Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5 "Don't say it," Dan said. "I know, it's my fault. But this place is so yikes-worthy, I forgot about the key." "How are we going to get out of here?" "We'll figure it out. C'mon, let's explore." "I don't know about this," Amy said. "What if it's booby-trapped?" "We would have tripped it already," Dan pointed out. Amy lowered her voice to a whisper. "Why isn't anyone here? The other strongholds were full of people." "Because we got lucky. Come on. Don't be a weenie." Dan bounded forward. He couldn't resist the array of genius and ingenuity before him.

Holograms shimmered, LEDs flickered. Over in a corner, a machine began to clatter, spitting out ticker tape, just like in an old movie. Blueprints of inventions projected down one wall. He charged down the gallery, calling back, "Oh, man. Thomas Edison was a Cahill! How cool is that? The lightbulb!" Amy walked more slowly through the exhibits. While Dan circled Robert Fulton's design for a steamboat, she stared at a schematic of a submarine weapons-delivery system. Dan let out a whoop. "The cotton gin! Eli Whitney was an Ekat. Genius!" Ahead, Amy saw a black curtain. It seemed to suck all the energy in the room. "Amy! We invented the bicycle!" Slowly, she walked toward it. As she grew closer, she realized that it wasn't a curtain but a wall of shadow that was somehow created by a machine aiming light— or was it the absence of light? How was that possible?— toward a corner of the room. "The sewing machine. Elias Howe, you rock!"

Hesitantly, she moved through the shadow. Ahead of her was a white screen. As soon as she approached, it was activated. It took her almost a full minute to understand. At first, it was just blueprints flashing on the screen. Then numbers. She heard Dan crowing something about the internal combustion engine. "Way to go, Marie Curie! Radioactivity!" A slide show began, black-and-white photographs. She pressed her hands to her mouth. Dan was right outside the shadow. "These inventions are so radical. We changed history!" "Not we," Amy whispered. Another stream of images began. "Not we, Dan!" she suddenly shouted. Dan walked through the shadow curtain. "What's this?" he asked, studying the schematic and then peering at an old black-and-white photograph. There were more photographs to come in the slide show. Amy yanked Dan back into the brightly lit gallery. "Hey!" Dan protested. "What are you doing? I

want to see!" "No," Amy said fiercely. "You don't. You don't want to see how we figured out a poison gas delivery system to kill millions." The color drained from Dan's face. "How we figured out how to split the atom and make a bomb that could annihilate a whole city!" Heat made Dan's face turn red. Except for the small scar under his eye, which stayed white. It was how he looked when he was really upset. She should stop. But she didn't. Couldn't. "Chemical warfare, Dan? Does that rock?" Amy didn't know why she was so angry at her brother. "Is genocide way cool?" Amy backed away, her hands shaking. For the first time since he was a tiny kid, she had set out to make her brother cry. Which was funny, because she was the one who wanted to wail. She wanted to stamp her feet. She wanted to scream. But her eyes were dry. "What if we're Ekats?" she whispered. "What if all that evil is part of us? Embedded in our DNA?" Seeing the fear on her face, Dan suddenly felt

afraid, too. "Every branch had bad people in it," he said. "And there are plenty of good Ekats, too. I mean, where would we be without Edison? In the dark, that's where. Anyway, we don't know what branch we're in. We only know we're Cahills. If I had to choose a branch based on the bad guys, I wouldn't want to be part of any of them." Amy slumped to the floor and leaned her head against the wall. "What are we doing here?" she asked. "The more we find out, the more I have to wonder. Why would Grace want us to know that we were connected to so much evil?" "I was just babbling before," Dan said. "Saying that we were responsible for that"— he jerked his head toward the black curtain— "is like saying I invented the cotton gin." Amy gave a wan smile. "Good point. But Grace… she always protected us. She loved us, Danny. Or, at least… I thought so." Dan was too stunned to even complain that she called him "Danny." That nickname had been offlimits since he was six. "You thought so? What

do you mean?" "Ever since we started this, we've wondered why Grace didn't help us," Amy said. "She didn't leave us a private message. She didn't leave us anything. She just lumped us in with all the rest of the Cahills." "Like we weren't special to her," Dan said. He expected Amy to leap to Grace's defense like she always did. It annoyed him, but he depended on it, too. Instead, she nodded. "So did we really know her at all?" Amy asked. "Think about it. There was this whole huge thing in her life, and we didn't know. Being a Cahill was so much a part of her. How could we have known her, really known her, if we didn't know that?" Amy swallowed. "It just makes me feel so…" "Dumb?" Dan asked. "Hey, speak for yourself." Amy didn't even get irritated. "Mr. Mclntyre told us to trust no one. What if that includes… Grace?" Amy closed her eyes. She hated saying these things. She hated thinking them. But she couldn't