“What’s wrong then?” Landon asked. His voice raised; the pressure and anticipation of the situation was getting to him. He needed this to happen.
“Not sure. Let me try something.” Katie Leigh put her hand back on the keyboard and with a newfound confidence, worked diligently to access the file. Windows and code appeared and executed at an unbelievable speed, way too fast for Landon to catch or comprehend anything she was doing. The one thing he did notice, however, was that the “ACCESS DENIED” window seemed to pop up after every attempt Katie Leigh made.
“How is this possible?” Katie Leigh asked, dumbfounded by the fact that nothing she had tried was working. Somehow the files on Project Herakles were protected in ways that she’d never seen before, and she couldn’t find a way in. “Hold on,” she commanded Landon, even though he hadn’t said anything. New windows of code started to flash onto the screen. “I may not be able to get access to the files, but I can at least find out who has. These firewalls are more sophisticated than anything else in the system. Whoever did this, they wanted to make sure no one—and I mean no one—got to see what was inside without the right authorization.”
Landon waited patiently. It was hard for him to not be totally disheartened by what had just transpired, but he did his best to stay positive knowing that he’d at least find out who was protecting the information so heavily. Names of potential candidates began to present themselves in his mind. Was it Drake Harper? Landon thought. Or maybe Dr. Wells? I wonder if Verne had anything to do with the protections. He is the head of technological developments, and he created the Janus Key, which could crack a 1024-bit encryption in ten seconds, so he obviously has a strong understanding of computers.
“There,” Katie Leigh blurted out as a window opened on the screen, covered in an array of text and dates. As she scrolled through the information, she explained, “This is the activity log for the folder. It should tell us whoever installed the safeguards that are denying me access. Now, if I can . . .” Katie Leigh’s voice trailed off as she scanned the document on the screen. “Here it is. The person who activated the firewalls was someone called ‘the Prince’ at 0958 this morning.” She pulled back from the screen and looked at Landon inquiringly. “That’s a strange log-in name. Do you know anyone who goes by Prince?”
The Prince? Landon searched his brain, but couldn’t think of anyone or anything in the Gymnasium, Pantheon or Olympic Tower with that name. Everything of or relating to the Gymnasium seemed to be named after something from antiquity. The Palaestra, the Pantheon, the Altar, the Janus Key, A.R.G.O.S., the Alpha Chariot, even their codenames—they all had some reference to the ancient Greeks or Romans. But ‘the Prince’? It was so outside the norm.
“Man!” Landon shoved himself up from the desk and began to pace the room. Every time he seemed to get close to finding something, some new obstacle managed to get in the way. Why was this project guarded so heavily? What was going on in the Olympic Tower that not even the Pantheon knew about? Why were there never any answers to his questions? All Landon wanted was something—anything—that would explain in black-and-white terms what was really going on—something he could take back to Celia.
What he did know was that the Pantheon was acquiring items—items from across the globe—typically under the pretense that they would be dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands. They were told that these items were completely unrelated, that they were each obtained to prevent the worst from happening, but Landon had a sinking suspicion that the missions, the items, and the research were all somehow connected and everything trailed back to Project Herakles. Something strange was going on behind sealed doors in the Olympic Tower, maybe even something the Pallas Corporation was unaware of, and he needed to know what that was.
Landon had an idea, a possible way to know once and for all what Project Herakles was about, but it would require Katie Leigh’s cooperation. “Katie, I need your help with something. Have you heard of the A.R.G.O.S. system?”
Rather than respond, Katie Leigh placed her hand back on the keyboard. Seconds later a new screen opened on the monitor, bearing the A.R.G.O.S. acronym and a colorful, abstract image above it that must have been the logo for the program.
“You really are impressive,” Landon commented before returning to his request. “First, before you do anything, I need to know: Is it possible to have A.R.G.O.S. look for something without anyone knowing?”
“I believe so,” Katie Leigh answered as she straightened up in her chair, curious to discover where Landon was going. “I can submit a query into A.R.G.O.S. that can run on the back-end and be invisible to everyone.”
“Then the question comes down to whether you’ll help me or not,” said Landon. “I want to know what’s going on in the Olympic Tower. I want to know what Project Herakles is. Why can’t we see it? Who is this Prince? And what are they planning? I have an idea how I can find that out, but it’s something I can’t do by myself. I need your help.”
“I’m in,” Katie Leigh replied emphatically, without hesitating. “I don’t like it when people deny me information. I’m more of an open-source kind of girl, and restrictions aggravate me to no end. I need to know who this Prince is just so I can show him who’s boss.”
It figured that Katie Leigh’s motivation was not only her unrelenting need to learn what was happening in the Olympic Tower, but also to get revenge on the person who’d outsmarted her. Landon didn’t care what her reasons were, though—he was just glad she was willing to help.
“So here’s what I need you to do,” he said with an authority that surprised himself. Maybe his mother and teachers were right and there were some latent leadership skills hidden deep within him. “I need you to have A.R.G.O.S. constantly scan for any mentions of ‘Project Herakles’ or ‘the Prince.’ And this needs to be completely hidden . . . deep in the system. We can’t have people finding out that we’re looking.”
“I can do that,” Katie Leigh said.
“Something weird is going on here. So if anything gets returned, get me right away. And Katie, you can’t tell anyone about this—I mean no one.”
“Done and done,” she replied.
“If anyone found out what we’re doing—”
“I got it Landon,” Katie Leigh interrupted. “I won’t—”
Suddenly there was a rap at the door. Katie Leigh and Landon both froze.
Knock, knock, knock!
Katie Leigh looked at Landon, urging him to give her some guidance on what to do next. Landon was overcome with paranoia; afraid that whoever was there had overheard their plans and would either turn them in or blackmail them.
Knock, knock, knock!
Closing her laptop as a precautionary measure, Katie Leigh rose from her chair and walked to the door. Just as she was about to open it, she gave Landon a final nervous look. With eyes wide, jaw clenched, and her neck pushed forward, she urged Landon to make the decision as to what she should do.
Landon returned a similar expression, wordlessly telling her to just take care of it. When the persistent person at the door knocked again, he added a forceful motion of his hand that unmistakably told Katie Leigh to “answer the door already.”
Nodding in agreement, Katie Leigh, with a slow turn of the knob, cracked the door just enough to see who was outside. Standing there, with an impatient and agitated grimace, was Riley. Landon and Katie Leigh both let out a small sigh of relief.
“What took you so long?” Riley asked. “I wanted to see if you were up for—”
“I was busy,” Katie Leigh tersely interrupted.
“Doing what?” Riley sounded convincingly ignorant about Landon and Katie Leigh’s discussion. “And why aren’t you letting me in?” he asked. “What? You got someone in there you don’t want me to know about?” he said jokingly as he craned his head over Katie Leigh. He bobbed left and right,
trying to get a glimpse inside her room. It wasn’t hard for him to see Landon standing awkwardly by Katie Leigh’s bed. “Landon?” he said, surprised. Then, talking right over Katie Leigh’s head, he added, “What are you doing in there?”
Much to Katie Leigh’s disbelief, Riley proceeded to come into the room without an invitation, believing that if Landon was inside, he was free to join them. His gangly body seemed to glide across the floor as he went to Katie Leigh’s bed and sat down beside Landon.
“What are you guys up to?” he asked, extremely curious as to what Katie Leigh and Landon could have been doing shut up in her room so late in the evening.
“Nothing really,” Landon lied. “Katie was just helping me do some research for a paper my tutor is making me write.”
“No need to lie to me,” Riley returned, putting on airs to suggest he was hurt by Landon’s attempt to deceive him. “Katie finally told you, didn’t she?”
“Told him what?” Katie Leigh interjected after she shut her door.
“That we know about him and the Pantheon,” Riley explained, as if it was completely obvious. “Well, unless you guys were making out in here, that’s the only explanation for why you two are acting so strange right now.”
Landon gave Katie Leigh an inconspicuous but telling expression.
After flopping down on Katie Leigh’s bed, Riley added, “You don’t have to worry, Landon. Katie and I have known for a while. We won’t say anything.”
“What are you talking about?” Landon asked, trying to keep up the charade.
“Landon, it’s all right,” Katie Leigh interjected. “I told Riley you were on the Pantheon a few months ago. I was getting tired of hearing him constantly talk about ‘how you’d changed,’ and ‘how you’re being secretive,’ and ‘what could you be doing?’ that I had to tell him . . . for my own sanity.”
“Yeah,” Riley added. “Now we all know. So now you don’t have to tiptoe around the subject anymore. But something’s been bothering me since I found out. Why did you trust Katie and not me?”
Landon almost laughed at the appropriateness of Riley’s question. If only he knew what had happened over the course of that evening: what Katie Leigh and Landon were planning, what secrets they’d revealed to each other but swore to keep hidden from everyone else. “I didn’t tell her,” he answered truthfully.
All irony aside, Landon felt a pang of guilt as he looked at his friend. Riley was one of the few people he had really connected with since he came to the Gymnasium, yet with every passing day, there was more and more about his life and what he discovered that Landon had to keep hidden from him. When would the time come when Landon could finally explain everything?
“Then how’d you know about the Pantheon?” Riley asked Katie Leigh.
“I’m clever,” she said matter-of-factly as she took her seat in her desk chair.
Landon had a difficult time dealing with the conversation they were having. Usually, he would want nothing more than to feel normal, as if all the drama in his life was nonexistent, but right now Landon had no patience for this trivial bantering with friends. Unable to handle it any longer, he started toward the door.
“Anyway,” Landon said, “I can hear my bed calling. Katie and I were actually finishing up when you came by, Riley. I’m beat.”
“Yeah, it is getting kind of late, isn’t it?” Riley agreed as he rubbed his buzzed, sandy blond hair with his fingers. “I was just wondering if you guys wanted to hang out, but I probably should make it an early night too. I’ll walk with you.”
Riley opened the door and exited Katie Leigh’s room, Landon following close behind him.
“Hey, Landon,” Katie Leigh called to him just before he disappeared into the hallway. “I’ll let you know if I find anything on that paper you’re working on.”
Landon glanced back at Katie Leigh, who winked at him. He nodded to acknowledge that he understood the subtext and headed out the door to join Riley.
They walked in relative silence as they made their way down to their dorm rooms. Landon really felt tired. It was like Morphium-12 was in the air, and he’d breathed in a heavy dose. Even though he’d slept for so many hours that day, he still hadn’t recovered from the emotional stresses of the last few days or his back injury.
“Have a good night, Riley,” Landon said as they prepared to part ways.
“You too,” Riley returned.
Riley didn’t say anything else, but Landon could tell something was bothering him. Landon wondered if somehow finding him and Katie Leigh locked up in her room without him had hurt Riley in an unspoken way. Could he tell he was interrupting something? Landon wondered. Did we make him feel that unwelcome?
When Landon entered his room, he was starting to realize he might have actually accomplished something that night. With the help of Katie Leigh, he’d made a serious stride on the road to discovering what was going on in the Olympic Tower and what was being planned. Perhaps he could file that particular worry away, let it marinate for a while, and put the active sabotage on the back burner while he focused on how to revive Celia from her comatose state and how to deal with the looming danger of the Sentry’s purpose at the Gymnasium.
Feeling the weight of his life pulling him down, Landon collapsed onto his bed, but immediately felt a pain shoot through his back. Something hard on his bed was digging into him. Landon reached out an arm and yanked an object out from under him.
He lifted it up to see it, but couldn’t make out anything without more light, so he moved over to his desk and turned on his reading lamp. There, under the light, Landon discovered he was holding an old book. The leather binding was worn, flaking in places, and the pages were yellow with age. He turned the book over in his hands a few times, admiring the gold leaf detailing on the cover. He opened the book, turning a few pages before he found the title.
Landon became overly aware of his surroundings; his hearing felt sharper and his skin tingled in anticipation as the weighted silence closed in around him. Frozen in place, and holding his breath, he allowed himself to move only his eyes as he scanned his room for any signs he was being watched.
When he felt confident that he was truly alone, Landon relaxed and returned his attention to the book. He thumbed through a few pages, searching for any signs of who might have left it, but soon realized there were no notes, no markings, nothing that would give a clue as to who the book belonged to or who had left it. All he knew was that it was old, and it was titled The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli.
CHAPTER SEVEN
RETURN TO THE SECRET GARDEN
Weeks passed, and the Gymnasium fell into a state of restlessness. The cooling showers of spring abandoned the valley, and in moved the oppressive, humid heat of the summer. It was next to impossible to spend even a minute outside without one’s entire body being soaked in sweat, so the general student body, unwilling to brave the dog days, locked themselves inside for weeks of their own volition. This self-induced lock-in was starting to show in their demeanor as cabin fever set in.
Yet Landon, expecting the arrival of Dr. Brighton any moment and ready for a day under the blazing sun, stood at the northern exit of the Gymnasium. Once his professor arrived, they could commence their long stroll through the forest to Dr. Brighton’s secret sanctuary, which was hidden behind a wall of rocks, and begin their first private training session since last fall before missions and Pantheon training always seemed to get in the way.
As Cortland had predicted, the Pantheon saw a lull in activity when summer started to creep in. Missions were few and far between, and they never seemed to require the entire team. With Landon being a plebe, his participation was rarely required.
The Qualifiers, which Cortland had said would coincide with the reduction in Pantheon activity, had yet to be announced. Students who had been at the Gymnasium
for a while eagerly waited for Dr. Wells to call an assembly and give them the details of the summer’s premier event. Landon learned from Riley and Katie Leigh that the Qualifiers garnered even more excitement and enthusiasm from the student body than the First Frost Frenzy did in the winter.
The Qualifiers required students to complete a set of benchmark activities in each of their key training areas. The faculty and staff scored each student’s performance, ranking the student body on their psychokinetic skill and fortitude. This determined one’s position in the main event. Inasmuch as Landon understood it, a tournament followed, pitting student against student in a single-elimination sparring contest. Use of one’s psychokinetic abilities was expected but not required, as students were asked to either render their opponent unconscious, force them to surrender, or knock them outside the gaming arena. Landon could not believe that such an event could even exist amongst the normal student body; combat training was not a part of the general curricula, and he couldn’t imagine a willingness to allow someone like Peregrine to go up against someone like Brock. But the Qualifiers were blind to student age, level or gender.
The general air of anticipation aside, Landon spent most days in the medical wing sitting beside Celia as he waited for the moment when she would wake from her coma. Every time he visited her, he attempted to communicate with her through their psychic link, yet still without a single sign that he’d gotten through to her. The doctors remained unsure as to what was wrong, but they were optimistic that at any moment her brain would reboot and Celia would wake up from her extended slumber. Landon wished he could fix her, but as the days passed, he understood he didn’t have the ability.
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