“We’re picking up radio frequencies,” she said.
Then a voice came through loud and clear. “Oslo is down! I repeat, Oslo has been eradicated!”
“What? No!” Carter yelled, looking first at Adi, then at the wall. “Where’s Oslo?”
He pointed at Norway and, as they watched, a tiny blue light turned purple.
“Hold on,” Adi said, snapping his fingers between Sierra’s face and the notebook. She made a disgusted face and snapped her fingers back at him, but he ignored it. “The city names, in the alien language. Look, four characters for Oslo, and the first and last ones are the same. They correspond to our alphabet.”
“Right,” said Sierra, grabbing a pencil from among the knick-knacks on the shelves. She started scribbling, making her own key from the cities listed on the wall. “This is going to take a minute. Carter, you inspect the objects, see if anything has writing on it. Adi, you work out what’s going on with the landmarks and call them out as you see them.”
“A purple light must mean a city has been wiped out,” said Adi. Even as he said it, more blue lights flashed to purple.
“Wait—didn’t the Game Master say we were supposed to stop the attacks, but that some could also be reversed?” said Beck. “How are we supposed to do that?”
Carter gestured to the objects on the shelves. “Something to do with these? Here, help me look through them.”
As they worked, more transmissions came across the radio as cities continued to fall. It became background noise, punctuated by Adi’s recitation of the rotating pictures. “The Eiffel Tower is being hit by lightning. The Sydney Opera House is getting washed away by a tsunami. That’s, er—where is that? Oh, the Kremlin in Moscow. That’s on fire. Taj Mahal looks like it’s cracking from an earthquake. Don’t know where the fifth one is, but it’s being hit by acid rain, I think. Pyramids of Giza, locusts. Of course.Christ the Redeemer—a landslide?”
“Wait, locusts?” Beck turned to the shelf opposite Adi. “There’s bug spray over there.”
“The enemy of your enemy is your friend!” Carter said excitedly. “The enemy of locusts is bug spray. Quick, grab it!”
Beck snatched it from the shelf.
“Okay,” said Adi. “We’re back to the Eiffel Tower and electricity.”
“Lightning rod!” Beck said, picking up the steel pointer.
Carter found a sponge for the Opera House tsunami and grabbed the pitcher of water for the burning Kremlin.
“An earthquake,” Adi said, staring at the Taj Mahal. “What’s the enemy of an earthquake?”
Beck laughed, holding up the springy contraption. “Shock absorbers!”
“Huh,” said Carter, “and here I thought they were fancy bedsprings.”
“The plant could be for the landslide,” said Adi. “Roots help with soil erosion. Does anyone know what the enemy of acid rain is?”
“Try a neutralizing solution,” Sierra said without looking up from her decoding work.
Carter hurried over to the glass bottle. “This says it’s sodium hydroxide.”
Beck flashed her a thumbs-up.
“Okay, the bug spray goes on Egypt,” Adi said, directing them where to place all the objects on the huge map spread across the table. “The plant on Brazil. The sponge on Australia . . .”
“Got it!” Sierra shouted, slapping the pencil down. “The first page says:Do not let our rainbow dissolve, lest our forces be weakened.”
“So . . . the aliens control rainbows?” said Beck, grinning. “Cool superpower.”
Carter shouted gleefully and grabbed the rainbow bath bomb. “It has to mean this!”
“A side quest?” Adi said as Carter dropped the bath bomb in the pitcher of water. They watched it fizz away.
Adi scanned the room. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Maybe we have to wait until the bath bomb dissolves completely,” Beck said. “Sometimes they have little toys inside.” He paused before adding, “Dibs.”
