The Impossible Race: Cragbridge Hall, Volume 3 (23 page)

“Where are you going?” Malcolm called out, obviously running behind them.

Derick didn’t answer.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

“Me too,” he heard Nia and Maria call out in unison.

Derick didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t thought the others would follow, and now his chances of persuading them to leave this alone were probably nil. He also couldn’t stop. He had to find out what awaited in the robotics lab.

In the moving light from his rings, Derick caught a glimpse of a figure in a security uniform. He made a split-second decision. “Come with us,” he said. “Something’s wrong in the robotics lab.”

“What?” the security officer asked.

“Something’s wrong,” Carol repeated. “You’re a security person, so come secure it.”

The officer ran alongside until they approached the lab. She asked a few more questions, but they didn’t know how to respond. Through the window they saw a flicker of light.

“There’s someone in there,” Rafa said.

“I can’t open the door,” Carol said, pulling on the handle. She was smart enough to do it quietly so it didn’t warn whoever was inside. “It’s locked and coded.”

“I can’t open it either,” the security officer said. “I’ll call in to get an administrator here.”

“I know the code,” Jess said. Apparently she had also followed too when all the action hit. “I’m the teacher’s aide.” She approached the door and pushed in a few numbers on the keypad above it.

The door opened.

“You wait here,” the security officer said, triggering a stun gun to come out of her sleeve and align next to her pointer finger. But once she stepped inside, Derick followed. He didn’t know what he was about to see, but he wasn’t going to miss any clues. Every glimpse could be important.

The small light quickly disappeared.

They had been noticed.

“Stay where you are,” the security officer said in a loud and commanding voice.

They heard some shuffling.

They reached the aisle where the light had been. Just then, all the lights in the room flickered back on.

The security officer lowered her stun gun slightly. “Would you mind explaining what you’re doing in the robotics lab in the darkness, Mr. Sul?

• • •

“I wasn’t stealing them,” Mr. Sul said. “I received a message that I should go to the robotics lab immediately, that these robots were going to be stolen.” He pointed at an array of robots students had been making that were stored in the lab. They were a mix of humanoids, mechanical arms, and box-like machines. “Someone intended to use them to transport something dangerous without being detected.”

“What were they going to move?” Abby asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Sul admitted. The sides of his head glistened with sweat, matting down his black hair beside his ears.

“Show me the message,” Chief Shar said, standing tall and serious in her gray security uniform. She had been called in and showed up on the scene a few minutes after they found Mr. Sul.

“Gladly,” the administrator responded and moved his fingers, controlling his rings to find the message. “Wait. It isn’t here anymore. It’s just disappeared.”

“Right,” Chief Shar said. “Please sync to my assistant and he’ll look it over.” She gestured toward the guard with the blond beard. Mr. Sul complied.

“You have another situation to worry about, Mr. Sul,” Chief Shar said, her voice a little louder and more commanding. She logged onto a screen in the robotics room. “How do you explain this?”

The scene was obviously footage from a security camera.

“This is from the hall outside an electric panel,” Chief Shar said.

Mr. Sul appeared in the footage, looked over his shoulder and then unlocked the door with a code.

The footage changed to show the inside of the room.

“We placed extra cameras here after the last incident,” Chief Shar said.

Mr. Sul appeared again, opened the box, and then placed a small metal device inside it. He screwed the panel back on, closed it up, and left.

“That . . . I didn’t do that,” Mr. Sul stammered.

“We just saw you,” Chief Shar said, her voice flat. “You may want to try a different defense. I think you and Mr. Silverton were planning something together.” Her voice rose as she accused the administrator. “He could shut down the electricity with a clever hack, but after we busted him, then you had to use a device; you don’t have the same computer skills he does. Then you came here, intending to steal working robots. Perhaps you would use them to steal the chemicals Mr. Silverton was arrested for. Or perhaps you had other plans.”

“No!” Mr. Sul nearly yelled. “I want that footage analyzed. Every pixel.” He jabbed his finger toward the screen. “I never did that. I was never there. And I only responded here because of a message I received.”

“There’s nothing here,” the security officer with the blond beard said, shaking his head. “I’ve been through it all. There is no message today that has anything to do with what he says. No warnings. Nothing even close.”

“But that’s impossible too,” Mr. Sul said, rubbing his temples.

“Messages like that don’t disappear without a trace,” the security guard said, looking at Chief Shar. “Like Mr. Silverton showed us, they can be encrypted. They can try to throw us off the scent, but they don’t just disappear.”

“I got a message too,” Derick said. “That’s how I knew to come here.” He didn’t know if he should volunteer that information, but it would have to come out eventually. They would need to know why they all came running to the robotics lab and perhaps it would help them determine whether or not Mr. Sul was telling the truth.

After Chief Shar asked for a copy of the message, Derick sent it to the blond-bearded officer. After a few minutes, he reported back. “No, this is different. It’s been rerouted several times, but the message was definitely here. Mr. Sul’s was not.”

“Analyze it,” Chief Shar said. “I want to know who it is from.”

Blond beard nodded.

Derick hoped he hadn’t been foolish. Security might discover another member of the Council of the Keys and whoever it was could receive some unwanted attention.

“I didn’t believe Mr. Silverton when
he
said it,” Mr. Sul said, “but I have also been framed.”

“Then why are you on my security cameras, and why do we have your fingerprints at the scene?” Chief Shar asked, her voice raising almost to a shout.

Mr. Sul cradled his face in his hands. “I don’t know.” He clenched his eyes closed. “I don’t know,” he repeated.

Jenkins

Derick stepped into a volcano.

It was another one of Anjum’s virtual worlds: a heat-resistant observatory hanging on the inside of the rupturous mountain. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all transparent and showed an unparalleled view of the red and yellow lava rolling and cracking beneath them.

“This place is amazing,” Derick complimented, gazing around him.

“Thank you,” Anjum said in his Indian accent. He took a few steps along the transparent floor. “Not to be rude, but we don’t have time for compliments. We have another challenge to prepare for.”

“Okay, I’ll be quick.” Derick wanted to get back to his grandfather’s office anyway. “It’s just that you’re the person I know that’s best at all of this virtual stuff.” He motioned toward the lava beneath him. “And I was wondering: Is it possible to make a virtual few minutes of footage look so real that no one can tell it’s really virtual?”

“Doesn’t this look real to you?” Anjum answered with a question.

“Yes,” Derick said. “I mean, it’s spectacular. But could you make something realistic and have it be so good that even if experts examined it they couldn’t tell that it wasn’t real?”

He had been thinking about the footage of Mr. Sul from yesterday and his claims of being innocent.

“That is a very strange question,” Anjum said. “Does it have to do with the secret you’re keeping?”

Derick didn’t expect that. “Maybe,” he said honestly. “I’m not sure.” He turned away from Anjum and looked out against the inside of the volcano.

“Curious answer. I’ve overheard other members of the team speaking of your secret. Perhaps we will all find out at the end of the Race.”

“Maybe,” Derick admitted, turning back to the olive-skinned leader of the Spartans. “Hopefully it’s us and not anyone else.”

“Yes,” Anjum said. “I think we have a shot.” He nodded several times and gazed out at the bubbling magma. “The answer to your question is ‘maybe.’ There are many who are very talented at virtuality, but it would take a whole team of the very best working long hours to pass something off as absolutely real.”

It was possible that Muns could have a whole team working on virtuality, but they would have to hack in and put it into the security camera files. And it would have to be good enough to fool the security expert, the guy with the blond beard. “Thanks,” he said. “I was just really curious.”

Derick said good-bye and logged out. He was walking toward his grandfather’s lab when he received a message from Abby. She wanted to check on Muns.

• • •

Muns lay in bed.

Abby looked at him through the Bridge, her heartbeat rising. His hair still fell in a tousled mess; his body still lay motionless. It was his eyes. They had cracked open. It was only a sliver and only for a moment before they closed again, but they had opened.

“Oh, no no no no no,” Carol said, shaking her head. “I’m not a fan. Just go back to sleep, Mr. Muns. Sleep really deep. Maybe dream yourself up a nice new business, or a girlfriend who could calm you down, or some better pajamas.” Apparently Muns’s solid black scrubs were not good enough sleepwear for Carol’s taste. “Even dream of taking over all of time and having all control over everything. But let’s just leave it in your dreams and not make it our nightmare.”

Abby couldn’t agree more.

“Better yet, Muns,” Derick said. “Why don’t you wake up enough to call off whatever plan is going on and then you can go back to sleep?”

That was wishful thinking. Once he was awake, Muns would be interested in every detail of whatever plan was going on. That was if he wasn’t furious and did something drastic right away. Abby couldn’t imagine he would be happy about spending weeks comatose. The only thing she knew for sure was that Muns would want his revenge, his control.

Why couldn’t those in the med unit at Cragbridge Hall have their eyes crack open? Abby would love it if any of them showed signs of coming back to life: Ms. Entrese, Coach Horne, Coach Adonavich, Mr. and Mrs. Trinhouse, but especially her parents or her grandfather. Abby had checked with the nurse again before coming to the basement. Though she hadn’t noted anything too significant, there were some changes in mental activity and heart rate in Coach Horne. He might be on his way to coming to. He had been a professional weightlifter and was the largest of all who had been tranquilized. Perhaps his strong body was recovering quicker. Abby asked the nurse to let her know the moment there were any more changes in any of them.

“Just relax, Mr. Muns,” his nurse said. “I’ve said it before, but I doubt you remember. It will probably be a few more days before the tranquilizer is fully out of your system and you’re completely awake.”

“A few days,” Abby repeated.

• • •

“Hello, Jess,” a small silver robot said in a voice that sounded completely human. It stood its eight-inch body up on the desktop and walked to the nearest edge to greet them. Its metal casing was painted to look like it was wearing a tuxedo. The entire team had walked into the same robotics lab that Mr. Sul had been busted in a day ago—everyone except Anjum. He was on rings sync as always. They passed through the classroom and into a locked room behind, a sort of office for the teacher’s assistant.

“Hey, Jenkins,” Jess responded. It wasn’t a whisper. It was the closest thing to a normal tone that Abby had ever heard from Jess. Perhaps she was a little more confident on her home turf. “I brought my friends today.”

“Oh, good,” Jenkins said, pressing his small silver hands together. “Would you like me to grill up some chicken wraps and throw on some music?” A beat pumped out of the speakers on his legs and he did a series of impressive twists and turns. He ended with a backflip and his head turning all the way around. His dance seemed a little inconsistent with his otherwise formal demeanor.

Carol clapped. “Oh, I want one! I want a robot just like him.” She did her own version of Jenkins’s dance. “He has some moves!” She leaned forward to get a closer look at the robot. “I like you, amazing robodude.”

“Thank you,” Jenkins responded with a slight bow. “And perhaps,” he said as he scratched his head with one of his metal fingers, “you missed the simple detail that my name is Jenkins, not ‘Robodude.’”

“Sorry,” Carol apologized with a giggle. “My blunder.” She reached out to give a high five to the robot. He paused a moment, and Jess nodded. Jenkins tapped Carol’s hand. She beamed. “I give high fives to the coolest robots.” Derick gave Carol a warning glance. Perhaps she was remembering how she high-fived him as an alligator. She couldn’t talk about that.