Return to the Isle of the Lost
Page 12

On the third evening, Ben scoured the river’s shoreline, hoping that the creature would finally make an appearance. He was still unsure about allowing Merlin to use magic, and he knew the old wizard was growing impatient. King Arthur was still abroad, warning his people to find shelter, although he couldn’t be too pleased to have his castle overrun by his subjects.
But Camelot’s monster wasn’t Ben’s only problem. It was Castlecoming on Saturday at Auradon Prep and he really wanted to play the tourney game and take Mal to the dance, and he was disappointed that it looked like he wouldn’t make it back in time. But that was the boy in him speaking. The king’s place was here in Camelot, at the edge of the forest, waiting for a creature to appear from the shadows.
In the wee hours of the morning, Ben was asleep in his tent when he heard a boy scream.
“It’s here! It’s here!” cried Artie. “It’s a dragon!”
Ben dashed out of his tent and looked up at the sky, where, sure enough, a huge purple dragon was roaring, sending massive fireballs down to their camp and setting trees ablaze.
He felt his heart stop in his chest, for his worst fears had been realized. He had seen such a dragon only once before….
 
 
On Thursday, a few days after he’d first discovered the Dark Net’s existence, Carlos was running across campus as fast as he could, almost as if he were still scared of dogs and had a pack of them chasing him. His teammates on the tourney field watched him run and cheered him on. “Go, Carlos!” they yelled, thinking he was practicing for Saturday’s game.
When he finally arrived at the girls’ dormitory and made it up to Mal and Evie’s room, he threw himself at their door only to find it open already. He tripped and fell, crashing hard on the floor, just barely able to save his laptop from hitting the ground.
“Carlos!” Evie said as she and Mal helped him up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said, getting to his feet. “I found something!”
“On the Dark Net?” asked Evie.
“Yes! Where else?” He sat on Mal’s bed—which now had a purple coverlet over the white frills, and opened up his laptop to show them. “It’s not good.”
“Well, if it’s on the Dark Net, we didn’t think it would be,” said Mal, reasonably enough.
Once again he brought up the black screen filled with green letters and began to move through the open windows, scrolling through the threads until he found what he was looking for. “Got it,” he said. “Here!”
“What am I looking at exactly?” asked Evie, squinting.
“It’s a forum. People go online and post things anonymously, mostly, um, complaining about things, being mean. You know what a troll is, right?”
“Yes, but I didn’t think they could type,” said Evie doubtfully.
“No, not a big goblin, like a person on the Internet who only says nasty things about people,” Carlos explained.
“Nasty things?” Evie blanched. “Who would do that?” She had lived in Auradon too long now; she wasn’t used to malice anymore.
“It’s the Dark Net. The villain online underground, what do you think they’d post?” he pointed out.
“Puppies?” Mal said sarcastically.
Carlos looked ill. “I was digging around and I found this forum about something called the Anti-Heroes movement,” he said.
Mal curled her lip. “Anti-Heroes? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“You shouldn’t,” said Carlos. “Because look at this.” He typed in a few keystrokes and a colorful picture filled the screen.
“That’s us!” cried Evie.
It was a photo of the four of them, and there was a huge red X on all of their faces along with the words Join the Anti-Heroes Club Today! scrawled in spiky red letters.
“Anti-Heroes. So they’re anti-us? Are we the heroes?” asked Evie. “And the club is organized against us?”
“Looks like it,” said Carlos grimly. “My guess is that the Anti-Heroes movement is a revolutionary group founded on the Isle of the Lost for the single goal of eradicating Auradon’s heroes. They’re using the Dark Net to draw members and posting incendiary pictures of us to fire up hostile sentiment. To the villains on the island, we’re basically traitors. They’re using what happened at the Coronation to gather numbers on their side, and when they’re ready, they’ll come for Auradon.”
The room went silent at Carlos’s words.
“But, um, it’s just a theory,” said Carlos, to try to lighten up the vibe.
“What’s that?” asked Mal, pointing to the small type underneath each picture: #AntiHeroesUnite #IRL #CAW #Yadrutas #2359 #BeThere.
“I was about to get to that,” said Carlos. “I cracked the code. I think it’s a meeting invitation. ‘IRL’ is short for ‘in real life,’ which means it’s taking place in the real world, not the online world. ‘CAW’ was harder, but I think it’s the location.”
“C-A-W?” asked Evie. “But that’s—”
“The Castle Across the Way, your house, yep,” said Carlos. “It looks like that’s where it’s being held.”
“But what’s…Yadrutas?” said Mal, frowning as she tried to pronounce the strange word.
“That one took me a while, but after staring at the word for an hour, I realized there was something familiar about it. It’s Saturday, spelled backward! And two-three-five-nine is 23:59 in knight time, or 11:59 at night in royal time. So just before midnight this Saturday, there will be an Anti-Heroes meeting at the Castle Across the Way. ‘Be there’ is obvious. They’re telling their members to be there.”
“You think?” teased Evie.
“Saturday night, right before midnight. Hold on,” said Mal. She grabbed a book from behind her desk. “It’s a moon calendar; I was using it to try to figure out what the notes were saying about the moon. Look at this—the end of the old moon, or moonset, is on Friday before midnight, and the new moon rises on Saturday at 11:59. The young moon is Sunday, which is too late. I think the notes are connected to this Anti-Heroes club. Someone wants us to go to this meeting.”
“So we were right,” said Evie. “Evil Queen, Jafar, Cruella, and Maleficent are behind it somehow. Mal said her mom goes by moon dates.”