do with herself. Where was her coffee table? Where was her sock collection? She ran from room to room, chirping in confusion. Theo didn’t blame her. Without their books and shelves and tables and photographs, the walls looked dingy and bare; this could be any apartment anywhere. Not theirs, not anyone’s. Anonymous as a skeleton.

  Mr. Biedermann said, “We’ll load up the rest of the boxes and then . . .” He trailed off, took another bite of calzone, chewed. “A home isn’t a place, you know. It’s not an apartment or a building. It’s not the stuff you have. Home is with your family. We’re going to be fine, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.”

  A million questions flooded Tess’s mind. Fine? FINE? What about school? What about the wandering elevator? What about Jaime? What about his grandmother and Mr. Perlmutter and the Morans and the Hornshaws and the Adeyemis and the Schwartzes? What about New York City, the city of the Morningstarrs?

  More than that, what about fairness? What about justice? What about right and wrong? What about Grandpa?

  What about us?

  When Tess leashed Nine, Nine lunged for the door as if she couldn’t wait to get out of a place that was no longer theirs. The whole family got on the elevator, pressed the down button. It took them on a tour of the building, the doors opening on each floor, though they had only pressed the one button. In the lobby, they saw the Ms. Gomezes, the Hornshaws, the Adeyemis, the Yangs, and the Morans—some resigned, some fierce and determined, some blinking back tears. They saw Mr. Perlmutter, small and hunched in a wheelchair, a sweater around his shoulders, being pushed by a tired-looking man in his own worn cardigan. “Some of us have nowhere else to go,” Mr. Perlmutter had said.