Rune snorted a laugh, and it was the first time I’d heard her sound anything other than reserved.
“Fiddlesticks? Have you been reading parenting books again?”
“Just trying to do things right.”
“You already do everything right.”
“Guys,” Ravi said. “Can we have this discussion later when the clock isn’t ticking? How much time do we have left? And what’s down there?”
Rune checked the timer. “Fifteen minutes gone.”
“Down here?” Alaric’s voice sounded a bit echoey. “Remember that part in Ocean’s Twelve with the laser grid?”
Ravi grinned. “Best scene in the movie.”
“Well, it’s like that except the lasers are green rather than blue, and there’s no music.”
I’d seen that movie too. What on earth had we gotten ourselves into?
CHAPTER 26 - BETHANY
I LOWERED A foot, feeling for the ladder with my toes, and once I’d got down a few rungs, Alaric’s hands rested lightly on my hips, steadying me. I didn’t particularly need steadying, but I liked the feel of them so I didn’t say anything. Yes, I understood nothing could happen between us, but still… Those little touches sent flashes of heat through me.
Swiftly followed by a chill when I turned to see the lasers. How the hell were we supposed to get across that? A big button glowed white on the other side—presumably we had to press it? Alaric reached out a hand and cut one of the beams. A buzzer sounded, and the button turned red and began a countdown from thirty seconds. Did that mean we couldn’t complete the task until the clock hit zero? When he cut the beam a second time, the timer increased by a minute.
“Perhaps leave it?” I suggested.
“Just seeing what would happen.”
Rune climbed down and quickly took in the scene. “Ravi can do this one?”
“I’d put my back out if I tried it,” Alaric said. “Unless Bethany wants to have a go?”
I might have worn sensible shoes today—black suede boots with gold zippers on the sides—but that didn’t qualify me to be a contortionist.
“Ravi’s welcome to—” I jumped as I realised he was standing right beside me. How had he come down the ladder so quietly? “Uh, be my guest.”
He studied the array of lasers for maybe ten seconds, then leapt, skipped, and limboed around the beams, finishing with a freaking backflip. The buzzer stayed silent, and the countdown reached zero a second before he punched the button. Perfect timing.
“Show off,” Alaric muttered.
“What the…? Did he do gymnastics as a child?”
“Something like that.”
“Wow.”
The lasers vanished, and a door in the far wall swung open, revealing Krankov’s lab. A ceiling fan whirred overhead, casting eerie shadows over the room. Bubbling flasks of coloured liquids lined one wall, and another held a bunch of animal skulls in glass cases, each with a plaque underneath. Were they real? A scarred wooden bench spanned the room, complete with three sets of electronic scales holding empty glass beakers. Brilliant. Science had always been my worst subject at school, and dead animals gave me the creeps. Dubious specimens floated in jars, atomic models sat on shelves, and I hoped to goodness the DANGER: RADIATION sign was a fake.
“What’s that on the chalkboard?” Ravi asked. “Is that algebra? Or Russian?”
“Both,” Rune told him.
I had an “aha” moment. “That’s what the books are for upstairs. Russian and algebra. They’re to help us down here. I’ll go and get them.”
“Time is of the essence,” Alaric said.
“I know. I’ll be quick.”
“No, that’s what the Russian says. It’s a red herring.”
“You speak Russian?”
“Enough to get by.”
“Oh.” Colour me impressed. “That’s…that’s… But we still need the algebra book. All those x’s and y’s are like Greek to me.”
“Thirty-seven,” Rune said.
“Huh?”
“The answer is thirty-seven. I can’t speak Greek, but I can speak English, Thai, French, German, Spanish, and algebra.”
Flipping heck. I turned to Ravi, questioning, and he backed away with his hands in the air.
“Hey, don’t look at me. I can only speak English, Spanish, Hindi, and enough French to get laid.”
Alaric glared at him, then cut his eyes to Rune, and Ravi took another step back.
“Shit, sorry.”
Rune just giggled, high-pitched and musical. “Time’s ticking. What do we do with the thirty-seven? Do you think it’s something to do with these atomic models? Thirty-seven on the periodic table is rubidium.”
“No, not that. There isn’t a copy of the periodic table in here, and they can’t rely on us knowing that information. We’re not all smart-asses.”
“Are you supposed to say ‘ass’?”
“Dammit, probably not.” Alaric smacked his forehead. “Sh— Shoot.”
“We do swear at school, you know. And I’m fifteen now.”
She looked younger, although I wasn’t about to point that out. “Only a couple of years until your dad’ll be fighting off the boys with a stick.”
If I hadn’t been looking right at Rune, I might have missed it. The flash of fear in her eyes. I was sure I hadn’t imagined it, but she quickly shook it away.
“No, no, that’s no problem. I’m not interested in boys. No, never.”
“Shall we get on with the game?” Alaric asked, and there was nothing subtle about his change of subject. Should I apologise? I wanted to because I’d obviously upset Rune, but at the same time, I didn’t want to prolong the pain by pushing a topic nobody wanted to discuss. Maybe I’d ask Alaric later, see what he thought was appropriate.
Ravi followed Alaric’s lead. “It has to be the beakers. We need to put something in them—thirty-seven of something.”
“Thirty-seven millilitres?” I suggested. “Thirty-seven grams?”
Rune moved to the back wall, to the flasks of coloured liquid. “If this is water, then one millilitre equals one gram, so it doesn’t matter which. And I can’t see thirty-seven of anything else unless we start popping hydrogen atoms off all these hydrocarbon molecules, and I don’t suppose they’d thank us if we did that.”
Alaric grinned at her, the proud papa. “No, I don’t suppose they would. Do you want to measure?”
Now Rune looked like the kid she was as she gleefully poured exactly thirty-seven grams of blue liquid into the nearest beaker. Nothing happened. No flashing lights, no hint as to whether we were correct. Did we just trust that we were on the right track? I didn’t see we had a lot of choice.
“We need two more numbers,” Alaric said. “Look for anything out of place, and say what you see the way we did upstairs.”
We fanned out, and as luck would have it, I got the animal skulls. I peered closer and breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted a telltale moulding line—they were plastic, not real bone.
“Methane, ethane, propane, butane, hexane, octane…” Rune said, picking up models that could have come from any high school science lab. “No pentane and no heptane. Do you think that means anything?”