“Yes!” Neela said, her voice froggy from the chalk. “So the weight is easy to figure out. One calcium at forty point oh seven eight.” She took a quick breath, then broke into a fit of coughing as she sputtered out the rest of the formula. “One…carbon, which is twelve point oh one oh seven. Three oxygen at fifteen—” She sneezed, the chalk cloud billowing in front of her mouth. “Sorry. Fifteen point ninety-nine ninety-four.”
Persey waved her hands in front of her face, trying to clear the air. “Thank God you have a photographic memory, or we’d all be dead.”
“You’re welcome,” Neela said, still calculating in her brain. “Carry the one and…one hundred point eight six nine.”
This had to be the answer.
“Argh! That’s—” Mackenzie gagged on the thick dust. Even her coughs sounded exasperated. “That’s not four digits!”
“Who said it had to be four?” Persey asked.
“Fine. Then you try it.”
“Fine, I will.”
“Okay,” Kevin said on an exhale, as if giving permission. “Go for it.”
Without hesitating so she couldn’t change her mind, Persey typed in the first digit, letting the pad of her finger rest against the glass long enough to feel the electric shock, if it was going to come. But she didn’t feel a thing.
“It’s working!” Neela gasped.
Persey sure the hell hoped so. Hand trembling, she typed in the next five numbers as quickly and accurately as she could, then paused before entering the last one. If you’re wrong, this stupid door will be the last thing you ever see. Her eyes drifted toward Kevin. She couldn’t see his face through the haze, just the outline of his tall form and his small, almost-imperceptible nod of encouragement.
Now or never.
Persey held her breath and hit the nine.
PERSEY HAD OFTEN WONDERED WHAT IT MUST BE LIKE TO BE electrocuted. Such a punishment hadn’t been deemed “cruel and unusual” in the eyes of justice departments across the country, who used electrocution as a common means of execution, but Persey had seen a documentary on television once about a man named Willie Francis, who survived the first attempt to execute him by the electric chair. He said that when the switch was thrown, his arms jolted involuntarily and his skin felt as if he was being pricked by thousands of needles all over his body.
It was with a Riot-like intellectual curiosity (fatalism) that she touched the final number on the pad, half wondering if she might discover the truth in Willie Francis’s words for herself.
But instead of the sensation of transforming into a real-life voodoo doll, all Persey felt was the bolt sliding free inside the heavy door, releasing the lock. With her finger still pressed firmly against the glass pad, Persey pushed.
The door swung open.
Adrenaline still pumping blood through her ears with a thunder so deafening she couldn’t even hear the people around her, Persey felt a hand on her back, a figure brushing past her arm, and then her legs were moving as she was half dragged out of the classroom.
“You okay?” Kevin asked. He held her by the elbow, supporting her weight. Once again, he’d made sure she was safely out of a dangerous situation.
Persey nodded, not entirely sure she even knew what “okay” was anymore. “Yeah.”
He leaned closer to her. “Why did you volunteer as tribute back there? What if you were wrong?”
“But I wasn’t.”
“You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t.”
Kevin’s brow clouded, and once again, Persey was struck by the dichotomy of his personality: carefree and flippant one moment, deadly serious the next. “Just be careful, okay?”
Persey’s smile was tight. “Okay.”
Neela bounded up to Persey, hands clasped before her. “You saved me. I was so confident the correct answer was the algebraic solution, I didn’t even consider other options. I would have…I mean, it might have been my last…” She heaved a steadying breath. “This is why you solved the Hidden Library: you know how to step back and assess all the options.”
“It just reminded me of the ATM booth,” Persey said, uncomfortable (unworthy) with any kind of praise. “The first answer that popped into my mind was