The Backstagers and the Theater of the Ancients (Backstagers #2)

by Andy Mientus

  “I owe you an apology,” Sasha said to Genius, gazing at the Master Switch in awe. “I’m sorry I doubted you. It’s just that my friend has been hearing this voice in his head and it sounded like the way you spoke to me, so I thought it might be you behind it. Can there be bad muses that whisper bad things in your ear?”

  “No. We only exist to inspire.”

  “Huh, weird. I’ll have to ask him more about it when he gets home from Greece.”

  “Greece?” Genius’s glow diminished a bit as their face turned to concern.

  “Yeah, Athens. He’s there for some kind of summit. It was set up by some big company with a weird name. Thi . . . Thiasos? I think?”

  Genius shut their eyes as if Sasha’s words had caused them literal pain.

  “What is it?” Sasha asked.

  “Your friend,” Genius replied gravely, “is in serious danger.”

  CHAPTER 13

  At long last, Niko and Aleka’s convertible slowed to a stop in front of a hulking building of dark stone. The sun had just about set over the rocky cliffs overlooking the sea, and the long shadows of the waning sunlight gave the place an ominous, otherworldly feel. It looked like a palace, with its domed turrets, towering arched doorways, and ornate carvings of mythic scenes set into its stone walls. It also reminded Jory of a monastery or even a prison, because all of the windows were blocked by black curtains. And for the site of an international summit, the place seemed conspicuously quiet.

  “Where is everybody?” Jory asked as he climbed out from the back seat and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

  “Probably inside already, getting ready for dinner!” Niko exclaimed. “We got in a little later than I’d hoped, due to the scenic route we took.”

  “Okay,” Jory said nervously. “Let’s get inside, then.”

  “Wait,” Aleka said. “There is something we want to show you first. Your surprise!”

  Jory forced a smile as Aleka and Niko led him across the property, away from the stone mansion toward the rocky cliffside. When they reached the edge, natural stone stairs led them down the cliff face to a landing some fifty feet below. There they came upon a lonely ruin. There were rows of repeating semicircles facing a stretch of bare earth that jutted up against a frame cut into the very side of the mountain.

  “What is it?” Jory asked, suddenly very wary of their altitude and the lack of any barrier at the edge of the space to protect them from a steep drop into the black water below.

  “Can’t you tell?!” Niko asked incredulously. “It’s a theater! One of the very first in the world, as far as Thiasos can tell. They built the headquarters here specifically to be close to it.”

  Jory could now see that those repeating semicircles were actually rows of incredibly ancient seats facing into a playing space. The frame cut into the mountainside was a proscenium. The shadowy space inside the frame was a primitive backstage.

  “Oh, wow,” Jory whispered, truly impressed.

  “Yeah, I’ve always loved it here,” Niko said, gazing out at the sea. “It’s been in the family for eons.”

  “Family?” Jory asked.

  Suddenly Aleka shushed them. Jory and Niko turned away from the sea as Aleka pointed silently to the top of the cliff. Three cloaked figures stood at the edge, staring down at them through monstrous stone masks, all howling frozen stone howls like a chorus that had been lamenting some tragedy for thousands of years. Jory staggered backward in shock and fell just a few feet from the edge of the theater and the deadly drop below.

  “Who are they?” Jory gasped. The three masked intruders began to descend the stone stairs leading to the ancient theater. Jory and the siblings were trapped.

  “Come on,” Aleka commanded sternly as she headed for the proscenium in the mountainside. Niko lent Jory a hand up and they dashed after her into the darkness.

  When Jory’s eyes adjusted, he saw that the wings of the ancient theater were empty save for a huge boulder set against the center of its back wall. Around the edges of the boulder, he could see an archway adorned with elaborate primitive carvings. Aleka and Niko gripped the boulder from either side and began to tilt it, exposing a gap in the arch just big enough to squeeze through.

  “Jory, go! It’s safe in there!” Niko cried. Jory hesitated a moment. “Jory, they’re coming! There’s no time!” Jory nodded and tried to fit through the gap as Niko and Aleka struggled with the boulder. The hole was too small.

  “I can’t fit!” Jory cried.

  “Hand me your backpack!” Niko said. Jory did and without the bulk, he was able to slip through the crack into the dark of the cavern beyond the archway. Aleka followed close behind him and with a great grunt of effort, Niko nudged the boulder a few more inches to the side, tossed the backpack in to Aleka, and darted into the cavern himself just before the boulder rolled back into place, sealing them in the dark.

  The three of them collapsed to the dirt floor of the cave and panted in the darkness. Jory’s eyes began to adjust and he saw that they weren’t actually in complete darkness but were lying beneath a sea of stars twinkling miles above them. He then realized that they weren’t trapped at all—they were in the backstage!

  “I think I can get us out of this! Give me my backpack!” Jory exclaimed.

  “Why? What do you mean?” Niko asked.

  “My notebook! It can help us back here.”

  Aleka took the tattered notebook out of the bag. “This notebook?” she asked.

  “Yeah . . . let me see it.”

  The boulder blocking the entrance to the backstage began to shift. A slice of moonlight cut through the darkness on the cave floor. Their masked pursuers were coming through!

  “Quick!” Jory shouted. “They’re coming! I can draw us an escape path! I just need the notebook!”

  Aleka extended the notebook to Jory, but when he went to take it, she pulled it away and smiled slyly.

  “Now why in the world would I just hand over the legendary Designer’s Notebook?” she asked coldly. Jory’s brow wrinkled as he tried to make sense of what Aleka had just said. He looked to Niko for an explanation, but Niko just looked at him with pity.

  “Come on, kid. You didn’t really think we were gonna make you famous, right?”

  The boulder was flung to the side and the three masked figures, drenched in the moonlight reflecting off the sea, entered the cave. Jory stared at them and they just stared back.

  Jory shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Caught.

  Then, without warning, he dove at Aleka in a rage, trying to wrench the notebook from her grasp. The masks swept in and restrained him.

  “Hey, hey, everyone relax, there is no need to be rough with him,” Aleka said. “Let him go.” Her English was actually impeccable, another mask she’d worn all along.

  The masks released Jory and he stood up, glaring at Aleka and Niko. He took a step toward her. She pulled a pencil from her pocket and opened the notebook. Jory’s eyes grew wide. He turned and made a dash for the exit of the cave, but Aleka scribbled furiously in the notebook and before he could reach the arched doorway, Jory fell to the ground, wrapped tightly in ropes that had appeared out of nowhere.

  “It works!” Aleka exclaimed to the others. “This really is the legendary Designer’s Notebook, and it is finally ours!”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Hey, Mom? Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to pull an all-nighter here ahead of the load in tomorrow. Lots to get done . . . Hunter is ordering pizza, yeah . . . Yes, I have a toothbrush here.”

  Aziz ended the call and joined the others as they huddled in the Club Room. They were preparing for an overnight rescue operation.

  “So this thing appeared to you and you didn’t tell anybody?” Hunter asked, straining to understand.

  “I TRIED!” Sasha moaned for the eleventh time. “But everyone was so BUSY. And besides, they only appear to me, so you wouldn’t be able to see them anyway.”

  “But wait, slow down. Jory was captured by
a secret society?!” Beckett asked. “Who are they? What do they want with him?”

  “I don’t KNOW, the POINT is, the muse told me Jory is in trouble! We have to hurry!”

  “I believe you, Sasha,” Reo assured him. “But how in the world are we going to get to Greece?”

  “The backstage,” Beckett realized. “All of the theaters in the entire world are connected by the backstage. There’s gotta be a theater somewhere near where Jory is.”

  “But how do we find the right path?” Adrienne asked. “That’s farther than any of us have ever gone before.”

  “I think I know,” Sasha said.

  Aziz, Adrienne, Reo, Beckett, and Hunter gathered a few supplies and Sasha led them all through the Unsafe door into the starry tunnels. Once inside, Sasha took out the Master Switch and shut his eyes, concentrating as hard as he could.

  “What is that?” Hunter asked.

  Find Jory, Sasha thought. Lead us to Jory. Fast!

  He slid the switch to its on position. A pool of light appeared a few feet in front of them. The Backstagers all looked to one another, unsure of what to do next. Sasha stepped forward into the pool. It faded as another pool appeared a few feet farther down the tunnel. He walked to that pool and once again, it faded and was replaced by another pool, this one down a corridor branching off from the main tunnel. Sasha turned to his friends, elated.

  “It’s a PATH!” he cried. “It’s leading us to Jory! Come on!”

  “Sasha, what is that thing? Why did the muse give it to you?” Hunter was bewildered.

  “We’ll figure that out later, but for now we don’t have any time to lose. Trust me!”

  The other Backstagers had no idea how Sasha was leading the way, but when you’re a Backstager, you trust your crew, and so they took off in a sprint as pools of light led them deeper and deeper into the backstage.

  “All right, we got the thing, now can we let him go? I didn’t come here to become a kidnapper, dude.”

  Back at the ancient theater, the three masked figures had unmasked, revealing themselves to be three more teenagers. The reluctant kidnapper was a tough-looking girl with buzzed hair, ears loaded up with piercings, baggy jeans, an oversized green flannel shirt, black lipstick, and serious apprehension about what she’d gotten herself into.

  “Dia, don’t be so BORING,” moaned another. She looked every bit the sweet, innocent schoolgirl—long blond pigtails, frilly school uniform, cutesy pink jewelry, unicorn phone case—except for a look of utter mania in her wide brown eyes; it was the kind of look toddlers have right before they squash a whole colony of ants. “Maybe we can have some fun with him first!”

  The schoolgirl reached into her purse and took out an oblong piece of stone, carved with strange symbols. She held it to her lips like a microphone.

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK, JORY?! ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET?”

  Jory winced as the dark voice that had plagued him back at Genesius roared into his ears once again.

  “It was you all along,” he whispered. “But how?”

  “You’re not the only one with a legendary artifact,” the girl taunted. “The God Mic lets you talk directly to anyone in the world! Or listen to anyone in the world if they’re near a microphone. And now that everyone in the world is glued to their phone, that’s all the time. It can do other things, too . . .”

  “For the love of the gods, Tasia, are you just gonna give him your email password too? Maybe your home address?” a stylish, spectacled boy with a low, gravelly voice and a permanent scowl scolded her.

  “Shut up, Dimitri!” she barked, her eyes flashing with even more violence. “He can’t go anywhere, what is he gonna do?!”

  “Shut up, all of you,” Niko said. “Tasia, what do you think you’re doing, taking the God Mic out from its case?! We only needed it to lure him here and talk a few thousand strangers into following him on Instasnap. That part of the plan was over days ago. Can you imagine what would happen if management found out we were using it? Or if, gods forbid, anything happened to it!?”

  He grabbed the mic out of her hands as she pouted.

  “Speaking of management,” Dimitri croaked, “I know it’s late, but I say we deliver the notebook now. We’ll be legends for doing what the adults have been unable to do for generations.”

  “NO,” Aleka commanded. The other four Thiasos Backstagers snapped to attention. “This whole plan was dreamed up and executed by my brother and me. Your help has been appreciated and you will be rewarded in time, but we will be the ones to bring the Designer’s Notebook to management. You can all go now. And Dia, don’t worry, we’ll let him go just as soon as he tells us everything he knows about the other legendary artifacts.”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Jory said.

  “I think you just need some persuading,” Aleka said.

  “You mean like torture?!” Tasia cried, her wild eyes lighting up again.

  “Of course not,” Aleka said. “Thiasos wouldn’t resort to such vulgar methods. But we’ve got him right where we want him. I suspect his mom will start to get worried when he doesn’t return home as scheduled and doesn’t check in.”

  Jory winced.

  “Come on, Tasia,” Dimitri said. “Let’s find some birds for you to terrorize or whatever it is you like to do.”

  He, Tasia, and Dia exited the cave.

  Aleka flipped through the pages of the notebook, examining Jory’s sketches. Niko snuck up to where Jory was lying on the floor, bound.

  “Hey, for what it’s worth, I actually did really enjoy hanging out with you. I’m sorry for this unpleasantness. It’s Aleka, she’s a bit . . . intense. Why don’t you just tell her what you know and we can put this behind us and have a great weekend?”

  Jory averted his eyes from Niko’s nice-guy act. He didn’t buy it anymore and felt stupid for ever believing it in the first place.

  “You know, you’re really good,” Aleka said as she examined the sketches.

  “You don’t have to do that anymore,” Jory said. “You got what you wanted.”

  “I want to make something clear,” Aleka said, crouching low to Jory. “We all love theater here. Now that this little . . . performance has ended, I can finally tell you what Thiasos really is.”

  “A club for crazy teens to lie to strangers and lure them across the world to kidnap them?”

  “We are the very guardians of the theater, Jory.”

  She began to sketch in the notebook as a living mural appeared on the cave wall depicting masked men and women performing before an impossibly tall figure in flowing robes.

  “We are a group of like-minded theater artists who have been around since this ancient theater was built, since the magic of the backstage was first created and harnessed. Yes, we may seem a little old-fashioned, as Niko put it, but you have to understand that we have been around a very long time. Before cell phones—can’t you see how quickly and easily we got you addicted to yours? And can you remember a time when a beautiful theatrical moment wasn’t ruined by some ringing phone or glaring screen in the audience? We’ve been around since before theater designers got lazy and started falling back on technology to tell their stories.”

  She began to erase the masked performers, replacing them with modern, distracted-looking people. She changed the giant’s expression to one of anger.

  “Don’t you miss using your imagination instead of just sitting there and watching a video projection telling you everything you are supposed to be experiencing? Technology has utterly ruined theater and it’s only getting worse. Thiasos’s only aim is to bring things back to how they were before.”

  When Aleka finished the mural, the crowd of modern people were all gazing into cell phones as the robed giant gathered a thunderbolt above their heads, ready to strike. She snapped the notebook closed and turned to Jory.

  “And you can be a part of that. Our family has been looking for the artifacts for eons with all of our available resources. You found the Designer’
s Notebook in your first year as a Backstager. That has to mean something, Jory.”

  “What do the artifacts have to do with it?” Jory asked.

  “Even considering all of the wondrous and terrifying things you’ve seen so far in the backstage, gathering all of the artifacts together summons a power unlike anything you can even imagine. Thiasos wants to make sure that power doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. We want to use it for good! To make theater pure again.”

  Jory looked at her for a long moment. For the first time in the days they’d spent together, there was something in her eyes that wasn’t guarded and mysterious. He could tell she meant what she said. It made him even angrier.

  “I liked you better when you were quiet,” he said, finally giving up his struggling so he could make his point absolutely clear. “When I think about theater being pure, I think about it being for everyone. I have seen firsthand how technology can make that a reality. Without Adrienne’s hearing aids, we could have never had the conversation that led to her making her acting debut. Without recording equipment, my family back in my hometown could never have seen Les Terribles or Phantasm or any of the other shows I do at Genesius. Without Beckett’s ideas to incorporate technology to reimagine an old show for a new generation, that show would stay old and eventually become lost. If you don’t believe that is pure theater, then I don’t think you love theater very much at all.”

  Aleka’s eyes darkened. “We can agree to disagree,” she said. “But you’ll have plenty of time to think it over, since you aren’t getting out of here until you help us.”

  Just then, the stars hanging overhead were snuffed out like candles on a birthday cake. Aleka shrieked, unable to see a thing. That is, until a theatrical spotlight flashed on from above, revealing a tall teenage boy with a towering pompadour.

  “As the stage manager of St. Genesius,” Hunter said, “it is my duty to keep everyone on schedule and I’m sorry to say that your time is up!”