Whatever J. Rutherford Pierce wants to tell us on Sunday, he will have the collective ear of the entire world. . . .
Nellie crumpled up the newspaper clipping and tossed it into the nearest wastebasket. “What an idiot. Who thinks the most all-American thing is clams? Ask the folks in Iowa how many clams they run into in the course of a day.”
Sammy was nervous. “This is serious, Nellie. We just blew up this guy’s serum factory, and he knows exactly who we are. If he gets to be president, we’re going to have to form an expedition to colonize Mars.”
The two had traded one lab for another. Now they were in an underground facility below the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the lab of Dr. Sylvia Seung, Sammy’s mentor and a cousin of the famous Oh family that had once dominated the Ekaterina branch. Although they were no longer prisoners, Sammy and Nellie rarely appeared aboveground in case Pierce’s forces were looking for them.
Dr. Seung was surveying a vast mosaic of notes, diagrams, and chemical formulas that covered an entire wall of the lab. “Sammy, is this for real? Who on earth could imagine the chemical properties of the whiskers of an extinct leopard or a crystal formed by a prehistoric meteor strike?”
“It’s a long story, Professor,” Sammy admitted. “A very old recipe from Olivia Cahill herself. She cobbled it together from the ancient wisdom of the greatest lost civilizations the world has ever known — from Tikal, to Troy, to Angkor. I don’t understand exactly how it’s going to work yet, but all the ingredients will be coming here. It’s up to me to put them together and synthesize more.”
The sound of voices in the hall brought Nellie to her feet, quivering with excitement. “They’re here! My kiddos are here, safe and sound!”
And then Dan burst in the door and threw himself at her. “Nellie!”
She embraced him, then stepped back, surveying him from head to toe. “You’re a foot taller! It’s been less than a month. What are you eating, Miracle-Gro?”
“Nothing compares with your cooking!” Dan replied, hugging her tightly.
“You would have loved my last creation,” Nellie told him with satisfaction. “Nitroglycerin milk shake, extra, extra, extra large. Pierce’s lab is still raining down in fine dust.”
Dan shook his head with admiration. “Nobody messes with you.”
Nellie’s attention shifted to Jonah. “Last time I saw your famous mug, you were trending on YouTube for saving a lunkhead from crocodiles.” She turned to Hamilton, giving his massive biceps an affectionate squeeze. “The lunkhead, I presume.”
Hamilton smiled sheepishly. “Good to see you, Nellie. Kabra says hi, too.”
“Ian? Where is he?”
“He’s in quarantine at the airport,” Dan supplied, “surrounded by people in hazmat suits. They think he might have a tropical disease.”
“Does he?” Nellie asked in concern.
“Nah,” Dan explained. “Our snake bit him on the nose, but we couldn’t say that without admitting we were smuggling a protected animal out of Cambodia and into the United States. They’ll cut him loose when the swelling comes down and the rash goes away.”
Nellie laughed. “It’s good for a Lucian to take one for the team.” Her gaze fell on the last to arrive, Atticus, Jake, and finally Amy.
Nellie had been the Cahill kids’ au pair, their protector, and then their legal guardian. She was the closest thing to a parent they’d had since losing their mother and father. So it was with the eyes of love that she looked at Amy and saw the toll the serum had taken on her.
On the surface, Amy was the picture of health — athletic and strong, brimming with energy and glowing with an inner light. But on closer inspection, her robust exterior seemed to hide many troubling details. She was more muscular, but thinner, with hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes. Her gait and posture were graceful and confident, like that of a star athlete. Yet her smaller movements were shaky, and her hand seemed to have the tremor of a ninety-year-old.
Nellie Gomez was 100 percent tough and ready for anything. She had a tenacity that could be applied equally to perfecting a puff pastry or destroying a billion-dollar lab. But the sight of Amy made her break down and cry.
“It’s all good,” Jonah soothed, placing a hand on Nellie’s shoulder. “We’ve got the ingredients for the antidote.” He nodded in Sammy’s direction. “What up, genius? Ready to do your thing?”
“I’ll try,” Sammy promised nervously.
He sounded far less certain than they would have hoped for with Amy’s life — and the fate of the planet — hanging in the balance.
Amy deftly applied pressure with her thumb to the head of the Tonle Sap water snake. The small fangs came down, piercing the thick latex that covered the beaker. The Cahills watched as clear droplets of venom pearled on the fangs and splashed into the container.
Jonah was bug-eyed. “That’s it? The Wiz was almost croc chow for that?”
Amy massaged the venom glands to make sure there was no more liquid to be had. “I hope it’s enough,” she said anxiously.
Sammy measured carefully. “We only need a tiny batch. Then we can analyze the molecular composition and synthesize a large quantity.”
Next the Anatolian leopard whiskers were ground to powder and suspended in solution. The riven crystal was melted to a liquid state. One by one, the ingredients were meticulously prepared and measured.
While Sammy worked his magic in the lab, Dr. Seung, who was also an MD, gave Amy a thorough physical exam. The results were all over the place. She registered astounding strength and record-setting reflexes. However, Amy’s heart was racing to keep pace with a metabolic rate that medical science had never seen. She scored off the charts on vision and hearing tests, but her blood pressure was so high that the cuff blew right off her arm. An EEG revealed brainwaves on a par with the greatest minds in history, yet her tremors were consistent with a patient in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease. There was no speed on the treadmill that she could not maintain comfortably. Although she showed no symptoms of fever, her body temperature was approaching 105.
Eventually, all the doctor-speak became too much for Dan. “Cut the mumbo-jumbo, doc. Give it to us straight. One minute she’s too sick; the next she’s too well.”
“She’s both,” Dr. Seung explained. “In order to perform at this extraordinary level, her body is literally burning itself out.”
Jake’s voice was barely a whisper. “How long?”
“If I had to guess — and I do,” Dr. Seung replied, “I’d say two days, maybe less.”
Now Dan’s own heart was pounding, no serum required. It’s happening! It’s really happening! Amy’s dying!
Amy nodded stoically. “It adds up. The estimate was always about a week, and I took the serum five days ago.”
“Adds up!” Jake’s stress bubbled over. “Amy, how can you talk so clinically about your life! If the snake hadn’t climbed into Ian’s shoe, we’d still be in Cambodia, looking! We could easily have missed our one chance to save you!”
“But we didn’t,” Amy reminded him.
“Yeah, by sheer random chance!”
Amy and Dan shared a flash of the almost telepathic connection that had grown between them since the loss of their parents. Brilliant as he was, Jake was not a Cahill, and he couldn’t possibly understand the lesson they’d learned in the search for the 39 Clues. There was no point worrying about what might have happened. As long as you were still alive, still in the hunt, that was a good day. There was antidote to be made and a presidential wannabe to be foiled. That was all that mattered.
Amy and Dan lived in the moment, because hard experience had taught them that there was no other time.
Chapter 20
Ian was finally released by US immigration close to midnight. By the time he made it to the lab, the place was deserted. It took twe
nty minutes of pounding against a heavy steel door to wake an exhausted Sammy, who had fallen asleep at his worktable.
“Where is everyone?” Ian asked in irritation.
“Dr. Seung got them apartments in a residence for visiting professors,” Sammy replied. “It’s the middle of the night, Ian.”
Ian nodded. “How lovely to know that they were comfortable while I was poked and prodded and drained of half my blood so the Center for Disease Control could test for the Ebola virus.”
The big news was that the antidote had been created, analyzed, and synthesized. It was ready for testing.
Ian forgot his grievances and sprinted out of the building to rally the Cahill troops.
Soon the entire group was back in the lab, gathered around a single hypodermic syringe filled with an opaque milky liquid. They looked at it with reverence.
Atticus was the first to put the emotion into words. “I know it’s just a dose of gray slime and all, but think where it comes from — and who! The wisdom of lost civilizations, collected by Leonardo da Vinci himself!”
“And his lab assistant, Olivia Cahill,” put in Dan. “It was her notebook that made this even possible.”
“This is like a life-saving gift handed down through the centuries from the mother of our family,” Amy added in a hushed tone.
“It’s all that,” Jonah agreed.
“I prepared it as a shot because that’s the fastest way to deliver it to the bloodstream,” Sammy explained. “But it could also be taken by mouth or even converted to an aerosol spray.”
“Faster is definitely better,” Nellie decided. She turned to Amy. “Kiddo, roll up your sleeve.”
Amy’s reply was a single word. “No.”
Instantly, she had everyone’s attention. “Quit fooling around,” Dan growled at her. “You need the antidote.”
“And I’ll take it,” she promised, “but not yet.”
“When?” Jake blurted. “Tomorrow? The day after? You don’t know if you have that much time!”
Amy squeezed her eyes shut to force away the pinwheels of color that were swirling all around her. Her hallucinations were becoming more frequent and intense, as were the tremors, but at least now there was light at the end of the tunnel. Their long, meandering journey through the capitals of antiquity had a scheduled ending — Sunday, at the All-American Clambake on Pierce Landing. The antidote would save her life, but it would also take away her biggest advantage going into that final battle. How could she place her own well-being above the future of the world?
“Once Pierce announces he’s running for president,” Amy tried to explain, “he’ll have Secret Service protection and platoons of journalists following him everywhere he goes. We won’t be able to get near him. That makes the clambake our last chance to derail his freight train. To pull this off, I need to be the way I am now — stronger, faster, and smarter.”
Nellie lifted several inches off the floor. “You might not be stronger, faster, and smarter then! You might not even be alive!”
“It’s a risk,” Amy admitted. “But the plain truth is there’s no other way. Pierce is enhanced; so are Galt and the family’s whole army of minions and goons. We need that boost on our side, too.”
“Why?” Dan shot back in anguish. “We kept up with those idiots before you took the serum.”
“Well, for starters, we need a way to get the antidote to Pierce Landing. Right now I can learn how to fly a plane in a matter of hours.”
Nellie jumped in. “I’m a pilot. I can fly the plane!”
“But on the serum, I’ll be more than a pilot,” Amy argued. “I’ll be a one-person command center.”
“Maybe you won’t need to,” Nellie argued bitterly. “Maybe the plan will go perfectly and you’ll end up tossing your life away for nothing!”
“Maybe,” Amy conceded. “But that doesn’t change anything.”
“Forget it.” Jake played his trump card. “You put Dan in charge, and there’s no way he’s going to go for it.” He looked to Dan for confirmation.
The answer was a long time coming. Dan thought hard, his expression torn. “I’m with Amy,” he said finally. “This thing is too important. It’s like Luke Skywalker trying to destroy the Death Star. We’ve got one shot, and if we blow it, the whole galaxy pays the price.”
The argument ceased. The group had learned through hard experience that some missions took absolutely priority. There were things that had to be gotten exactly right, or nothing else would matter.
Dan swallowed hard. At least 40 percent of him had been cheering for the others to shout him down. He could not see the future, but one thing seemed absolutely crystal clear: If Amy died because of this decision, he would never be able to live with himself.
The sheer weight of it threatened to crush him into the floor, almost as if the force of gravity had been tripled through some fiat of nature. All he wanted was to be free of the Cahills, yet here he was — not merely involved, but calling the shots, with nothing less than Amy’s life on the line. Decisions had to be made, and he was the one who had to make them. For that alone, he felt a blinding hatred toward J. Rutherford Pierce he’d never believed himself capable of.
He realized that he would never get away from all this Cahill craziness — not alone anyway. The only way out would be with Amy at his side. If she survived the next twenty-four hours — if they both did — they would quit the family together.
“Can I ask a practical question?” Sammy broke the solemn silence. “If Amy’s not going to test the antidote, who is? I mean, someone has to. All this is for nothing if the antidote doesn’t work.”
Hamilton had a suggestion. “We could always test it out on one of Pierce’s souped-up goons.”
Amy shook her head. “No good. Pierce’s people know us too well. The last thing we want is to tip them off that we’ve completed the antidote.”
“What about Cara?” Jonah suggested. “Nobody would ever suspect her.”
Ian shook his head. “She’s already on Pierce Landing. By the time we could get her some antidote to test, it would be too late to change our plans.”
Atticus spoke up bravely. “I volunteer to take the serum. Then you could try the antidote on me.”
“Don’t even think about it!” snapped Jake, drawing his little brother close.
Dan regarded his best friend in genuine affection and respect. “You rock, buddy. But we’d never allow you to do something like that. And nobody else, either.”
Nellie had an idea. “Well, there is one person. . . .”
Chapter 21
As the taxi from LaGuardia Airport drove Nellie through the streets of New York, she passed her favorite French bakery and knew a moment of yearning and regret. It was still far from sunrise, and people were already queued up at Au Delice, home of the flakiest, most exquisite croissants outside of France. It took all her willpower to keep from jumping out of the cab and getting in line. Alas, this was the Cahill world. The delights of life were all around you — right under your nose sometimes. But no, you had to take care of business, because business was usually life and death.
Her destination was not too far away, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — the Callender Institute. She noted that the flag was at half mast, no doubt to mark the passing of their founder, Dr. Jeffrey Callender. Nellie was surprised at the wave of regret that came over her. If anybody deserved his fate, it was Callender — a staunch Pierce ally who was using Fiske Cahill as a human guinea pig. Yet as much as Nellie had wanted to destroy the Delaware lab and everything in it, she and Sammy had worked so hard to protect the people — to make sure that the staff got out before the nitroglycerin explosions began their march down Kablooey Avenue. They had succeeded in every case except one. She still found it in her heart to regret the death of Jeffrey Callender.
On the other hand, it was just as we
ll that the doctor wasn’t there to try to prevent her from seeing Fiske.
The receptionist smiled at Nellie without suspicion. “Welcome back, but I’m afraid you’re a little early. Visiting hours don’t begin until noon.”
Undaunted, Nellie delivered a long rambling speech about having just gotten off the plane from Europe, and, oh, how she longed to see her dear uncle. She was so emotional, so noisy, and so persistent that the young woman let her through “just this once.”
Nellie took the elevator to Fiske’s floor and started down the corridor, steering clear of anyone in a lab coat. Most of the staff were regular medical personnel, but a few of the male “nurses” were unusually broad and muscular and bore a troubling resemblance to Pierce’s goons. She proceeded cautiously, marveling at the luxury of the plush carpet, oak paneling, and recessed halogen lighting. It was pretty posh for a medical facility — the institute was known to cater to the wealthy. She felt a stab of anger. Not only was poor Fiske being experimented on, but he was paying through the nose for the privilege.
And then she was peering in the doorway at him. He was sitting up in bed, reading the paper — at least, that seemed to be his plan. In fact, he was staring listlessly at the wall while the New York Times drooped in his hands. He looked awful — much worse than the last time she’d seen him. True, he showed a few traces of the enhancement that could be found in Amy or J. Rutherford Pierce. His face had that healthy glow, but his eyes and cheeks were hollow. His flesh hung off his bones, as if he were a former star athlete who hadn’t exercised in decades. Horribly, he reminded Nellie of the skeleton figure on the tarot card Death. With a pang, she noted that the hands that held the newspaper were trembling.
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