The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 2: A King's Ransom
Page 16
Atticus sank into the chair, sending up a small cloud of wispy dust. His throat was dry. He had to swallow twice before he could eke out a sound. “What am I supposed to do?”
Cheyenne pulled a handkerchief from her bag and dusted off two seats. The twins sat. “Tell us what you know.”
“About what?” Atticus asked.
Cheyenne glanced at her brother, rolling her eyes. “The genius thinks he’s too smart for us nincompoops.”
“About being a Guardian!” Casper exploded, lunging forward.
Atticus screamed. His leg dug reflexively into the floor, propelling the chair backward. He crashed against a computer table, the impact knocking the wind out of him.
Casper cracked up. “Brave kid.”
“I suggest cutting to the chase,” Cheyenne said, looking brightly around the room. “No one can hear you in here. No one knows where you are. You will not leave until you answer. And you will not live if you don’t.”
“I don’t know anything!” Atticus insisted. “I told you! My mom was dying. She said I was a Guardian. She said we were enemies of you guys. The Vespers. She said you were after some secret. It was all in fragments — I can barely remember.”
Casper grinned. He stood slowly and sauntered to the wall. There, he opened a cabinet door. “Maybe we can change that,” he said.
Inside were a series of long knives. Casper pulled one out, a thin blade that made a high-pitched shhhhink.
Atticus felt the blood rush from his head. For a moment he could see only white spots. The room around him seemed to shrink, its frigid temperature warming, the walls rushing in, everything decaying into a tiny trap… .
His brain flashed an image of the tiny room at the airport. A men’s room. A tiny can.
Germ Away.
“I know! I mean, I don’t know!” he blurted, words propelling through his mouth before he could think. “That is, in actuality, I don’t know the information. In my head. But I have it. All of it. That’s how we Guardians do it. Even though we’re, like, nerds and geniuses, all we know is the inscription.”
Casper cocked his head. “The what?”
“Encryption!” Atticus said.
Slow down. Think.
Casper came closer, casually sliding the blade along his fingernail and shaving off a thin slice as if it were butter. “Go on… .”
“It … it’s a precaution,” he said. “To avoid hypnosis. And torture. And truth serums. We just know the key sequence, that’s all. So we can decrypt it.”
Casper flung the blade’s tip forward, sending a fingernail into Atticus’s face. “What. Exactly. Is it. That you decrypt?”
“It’s all in my flash drive!” Atticus said.
Cheyenne looked dismayed. “The one I smashed under my foot at the airport?”
“No!” Atticus shot back. “Another one. Hidden on my key chain.”
Casper’s face darkened. He lifted the blade carefully over his head. Then, with gritted teeth, he hurled the knife at Atticus.
Atticus screamed and ducked. The blade tore through the fabric of the seat and impaled itself into the table behind.
“That’s for making me have to go and get that stupid key chain,” Casper said. “I threw it in the trash can outside. It was ruining the hang of my pants.”
As he left, Cheyenne walked over to the bank of clocks. She stopped near one that said EASTERN STANDARD TIME, US, which read 7:02 A.M.
“This is Boston time, set precisely by the atomic clock,” she said. “All your little friends are waking up and getting ready for school. In a half hour, at seven thirty-two, they will be running for the school bus. And you, halfway across the world, will have decrypted your flash drive and given us all your supposed information.”
Atticus was shaking too hard to agree.
A half hour?
Even if he could make contact — with anyone — a half hour was not enough time. “I — I — m-m —”
“Chill out,” Cheyenne said. “You’re among friends.”
“I may need more time,” Atticus blurted out. “I need to … write code.”
“It’s a fast computer,” Cheyenne drawled.
“But I’m a human,” Atticus said. “Not even Mark Zuckerberg can code that fast!”
Cheyenne walked to the table where the knife was lodged. She yanked it out and held it toward the light. “Well, then … epic fail.”
Copyright © 2011 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, THE 39 CLUES, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011930647
Book design by SJI Associates, Inc.
bones chapter 19: CG Textures
hostages chapter 20: Ken Karp for Scholastic
De Virga Map chapter 23: Wikimedia Commons
All other images created for Scholastic by Keirsten Geise, Charice Silverman, and Rainne Wu.
First edition, December 2011
Scholastic US: 557 Broadway · New York, NY 10012
Scholastic Canada: 604 King Street West · Toronto, ON M5V 1E1
Scholastic New Zealand Limited: Private Bag 94407 · Greenmount, Manukau 2141
Scholastic UK Ltd.: Euston House · 24 Eversholt Street · London NW1 1DB
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-34468-5