Planet Secrets

by Trisha M. Wilson

  Chapter 24

  Day five of Operation: Follow Meredith and I was frustrated and furious. I’d shadowed her every move except when I’d had to go to my own classes and so far nothing. Not one single solitary thing had come up.

  Was she on to me? I didn’t think so, but she must have noticed that I seemed to be around more often than before. Or perhaps she’d felt my eyes on the back of her neck. I certainly hoped I’d know if someone was stalking me.

  However, from what I’d seen, Meredith wouldn’t notice a house until it fell on top of her. She just wasn’t that observant to the world around her. I’d tried to be covert in my actions, but even so, she still should have realized something was different.

  She mustn’t have felt anything wrong, however, because I’d seen no signs of discomfort coming from her. Not once did she rub the back of her neck or look around to see who might be watching her, or even use a compact to see what was going on behind her. She was oblivious to all but what she was doing, which helped make my job easier.

  But something was different today. Not with me, but with her. She was looking around more, acting more suspicious than I’d ever seen her.

  Maybe today would be my lucky day.

  I yawned hugely as I wearily followed her. I hadn’t been getting much sleep these days because she kept some interesting hours. How she got by on only three hours of sleep every two days was beyond me. I was downing handfuls of coffee pills just to keep awake and those things had a horrible tendency to create hallucinations in long term users, a side effect I was only just beginning to have. As for Meredith, I think her wakefulness was natural. I hadn’t seen her use any stimulants to keep up this crazy pace, which just made me more aware of how abnormal she really was because a normal person would have fallen down into a coma by now, or would be so hyped up on pills they’d be jumping off the walls.

  (I was somewhere in the middle since I knew what taking too many of these stimulant pills could do to a person, but if I didn’t stop this soon...well, I didn’t want to think about what would happen.)

  I’d come to the conclusion she must be a vampire who could be out during the day. What other explanation could I come to based upon the evidence?

  I wonder if I got a large stake and stabbed her in her cold lifeless heart, if she’d explode in a burst of dust as death welcomed her into its grisly arms. Or maybe I’d soak her in a bath of holy water and watch as she screamed in pain before going up in flames. That might be fun too.

  My musings were pushed away when Meredith made a surprising turn toward the back of campus. All that was back here was one building for classes and trails through the “woods.” (They weren’t real woods. They were manmade with every tree, plant, and pond planned out and executed by hired men. They’d even gone so far as to import the deer, birds, and other wildlife to make the woods more realistic. Except they’d forgotten that, in the wild, animals aren’t all micro chipped, tracked, and forced to stay in a specific area. The natural woods, which had been alive and thriving for hundreds of years before the campus was planned, thought of, or even a glimmer in the great great grandmother of the founder’s eye, had been cut down because it’d been too unruly for the campus founders.) Maybe Meredith had hidden her stash in one of the grottos or along one of the paths which crisscrossed in a perfect grid pattern in the unnatural nature space behind the campus proper.

  One thing I did know, I had to be on my toes. The farther away from the heart of campus we journeyed, the fewer people we encountered. At any moment, she could turn around, see me, and scamper.

  In an ideal world, I’d have been doing my best to stay undercover and out of her radar at every possible moment. Her speed and the complete purpose in every step she took made this ideal situation go out the window. In addition, if I tried to hide, I’d have to take my eyes off of her. I knew if I took my eyes off her for even a second, I’d lose her and my only chance of finding where she’d put my pretty jewels and all the other items of value she’d obtained illegally and was hiding from me. What was I going to do?

  What I had to do, I answered myself. You keep following her and make sure she ignores you.

  And if she notices me…I’d deal with that when I had to.

  I kept pace with her while I began digging in my bag. Somewhere in there, probably at the bottom, was a wig which would alter my appearance so much that she’d never know it was me. Add in a limp and glasses, and she would be never the wiser.

  (If I’d been in my right mind, and not so sleep deprived, I know I would have thought of the wig, glasses, and limp well before this point. However, disguises had never been a favorite act of mine. I preferred standing out in the open and letting the person I was pursuing ignore me to their extreme detriment. In this situation I felt that the deeper my cover, the better it would be for me and since I was going to be so close to her, I needed the wig and other accessories.)

  I finally found the wig, combed down the hair a little and put it on. The second it settled on my head, I felt more comforted. I was even happier when I found the silver rimmed glasses I’d selected to go perfectly with the wig as it made me look like just another one of the many innocent academics which were meandering around campus.

  I’d just finished pushing the glasses onto my face when Meredith looked over her shoulder. I knew she was looking at me, but I pretended to be deep in thought. To add to the illusion I was trying to create, I started muttering to myself as I’d seen other academics do when they were trying to figure out whatever they were trying to figure out. I’d learned from watching others watch these people that those who talked to themselves always seemed to be underestimated and given a wide birth. I knew she’d never look twice at me, but just to be sure, I stopped and began to wave my phone around as if possessed by the spirit of a million failed cheerleaders, my wild mannerisms enhancing my appearance of craziness beyond measure.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her smirk at my antics and keep walking. I continued to wave my phone as I followed her, speaking loudly and overdramatizing my hand gestures even more as if I were in a heated debate with the trees around me in order to improve the genuineness of my act.

  Meredith came to a fork in the path. I expected her to take a left which led into the “woods” but she took a right toward an oddly shaped building.

  What building was this? I asked myself. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what building this was. I’d never been in it.

  In fact, the more I tried to come up with an answer as to what building it was, the less I seemed to recall. All that really came to me was that there’d been some new building built a few years ago, but everything had been very hush-hush. No ground breaking ceremony, no open house, no come and see what we’ve done and how it’ll enhance our campus. It was almost as if the school didn’t want anyone to know about the building.

  But that couldn’t be right. Schools always want to show off their newest and shiniest toys and wasn’t that what a new building was – a brand new shiny toy?

  As we turned the corner and I saw the building well for the first time, I had to admit to myself that the building was very shiny, but also very unusual.

  All the other academic buildings I’d been in had been rectangular with plain exteriors and interiors, and had enough classrooms to hold a couple thousand students.

  This one wasn’t in the shape of a rectangle, or any other shape that was readily recognizable. There would be a curve for a yard or two, which would then jut out into a triangle, looking like a duck’s beak, before going back to another curve. However, no two curves were the same shape or length or even in the same direction. Some curves went horizontal while others were vertical. More often, however, these curves were at differing angles.

  However, don’t for one moment think the protruding shapes were all alike because they weren’t. There were simple triangles, eagle beaks, avocet beaks, and even half formed ideas of triangles, where there would be a portion of the triangle, but the rest w
as missing as if there hadn’t been enough money to finish the design. These too were at odd angles which seemed to have no rhyme or reasoning.

  If this craziness wasn’t enough, there were flourishes all over these curves and corners. Flourishes which seemed to have been added with no care for whether they enhanced or detracted from the overall design of the building. It almost felt as if the architects and designers had said, “I think I want to put a flower design here,” and had done it, not even caring what was next to this design choice.

  Looking at all the different styles, it felt as if a group of artists with different preferences had come in and put in elements from their favorite art periods. There was tribal art intermingled with classical Ancient elements. Inge with Min. Even some Simplistic and Animal patterns were incorporated. It was unimaginable that anyone would believe such a mismatch would look good, or that it was appropriate for the outside of an educational building.

  If all that wasn’t enough, I couldn’t for the life of me tell how many floors this monstrosity contained for the windows were placed in such a haphazard arrangement it was impossible to know where one floor was supposed to have ended and another begun. Had the designer and builders been high as a kite when they’d created it? Who had they bought off or killed on the board of regents in order to be allowed to create such an architectural disaster?

  Then another, and even more disturbing thought came to the forefront of my mind. What if this monstrosity had been designed this way on purpose? If this was the case, why hadn’t they celebrated the creation of such an interesting creation? There had been no parties, no press event, no photo ops at all. Surely the architect, builders, and school would want the world to admire it as its sheer size and audacity seemed to suggest.

  However, if showing it off to the masses was the university’s endgame, why was it hidden in the back of campus where nobody went? In fact, I felt like I was on a different planet all together. There were no people around. No talking or mumbling or anything associated with people and what they naturally did. In fact, there was no noise at all. Even the sounds of the natural world were surprisingly absent.

  There was just an eerie silence surrounding the area. I felt that if I made any noise whatsoever, I’d be struck down my some unknown force.

  I didn’t like this feeling.

  It wasn’t natural.

  It wasn’t right.

  I wanted to run as far from this place as possible and never return. Something was definitely wrong here.

  Meredith, on the other hand, appeared to not feel the wrongness of it at all. She continued to walk confidently toward the entrance as if these surroundings were something she dealt with on a daily basis and was so used to that it felt second nature.

  This complete ease in the face of blatant wrongness was just more proof in my belief that she was a vampire. Weren’t vampires always at ease in all the unholy places of the world?

  She had just approaching the door when I stopped to study the sign announcing that this abomination of a building was the “Secrets of the Ancients” building.

  I got closer to the sign and started asking it questions as if it were an information window. Even as I did this, I hoped she wouldn’t realize the crazy lady with the silver glasses and limp was going to follow her inside. If she looked back at this point, I wanted her to think I was lost and too crazy to worry about. I couldn’t afford her being spooked or else this would have been for naught.

  Then I realized what I’d just read on the sign. Secrets of the Ancients building? That was an interesting name for a building because every other academic building was named after the majors taught inside. Confectionary Hall housed all the culinary arts involving sweets and baking. Cosmos Plaza held every class which had to do with the universe, the planets, stars, and everything else out there in space.

  But Secrets of the Ancients? There was no major on whatever secrets the Ancients might have had. There weren’t even any classes about the Ancients except for the historical and religion classes, and these were purely for those deep within the history and religious fields.

  Why would the school have built such a weird building for majors the school didn’t even have?

  My confusion fueled my curiosity and when Meredith disappeared into the building, I ran to the door, opened it quietly, and stepped through just in time to see Meredith make her way down one of the five hallways which branched out from the front door.

  Even as I followed her, I questioned my count. Five hallways? That couldn’t be right because what type of building has five different hallways right at the front door?

  In fact, where were the classrooms? Since I’d started down the hall, I hadn’t seen even one doorway or window.

  This was very, very weird.

  And creepy.

  I resisted the urge to rub the back of my neck. I felt someone, or something, watching me, following my every step, but I couldn’t see or hear anyone. I didn’t even see any cameras, not that I’d be able to see the tiniest of the cameras that were made today, but something within me told me it wasn’t the eye of a lens which followed me.

  These invisible eyes weren’t the only thing which bothered me about this building. There was something very wrong about the floors, not that you’d know by just looking at them. To the naked eye, they looked like regular white tile floors, hardy and able to withstand thousands of students traipsing over them for decades.

  They even acted like regular floors for when Meredith walked upon them, they squeaked in response to her tennis shoes. Every step she took I heard because of this squeak.

  I too was wearing tennis shoes. (I realized soon after I started following her that I’d need to wear comfortable footwear or else I’d never make it.) The noises Meredith’s shoes made had me thinking mine would make the exact same noise.

  I was wrong. My shoes made no sound whatsoever. They didn’t squeak or click or make any other noise which would have announced to Meredith that someone was following her. This confused me greatly for my shoes should have made some type of noise, even if it was just a result from brushing a shoe across a surface. I mean, her shoes were making a great deal of noise, so why wasn’t mine?

  I could come up with no logical answer as I followed Meredith down many winding hallways and through doors which appeared out of nowhere. Some of these halls seemed to dead end only to suddenly veer into another direction. Stairwells went up and down haphazardly, sometimes leading to nowhere. Other times, the stairs led up into the heavens, going so high I couldn’t tell where they ended.

  If I’d had more time, I would have enjoyed pitting my wits against the master of this labyrinth of twisting halls and spiraling stairs. I would have loved to seek out more of the labyrinth’s secrets and learned the reasons as to why objects appeared and disappeared at random.

  However, my prey was moving very quickly through the twists and turns of this maze. I was convinced that if I lost sight of her for more than a handful of seconds, she’d disappear completely and I would never find her again.

  I was just about to follow her around yet another corner when I heard Meredith’s footsteps stop. I peered around the corner and saw her standing in front of a plain wall. From where I stood, there was nothing to distinguish this wall from any of the other walls we’d passed since entering this crazy building. So why was she standing in front of this particular one?

  Meredith looked around for a second, failing to notice me peering around the corner, before pressing her fingers against the wall before her. To my extreme surprise, a keypad appeared and she began typing in a combination.

  My brain was urging me to get closer, to see what she was putting into the keypad, but if I moved out into the open, she’d know I’d been following her. I was just grateful at this point that the building had decided to cloak my footsteps, so Meredith didn’t wonder who was responsible for the second set of footsteps which seemed to be following her.

  It was at times like this I wished I h
ad x-ray vision. Or better yet an invisible camera I could remotely control. I’d have had that thing above her head and recording what she was typing so fast she’d never know it hadn’t always been there.

  After she’d typed in eight or nine numbers, she pushed the keypad back into the wall and stood waiting. I watched the space around her, trying to see if anything started moving, but saw nothing.

  Meredith moved away from the keypad and walked to a staircase I hadn’t noticed before. Had that always been there or had it appeared when she’d entered the code?

  She walked up the staircase, and I moved fast, unsure if it would disappear the second she got off. I ran up a few steps, grateful that the stairs seemed to be of like mind as the floor as my pounding feet made no sound to speak of, before I saw her again.

  She was making her way steadily up the winding steel staircase. Her footsteps landed heavily with every step she took, announcing her presence to the world. She was more than loud enough to cover up any sounds I might have made from brushing my hand against the railing or my clothing rubbing against each other.

  However, I never heard any sound emanate from myself.

  This spooked me.

  How was this building able to stop sounds from coming from me and almost enhance Meredith’s noises?

  As I followed her, I tried my best to time my movements so there would be the least chance of her noticing someone out of the corner of her eye. I knew I was playing with fire and that she could notice me at any time, but for some reason she was so focused on her goal that all forms of common paranoia had flown out the window.

  Did the building have some control over this as well?

  I pursued her as we climbed the spiral higher and higher. From the different size landings, which appeared on both sides of the staircase, we must have climbed at least ten stories. However, I felt that this must have been an optical illusion. I most definitely wasn’t as tired as I should have been if I’d actually climbed up ten flights of stairs.

  Even when I accounted for differences in floor height and vault locations, I still knew I hadn’t climbed up as many floors as my mind was telling me I must have. Something here was very wrong, but for the life of me, I couldn’t pinpoint the cause of the cognitive dissonance.

  Well before the staircase ended, Meredith stopped ascending and went onto a very tiny landing. It was barely large enough for her feet to leave the stairs. Again, she faced a plain wall, but now I knew what to watch for. I knew there must be keypad somewhere for her to enter a code.

  I crept closer until I was directly below her, staring up at her though the steel grated staircase. She didn’t look down and I didn’t move. We were both too engrossed on the code she was entering to notice anything but the keypad. As I obviously couldn’t see the keys, I attempted to memorized her hand movements. If necessary, I’d try to copy them in order to enter wherever she went next.

  She’d barely finished entering this newest code when the wall opened. She stepped through the opening and the wall closed behind her before I even thought about chasing after her.

  Did I repeat the code and follow her in or did I wait for her to come out? Damn, I really wished I knew what was going on behind that door.

  I was about to follow her in when the door opened. Meredith came out and began coming down the stairs, taking every decision out of my hands.

  I ran down the stairs and jumped onto the first landing I came to. This landing, thank the Ancients, wasn’t like the landing Meredith had gone into. Where hers had been very small, so small her feet had barely fit on it, this one was large, about three feet deep and at least six feet wide.

  As I hopped onto the landing, I saw that there was a little hiding spot on the right hand side. It looked like a “u” shaped alcove with the three walls surrounding it, the smallest protecting me from the stairs. If Meredith paused and looked up and down the landing, she’d see me immediately. However, if she just glanced as she went down the stairs, she’d would never know I was there.

  But I needn’t have worried because she was so unobservant, she didn’t even look for anyone else. She just continued down the staircase until I couldn’t hear the squeaking of her shoes or the pounding of her feet any more.

  By the amount of sound she was making, it felt as if the building was amplifying it so I would know when she was out of my sight, but why would it? If Meredith had all these codes, which revealed its secrets, wouldn’t it be more loyal to her?

  It probably doesn’t like her any more than you do, the little voice in my head said.

  This could have been true, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. Even after I believed she was well gone, I waited. If she’d left so quickly, she could come back just as fast and I didn’t want her catching me as I entered her…what? Her locked room? A locked hallway to another locked room? What exactly was it I was going to try to break into?

  After what felt like an eternity, I decided it was a safe bet that Meredith wouldn’t be returning. I ascended the staircase to the floor she’d been on. I stood where she had and searched the wall, trying to see where she’d pressed for the keypad to come out. The wall, however, appeared unbroken. I ran my hands across the wall at waist high, pushing into the wall every few inches. The trigger had to be there somewhere.

  I finally made the keypad appear, but was disappointed it had taken me so long to find it. What I saw on the keypad made my tiredness wash over me like a wave. What I’d revealed would have been an earth shattering mystery in itself anywhere else. In this fun house maze, however, what I found was just another annoying, and energy draining, obstacle which needed to be overcome before I could continue my quest.

  Instead of letters or numbers, the pad had symbols, symbols I was not familiar with in the slightest. Questions popped into my mind, but two stood out and refused to leave without being asked. What were these symbols and what were they doing here?

  You’d have thought I’d have seen some indication of their existence upon my walk from the front door to this staircase, but I’d had none. The walls, which had been blank canvases, had given me no idea that keypads and strange symbols were within their depths.

  The more I studied the symbols, the less I understood, so I tried to ignore them and attempted to move my hand as she’d moved hers. This was a difficult task as I’d been below her and unable to see which exact symbols she’d pushed. However, since I did have some idea as to her hand movements, I was able to come up with what resembled an idea as to which symbols she’d pushed. This accomplishment was no mean feat considering how exhausted I was by this time, but the firm belief that the treasure of my dreams was so close helped keep me sharp and my brain still working.

  One problem, however, which came to my mind quickly was that even though I had a feeling for her motions, this didn’t tell me if she’d pushed a symbol more than once. However, this possibility just gave me a headache and was an added worry I didn’t need, so I ignored the possibility. If I couldn’t get in, and only after many failed attempts, would I consider this as a viable solution to my problem. As of now, however, I was just going to assume she’d pushed each symbol only once. It was just easier that way.

  Following her hand motions, I pushed nine symbols before a light on the keypad began to blink. Why was it blinking? Had I entered the right code?

  I pushed the keypad into the wall and waited for the door to appear, but it didn’t. I must have entered the code wrong, so I tried the code again, this time stopping after the eighth symbol.

  This time the light didn’t blink. I pushed the keypad back into wall and waited with baited breath. After what felt like an eternity, the wall opened, revealing a very small entryway. I stepped into the entryway and the door shut behind me, sealing me in.

  Instead of worrying about being trapped, I found myself standing enraptured by the sight before me.

  Glistening gold.

  Shimmering silver.

  Gleaming gems.

  It was all mor
e than I could take. I’d never seen so much raw wealth and so much breathtaking beauty in one place.

  I felt as if I’d been struck by lightning.

  My fingers and toes tingled.

  My mind stopped thinking.

  My eyes glued to the vast wealth only inches from where I stood.

  The gold and silver wasn’t just in the form of coins and bars, but was also found in sculptures and jewelry.

  The gems, lose and set, appeared so flawless they could have been paste. But there was a primordial quality about them, a divine brilliance which flared so fiercely from their very depths which spoke, nay, screamed their genuine nature.

  The sculptures were every size and shape imaginable. A few were barely taller than my knee, while others towered over me like a giant.

  A pair of statues took up more floor space than any of the others. One was of four children laughing together. Their figures had gold and silver veins running through their every limb, while their eyes contained luminous tiger quartz which made the children look a little possessed. This possessed look might have been the sculptor’s intent for all I knew, but it did make me feel uncomfortable.

  The other large statue was of a couple sitting in regal thrones surrounded by cats. The couple looked only faintly familiar and for the life of me I couldn’t place them. They were probably a minor god and goddess which were worshipped by one of the Ancient offshoot cults which kept popping up. Their jewel adornments were spectacular, drawing me in with their depth of color. The only reason I wasn’t completely ensnarled by it was that there was so much more to see that my eyes kept jumping around, unable to focus on one item for more than a second.

  “I found it,” I breathed, unable to keep the words within myself anymore. I’d found more than I’d ever expected. Who’d have thought Meredith would have so much?

  And of such quality! I had many pieces of equal or greater quality, but what I saw here was mind numbing.

  My eyes jumped from one shelf to another, trying to absorb what I was seeing but it was impossible. My pulse beat hard and fast. My breath came in pants. My head felt light and airy.

  My vision began to go black.

  I needed to calm down before I passed out. I leaned over, putting my hands on my knees, taking steady deep breaths. The blackness which had been creeping up around the edges of my vision began to slowly fade.

  When I felt more in control, I stood up and finally took the last few steps necessary to enter the vault. That’s right, I’d been almost completely overwhelmed by the least sliver of the vault’s wealth visible from just inside the door. So much so that I’d almost been incapacitated to the point where thinking ceased and uncontrollable celebrating, once I became conscious again, began.

  It was all just too much. My eyes began to glaze over again and I could feel my mind becoming cloudy. I forced my overwhelming feelings back. If I let myself become carried away, I’d never know if the jewels I sought were here.

  But does that really matter? I had to ask myself.

  Before me was so much more wealth than I’d ever need. Did a few baubles really matter in the grand scheme of things?

  I mean, how was I even to know for sure what had been in the case Meredith had left behind in the tunnel Darius and I had explored mere weeks before? Yes, I had the imprints and an idea as to what I was looking for, but would I recognize them amongst all the other pretties in this room?

  I would, I acknowledged to myself. I would recognize them as a mother knows her children. I would just…know and since they were my children I had to keep searching for them until I found them.

  So, in the end, I had no other option. When I started searching for something, I had trouble stopping. If I didn’t find it, I’d constantly think about it, trying to figure out what happened to them and if I should have looked somewhere else for the objects in question. This made it hell for me when I lost even a sock or a shirt, but jewels of incredible wealth and splendor? There was no comparison to the tizzies I could, and would, work myself into.

  I began lifting open boxes seemingly at random. Every single box revealing even more treasures than the last. A jade encrusted Oland necklace. A broach belonging to Queen Lace I. A cameo of the first and only king of Oustlandia. After awhile, I had to harden my heart and mind to these beauties or I’d never find what I sought.

  Untold time passed before I finally found them in a box with other priceless jewels. I saw the Queen Lace III necklace first. With its over shaped squares which stayed consistent all the way around, this necklace had been the easiest for my jewelry software to identify from the impressions left in the foam. Everything about this necklace from its design to its shape was a legitimate one of a kind. There were no knockoffs or copies. There was only one exactly like it in the world and it was before me.

  I pulled out my phone and brought up the matches the software had created for the foam slots.

  One by one, I ticked off the items until there was no doubt about it. These were the jewels I’d been looking for.

  Each piece might have been from different time periods, different dynasties, and in different styles, but their amazing cut, and superb clarity marked them as originals. And my software told me they were matches.

  This find made me breathe a sigh of relief.

  Now I could relax.

  Now I could celebrate.

  Now I could send Meredith away with all my blessings.

  Surrounded by my soon to be newest acquisitions, I grabbed my phone, which I’d set aside to caress my beauties and sent Atrox, my mafia contact, an email. I wanted to let him know he could pick her up whenever it was convenient for him. I also wanted to thank him for the delay he’d afforded me. Without his gracious cooperation, I might never have found these pretties.

  “And that would have been such a shame,” I cooed to them. “For you are so very pretty, aren’t you? And you need to be shown off, not lost in a claustrophobic old vault forever. I can’t wait for you all to meet my own beauties. I think you’ll all get along splendidly.”

  They would too, just as soon as I could get them all together. Oh, it was a foregone conclusion that these babies were mine the second I set eyes on them. There was no way in hell I would let Meredith continue to sully them with her hands and very presence. No, now that they were mine, they deserved to be revered and loved as much as my own babies in their very secure, temperature controlled vault.

  Unfortunately, this brought up another issue. How was I going to move all this stuff? The gold bars alone were at least twenty-five pounds each and there was enough jewelry for at least eight trips.

  And that didn’t even count all the other incidentals. How had she smuggled the statues into the building without someone seeing?

  I tried to come up with some type of answer, but every scenario I came up with was as unlikely as the next.

  And those scenario’s led me to another huge problem: access. How was I going to get back here without the first code? It was all well and good that I knew the code into this individual room, but what about the stairs? I hadn’t seen what she’d pressed and if I left, I’d be taking a huge risk of never getting back here again.

  But I’d have to leave sooner or later. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in this room, so what was I going to do?

  Hundreds of ideas came to me in a rush, making my head feel bogged down and heavy. Each was more ludicrous than the one which came before it.

  I was certain there was no way to force the stairs to stay down, and I knew I had no way to hack into the keypad and make it reveal its answers because I’d left my hacking jewelry at home. I never dreamed I’d need it, which had been a mistake. I should have brought them along, just in case something like this came up. If only there was a way to know what the code was before I left this room.

  Then, the most ridiculous idea came to me.

  What if she’d written the passwords down on her computer and forgotten to delete them? We all know from childhood
not to write down your passwords and if you do to keep them somewhere safe, but what if she’d written them down on her computer, thinking it was safe?

  I pounced on my phone, my hands shaking so badly it took me a few tries before I was into my virtual copy of her computer. I skimmed through the file structure and nothing struck me as having passwords.

  Then I decided to do the silliest search I’d ever dreamed of, because nobody was that stupid. I punched in the word “password” in the search field and hit search.

  Of course this search found nothing, but this didn’t stop me. If I was going to try the obvious, I couldn’t give up without trying more keywords. “If it’s not under password, what could it be under? Key code? Pass key? Code that drops the stairs?”

  None of these brought up any results.

  “Alright, she’s trying to be tricky. I can live with that. What about this building? The Secrets of the Ancients? Wonder if there’ll be any hits to those words?”

  To my great surprise there was exactly one hit. It was a subfolder of her miscellaneous folder. I opened the folder and found there were two documents inside.

  Instead of conforming to her normal file name structure, such as “History101254-Essay-HowtheAncientsWontheWar” or “PlanetofRiches-Book-ThePlanetofRiches-GregoryLama”, which were very conscience naming structures enabling you to know exactly what was inside the file before you opened it, these two documents were named with numbers. From what I’d seen of her other files, all of them followed this precise naming structure. None other deviated.

  This unique diversion from the norm peaked my interest.

  The first file I opened made me smile with glee. It was the passwords I’d been looking for, or at least I assumed it was. Why else would there be two sets of eight numbers and letters. If I was going to write down a combination, it would have looked like this. After my second of glee, however, my smile began to droop.

  These passwords were in code.

  Great. One more obstacle in my path. As if I hadn’t already overcome enough barriers, escaped enough crazies, lost enough sleep on this wild journey, I now had to contend with coded passwords. Hadn’t I done enough to prove myself worthy of this glorious bounty? What more did the Ancients what? Blood?

  One more problem and I swore I wanted to bang my head against a stack gold bars and give the Ancients all the blood they desired.

  Why couldn’t anything be easy? Why, why, why was everything with this woman a thousand times harder than necessary?

  I had a pity party for about a minute before I pulled up my big girl pants and really looked at the coded passwords. They were both eight figures long, so no help distinguishing them via length.

  Those symbols…what were the symbols on the keypad to the vault? Maybe if I figured out what they were, I’d be able to figure out which code belonged to the door and which to the steps.

  I was so excited by this point, it didn’t even enter my mind that these lines of code weren’t the passwords I sought. That they could have meant nothing. No, I knew these codes just had to be what I was looking for. I felt it within my bones and I always trusted my bones when it came to something as important as liberating treasure.

  I opened an internet browser and searched for “ancient symbols.” Even as I hit the search button, I realized how pointless such a search would be, even before the results popped up on my screen less than a second later. Millions of pages of results came up. There was no conceivable way I would be able to search all these pages. Finding what I was looking for would be like finding a needle in a planet covered in nothing but hay.

  With so overwhelming odds, I decided I needed another approach to my hunt, so I selected the results of an image search. I knew I’d never be able to describe what they looked like, but a picture, well a picture is worth a thousand words. Or, as in this case, it was worth a lot more than the standard thousand words. A lot more.

  I scrolled down the screen, trying to find something that looked like what I’d seen. I must have gone through twenty pages, and was about to stop the search, thinking it was a fruitless waste of time, when I found them. It was a very tiny picture, but one of the symbols caught my eye because of its distinctive curves and lines.

  I clicked on the picture and was redirected to a horribly setup website called “Keepers of the Secrets.” What made it horribly setup wasn’t the fact that it had grey text on a black background, though that was hard enough to read, it was the fact that there were only two main pages, if you didn’t include the sign in/membership fee page. This meant that if you wanted to delve deeper into the site to find out more information, you’d have to hunt on these pages for the one link which would take you to the page you were really looking for. Not that these pages were easy to follow, because they weren’t. It felt like a five year old had just started writing and whenever they saw something shiny, changed topic and started writing about something else.

  And the name they gave themselves! I wanted to laugh at such a lofty and silly sounding name. Keepers of the Secrets? What were these people playing at? Who exactly did they think they were?

  I read the first blurb at the top of the page I’d landed on, not bothering to hold in my laughter at this point. They thought they were “The last line of defense in the protection of the secrets” of…who?

  I read a little of the front page dribble to satisfy my own curiosity, skimming over their misspelled mantras and hocus pocus gobblygook and found they were much more than your garden variety Ancient conspiracy head cases. No, deep down in their heart of hearts they really believed they were safeguarding the super secret secrets of the Ancients.

  However, you only got this privilege if you paid the nominal membership fee. I smiled at this. A fee to protect the secrets of a society which had been gone for thousands of years. How quaint. I don’t think I could think of a single better way of making money than the scam these conmen had come up with. They were shysters after my own heart.

  In addition to this beautiful fee, the new member had to pledge never to talk about the Keepers of the Secrets, or KOTS as they liked to refer to themselves, because the first rule of KOTS was not to talk about KOTS.

  This had me fighting back my laughter. Really, their first rule was the first rule of The Ancients Pact? Really? They couldn’t have come up with something better than that? You’d think someone signing up for this society would realize you shouldn’t talk about secret societies, but I guess some people just needed these things written out.

  Or maybe the point in writing down this rule was for people to do the exact opposite. The brilliance of these masterminds behind KOTS flashed before my eyes. When you tell people not to do something, especially not tell others about a secret society or any secret for that matter, that is the first thing they do. One member will tell all his friends about what a great organization he just joined, thus getting them to join. This leads to more members and more profits for our original conmen. The simplicity of it took my breath away.

  After I’d gorged myself on the utter stupidity the rest of the rules of KOTS turned out to be, I turned my attention back to my original reason for being on their website. They had images on their website which matched the symbols on the keypad which allowed me entrance into Meredith’s vault. Symbols only they, and the crazy creators of the monstrosity of a building I was in, seemed to know about.

  They called the symbols Pre Manic and described the language as “ancient pictograms which were representatives of the written language of the earliest of the Ancient’s Pre-Mane period.”

  (The Ancient’s Pre-Mane period was a period which most reputable scholar’s, historians, and researchers don’t even believe existed. In fact, most of these authorities believed the supposed Pre-Mane period was just an excuse for laymen to split up the Post Vetu period from the Mane period. Where these people thought to even fit in a Pre-Mane period was beyond comprehension.

  As to the name of this written language, since these crackpo
ts were the only people to even acknowledge its existence, I didn’t have another name to call these symbols or pictograms or whatever else you wanted to call them. Pre Manic was just as good of a name as symbols, though thinking of them as symbols was easier after thinking of them as such all this time.

  Though, now that I do think of it, the name Pre Manic does fit the KOTS organization perfectly, especially if you substitute manic for possessed. They were possessed with the crazies.)

  I found the symbol meanings hidden deep within a long rambling dissertation detailing every one of a thousand ways in which the establishment, which included “scholars,” “historians,” and “archaeologists,” were all completely wrong and the KOTS were absolutely right. (This exposition also happened to include how the establishment had been covering up any finds which would prove the KOTS key points were correct for generations. Absolute dribble if you asked me.)

  I bookmarked the article for a later date when I needed the release of watching grown adults argue about whose twisted hallucinations of the truth were more valid. I always love reading the conspiracy theories of the deranged and possible crazy, don’t you?

  My amusement at their hair-splitting turf wars faded when I found a passage arguing about the significance and meaning of each symbol. According to the KOTS, each symbol represented both a number and at least two letters. The only differentiation between the different states was in the slight tilt given to the symbol when it was written.

  For example, if you took the symbol for the number one and the letters “a” and “w” and tilted it to the left thirty degrees, then it was a one. However, if you had tilted the same symbol sixty degrees to the right, then it was an “a”. To get a “w”, you had to tilt the symbol sixty degrees to the left.

  A tilt? That’s all that meant the difference between a letter and a number in the crazy written language of Pre Manic? What happens if you had a really sloppy scribe who couldn’t tilt worth a damn? I knew what would happen.

  The nearly “illiterate peasant” would get to guess as to the meaning of a message, which looked to be just a bunch of random letters and numbers. Meanwhile, the “scholars” stood around nodding their head wisely as they “translate” the message for the confused “illiterate peasant.”

  I could just see those same “scholars” patting the “illiterate peasant” on the head, telling them not to worry their pretty little heads about trying to decipher the obviously confusing messages. We, the extremely educated, the sophisticated men of the world, will tell you exactly what it says so you never have to learn to read properly, or write with the proper tilt. Everyone knows an “illiterate peasant” such as yourself has no need to read or write and besides, reading is really only for the educated and wealthy anyway.

  Why would you want to read? What possible reason could you have? No, trust us elders and wealthy people not to swindle you. Or lie to you. Or make up “prophecies” about how you need to worship us or the world’s going to end when in reality, these “prophecies” are tallies of how many cows and sheep are on a farm.

  I stopped myself from going on.

  There were just too many cliché’s and deceptions that could come with a tilt differentiation. If I were a dishonest person in a world with such a screwed up writing system, I knew I’d use my ability to properly read to get ahead in that world. And make some money. For, in the end it always came back to money. Was there really anything else to come back to?

  For now, however, I needed to focus on my symbols and what their slant had been.

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember what the symbols on the keypad had looked like, but I couldn’t remember exactly. At the time I’d been more interested in getting inside than inspecting the symbols.

  Maybe if I wrote down the combination in the order of the button presses, I’d come to some conclusion. I took out a stylus and opened a drawing app on my phone. I thought hard and wrote down everything I could remember. When I compared my written symbols to those on the site, I found there were a lot of differences.

  “I’m going to have to go outside and copy down the combination from the pad. If something goes wrong and I can’t get back in here, what do I not want to leave without?” I asked, my voice as forlorn as I felt.

  I looked around the room and everything my eyes touched upon I wanted to take with me. But I’d already established I couldn’t take everything. It wasn’t practical. It wasn’t sane. It wasn’t even possible, I thought as I saw more objects than before.

  “I’ve got to take the jewels. If I leave without them, I might as well never have started this search,” I said aloud. I put the box full of jewelry near the door. “And how about a bar of gold and one of silver? I can hide them in the woods and come back for them if they become heavy.” I placed a bar of gold and a bar of silver next to the box containing the reason for my presence in this vault.

  “Anything else?” I took one last long look at the incredible wealth laid out before my eyes. Every piece was so special, so beautifully unique I wanted to clutch it to my bosom and never release them. I couldn’t do that, though. I simply didn’t have the strength, or ability to bring it all with me at this second. If only I’d thought to bring more bags with me, maybe then I would have been able to take with me more of my babies. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, however, never dreaming Meredith would have collected so much loveliness.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said sadly.

  These words hurt my heart. Just the thought of such wondrously exotic beauties being locked up forever in this Ancient forsaken temperature controlled vault in the heart of this ever-changing building for all eternity made me want to cry out in pain. This wasn’t where they were destined to end up. They should end up with their own kind, adored and worshipped as only I could properly do. They should end up in my safely guarded vault and praised for their beauty. Nobody should be left here without hope of being released from this cell disguised as a vault.

  I pushed back all my feelings of longing, desire, and acute despair. Feeling such deep emotions with the raw intensity coursing through me could only distract me from the here and now. And distractions would only lead to mistakes, mistakes which would cost me all I longed for.

  I opened the vault door after one last tearful look behind me and placed my treasures just outside.

  When I was completely certain I had everything I wanted out on the landing, I shut the door.

  I felt a moment of panic, as if I’d forgotten something important inside, but it quickly passed.

  Everything was ok. Nothing had been left inside that I couldn’t live without. I had the jewels plus some other souvenirs.

  I bent down and reopened the case which contained the jewelry. Their twinkling sight, more than anything, brought me some measure of relief. My babies were right beside me. They weren’t locked in the vault. Everything was going to be fine. I had what I’d been looking for.

  And I’d be able to verify this fact once I regained access to the vault.

  I took a few deep breaths to calm the panic flowing through my veins.

  I brought up my hands to access the keypad and saw they were trembling. I took a few more deep, calming breaths, and concentrated on controlling the trembling of my hands. It took a few minutes, and many happy thoughts, but soon their shaking calmed.

  When I could use my hands again, I released the keypad and compared the symbols to those from the KOTS website. The first thing I noticed were that the keypad symbols were not slanted one iota. They were straight up and down, just like any letter in the alphabet.

  “Scribe should have practiced tilting better,” I mumbled, trying to come up with some reason as to why they weren’t tilted. “Why go to all the trouble of putting the symbols on the keypad if you’re not going to do it right?”

  The lack of answers was frustrating, but then an idea came to me. What if the scribe had done this on purpose? I copied down the entry code from the keypad. Then, I punched the code
I had just copied back into the keypad to verify it worked and reentered the vault. When the vault door opened, I brought in my pile of goodies from the landing so no thieving bastards would be able to make off with it. People today just couldn’t be trusted to leave unattended items alone.

  Once inside, I sat down and compared the symbols I’d copied down to those from the website. I then proceeded to write down each symbol’s numerical and letter meaning. Then, I reopened the document which contained the passwords and compared them to what I’d written.

  Unsurprisingly neither password matched up to what I’d come up with, but I did notice that if I started at the end of the first password and went backwards, it would be the same. That must be it. This password went to the vault door while the other went to the stairs. Using this premise, I quickly figured out what the other password should be, “Baring any unforeseeable tricks.”

  With the password problem out of the way, I opened the second, and only other document in the folder. A feeling of immense appreciation toward Meredith for her incredibly obsessive organization skills flowed through me.

  This was beautiful.

  No it was beyond beautiful.

  It was the Holy Tiara of documents, and I had it all.

  What had I found? I’d found nothing less than a complete list of everything she had in this vault, how much she’d bought them for and what they were worth at the time of the acquisition.

  Simply reading down the value column and doing some very rough math it was obvious I had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of items around me. “And they’ll be all mine when you’re out of the way,” I said with glee, rubbing my hands together in almost uncontrollable excitement.

  But I couldn’t stay here gloating. At any second she could come back and I didn’t want her finding me inside her cave of treasures. I grabbed my things, resealed the vault and headed down the stairs. I took great care to make as little noise as possible, for the building gave off the feeling that noise was not only not acceptable, but that it wouldn’t be permitted.

  Even if my steps did attract attention, however, I still wore my camouflage, the wig and glasses. However, these precautions didn’t mean she couldn’t come back and see through them in a second.

  This thought made me stop mid step. I needed to change my look again for the eventuality of Meredith returning. I took off my wig, putting it in my bag, pulled my hair back into a bun, and left the glasses on. Now if she saw me, she would believe the similarity in the glasses was a coincidence because the crazy lady she’d seen before had different hair color.

  When I reached the end of the stairs, the entire staircase disappeared. I don’t know where they went, but it was as if they’d never been there to begin with.

  I rubbed my eyes, gazing into the space the stairs should have been. I was just so tired; I didn’t know what was going on anymore. If I just got some sleep, ten uninterrupted hours sounded blissful, I’d be able to figure out this newest mystery.

  However, I wasn’t going to get any sleep until I focused all my remaining brain power on solving the mystery of getting back up those stairs whenever I wanted to. Stumbling a little from exhaustion, I went to the wall Meredith where had punched in the code and began my search.

  Like the keypad for the vault, it took me longer than I would have liked to find exactly where to push on the flawless wall to reveal it. Also like the other keypad, there were the unique symbols from the KOTS website. Checking my notes frequently, I slowly entered the password. After I’d entered the eighth symbol, I pushed the keypad back into the wall. I turned to watch the space where the steps had been before, but naturally they chose this moment to not reappear.

  “Of course they aren’t there,” I mumbled to myself as I revealed the keypad again. “If they were there, it would have made everything way too easy. And the Ancients forbid anything is easy.”

  I typed in the password again and tried to will the steps to appear, but they didn’t. Had I mistranslated the password? I compared my translation to the website and saw I hadn’t mistranslated anything.

  “Then I’m reading it wrong. That’s the only answer. What if instead of reading it backwards, I’m supposed to read it the way it’s written?”

  It didn’t hurt to try, so I attempted to reveal the stairs again. To my everlasting joy, this time I was successful. The staircase appeared as silently as it had disappeared, not that I actually saw it come out of hiding. One second it wasn’t there and the next second it was. I never saw it descend from the ceiling or rise out from the floor. I didn’t even see a wall open in order for the stairs to move into place. They just appeared. There was no explanation as to where they went when not in use.

  At least no explanation I was able to come up with at this second.

  I wearily went up a few steps to verify these were the correct stairs. Once assured I hadn’t accidentally revealed some other staircase leading somewhere I didn’t want to end up, I began the long journey of getting out of the building and home.

  I planned to bask in my success tonight. Perhaps not tonight, I amended as I yawned. Tonight I would sleep like the dead. Tomorrow…tomorrow I would party, indulging in tons of soothing music, decadent chocolate, and alcohol.

  Lots and lots of alcohol.

  And chocolate.

  Baskets full of chocolate.