I wonder how well Alistair knows the security-disarming technology. Is it something he helped create and that he will now be able to track down?
“Didn’t you make this thing?” I ask him, pointing at his game phone. “Isn’t it your design?”
“In some ways,” he says. “But I didn’t design it to be used like this. Also, I’ve never seen it work before outside of my lab.”
We walk through the entire first building but we don’t see any jellyfish. We push open a door to the expansive outdoor exhibits, with Pez leading the way. Outside, there are rock-bounded pens with otters and penguins, all of whom ignore us as we creep past the motion-sensor lights. I see the giant new building that houses the sharks and suddenly realize why I can’t remember where the jellyfish are. The jellyfish building isn’t open to the public yet.
“Cnidarians,” I say. “That means jellyfish. They’re over here.”
We sneak over to the building that has a giant box jellyfish painted on the side below the pronouncement that says “Coming Soon.” Alistair’s phone unlocks the door, like all the others.
Most of the tanks are empty, but one is full of floating, bioluminescent jellyfish, blooming in hypnotic patterns. Alistair looks at me.
“You go first,” I tell him. “That’s the whole point of coming together. So you don’t lose all your lives like Henley.”
“I couldn’t have done this without you,” he says.
He walks up to the tank and holds his game phone up to the glass. The phone bleeps and he looks at the screen. He gives me a thumbs-up. I go next. I hold up my phone and wait for the fateful bleep. I brace myself for whatever might come next. I look at the character screen and see that I am in last place and that I have lost a life.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I say, letting out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
That’s when the tank explodes.
22
The glass is blown inward, not out, which is all that saves us from being sliced into pieces by the blast.
The concussion still knocks us backward and off our feet. Most of the water drains down the back of the aquarium into some hidden channel, a design feature by an architect who must have anticipated the horrible event of the tank bursting. The room is not flooded, though the splash still soaks us and the jellyfish come raining down around us, helplessly carried by the crashing wave.
It is a small miracle that none of us are caught up in the tendrils or stung as the jellyfish fall all around us. Their tendrils gyrate for a moment but quickly go still as the water recedes. The jellyfish are useless without a current to buffet them. They are glistening jewels on the aquarium floor, dangerous and evil looking.
For a long moment, Alistair and I simply stare at each other, completely shocked, unsure of whether to run or hide. We feel our faces, our hair, our arms, making sure we aren’t cut or bruised. Slowly, we come to our senses. We pick our way around the dying jellyfish. Other small fish in the tank, meant to clean the sides and keep the miniature ecosystem churning, flop around in the pool of brine. The smell of clean, wet salt is overpowering.
Pez got it the worst. The blast flipped him onto his back and slid him into the hallway on his ass, knocking his hat off his head. He is dazed and blinking when we find him and lift him to his feet.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I think so,” he says. “But there’s no reason that I should be. I might have broken my neck.”
“If it was me who got here last, the glass would have blown outward,” says Alistair. “I would have been killed. That’s the message of this catastrophe. The Game Master doesn’t want us to go even one day without knowing that they are in control.”
“What do we do?” I ask, turning around and around. “Do we stay or do we go?”
“We go,” says Pez. “Quickly, before the security guard comes.”
We scuttle out the way we came in. We don’t see the guard. No alarms go off. Possibly this is because the jellyfish house is still under construction and cameras and alarms haven’t been fully installed in here yet, but it is more likely that any alarms have been disabled by the Game Master who planned this ambush.
Soaked, we hop into a cab. The driver is dubious and doesn’t want us to get his seats wet. I pay him a hundred in cash in addition to the fare and he takes us back to the Nylo office with limited grumbling.
“If it was the Midwesterners who did this to us, I want to find out tonight,” says Pez. “I’m going to change my clothes and pick glass out of my knees and take a shower, and then I will come back and pick you up and we’ll go to K-Town.”
While Pez goes home to clean up, I decide to take a shower in my office. Alistair says he’s had enough. He appears to be in shock.
“Can you believe it?” he says, his skin looking even paler than usual. “There will be another clue tomorrow. We’ll have to do this again.”
“We should all stop playing,” I say. “The cops should handle this and we should stop playing this stupid game.”
“You’re right, of course,” says Alistair, mumbling to himself as he wanders off.
I hop in and out of the shower and it’s a good thing I’m quick, because Pez isn’t gone long. He collects me from my office, his lips pursed with determination. I get the feeling he has taken what happened at the aquarium personally. He understands the stakes.
“Come on,”
