61 – Operation BB
Perhaps the three really were too underprepared and too naïve, for it struck them during their secret practice one day that they had absolutely no idea which way they were headed. They had no idea where Master Archidemus was or even where to begin their journey! Maybe Tony Goodwin was right: they were too foolish.
Boldly, they hatched a plot to spy on the black and beady eyed man if they could. They speculated that if they could spy on him, or even break into his office (an idea that made them all shudder, especially Savannah) they might glean some scraps of information to set their initial course.
Why was Master Archidemus kidnapped? Was he still alive? Where was he being kept? These are some of the questions they intended to answer… the last one above all.
They called their plan Operation BB after their new nickname for the black and beady eyed man. They didn’t know his real name.
Thinking about Operation BB gave them the chills. No one could argue it wasn’t perilous. The three felt primed, however, for a first test of their recently acquired skills. If they couldn’t pull off a simple reconnaissance mission, what could they do?
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62 – Decked Out
On the evening Operation BB was supposed to take place, Ray, Marion, and Savannah dressed in hooded trench coats, with bandanas round their necks that they could pull up to their nose. At a moment’s notice, they could transform themselves from normal, unassuming students into identity-less spies, by pulling their bandanas up and throwing their hoods on.
Their jackets had pockets on the inside to keep their decks of cards near at hand. It was well-known to them that cards are the most treasured possession of every master cardlanger, and they must know how many cards they carry, which ones, and in which pockets. In the heat of battle, drawing the wrong card or mistakenly putting a hand into an empty pocket could be a death sentence.
A photocard, cardcorder, lockpick set, pocketknife, keylogger, GPS locator, and more, rounded out their supplies, filling the remaining outer pockets of their jackets and pants.
Shortly after dinner, when most students went to the library to study or back to the dorms to relax, Marion, Ray, and Savannah, chose a different direction entirely.
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63 – Picking A Path
As they approached a side door of Elders’ Hall in the fading light, their pulses and breathing quickened. A dizzying array of doubts started pouring into Savannah’s brain; she regretted coming. Evidently, she had post traumatic stress from her last experience there.
Ray felt nervous, too, but Marion reassured him. If Marion was in the mix, they would probably get out unscathed, Ray reasoned; they always did.
Marion seemed powered by a desire to prove himself. After his run-ins with Tony, he could see his own destiny more clearly. And even though Tony didn’t get along with the group, Marion idolized him. For him, this mission was as much about getting the needed information as it was about establishing some street cred. If Tony saw them as capable and cool, maybe he would join them.
Savannah took in the moon quietly as Marion started to pick the lock. She thought to whisper her concerns. But when she returned to Earth, she noticed the boys were gone! They had already entered through the slit in the door. Savannah drew in one meditative breath and slipped in after them, closing the door quietly behind her.
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64 – Wind In The Corridor
Inside the first corridor, none of the three friends could have predicted there would be wind. It was light at first, but soon crept throughout their souls with a morale-breaking heaviness, as if it had found them and would destroy them.
Marion recalled Tony’s derisive taunts, composed himself, and shuffled forward along the wall like a ninja. With Savannah and Ray behind him, he wanted to be a leader.
For every step they took into that hellish wind, they seemed exponentially farther from the side door, but they couldn’t leave until they found something. And if they headed into that wind, there must be an answer.
The gas lights on either side of the corridor flickered and flickered until at last they went out. Was it some kind of curfew? A timer? Savannah whispered some French and got a tiny fireball spinning. It was her turn to lead.
Marion stood by her side, ready to fight.
Ray kept an eye on the direction they had come from.
Savannah couldn’t help but wonder whether three was enough.
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65 – The Source Of The Wind
Savannah slowed her pace and stood still when she realized the wind was leading them right to Friendly Faces’ door. When she motioned sternly that she wanted to get out, the boys disregarded her. If they got into trouble at this point, so be it. Or even if they had a fight with someone, so be it. They were looking for a piece of the action.
Friendly Faces’ door was unlocked, which Marion thought strange. And as he pushed it open, he felt it even more strange: the wind was obviously emanating from the second, interior room. Marion pushed away thoughts of the story Savannah told.
Savannah had an awful feeling welling up inside her, but she couldn’t turn back alone. These two idiots are gonna get us all killed. She tugged at Ray’s sleeve to stop him, but he wouldn’t stop. Instead, he took the opportunity to offer his hand and relished in his newfound position as the brave one.
Together, they followed Marion into the second room.
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66 – An Office Turned Dungeon
It was no coincidence the three arrived at this room. In a way, fate had beckoned them back.
All Savannah could do was try to not pass out from fright. The wind had ceased, making the room as quiet as a graveyard. She clenched Ray’s hand as they explored the room for clues. The light of Savannah’s fireball envelope them all in faint globe, yet it failed to illuminate the whole room; parts of it sat in silence, watching.
Savannah and Ray moved to investigate the bookshelves more closely, while Marion crouched to search the ground near the desk in the center of the room. Something had caught his eye. A letter?
Scrounging around at the edge of Savannah’s yellow orb, he found it, folded it quietly, and dropped into one of his pockets. He crawled a little closer to the desk in the darkness. Truth be told, fearful premonitions began to reach into his mind. He tapped the floor with his hand as he inched forward and made contact with the wheels of a large office chair.
Slowly rising to stand, Marion walked his hands up the back of the chair feeling coarse ropes. It was hard to spin the chair and when he succeeded in doing so, a rusty screech mixed with his own gasp.
There was a body!
Friendly Face?
Savannah and Ray had circled the room and tiptoed towards Marion’s location. He held out his hand to stop them, to warn them, to avert their eyes, but it was too late, they had seen it.
Savannah instinctively recoiled, her head hid in Ray’s neck, and, most importantly, her fireball went out, throwing the group into total darkness.
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67 – A Big Piece Of The Action
Did you ever experience a few never-ending seconds?
The three friends couldn’t move, until the door slowly closed with a click. That click brought them back to the harshness of their reality and they edged backwards together. This wasn’t a game anymore.
Blazing green tentacles lashed out of nowhere, tangling themselves in Ray’s limbs, and slamming him to the ground; he shouted out in pain.
Marion found his bravery even more quickly than he expected because his best friend was in trouble. Gritting his teeth, he launched off the desk and kicked into the source of the tentacles making contact with a human form! The anonymous attacker gripped Marion’s throat with one hand, pulled him forward, and then thrust him against the door, forcefully pinning him.
Marion couldn’t breathe and neither could Ray; he wriggled about as the tentacles squeezed the air out of him like boa constrictor.
A terrible voice slithered into the choked atmosphere, “What’s wrong? You don’t want to see Master Archidemus?”
But the boy’s couldn’t reply.
They were suffocating.
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68 – The Heat Of Battle
Things were looking dire. The boys’ lives literally hung in the balance. But the time was enough for Savannah to get her act together and soon a mighty fireball ripped across the room, blasting the enemy through the door and into the next room.
That cursed creature-human-thing, whatever it was, released Marion and Ray. It writhed on the floor in pain, as the last bits of flame subsided. When it rose in anguish to discover the three gone, its scream permeated Elders’ Hall.
Marion, Ray, and Savannah heard the screams, but didn’t dare look back. They intended to get the heck out of there as fast as humanly possible.
Which way was it to the side door? In their fear, they had forgotten. Or had the corridors rearranged themselves? They searched desperately.
Finally, spotting an old door they believed would lead to the outside, they forced it open and tumbled down a hill together, ending up in a pile, in a creek, at the rear of Elders’ Hall.
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69 – Extricating From A Tangled Mess
“Our exit was less graceful than we planned.” Ray groused
“You should be thankful we got out at all!” yelled Savannah. She was fuming since the two boys wouldn’t turn back at the beginning.
“Holy cow, Savannah!” exclaimed Marion, “That was amazing!”
“Idiots!”
The three untangled themselves.
“We’d better get back to the dorms, clean up, and put our gear away. If anybody finds out we were gone when this happened, it could be really bad.” Marion decided.
“You don’t say?” Savannah replied sarcastically.
Then, Marion, Ray, and Savannah, walked back towards the dormitories, skirting the center of campus, and eventually parted ways.
A few students were still out and about, here and there, so the three friends tried their darndest to look like normal students returning from a late-night study sesh, not three quasi-criminals, who broke into Elders’ Hall; saw a body; battled a half-human, half-giant squid; launched a fireball; and rolled down a hill into a creek bed.
It was hard.
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70 – The Fallout
They fell asleep to the sounds of the C.A.T.S.’ sirens and woke up to the sounds of the news. In the dorms, nothing could separate the students from their screens. They hadn’t watched that much news in years.
And the fallout! The fallout revealed itself to be larger than Marion, Ray, and Savannah dreamed in their worst nightmares. The explosion of the fireball was reported on at the blast site. Also, reported on: a deceased head teacher named Master Caruthers, and one survivor, a burn victim, identified as Master Scrimwither.
Hordes of seething parents demanded answers and some went so far as to take their children out of the Academy.
Savannah’s parents called, and so did Ray’s dad. Their parents could never have expected their involvement in the horrific events, so it was relatively easy to calm them down. “We’re okay. Everything’s fine.” Savannah and Ray told their parents. And that was that.
Their parents ended the call by saying, “We’ll see you over Spring Break. Love you! Bye!”
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