Read Online Book Two of the Travelers by D.J. MacHale - Free Book Online Page A

better light.”
    â€œBut…I thought you said you’d get us out,” Omni said.
    â€œI will,” she said. But she wasn’t feeling all that confident.
    A door began to open.
    â€œLet’s go,” she said. She put her arm under Omni’s shoulder, supporting him. They walked slowly into the next chamber. And stopped.
    After a while the grinding ceased.
    â€œWhat’s in here?” Omni said. “Why don’t we keep moving?”
    She shook her head. “I have to do more calculations.”
    â€œCalculations?” Omni looked at her as if she werecrazy. “How’s that gonna get us out of here?”
    But Aja just began scribbling. As she furiously calculated, she realized her mistake. There were two sets of variables. The symbols and the times between reconfigurations. The time was anywhere between one and five minutes.
    â€œLet’s just go! ” Omni grabbed her hand and started yanking. “How are we gonna get out if we don’t explore?”
    â€œOmni, please—”
    â€œLet’s go ! I wanna go ! I wanna go into another room. Why do we have to stop here ?”
    Her eyebrows went up. That was it! That was why Nak said he wasn’t cheating. The times between the moves were a red herring! They were just random.
    No, Lifelight reprogrammed the sequences depending on where you stopped. If you followed the symbols to the very end of the sequence, Lifelight would just start the next sequence. But if you didn’t, if you stopped in a room that wasn’t the final one in the sequence, then Lifelight would generate a new sequence—a sequence that was based on the symbol on the door of the room where you stopped. Which meant…
    She began scribbling again.
    â€œLet’s go!” Omni pleaded.
    â€œWait!” she shouted. “Shut up!”
    Omni fell on the floor and started to cry.
    â€œLook, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to be mean. It’s just that—”
    She started running sequences as fast as she could. There had to be a way to get out. Nak said he wasn’t acheater. She had said that she was better in math. And he’d said, “Exactly!” Like that was somehow to his advantage. Like math wasn’t the solution to the problem.
    Surely it wasn’t something stupid. Like she had to smash the wall down with a crowbar or something. No. Even if she had a crowbar, that wouldn’t work. These walls were all too thick. It had to be something else. It had to be.
    And then she knew what it was. Press had said that sometimes the solution was that there wasn’t a solution. The solution wasn’t math! Not exactly, anyway. It was…well… anti -math!
    She smiled furtively. Then she started to scribble.
    It took three more moves and a lot of calculation. But finally she did it. Once she found the sequence, she memorized it.
    â€œLet’s go, Omni,” she said.
    â€œDid you figure a way out?”
    She shook her head. “Nope.”
    The boy looked at her hopelessly. “Then why go anywhere? My ankle hurts. I just wanna lie down.”
    â€œCan you trust me?” Aja’s eyes bored into the boy’s.
    He nodded.
    â€œAll right then.”
    They began walking. They walked and walked and walked, following the sequence of symbols she’d memorized. Through reconfiguration after reconfiguration.
    â€œWhen are we gonna get there?” Omni said after they’d gone through at least six or eight reconfigurations.
    â€œWe’re almost there,” Aja whispered.
    The walls began grinding.
    â€œThis way,” Aja said.
    â€œBut we’ve been in this same stupid room five times before. There’s no way out from here.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Aja said. “There’s no way out from here.”
    They walked into the room. It was high ceilinged, with all kinds of scary carvings of the Beast chiseled into the