by C. R. Grey
Hal, on the other hand, seemed oddly energized.
“That part that Lyle was waiting for came in today,” he told Bailey. “Just look!” He took a folded piece of paper out of his vest pocket and thrust it toward Bailey. “I saw him drop this during class today.”
Bailey unfolded it. It was a note, written in sloppy handwriting.
We’ll try it out in the small study room by the Science section tonight. Tell Nicolette and Simon too.—Lyle
“Was this for Tori?” Bailey asked.
“I don’t think so, or he’d have just given it to her right there in class,” said Hal, staring out a window where a lone bat was flapping its wings against the glass. “There’s clearly a whole group of them. But whatever they’re ‘trying out,’ I bet Tori’s in on it too. She and Lyle have barely been apart!”
“You would know,” teased Bailey. In truth, Bailey was worried about Tori as well—or at least disappointed. That afternoon had marked the third time in as many days that she had failed to show up at Tremelo’s workshop.
Hal poked his glasses into place.
“I’ve taken an interest,” he said, “and I think we should investigate.”
Bailey looked out the window, where the bat still hovered. He got up to open the transom and it flew in. It fluttered onto Hal’s leg.
“Investigate?” Bailey asked. “It’s a science experiment, not some top secret operation.” He folded the note and handed it back to Hal. The bat hopped up to Hal’s shoulder, hooked the top of its wings into Hal’s collar, and settled itself comfortably there. With a careful finger, Hal petted the little bat’s nose.
“Our science experiment is a top secret operation,” Hal whispered, looking around the common room. “Look, you’re the one always raring to go poking around. Aren’t you the least bit suspicious?”
“It’s interesting, I guess,” said Bailey. “But I’m not sure why you’re so obsessed.”
“Lyle’s no good for Tori,” Hal said. “In Biology and the Bond last semester, he didn’t do any work, just sat there with his feet up all the time, cracking jokes.”
“That does sound like Tori’s type,” Bailey admitted.
“Exactly!” said Hal, exasperated. “That’s the whole problem. She needs balance!” Hal threw out his arms, upsetting the frazzled little bat.
“I think if you ever tried to tell Tori what she ‘needs,’ she’d punch you,” said Bailey. “But I’ll go with you.” Spying on Tori’s new boyfriend was hardly the kind of adventure he’d been looking for. But the longer he sat still, the more his anxiety grew.
“Perfect,” said Hal, clapping his hands.
Bailey nabbed Bert from his slumber under the heat lamps, and the boys walked from the Towers to Treetop, the dormitory where students with bird and reptile Animas lived. Bert rode inside Bailey’s messenger bag. The sun had almost completely set, and the electro-current lamps along the campus paths began to flicker on.
“Look,” said Hal, grabbing Bailey’s arm.
Hal pointed at the darkened entrance to Treetop, where Tori and Lyle emerged. Lyle held a small bundle of black cloth. As Tori followed Lyle onto the path, a crow flew out of the dorm entrance and circled above their heads. Hal and Bailey ducked behind a hedge.
“Perfect timing,” Hal whispered. Behind his glasses, his eyes were lit with excitement—or jealousy. Bailey wasn’t certain which.
Just then, Bert jumped out of the messenger bag and began side-winding his way across the lawn.
“Hey!” whispered Bailey, trying not to attract Lyle’s and Tori’s attention. Bert was heading in the same direction as they were.
“What’s he doing?” Hal asked.
“Exactly what I’d be doing,” said Bailey, who stood up and began following the lizard.
Bailey caught up quickly. He could still see Lyle and Tori farther up on the path, heading toward the library and administration building. Bert trailed along after them.
The sun had set now, and the sky quickly shifted from a bluish gray to complete darkness, dotted with stars. Bailey and Hal hung back outside the entrance to the library as Tori and Lyle entered.
“So, what’s our plan?” Bailey asked Hal.
“I’m thinking.…”
“You don’t have a plan?” Bailey nearly laughed. Hal always had a plan.
“I do,” said Hal, defensively. “Just figuring out how to execute it! For now, stay hidden and follow me. We don’t know what Lyle’s up to.”
“Lead the way,” Bailey said. He doubted that Lyle was “up to” anything more than making Hal jealous, but he followed Hal into the library atrium all the same.
As they walked past the bookcase that held the Loon’s book of prophecies, Bailey paused to make sure it was still there. It was, camouflaged by the other bound volumes flanking it. A thin layer of dust had even settled on the shelf, ensuring that no one had touched it since the Midwinter break.
Hal stood at the end of the hallway, facing the entrance to the Science section. Across the room, light shone from underneath a closed door.
“Well?” said Bailey, catching up.
Hal’s eyes were closed. Bailey looked around, and didn’t see the bat that had come with them from the dorms.
A moment later, Hal opened his eyes and looked at Bailey, determined. “That door leads to a set of stairs, and at the bottom there’s a wide room with a low ceiling. That’s where Lyle and Tori are—with others. We can go into the stairwell and listen from there.”
“You saw all that?” Bailey asked.
“No, not quite,” said Hal. “But the bat was reading the sound vibrations in the room, and I could feel them too. My sight is never very good,” he said, putting his glasses back on. “No matter how you define ‘sight.’”
The boys walked silently to the door, which did lead to a set of curved stairs. Just around a corner they heard voices. Bailey peeked quickly around the wall.
Several students and animals were gathered in a low-ceilinged study room, with windows at the top of the walls that looked out to metal grates. They were in the basement level of the library. A fire had been lit in the stone fireplace, and the threadbare armchairs were all turned toward one corner of the room, where Lyle stood unwrapping something from the bundle he’d been carrying. Shadows obscured the back wall of the room, where a few squat bookcases flanked a cushioned love seat. Bailey gestured to Hal, and together they crept from the doorway to hide behind the shadowed seat.
Bailey recognized many of the students gathered in the room—a handful of other Year Ones, a smattering of students from his homeroom, and even one or two of his Scavage teammates. Tori sat close to the fire, at the front of the room. Bailey could see the black outline of one of her snakes settled into its usual place near her collarbone. A pair of squirrels huddled together on a bookshelf, their tails twitching.
“My dad just sent this,” Lyle said to the gathered group. “I’ve been excited to see what it can do! He’s a high-level tinkerer and this was a prototype made for Viviana herself.”
Bailey straightened up—Lyle was more than Tori’s new love interest, for sure.
Lyle gingerly lifted up a small, round object about the size of an egg, and turned it so the room could see. It was made of a shining metal. Bailey caught himself before he gasped out loud—it was almost identical to the centerpiece from Tremelo’s blueprint.
Lyle’s crow squawked—it perched on a tall shelf that held a number of glass jars, and looked in Hal and Bailey’s direction. But it turned away, and Lyle continued speaking as though nothing had happened.
“Not sure exactly what’s inside, but the metal is special—my dad’s been helping the Dominae, and this is his new top secret project—the Catalyst!”
“But what does it do?” someone asked.
“It traps electro-current inside,” Lyle said. “It basically absorbs any energy that you put into it. Here,” he said. He folded his hands over the egg, pressing hard. Then he breathed between his hands
as if he were trying to warm his fingers. When he opened them again, the egg glowed bright red, and Lyle had to quickly transfer it back onto its black cloth.
“Hot!” he said, laughing.
One boy sitting closest to Lyle reached forward and touched the egg with a finger. Bailey recognized him as Evan, from his Latin class.
“What do you do with it?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” admitted Lyle. “But they’ve made more of them, I think—even bigger ones! My dad sent me this because they don’t need it anymore.”
Several students rose from the seats to get a better look. The orb had cooled down, and returned to its silvery hue.
“Can you open it?” someone asked.
“No,” said Lyle. He ran his finger over a seam up the middle. “It’s sealed shut. Plus, if you could open it, it would just dissipate.”
“Huh?” someone asked.
“The energy would dissolve into the air,” Lyle explained. “I think, anyway.”
Bailey looked over at Tori. She wasn’t one of the students who’d gone up to crowd around Lyle. Instead, she sat in the armchair by the fire, playing with a thin black snake. Her expression was completely blank, and Bailey wondered what she was doing here, with Lyle.
The boy from Bailey’s Latin class, Evan, was now holding the metal orb.
“Whoa,” Evan said. “I just got a really powerful feeling.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lyle.
Evan gestured to his front jacket pocket, which seemed to be moving. A brown mouse popped its head out from the top.
“I could see exactly what the mouse was seeing,” he said. “I could see all of us, through the fabric of my pocket. I’ve never felt the bond that strongly.”
But the mouse was less enthused. It crawled out of Evan’s pocket and scurried down his pant leg. Once it hit the cold stone floor, it began to dart away. Bailey instinctively ducked down—the mouse was headed straight for them! But Evan put up his free hand, and the mouse immediately stopped as though frozen in place.
The mouse turned around and began walking slowly back to him.
“Wow, cool,” breathed Alice, the Year One girl from Bailey’s Scavage team. Curious murmurs rose from the crowd. It was common for human and kin to understand each other, but for animals to act on command? It was eerie, and while the other kids were obviously fascinated, Bailey grimaced in disgust. This was Dominance, Viviana’s sickening philosophy of controlling animals. He looked over at Hal, whose fists were clenched.
Evan smiled nervously at the onlookers, uncertain of what to do next.
Lyle stood at Evan’s side. Together, they stared down at the mouse.
“Tell it to do something again,” he said. His mouth stayed open in a strange, awed smile.
“Okay…” said Evan nervously. He looked from student to student, as if he couldn’t think of what to do. Then he shook his head slightly, as if something had come into focus in his mind.
“Um…lift your right paw,” he blurted out.
The mouse lifted its right paw.
Someone in the group squealed with excitement—the others simply gasped and whispered with astonishment.
“Another one!” said Lyle.
“I…I don’t know, what should I make him do?” Evan asked.
“Do a backflip!” someone suggested.
Bailey looked at Tori. She sat stone-faced and silent in the front of the group, like she was watching a boring play onstage. Bailey felt a little sick.
“Okay, do a backflip,” said Evan. The mouse jumped and twisted oddly in the air—hardly a perfect flip, but its tiny body obeyed. The students clapped and laughed.
“Would it bite itself if you asked?” someone said.
Evan looked at Lyle as though he could answer this question. Lyle merely shrugged. As Evan fixed his gaze on the mouse, it suddenly lifted its left back paw into its mouth and bit. A spot of blood appeared on its white foot.
“I didn’t even say anything,” Evan exclaimed, looking frightened. He backed away, unnerved.
“Whoa!” exclaimed Lyle. “All it takes is a thought! It’s like it does anything you want it to!”
Chaos erupted over the group. The students were fascinated, and they kept shouting different suggestions.
“Make it chase its tail!”
“Make it dance on its hind legs!”
Evan seemed to hear and envision every suggestion—he couldn’t help it. The mouse, powerless and under his complete control, performed every action that Evan thought of, in a sickeningly fast-paced sequence of jumps, chomps, and twists. The mouse moved so quickly that its body could barely keep up.
“This is heinous,” whispered Hal.
“It’s awful,” agreed Bailey. “We have to stop them.”
But he didn’t need to.
“Okay—okay, stop!” Lyle said. Evan’s eyes had grown wide and panicked. Lyle reached out and grabbed the Catalyst from him.
“I said, stop!” he shouted.
The mouse went still. Bailey held his breath, and many of the students gasped.
Then the little mouse began twitching and shaking uncontrollably. Lyle, holding the orb in his left hand, moved forward to pick it up. But before he could reach it, the mouse dropped, lifeless, to its side.
The students became very quiet. Soon, the only sound in the room was Evan’s muffled whimpering.
“Oh, no,” breathed Bailey.
“Oh, no,” said Lyle. He nudged the mouse with a careful finger. The crow on the high shelves squawked.
Evan broke out in a sob.
“You killed it,” he said.
“Maybe it had a bad heart,” said Lyle. The color had drained from his face. He stood up and looked at Evan, unsure of what to say. “I didn’t think that would happen—I’m sorry.…”
“Why would you bring that thing here?” Evan sobbed. “It killed my kin!” He stood. He looked like he might step forward and punch Lyle. But he didn’t—instead, he crumpled, and began to cry harder.
Bailey didn’t realize that he had begun to rise from a crouch until Hal placed a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t,” Hal said. “We’ll only get ourselves into trouble.”
Bailey nudged his hand away, but Hal grabbed his arm with a force that Bailey didn’t expect.
“Come on, Evan, let’s go,” said another boy, who put his arm protectively around Evan’s shoulder. “This is your fault,” he said to Lyle.
Lyle looked on, shocked, as one by one the other students filed out of the room. Their faces were cast downward, and an air of shame and confusion remained behind them in the room. Bailey and Hal stayed in the shadows as everyone left—even Tori. When they were sure they’d be the last to leave, they finally crept toward the door.
Bailey glanced back once more at Lyle. He stood over the body of the mouse with the orb held in both his hands. He looked thoughtful.
“What’s he doing now?” Hal asked, peering over Bailey’s shoulder.
Lyle watched the mouse closely, then stepped back, a look of awe on his face.
The mouse had lifted its right paw.
THE CHEERY GLOW OF the candles and the shouts of the boys playing Rabbit Flash were gone by the time Hal and Bailey returned to the Towers common room. The last cracklings of a fire still spat in the grate. The two boys collapsed into armchairs, and Hal covered his face with one hand.
“Nature’s eyes, Bailey,” he said. “What are we going to tell Tremelo?”
Bailey shook his head numbly; he didn’t understand what he’d just seen.
“We have to talk to Tori first,” he said. “We don’t know what she was doing there.”
“Wasn’t it obvious?” said Hal, gesturing to the door and beyond, toward the library and its basement study room. “Her boyfriend’s a card-carrying Dominae! ‘Looove’ has blinded her! She’s not our friend anymore. I don’t even know who she is.”
“She’s still our friend,” said Bailey firmly. But he
felt a little sick to his stomach, thinking of the mouse. Evan’s cries echoed in his mind. And Tori had just sat there the entire time, with that strange, vacant look in her eyes. What had she been thinking?
“She knows everything, about you and about Sucrette. Let’s not forget that,” Hal continued. “How do we know she hasn’t told Lyle something that could get you killed?”
“There’s no way she’s buying into that Dominae stuff,” Bailey answered. But he couldn’t think clearly, and hearing Hal’s argument made him feel uneasy. Tori had defended them, had fought by their side—but he had to admit, there was a lot about her that he didn’t know.
A slinking movement down on the floor caught Bailey’s eye. Something slithered along the floorboard—he rushed to grab it. A small black snake writhed in his hand.
“Hey!” said Hal.
Bailey, keeping hold of the snake, walked over to the door of the common room and opened it. Tori leaned against the wall of the hallway, her arms crossed and her eyes piercing.
“How long have you been listening?” he asked her.
“How long have you been following me around?” she countered.
“We weren’t,” Bailey lied.
“Like ants, you weren’t,” said Tori, storming into the room. “You two are about as covert as a rhino. I wanted to die right there in that study room from embarrassment.”
Bailey and Hal both straightened their shoulders defensively.
“You knew we were there?” asked Bailey.
“The snakes knew, the second you crawled into the room,” she said. She held out her hand for the black snake. After plopping into her palm, it disappeared inside the cuff of her sleeve.
“Did you rat us out to your new friend Lyle?” asked Hal.
“No,” snapped Tori. “And the reason I haven’t is because I’m doing the same thing you are—except I’m better at it. I’m spying on him.” She paused, eyeing the boys’ shocked expressions.
“You’re spying on Lyle?” Bailey asked. “We thought you liked him!”
