by Andy Mientus
“Well, I never had much of a choice, did I?! We were born into this! And then there’s Aleka. She’s always been the good Thiasos girl, so devoted to the cause. If I’d rebelled, I would have lost her for sure.”
He sat on the edge of his bed, his mind reeling.
“I guess I just never thought it would happen in our lifetime. It seemed like make-believe. But now here it is. I’ve just realized how little we actually know about this thing we’ve devoted our whole lives to . . . how little she told us.”
Tassia took another twirl and said, “I’m sure the elders have a plan—”
“But how will banks work? Or cash machines? Will people have their whole life savings wiped out and have to trade their possessions just to eat? And what about the people with medical problems who need the electricity to survive?”
“What are you saying, Niko?” Dimitri asked.
“I’m saying, haven’t you all considered that people could die?!”
Tasia squealed in delight. Dimitri rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the robes. Dia, however, lowered her head and said, “Huh.”
“It’s been on my mind,” Niko confessed. “That, and now, something else. Why did my mom need to chuck the McQueen kid in the box with the others? His job was done.”
“Not done yet,” Aleka said from the door. She closed it behind her and made for her corner of the room where her robes lay waiting.
“There you are,” Niko said.
“‘Not done yet’?” Dia asked. “The kid helped us find the Genesius artifacts and then solved the tower for us so we could get the Show Bible. What else could he possibly do?”
“We’re summoning Dionysus,” Aleka said. “He’s going to manifest in a physical body for the first time in eons.”
Dia made a gesture as if to say, And?
Aleka smiled.
“Where do you think that body is going to come from?”
The other Thiasos kids stood shocked for a moment. Finally, Tasia understood the implication.
“OH! You mean, like, a sacrifice?!”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Tasia, but no. The McQueen boy will live, but he’ll share his body with our great patron. Naturally, his life won’t really be his own anymore. He’ll be a passenger in the vessel of his body, rather than the pilot. What an honor to host the great architect of the backstage as Thiasos brings forth a new era of global rebirth with the Final Blackout.”
She clipped a pin to hold her dark robes together and admired them in the mirror, her eyes alight with anticipation.
“Well, that’s not nearly as cool, but okay.” Tasia pouted.
“I just hope this doesn’t take too long,” Dimitri said. “This fabric is really irritating my sensitive skin.”
Dia glanced silently to Niko, who returned her look of concern. They both knew it without having to say it. Maybe they did have a choice after all.
CHAPTER 23
One by one, each of the Backstagers was taken from the Prop Box by a suited Thiasos soldier and handcuffed.
“We’re in the tunnels,” Aziz commented, looking up at the stars.
“What’s happening now?” Jory asked. “Where are you taking us? Hello?”
But the soldiers just worked silently until the Prop Box was empty. A tall, thin soldier took the Box and made his way down the tunnel until he rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.
“Form a line,” another ordered coldly.
The Backstagers looked at one another tentatively, then did as commanded. Beckett reached for Bailey’s hand secretly and she took it. They couldn’t talk right now, but they both knew what the other wanted to say just with a squeeze.
“Follow me.”
The soldier led them down the tunnel and, after a few twists and turns, through a stone arch and back into the real world. There, a great crowd of masked, robed figures faced some kind of altar where Blake was chained by the wrists to two stakes in the dirt on either side of him.
“Blake!” Hunter cried. Blake looked to Hunter with the terrified eyes of a captured animal.
“Quiet!” the soldier ordered. “Look straight ahead.”
“We’re at Thiasos headquarters,” Jory said. “This is the ancient theater where they captured me!”
“I said, quiet!”
The soldier led the line of Backstagers through the aisle between the rows of masked onlookers to a flight of stairs that snaked its way up the side of the cliff. When the stairs leveled off, they could see a dark, windowless mansion in the distance.
They walked across the lawn to the mansion and the soldier unlocked the front door and barked at them to go in.
The lobby of Thiasos headquarters was a darkly gorgeous hexagonal room with purple velvet curtains, inky paintings of Thiasos members past, iron candelabras that twinkled with candlelight, and a grand wooden staircase leading up to the next floor.
The soldier took them across the lobby to a heavy wooden door to one side of the grand staircase. He pulled it open, revealing a shockingly modern steel staircase spiraling downward.
“This way.”
The Backstagers plodded down several floors, to the very bottom of the stairwell. Beneath flickering halogen lights, there was a white hallway lined with black doors with small barred windows.
“Awesome,” Beckett said.
“This way,” the soldier commanded.
Using one of the keys from the ring on his belt, he opened a door and gestured for the Backstagers to enter, which they did, begrudgingly. It was a simple cell with a couple of metal benches and, thankfully, a door to a small bathroom.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Sasha said before darting into the bathroom.
The others dropped onto the benches.
“Did you guys see Blake?” Hunter asked.
“Yeah, that looked pretty murder-y,” Aziz said. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know what we can do,” Hunter said.
“They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?” Bailey asked.
“They didn’t hurt me when I was captured,” Jory said. “But this is all getting crazier and crazier.”
“I’m just glad we’re all here, together,” Beckett said. “I mean, I’m sorry you’ve gotten dragged into this, Bailey. This was the last thing I ever wanted to happen. That’s why I kept it from you. But, just my luck, here you are, in danger anyway. Still, I have to say, I’m glad you’re here.”
“I think I get it now, Beck. I think I’d have a hard time telling someone I’m close to about this if I were in your shoes. But still, just know honesty is the best policy with me when we get out of this.”
“Ha, if.”
“When.”
There was a toilet flush and Sasha emerged from the bathroom looking relieved in more ways than one.
“You’re looking awfully optimistic,” Reo said.
“Why not?” Sasha said. “I still believe what I said back in the tower. I feel it more strongly than ever. We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.”
Suddenly there was the sound of a key in the door. The Backstagers all rose and gathered in the middle of the room, ready to face whatever was coming next, together.
The door swung open to reveal Niko and Dia.
“Ugh, you two,” Jory moaned.
Niko tossed something to Hunter, who caught it, even though his hands were cuffed. It was a key.
“Do your cuffs with that and help Dia and me do the others,” Niko said. “We don’t have much time.”
“Whatever game this is, can we just skip it?” Jory said.
But Hunter’s cuffs came free, and he looked to Jory, surprised.
“The artifacts are all assembled on the altar, so it won’t be long now,” Dia said. “The trick, though, is that all of the artifacts are out of the backstage. Meaning they have no special power. It’s a window we can use.”
“Why are you helping us?” Aziz asked as Hunter undid his cuffs. “You were part of the crew that trapped us here in the
first place.”
“This has gone further than we planned,” Niko said. “We knew we were summoning Dionysus. They never told us he’d need a human body as his host.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Reo said.
“Your friend is in danger,” Dia said.
“‘Friend’ is a strong word,” Aziz replied before Hunter shot him a reproachful look.
“There will be a hundred or more devotees down at the theater, but they are unarmed,” Niko said. “And, as Dia mentioned, the artifacts have all been laid out on the altar and they have no power in the mundane world. It will be tricky, but if we can surprise the horde of soldiers and get to the artifacts, we might have just enough time to throw them into the sea and destroy them. There’s no telling what Thiasos will do to us after that, but at least the Final Blackout will have been averted, and your friend will be safe.”
“The Final Blackout?” Hunter asked.
“It’s Thiasos’s ultimate goal,” Dia said. “To command the power of Dionysus to wipe out all the electricity on the planet and bring the world back to the old ways. It’s a mission we were born to achieve. We just never thought we’d live to see the day when it might actually happen. But now that it’s here, we’ve finally figured out that it’s not a future we want to see.”
“All of the electricity on the earth . . .” Bailey whispered. “That’s—that’s terrifying!”
“We have to stop them,” said Hunter.
“Jory, you spent the most time with these guys,” Beckett said. “It’s your call. Do we trust them?”
Jory took a hard look at Niko and Dia. Niko had deceived him for weeks during Tammy, but he had shown him kindness after the truth had come out in the ancient theater. And he distinctly remembered Dia objecting to taking him hostage after they had taken the Designer’s Notebook.
“It’s a tough call,” Jory said. “But yeah, I trust them. And honestly, at this point, what do we have to lose?”
CHAPTER 24
The moon was waxing close to full above the ancient theater.
The space had been prepared with chanting and the burning of arcane incenses.
The faithful were gathered, a hundred stone masks staring coldly toward the woman who stood upon the altar.
Everything was in readiness.
“Hail, the Designer’s Notebook! Artifact of creation!” Madam Thiasos called out to welcome the sacred artifact. She wore a crown of olive branches and a white ceremonial robe and looked out over the crowd.
“HAIL!”
A robed Thiasos member brought forth the Designer’s Notebook with great ceremony and laid it on a stone table a few feet from where Blake knelt, shackled.
“Hail, the Master Switch! Artifact of illumination!” Madam Thiasos cried.
“HAIL!” replied the crowd.
“Hail, the God Mic! Artifact of communication!”
“HAIL!”
“Hail, the Ghost Light! Artifact of protection!”
“HAIL!”
“Hail, the Carpenter’s Belt! Artifact of construction!”
“HAIL!”
“Hail, the Prop Box! Artifact of collection!”
“HAIL!”
“And finally,” she said, with great gusto, “Hail, the Show Bible! Artifact of information!”
“HAIL!” the crowd cheered, and as the seventh artifact was laid on the table with its siblings, the whole gathering on the cliffside went wild with frenzied celebration. The drummers pounded on their instruments with the fury of the thousands of years that Thiasos had waited for this night.
“Where on earth are Niko and Dia?!” Aleka whispered to Dimitri and Tasia.
The youngest members of Thiasos sat, robed and masked like all the others, in the last row of the ancient theater.
“This is the most important night of any of our lives, and they’re going to miss it!”
Tasia and Dimitri looked to each other, two identical, clueless stone faces, and shrugged. Aleka looked around nervously.
“IT IS TIME!” Madam Thiasos shouted as a hush fell over the crowd.
The wind that swept across the cliffside grew still. The insects singing in the spring night became quiet. Even the sea itself seemed to soften its crashing to make way for the invocation that was about to occur. Madam Thiasos took a breath, preparing herself, then began.
“Great Dionysus! Creator of the theater and all its magic! Patron of us, your flock, the Thiasos! Rival of Zeus himself! We have gathered your artifacts from the far corners of the backstage and have brought them here, to your ancestral home, to call upon your power. Great architect, we invoke thee!”
A swirl of dark mist began to gather low in the air above the table of legendary artifacts. It was thin and indistinct at first, but it became thicker until it looked like a swirl of storm clouds hanging just a few feet in front of where Blake stood, bound. He stared into the dark vortex, terrified.
Sprinting across the lawn, the Backstagers, Dia, and Niko reached the staircase at the edge of the cliff some fifty feet above the ledge where the ritual was taking place. They saw the swirling dark portal and stopped dead in their tracks.
“We’re too late,” Niko whispered. “He comes.”
“No! It can’t be,” Hunter said. “Maybe if we get to the artifacts . . .”
“The portal is opening. We’ve passed the point of no return,” Dia said. “Soon he’ll arrive and enter the body of the McQueen boy. Because he is chained, they will then be able to command Dionysus to do their bidding and bring the Final Blackout.”
Threads of crackling electricity danced around the vortex. The hoard of Thiasos swayed and chanted as if possessed.
“We’d better run,” Niko said. “Like, now.”
Hunter looked around to his crew and was met with one pair of sad, defeated eyes after another. They’d failed.
Sasha’s eyes, however, were fixed in quiet contemplation.
“I know what to do,” he said solemnly.
He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the vortex, unafraid.
“My muse came to me in a dream and told me to trust my instinct, when it speaks. And it’s speaking now, as loud as anything I’ve ever heard.”
“Sasha, what are you talking about?” Aziz asked.
A tear fell down Sasha’s cheek, but he smiled.
“The muse said that I was the chosen one. Don’t you see? This wasn’t meant for Blake. It’s meant for me.”
“Sasha, you don’t mean—”
But before Aziz could finish, Sasha made a run for it down the stone stairs.
“Sasha, no!” Aziz cried, racing after him as the others looked on in shock.
As he reached the ledge at the bottom of the stairs and sprinted toward the altar, Sasha roared like a warrior charging into battle. The crowd all looked toward the disturbance, a hundred emotionless stone masks glaring at Sasha in unison.
Madam Thiasos’s triumphant expression melted to one of horror as she tried to catch the charging little blond boy.
He evaded her grasp, though. The vortex’s electricity gathered at the center, and as it built into a blinding bolt of lightning, Sasha leaped in front of the chained Blake McQueen.
“NO!” Aziz cried as he reached for his best friend.
The bolt of lightning surged forth from the center of the dark vortex and hit Sasha directly in the chest with a blast so bright, everyone had to avert their eyes. A deafening crack of thunder erupted around the cliff, louder than a blast of dynamite.
Aziz’s ears rang and his vision was blurry as he regained his footing and looked down to the ledge. The vortex had disappeared and Sasha lay on the ground, lifeless. The crowd of Thiasos stumbled to their feet and removed their masks to see what had happened to the boy.
“Oh my gosh,” Bailey whispered.
Beckett took her hand. “Is he . . .”
But then his tiny body rose off the ground, into the air, and began to stretch and change.
A
leka turned to Tasia and Dimitri and said under her breath, “We have to run, right now.” They nodded, and the three snuck away from the crowd and made their way up the stone stairs.
Light poured from Sasha’s eyes. He doubled in size, then tripled, as his round body became chiseled like a classical statue. His blond curls grew spontaneously into a golden mane. With a flash of light, his T-shirt and jeans became a perfect white toga fastened with gold.
Now he was a shining deity straight from the pages of an epic poem of mythology. He was Dionysus himself. He opened his electric blue eyes.
Aleka, Tasia, and Dimitri reached the top of the stairs and were stunned to see Niko and Dia cowering with the Backstagers.
“I should have known,” Aleka said to her brother. “Do you know what you’ve caused? Dionysus is unbound! We cannot control him!”
“I didn’t know the boy was going to do that!” Niko said.
“What do we do?” Dia asked.
“We take cover in the emergency shelter in the headquarters,” Aleka said. “Come on!”
The Thiasos Backstagers made a run for it across the lawn, but Dia stopped when she noticed that the Genesius Backstagers hadn’t budged.
“We’re all in danger,” Dia shouted. “You have to come with us!”
“Sasha’s still in there,” Aziz said. “I’m not leaving him behind.”
“Good luck, then,” Dia said as she ran off with the others toward the Thiasos mansion.
Down on the altar, the crowd groveled on the dirt floor as a disheveled and cautious Madam Thiasos approached the levitating Dionysus as if she were approaching a tiger out of captivity.
“Great deity,” she said, trying so hard to project authority into her voice. Dionysus turned and looked pathetically at the tiny human.
“My family has worked for thousands of years to summon you here tonight! We have spent countless hours and many fortunes to procure each of the legendary artifacts. We have brought you back into this world! In return, all we ask is that you take back the lightning that man stole from the gods. Strip the earth of all electricity and technology. Take us back to the old ways. Make theater, and the world, pure once more! And we, as your flock, will worship you in a new, better world!”