WORK TO BE DONE.

THE STORM RAGES. Though the building is not yet complete, it is a fine shelter, the construction solid. For my plans, it will be enough.

I hear a thunderclap and look up. The door is open to the grim night. My would-be assailant lies unconscious over the threshold, at the feet of the guard. In silhouette the guard looks small and frightened, as though the worst is yet to come.

He has no idea how much worse.

At the foot of the stairs is a statue, not yet mounted onto the structure's roof - a ruler who has died, and his wife who is still alive. For a moment I think about my own father and mother, a king and queen in a place long gone. My throat closes and I choke back a sob. I will never have the opportunity to do for them what I am about to do now for this ruler who calls herself queen.

The ocean crashes at the bottom of the cliff. The building is cold and forbidding. But this will soon change. Beyond the building is an unspeakable place that will make this darkness seem bright, this bleakness seem like great cheer.

The queen is about to rule again.

I reach into my bag and remove the smooth cobalt sphere. The earth shakes but I am no longer afraid. It is all as it should be.

I am Massarym. And there is work to be done.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE TAILOR WAKES.

"HE'S AWAKE . . ."

"No, he's not . . ."

"His eyes are moving."

"Jack? Jack, do you hear me?"

Jack. My name is Jack.

The dream was breaking up into flinty shards, images that shimmered and vanished. I could hear voices. Real, not dream voices. Cass and Aly. I tried to move my eyes but they weren't working. I tried to talk but I couldn't.

"He needs at least a half hour recovery, maybe more."

"He can recuperate while we're moving him."

Dr. Bradley. Aly.

What was happening?

A warm hand clasped my arm. I was moving. Rolling. "He wasn't due for one of these for another week, you say?"

"Early. Like Cass."

"Then we can't waste time. What about Bhegad?"

Dad. Torquin. Dad again.

"I appreciate the concern . . . but I will feel better . . . if someone destroys that banjo . . ." Professor Bhegad.

"Is ukulele." Torquin.

Where am I going? What are you doing to me?

WHY CAN'T I- "Taalk!"

The rolling stopped. My eyes popped open and I blinked. We were in the hallway, outside the recovery room.

"Did you say something, Jack?" Dad was staring down at me, his eyes creased with concern.

I blinked. "I said talk. I think."

"I knew it!" Aly blurted out, clinging happily to my dad's arm. "He's okay." She leaned close to me. "JACK, ARE YOU FULLY AWAKE? CAN YOU HEAR ME? YOU HAD A TREATMENT. YOU ARE BACK TO NORMAL NOW."

"Why are you yelling at me?" I asked.

Cass appeared on the other side of the bed. "Bhegad's awake. We asked him about the Loculus of Healing. And about the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Just to be sure. And guess what? You were right-about both!"

"Good work, Tailor," Aly said.

"Tailor?" Dad asked.

Bhegad's soft, breathy voice called out. He was on a gurney next to mine. "Tinker . . . tailor . . . soldier . . . sailor . . ."

"I'm the Sailor, because of my emosewa lanoitagivan ability," Cass explained. "The Soldier is Marco-you never met him, Mr. McKinley, but he's cool-because he's mad athletic. And Aly is the Tinker because of her tech amazingness."

Dad smiled. "So what's the Tailor's special ability?"

I smiled weakly. "I was hoping you'd tell me."

The one who puts it all together, Bhegad had once said. But that seemed like an excuse. Like the trophy you get even if your team finishes last.

Unfortunately, Bhegad had fallen silent.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it's awesome," Dad said. He gave a signal, and I felt myself being wheeled again. We were heading away from the recovery room toward the exit.

"What's happening?" I asked. "Where are we going?"

"I had some time to think about what you told me before you passed out," Dad said. "Since then, I've chatted with Dr. Bradley, Torquin, and your friends. I have decided it's important to start planning for your fourteenth birthday. And fifteenth. So we've reserved Brunhilda to help us."

"What the heck are you talking about?" I said.

We stopped by a small, empty room. Two McKinley Genetics Lab people stood just inside, holding some folded-up clothing.

"Brunhilda is the name of our corporate jet," Dad replied. "Change quickly. I'm going to get you a cell phone in case we get separated at any point. Wheels up in ten minutes. With Bhegad. Torquin's flying."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

BRUNHILDA.

"PAH!" TORQUIN YANKED the steering mechanism to the left. "Slippy is like Lamborghini, Brunhilda like minivan!"

"Her ride feels smooth to me," Dad said from the copilot's seat.

The jet banked gently left. "Smooth, yes," Torquin shot back. "Fun, no."

Cass, Aly, and I sat quietly in three padded seats behind the two men. Cass was fiddling with his flash drive/worry beads again, staring at the Charles Newton letter. "There's something funky about this," he said. "Did you notice some of the letters are lighter than the others?"

Aly peered over his shoulder. "Bad photocopy," she said.

"Or bad typewriter," Dad added. "On those old machines, the keys responded to pressure. If you didn't type hard enough, the letters were lighter."

"But the light letters actually spell something," Cass said. "'The destroyer shall rule.' Look."

"Are you sure?" Aly said. "Because a lot of those letters look light."

Cass shrugged. "Doesn't seem like that could be a coincidence. Maybe it has something to do with King Mausolus."

"He wasn't a king," Aly said. "He was a satrap. Kind of like a governor."

"Maaa . . ." groaned Professor Bhegad from the back of the plane.

We all turned. Bhegad lay on a reclined seat, a wheelchair folded up and strapped to the wall behind him. "How's he doing?" I asked.

"The commotion drained him," Dr. Bradley said. "He hasn't been awake this whole flight. For a human being in his condition, travel is very nearly the worst possible thing."

"He'll make it as far as Turkey, right?" Cass asked.

Dr. Bradley cocked her head but said nothing.

Unbuckling her seat belt, Aly knelt by Bhegad and took his hand. "I don't know if you can hear me, Professor, but if there's a way to heal you, we will find it."

"Slippy," Torquin grumbled, "would already be in Holly-Holla-Turkey."

"Halicarnassus," Dad said. "And it's not called that anymore. The Knights of Saint Peter changed the name to Petronium. Which, over time, became Bodrum. That's where we're headed. Bodrum, Turkey."

Torquin nodded, then glanced at his GPS. "Ninety-seven miles from Boredom."

I turned away, focusing on the monitor that swung out from the armrest of my seat. Since leaving home for the KI, we hadn't had internet. Now I was making up for lost time, collecting research on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. If I had time, I wanted to look into the other Wonders, too.

I zoomed in on some drawings. The place wasn't sprawling or gaudy. It wasn't a phenomenal feat of engineering like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. But there was something unbelievably beautiful about it, almost modern-tall, columned, nearly square all around, like the top of a skyscraper. It was ornamented with massive statues and covered with carvings. At the top, like a hat, was a pyramid that rose in steps up to a statue of a chariot holding two people.

"'More than one hundred thirty feet,'" I read aloud. "Taller than the Statue of Liberty, not including the base. It lasted sixteen centuries. The whole thing is surrounded by columns, thirty-six of them. Mausolus and his wife, Artemisia, sat at the top in a chariot-well, they didn't, but a statue of them did. The place was called Caria back then, not Halicarnassus. It was part of Persia. The structure was considered crazy modern, even shocking. In those days fancy buildings were decorated with classical scenes, historical battles. But they used statues of animals, portraits of real people."

"Imagine," said Cass. "Must have been fainting in the streets."

"What happened to it?" Dad asked.

"Earthquake," I replied. "Totaled in the early thirteen hundreds. A century afterward, the Crusaders conquer the area. Near the old Mausoleum site they figure, hey, nice place to build a castle. Soon they need to reinforce it, so they use stones from the ruins of the Mausoleum. You can still see the actual stones-only now that old castle is a museum."

"Museum of the Mausoleum," Cass said. "MuMa."

"How do we find a Wonder that's been cemented into a museum wall?" Aly said with a groan. "Think about it. The parts of the Colossus were in a pile. The Hanging Gardens were tucked away in a parallel world. We could get to them. They weren't attached to anything else!"

Cass's face sank. "Good point."

"Well, just some of the stones were used," I said. "There's a collection at the actual site of the Mausoleum."

"I don't know how we'll get in," Dad said. "The site is closed for the day. I just checked."

"We'll figure something out," Aly said.

Dad sighed, glancing back at Professor Bhegad. "I hope I don't regret doing this."

Cass was peering out the window at a moonlit mountain peak of pure white that jutted up through the cloud cover. "Whoa . . . that's Mount Ararat. Eastern edge of Turkey. Where Noah's Ark washed up."

"Must have been some huge flood," I said.

"That must have been some huge ark," Aly added.

"Brunhilda is like ark," Torquin complained. "Without flood. Or animals. Hang on."

With a grunt, he yanked on some control so hard he nearly took off the lever.

Slowly, gently, we began to descend.

The rented van sped down the Bodrum highway along the coast of the Mediterranean. I sat in the back with Professor Bhegad, who was awake again but not saying much. His wheelchair lay folded in the van's wayback. Out the window, a carpet of moonlight led to the distant lights of the island Kos.