“I thought we found all those,” Diesel said, staring at Jack. “I guess you missed one.”
Jack said, “Clearly, the program I’ve been using is incomplete. I will be updating it.”
Madelaine said, “Oh, there are more places than the one I used to sneak onto Earth.”
“Cam will not be pleased to hear that,” Diesel said, glancing at his brother. “And neither am I, by the way.”
“Madelaine,” the Secret Keeper said. “Do you have any insight as to where the mechanism might be? I realize I’m grasping at straws here, but it’s all we have left.”
Diesel said, “The Paladin Cabal might disagree. They’ve supposedly been in session, sequestered in their formal discussion chambers for round the clock meetings since well before Tando Elroy was murdered.”
“And they have nothing to show for it,” the Secret Keeper said. “I say we need a fresh perspective.”
Madelaine glanced at her backpack where it sat on the table beside the cardboard box.
Madelaine let her mind wander to all the people she’d talked to throughout this journey with Jack. She thought about all that had been said to her. She got up, opened her backpack and dumped the contents on the coffee table next to the sofa.
Jack set the cardboard box down next to the pile on the coffee table.
“What are you doing?” Diesel asked.
“I don’t really know. But we don’t have anything to lose, so I’m going to inspect each item we collected with the hope of finding a clue that will help us.”
“All right, if I can help, please let me know.”
“Same here,” the Secret Keeper said.
“Thank you.”
Jack sat on the sofa next to her. Diesel remained where he was, leaning a hip against his desk, arms crossed, expression pensive.
“We got the blue stone first,” Madelaine said. She picked it up and it glowed from within as several symbols appeared and disappeared on the surface, putting an odd smile on her face. It always made her giggly. Must be a powerful stone. Jack took it from her to break the spell.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s a crazy stone.”
Next up was the petrified wood. The wood grain on each ragged end, which looked as if it had been twisted from a branch before hardening to stone, displayed a design. Jack pointed to it and Madelaine smiled. “Yes. I see it.”
Next was the circuit they’d gotten from Keirios. Embedded within the clear substance of all the circuits was that same design. How had they not seen it before?
The housing they’d retrieved from the prison planet was a beautifully carved piece with several indentations that perfectly fit the pieces they’d collected, including the silver bauxite nugget from Diesel.
Madelaine nestled the larger items into their specific slots, saving the bauxite nugget for last. As soon as she inserted the nugget into the small slot made for it, the whole piece seemed to come to life.
“Whoa.” Diesel’s relaxed posture disappeared. He stood from his desk. “That isn’t going to blow up down here, is it?”
“I do not know. But I don’t think so. This is the device and we need to find the Mechanism to place it in.” Then she had to do a special twist routine with the bauxite nugget, according to Winslow, once the device was placed in the Mechanism.
On one side of the housing, a new symbol lit up. It was a larger version of all the symbols represented on the other pieces.
“Is there a picture of the mechanism anywhere?” Madelaine asked. “How big did you say it is?”
“It’s slightly larger than an old phone booth. Maybe eight feet tall and rectangular in shape, maybe three feet by three feet,” the Secret Keeper said. “I don’t have a photograph, unfortunately, but I do have a detailed drawing.” He went off camera for a minute and came back with three pencil drawings of what the Mechanism looked like.
The first rendering showed just the Mechanism. To Madelaine, it looked like a giant old-fashioned computer from the 1970s, but made out of crystal and metal and wood. It had an empty hollow or socket in the center at about chest level.
The second rendering showed the Device placed inside the socket and a countdown clock with a two-minute timer. Beneath the socket was a large oval with the same symbol they’d seen on all of the collected items that comprised the Device. The outline of a hand was drawn on the larger oval.
The third rendering showed a door closing over the socket and the clock reading zero, time was up, and the Mechanism launched the device to deploy the Solution to save the galaxies.
