CHAPTER EIGHT

      G7W

      I RAN DOWN an empty, carpeted hallway. At the end was an exit sign pointing left, with a little graphic that indicated stairs. I took the corner at top speed.

      I didn’t expect the stairs to be so close. Or to run into a card game in progress on them.

      “Whoa, where are you going?” Aly cried out. She, Marco, and Cass jerked backward as I tripped over the steps.

      Marco caught me midfall, but didn’t let go. “’Sup, Jack? Didn’t Bhegad explain everything?”

      “You mean the part about him saving my life?” I said, struggling to pry myself loose. “Or turning me into a DC Comics hero?”

      “Are you a DC guy?” Cass asked. “Emosewa!”

      “Meaning awesome—Cass likes to talk backward,” Aly explained. “I’m a fan of the old-school Superman TV series…with George Reeves?”

      They were all crazy. “Get me out of here! I want to see the head of this place!”

      “You just did,” Cass said. “Well, he’s not the head of the whole thing…”

      But Marco was already dragging me back toward the room. “Just do this, okay?” he said through clenched teeth. “Don’t be a pain in the butt.”

      “By the Great Qalani, what are you doing to him?” Bhegad’s voice thundered as he came around the corner. “If he pops those stitches, we lose him!”

      Marco loosened his grip. I shot upstairs and pulled open the door, to the sound of a piercing alarm.

      Three guards pivoted on their heels and faced me, hands on their weapons.

      I stopped in my tracks. I was trapped.

      “Jack,” Bhegad said softly from the bottom of the steps, “I have PhDs from Yale and Cambridge. If you think I’m crazy, then you must think your three friends are, too. And Torquin and the guards. And seventy-nine world-class experts in genetics, biophysics, classical archaeology, geography, computer science, mythology, medicine, and biochemistry. Not to mention a support staff of two hundred and twenty-eight. The Karai Institute is the finest think tank in the world. And we are patient. We can wait until you’re ready to listen. But you will not escape. So it’s either now or later. Your choice.”

      “I don’t believe a word of it,” I said.

      Bhegad beckoned me to come down the stairs. “Marco, Cass, Aly—would you kindly turn your backs?”

      Marco spun around first—and my jaw nearly dropped. Buried in his dark mop of hair was a white Λ.

      Cass’s, too.

      “Mine is under the dye,” Aly explained.

      I swallowed hard. I took a couple of steps downward. The guards slammed the door shut. “So…you’re all…?”

      “The lambda is a unique physical sign,” Bhegad explained. “We don’t understand the mechanics of it. The hair changes rather quickly, and at virtually the same age among all who have the condition. But we do know its significance. It is common to one group of people, whom we call the Select.”

      “Select? What are we selected for, something good?” I asked.

      “Yes and no,” the professor replied. “Each of you has a rare genetic marker. It is an extraordinary gift, but it also happens to be a ticking bomb. Jack, we were hoping to have five of you here—including a young man called Randall Cromarty. You know the name?”

      I was about to say no. But the name did ring a bell. A news item. A grainy video that had been circulating for the last week or so. Some kid rolling a gutter ball, throwing up his hands, dropping to the floor. The story Dad had sent me. “The kid who died in the bowling alley?”

      Bhegad nodded. “At the age of thirteen, in Illinois. Cause unknown. Before him, a girl named Sue Gudmundsen fell into a fatal coma while in a San Diego mall—also thirteen. And Mo Roberts, playing catch with his little sister. In all cases, our medical team was too late. But we found you in time.”

      “Torquin…” I said. “Dr. Saark…But how did they know?”

      “For that, you can thank our IT staff,” Bhegad said. “After your last checkup, Dr. Flood made a note on your computerized medical records about the very beginnings of the lambda. Our tracking software picked it up.”

      “You hacked my medical records.” My checkup had been about a week before the math test—a day before Dad left for Singapore. Had Dr. Flood mentioned anything about a mark on the back of my head? I couldn’t remember.

      “Hacking is such an ugly word,” Bhegad replied wearily.

      “So…what does the lambda mean?” I asked.

      “Think of those nightly news headlines, the stories that float around social media like crazy.” Bhegad smiled. “An ordinary person lifts an entire car to free a trapped loved one! A kid considered mentally defective draws ornate cathedrals from memory, to the tiniest detail! As humans, we access only part of our brain’s capacity. But these people have tapped into a vast unused area of the brain that we call the ceresacrum.”

      “What does that have to do with us?” I asked.

      “Some people breach the ceresacrum temporarily, in response to crisis,” Bhegad replied. “Some are born with a bit of access, not much. But what if the ceresacrum’s gate could be lifted? Not just the rare flash of genius or the momentary feat of strength, but total access? Imagine! In each of us lies the potential to do superhuman things. Feats of great physical daring, art, science. The ability to defy laws of nature. Am I clear, Jack?”

      Aly, Cass, and Marco were grinning at me now. My mind was a big fog of duh. “No.”

      “Some genes are buried deeply in our DNA,” Bhegad continued. “For example, we all possess the code for a tail…for gills! But these are not expressed, as we say. Nature has shut the mechanism, except in extremely rare cases. Being able to open the ceresacrum gate is like having a tail. The genetic ability is there, but ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the world’s people do not express it. You four” —he glanced slowly at each of us— “are the point zero zero zero one.”

      Now it was becoming clear. And the clarity hurt. “You mean…we’re all genetic mutants?”

      “Yes, in a good way,” Bhegad said. “You four possess what we call G7W. It’s a marker. A piece of genetic code.