fully lowered—as it was now.
As they looked out across this double-bridge, they spotted Wizard standing in the doorway to the tower, waving them over.
“This way! Hurry!” he yelled as, without warning, the drawbridge in front of him began to rise.
Wizard seemed perplexed. He wasn’t doing it. Someone else was.
“Run!” he called.
“Run!”Zoe said to Alby.
She and Alby dashed out into open space, gunfire and explosions ringing out all around them, an RPG zooming past them, its smoke trail slicing through the air before it slammed into the cliff-side fort behind them and detonated. The fort erupted. Rocks and debris flew every which way.
But the RPG-firing warrior-monk who had been on its roof had already got out of there—and he came charging out of the little fort behind Zoe and Alby, also seeking to cross the double-bridge and get to the tower.
The drawbridge was rising—one foot above the leading edge of the half-bridge. Two feet…three…
Zoe and Alby were almost at it.
The monk was sprinting hard behind them.
Zoe and Alby got there as the rising wooden drawbridge rose four feet above the gap. Zoe quickly picked up Alby and hurled him at the rising bridge’s edge.
Alby flew through the air and thudded chest first into the leading edge of the drawbridge. The hit winded him but he got a handhold, and held on, half-bent over the edge of the rising bridge.
With Alby safely on the drawbridge, Zoe jumped for it herself, leaping from the end of the stone half-bridge, arms outstretched, and she caught the edge of the drawbridge with her fingertips and exhaled a sigh of relief.
Until the warrior-monk behind her also leaped for the drawbridge and, since he could no longer reach it, caught her by the waist!
Zoe was jerked downward, yanked by the extra weight, but she held on, her fingers going white as they gripped the edge of the ascending drawbridge.
Ever rising, the drawbridge passed through twenty degrees, thirty, then forty-five degrees…
Bent over the leading edge of the rising bridge, clutching the Second Pillar in one hand, Alby saw Zoe beneath him, struggling with the warrior-monk. He shifted awkwardly, juggling the Pillar, so that he could get into a position to help her…
…when—thunk!—without warning the whole huge drawbridge stopped with a violent lurching jolt that sent the unbalanced Alby flying clear off its upper edge and tumbling down its length, heading into the tower!
Alby rolled down the steep drawbridge, trying his best to keep hold of the Pillar. But at the very bottom of his fall, he landed heavily on the stone base of the half-raised drawbridge and the Pillar popped from his grip and bounced away from him, through the tower and out onto the other drawbridge, the one that stretched back toward the village.
Alby watched in horror as the glasslike Pillar came to rest out on the other drawbridge, right at the point where it joined with the matching drawbridge that folded out from the temple-fortress.
“Alby!” a voice called.
He turned, and saw Wizard standing at the bottom of a flight of stone steps that burrowed down into the floor to his right. Lily was with him.
But then Alby heard more voices, and he looked out at the Pillar just in time to see, appearing inside the temple-fortress beyond it, some heavily armed Congolese Army men led by an Asian-American US Marine.
The Pillar lay exactly halfway between them and Alby.
A pained shout from Zoe made Alby spin on his knees. He saw her fingers at the top of the half-raised drawbridge. Saw them slipping slowly out of view…
This is all happening too fast,his mind screamed.Too many choices, too many variables. Escape with Lily, grab the Pillar, or help Zoe …
And suddenly everything went silent and time slowed for Alby Calvin.
In the silence of his mind, Alby faced his choice.
Of his three options, he could do two.
He could make it to the Pillar and get back to Wizard and Lily in the tower—but he couldn’t do that and help Zoe. If he took this option, Zoe would drop into the croc-filled lake and die.
Or he could help Zoe and, with her, join Wizard and Lily—but that would mean leaving the Pillar to these intruders. And that could have global ramifications.
Global ramifications,he thought.
The Pillar or Zoe.
One choice could potentially save the world. The other would save a single life: the life of a woman who was dear to him and to those he cared about, Lily, Wizard and Jack West.
It’s not fair!he thought angrily.This is not a choice a kid should have to make! It’s too big. Too important.
And so Alby made his choice.
