“Well, that’s going to help.” He started to lower his hand but then raised it again and hit: 1-7-7-5. The little light stopped blinking but stayed red. Was that a good sign?
“Why 1775?”
“It’s my grandfather’s Earthly year of bir—”
The box shrieked.
I slapped my palms over my ears as Remo let out a new string of expletives and tried two other combinations. His year of birth: 2018—why he would think that could be the code was beyond me—and then the current Earthly year: 2124. And then he punched 2-0-3, his index hovering between the numbers five and six. “What’s your birth year?” he yelled over the loud screeching.
“Five!”
He punched the five. The keyboard kept trilling and the light stayed red.
Remo struck it with his fist. The light neither magically turned off nor did it quiet. He growled and raised his fingers to the sides of the box, trying to pry it off the wall, but like the bricks behind it, the box was indestructible.
Panting hard, he lowered his hands and fisted them at his sides.
I racked my brain for combinations but there were too many to try out. I stared around the room, on the lookout for numbers. None had magically appeared on the walls, or on the tables. The only thing that had magically appeared in this room, which hadn’t been there before, was the damn pie.
Remo must’ve followed my gaze because he muttered something—probably roared it, but since my palms were still sandwiched on either side of my head, it sounded unintelligible.
Suddenly, the high-pitched wailing stopped. We both spun back toward the box, hopeful to find the light off. It wasn’t. It had simply gone back to blinking, and then the beeps started again. I lowered my hands, the sound bearable but most definitely not enjoyable.
“What’s Linus’s year of birth?” Remo asked gruffly.
“Um. At the start of the 1800s, but I don’t know the exact date.”
“Well that’s gonna help.”
I’d have stuck my tongue out at him if I weren’t so busy gnawing on my bottom lip. “He was forty-four when he died.” I remembered this because Iba had just turned forty-four, and he’d mentioned something about being the same age as his father had been on the Day of Mist.
“Did he ever live on Earth? Because if he did that would change the calculations.”
“I don’t know . . .”
Remo sighed. “Well he died the year I was born. And forty-four times five is . . .”
“Two-fifteen.”
“So, that would mean he was born in . . .”
“1803,” I said, almost without thinking.
Remo hiked up an eyebrow.
“What? I love math.”
“I see that.” He lifted his hand back to the keypad and punched in 1-8-0-3.
The light and sound went crazy again.
He tapped 1800 and all the other combinations until he got to 1810.
I clawed at my ears since clawing at the damn box was useless. I knew prison wasn’t supposed to be fun, but come on . . . this was taking torture to a whole new level.
Concentrating on my breathing, I tried thinking of what four digits Gregor and Linus could’ve come up with in those scheming brains of theirs. I tapped Iba’s year of birth—wrong—my paternal grandmother’s birthdate—wrong—then 0000—wrong. I growled.
I walked to the bar, grabbed the freaking piping hot pan and lobbed it at the shrilling box. All that did was a big fat nothing. No, that wasn’t true. It made a mess. Chunks of crust and gooey filling slithered down the bricks, darkening the mortar. When the pan hit the floor, its clang was barely audible over the pandemonium.
