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I pressed my hand to my forehead, trying to think. “Okay, they know we can’t try them all randomly, so theremustbe a color-related clue in this room. We have a little less than four minutes to find it. Everyone get to work. In the meantime, Mike, start trying as many combinations as you can.”

“What if I get penalized?” he asked.

“Then we’ll each try a combination. Just try something.”

He turned back to the panel and started randomly connecting wires.

“I’ll go recheck the boxes of electronics to see if there is something in there that could give us a clue,” Jax said.

“I’ll help you,” Hala said, and they dashed down the corridor to retrieve the boxes.

We started looking at the paintings, the desk, the chair,everything, while the timer counted down. We found nothing.

Mike tried several combinations without penalty. It emboldened him, because he was working at a blindingly fast speed. Jax and Hala came skidding back in with the boxes.

“We’ve got nothing,” Jax said, dropping the box on the floor and rummaging through it. “No notes, no wires tied together, no clue that we could see.”

At least no one was panicking. Outwardly everyone remained calm. I was just glad no one could tell my heart was thumping wildly.

I moved closer to watch Mike, who was trying different combinations of the wires. He was incredibly nimble with his hands, but nothing was working and we were out of time. The timer started its countdown from under a minute.

Just as the timer hit thirty seconds, Kira suddenly pushed her way forward.

“I think I have this,” she said. “But I need some help. Quickly, help me unfasten any wires that are connected and let’s start fresh.”

Wally and I leaned forward to help, and in seconds we had all the wires all free.

“Okay, match the red, violet, blue, and green wires together,” she said. “Nothing else.”

I glanced up at the timer. Eleven seconds. I leaned over Mike’s shoulder and connected the blue wires while he worked on the green ones. Kira matched the violet, while Wally twisted the red ones together.

The timer froze on three seconds.

A loud click sounded, and the door slid open.

For a moment, we stared in disbelief until Wally shouted, “Yes!” and gave Kira a huge hug.

“Did we make it in time?” Frankie asked, looking around in bewilderment.

“We did,” Mike said. “By the skin of our freaking teeth.”

Shouting, cheering, and smacking each other on the back, we spilled across the doorway and into the next room.

“So, how did you figure it out?” Wally asked Kira.

“It was on the painting where Frankie found the hidden light switch,” she explained. “When she swung open the painting, the picture turned to face the wall, so none of us saw it. I just happened to swing it shut, and when I did, I saw there was a girl sitting there, holding a scroll. There was a poem written on the scroll. It said,‘Roses are red/Violets are blue/Throw in a green and you’ll find your way through.’I wasn’t sure if violet counted as a color or not, but when I got close enough to see the purple, I just went with it. It was risky, but it was our last chance.”

I stepped forward and put my hand on her shoulder. “Excellent work, Kira. You kept your cool, and you figured it out. You and Frankie really saved us on that challenge.”

“I was just doing my part,” she said modestly. But her cheeks flushed happily, and I knew she was proud of what she’d done.

“Come on,” Jax said, urging us forward. “We’ve got more challenges to face and not much time left to finish them.

As we surveyed the environment of our new challenge, it seemed simple. We were in a small indoor basketball court with a door at the far end. A timer hung over the door and read 52. Fifty-two minutes. It was all the time we had left for whatever challenges still awaited us.

The light in the gym was dim, with the only illumination coming in from a single window high on the wall to the left of us. Old gym equipment decorated the gym, including basketballs, barbells, and climbing ropes that reached the ceiling.

Leaning against the right wall was a tall ladder. I did a full rotation, noting the wall next to the door we’d just gone through had a series of vertical mirrors and a ballet barre.