All of the stuff about being invincible and purifying and sacrifices sure sounded like a guy thing. But what did it have to do with Mr. Kim and why would the FBI be asking him about it? He was a headmaster at a boarding school, not some low-rent James Bond.
Okay. I’m not really as dense as that. Really. Mr. Kim somehow taught all of his students to become cops, judges, or FBI agents. He was a major martial arts buttkicker. He had a mini-Pentagon underneath his office. So there was clearly more going on with Mr. Kim than him being a simple headmaster at a school for misguided youth. And all that was leaving out the fact that Mr. Kim was also buddies with Jackie Chan. Let’s not forget that.
I needed Pilar’s powers of concentration to help me muddle through all this. But she would probably have to see it to believe it. My mind was spinning so much that I almost missed the best clue. Down at the bottom of the screen was an e-mail message that had been reduced but not closed. Mr. Kim must have been in a hurry and probably thought he closed it.
Now, I want to go on record here that just because I tend to be a smart aleck sometimes and I have had a few unfortunate misunderstandings with the law, I’m not really a bad person. I know you shouldn’t read other people’s e-mail. It’s probably a felony or something. Unless, of course, it was an emergency and someone’s life could be saved by the information in the e-mail, like Mr. Kim’s—right?
I clicked on the e-mail and it expanded to fill the screen in front of me. It explained very little, but as I would soon find out, it also explained a lot. The e-mail read:
Jonathon,
My old friend. I have the book. Of course you already knew that. I think I’ll be putting it to good use. I’d say don’t try to find me but I know that you will. Trust me, it will only end badly.
Yours,
Sam Rith
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Finally They Believe Me…Sort Of
Aha! Somebody named Sam had stolen the Book of Seraphim! And he somehow knew Mr. Kim. And he wanted to brag about stealing the book. Maybe Mr. Kim had once been a cop and he’d busted this Sam guy, so when Mr. Rith got out of the big house, he wanted to make a big theft and rub Mr. Kim’s nose in it. Sort of like how Lex Luthor is always taunting Superman.
So Mr. Kim must have taken off to find this guy and get the book back. Now it all sort of made sense. I looked over to where the cars were parked and noticed there was one missing. Or at least there was a space that could hold a car or truck. So Mr. Kim must have come down here, gotten the e-mail, and taken off after this bad guy Sam. All by himself. With no backup. Had he never seen the Lethal Weapon movies? Didn’t he know what a bad idea it was to take off after a criminal with no backup?
What was I going to do with this information? I didn’t think it would be a good idea to let any of the teachers know that I’d been snooping around in Mr. Kim’s office and had found the Fortress of Solitude. On the other hand, I had to tell someone or I was going to explode.
I looked at my watch. I’d been gone an hour. I needed to find a way to get Pilar down here.
I printed out a copy of the e-mail, then headed back up the stairs to Mr. Kim’s office. I was huffing and puffing quite a bit when I got to the top of the stairs, so I paused for a minute, making sure I couldn’t hear anyone on the other side. No sounds. I pushed the little red button, and as the bookcase swung out of the wall, I stepped back into Mr. Kim’s office.
It took me a few seconds to realize what was wrong. I knew that I had left the light on in Mr. Kim’s office—but now the lights were off. I stood there, frozen in the dark, not sure what to do. Maybe someone had just seen the light on and come in to turn it off. Or maybe someone was lurking in the darkness right now, waiting to murder me in some horrible fashion. I was completely freaked out. I had to get out of there.
There was little, if any, light coming in through the blinds, and the office was cloaked in darkness. I started toward the door. Luckily Mr. Kim wasn’t big on office furnishings, so I didn’t have to worry about tripping over anything. I reached to grab the doorknob, and that was when I felt a hand go over my mouth and an arm come around to pin me from behind. The arms were strong, and they pulled me around so that our backs were to the wall beside the door. I tried to scream and struggle, but I couldn’t get any air. I kicked back with my legs and worked one of my arms free and pulled at the hand that covered my mouth.
A voice hissed in my ear. “Quiet. Mrs. Marquardt is in her office with the door open.” The voice sounded familiar. I stopped fighting. “I’m going to let go. Be quiet or we’ll be caught. Okay?” The arm around me relaxed a little, and I nodded. The hand moved away from my mouth. I sucked in a huge breath of air.
“Who—” I started. But whoever it was shushed me. I could see the dark form move around me and grab the doorknob. The door opened ever so slightly, and when it did a small sliver of light came in and illuminated Brent’s face peering into the hall. He closed the door silently.
“Brent, what are you doing here?” I said. My heart rate slowly started returning to normal.
“Shhh. She’s still there. I saw you leave the girls’ wing and you looked like you were up to something, so I followed you.”
“So it was you. I knew I heard someone behind me,” I said.
“I followed you into Mr. Kim’s office, but when I got here you had vanished. Where did you go?”
“I’ll explain later. Why’d you turn the lights off?”
“I didn’t want to attract attention. I was going to go back to my room, but when I opened the door to check the hallway, I spotted Mrs. Marquardt and had to wait. Then you came out of the wall. What’s going on?” He sounded concerned.
Suddenly we heard Mrs. Marquardt’s door close. We kept quiet as her footsteps headed down the hall. When we were sure it was safe, Brent flipped on the light.
“I’ve got big news. Can you get Alex and meet me in our room in fifteen minutes?” I said.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“It’s against the rules,” he said.
“Against the rules?”
“Yep.”
Getting information out of this guy wasn’t easy. I mean, I’d known him only a short time and he always seemed kind of quiet, but come on, talk already.
“What rules?”
“The rules against boys being in the girls’ wing,” he said.
Oh. Those rules. Hmm. Where could we meet after hours and not be seen?
“Okay, fine. Can you get Alex and meet us in the rec room? In fifteen minutes?” I remembered Pilar saying that hardly anyone used it.
Brent nodded. He opened the door slightly to check the hall. It was clear. We moved out of the office quickly and split up to head off to our rooms.
Pilar was still at her desk with her nose buried in her Criminal Justice text. She wasn’t crazy about leaving her books, but she eventually relented and fifteen minutes later we were all in the rec room.
“You are not going to believe what I’ve just seen,” I said.
“It wouldn’t by any chance be the answers to Friday’s Cultures quiz, would it?” Pilar said.
“No. Listen, I have to swear you all to secrecy about this. I’ve done something I probably shouldn’t have, but I had a good reason.”
Suddenly there was a hint of suspicion in their eyes. I was a little hurt at first, but then I remembered that they were here at Blackthorn on a slightly different agenda from me. The last thing they probably wanted or needed was someone that was going to get them into trouble.
“What is it now?” Alex asked, adding “crackpot” under his breath. I shot him my best hairy eyeball. He was unfazed. Stay on point, Rachel. Don’t let Alex goad you into an argument, I told myself.
“Something weird is going on, and I have proof.” I handed Pilar the copy of the e-mail. Alex and Brent read it over her shoulder.
Pilar looked at me, puzzled. “Where did you get this?”
“If I tol
d you that Mr. Kim has an enormous secret hideaway about ten stories below his office, filled with supercomputers, martial arts weapons, mad-scientist laboratory equipment, and a bunch of other high-tech gear, would you believe me?”
“Yeah. Right. Seriously, where did you get this?” Alex asked.
“No, it’s true,” said Brent. “At least some of it. I saw her go into Mr. Kim’s office and disappear. She must have gone somewhere,” he said. I gave him a grateful look. He shrugged.
“Look, you don’t have to believe it until you see it, but listen to this. I found out that the Book of Seraphim was stolen. That must be what the agents were talking to Mr. Kim about. Then some guy named Sam e-mails Mr. Kim that he has the book. And now Mr. Kim has been gone for almost four days. Something is definitely up. What if he’s in trouble?”
The thought of Mr. Kim in trouble clearly bothered Pilar. “Why do you say that?” she asked. Her voice was tighter.
“Because he looked very upset in the hallway that morning, and Mr. Kim doesn’t get upset. Plus this e-mail says ‘old friend’ and ‘don’t come after me because it will end badly.’ That’s a threat. Somebody would have to be a pretty bad hombre to threaten Mr. Kim like that.”
Pilar continued to stare at the e-mail. She was quiet for several minutes. I could tell she was perplexed. Alex was still muttering “nutcase” and “squirrelly” under his breath, but I was doing a good job of ignoring him. So far.
“Didn’t you say that you saw the word ‘MITHRAS’ written on the pad of paper in Mr. Kim’s office?” she asked.
“Yes, why?”
“Because this signature, ‘Sam Rith,’ is an anagram for Mithras.”
“A what-o-gram?”
“Anagram.”
“Isn’t that something someone delivers to your door?”
“No. That’s a telegram. An anagram is when you mix up the letters of a word to make a different word. Sam Rith is an anagram of Mithras. What do you suppose that means?” She looked up at me.
“I don’t know, but I read some stuff about Mithras on the Internet. He was this ancient god that was popular with the Roman army right before the end of the Roman Empire. They had all kinds of weird ceremonies and rituals, and it all sounded creepy and totally testosterone-driven.”
“Hmm. I wonder what the connection is between the book and Mithras.” She said it like it was a math problem she really wanted to study. It infuriated me.
“Pilar, I don’t have a clue. But the main thing right now is where is Mr. Kim and what do we do about this?”
“We could tell a teacher or Mrs. Marquardt,” Alex said.
“We could. But how can we be sure they don’t already know this and aren’t doing anything about it?” It occurred to me that if I told someone I’d been prowling around places I shouldn’t, I might get thrown out of here just like I wanted. But then that stupid judge would send me straight to Juvie. Aarrrgh.
“We don’t, I guess,” Pilar said.
“Besides, this place of Mr. Kim’s seems very secret, like he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Maybe we need to keep this to ourselves,” I said.
Nobody had any other ideas.
“Well, we can’t do anything tonight. I’ll get out of Kitchen Duty tomorrow afternoon so that I can show you what I found. Then we’ll decide what to do. Agreed?”
They were quiet for a minute. Then they all said, “Agreed.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We Take Action
Luckily for me, Mrs. Clausen had become quite fond of me in my month in the kitchen. It wasn’t difficult to convince her that I wasn’t feeling well and might be contagious and shouldn’t be handling food in case I started an epidemic in the school. She shooed me off to my room pretty fast.
Instead I headed straight for Mr. Kim’s office. I hoped the others didn’t have trouble getting there without being seen.
When I got there, they were waiting. Alex had gotten one of his buddies to “manufacture” a paperwork problem at the school’s loading dock, so Mrs. Marquardt had gone down to straighten it out. It would keep her out of our way for at least a little while.
I led them over to the bookcase in Mr. Kim’s office and moved the little picture frame forward on its spring. Just like before, the bookcase hissed and then swung out away from the wall. They were speechless.
“Hurry up, because it closes in a few seconds,” I said, starting down the stairway. They followed right behind me, too stunned to say anything.
It was another long walk down, but this time I was buoyed by the fact that I had these three with me. Now they would have to come around to my way of thinking. I love it when I’m right. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, I paused for dramatic effect, then swung the door open.
“Feast your eyes on this,” I said.
They stopped a few steps inside the doorway, like I had the night before. It was a lot to take in. There were a few mumbled “wows” and a couple of “I don’t believe it”s and then just silence.
I led them over to the computer consoles and showed them the e-mail and all the stuff about Mithras that I’d found on the Internet. They didn’t know what to say.
“Look, Rachel,” Alex finally said, “I guess I owe you an apology. You were right. Something is up. What in the world is this place?” Brent and Pilar nodded along with him.
“It’s okay,” I said. “What we have to decide is what we’re going to do about Mr. Kim.”
“Right,” said Brent, “any ideas?”
“Well, how far are you all willing to go with this?”
They all glanced at one another. Then Pilar spoke up: “As far as we need to.”
“Okay, then. There is something else that bugs me about this whole thing, and that is the Top Floor. Why did Mr. Kim take those agents up there and what is that whole wing of the school for? Everybody has heard of the Top Floor, but nobody knows anything about it. I think we need to check it out.”
“We’re not allowed in that wing,” Brent said. “We could get kicked out of school.”
“We could get kicked out right now for being here. But until we know the whole story, we can’t decide what to do,” I said. “We need to know what they were looking at up there.”
“But how do we get in? It’s always locked,” Alex said. “Someone must have a key. Maybe Mrs. Marquardt. We can search her office. Or maybe we can hang out in the hallway until somebody comes out the door and try to sneak in.”
“That could take hours,” said Pilar. I nodded.
Brent had moved away from us and was looking at the different weapons and other gadgets that were on the wall. He ran his hands over some of the equipment and picked up a small gunlike thing that had a piece of wire coming out of it.
“I can get us in,” he said.
“What? How?” I said.
“This is called a zip gun. It’s what cops use to get through locked doors when they don’t want to make a lot of noise. You stick this key part in the lock and wires spring out to find the correct tumblers in the locking mechanism. It’s silent and works in about three seconds.”
“And you know this how?” I was impressed and a little bit stunned as well, because that was the longest speech I’d ever heard him give.
“I just know, that’s all. I’ve seen them used before.”
“Where? Are you sure?” I said.
“In a past life. And yes, it will work,” he said. Men. You really have to drag information out of them. But the look on Brent’s face said don’t ask me any more questions.
“Why don’t we try it and see? We don’t have anything to lose,” Pilar said.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s meet in the rec room after Tae Kwon Do tonight. We’re less likely to be caught, and hopefully there won’t be anybody up there.”
And that was how we planned our unauthorized entry into the Top Floor wing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
All This but No Jacuzzi?
After Tae Kwon Do, almost nobody eve
r came out of their rooms at night. The average day at Blackthorn was pretty rigorous, and with studying and all you didn’t have a lot of energy left for wandering around. We’d need to be careful, but there was a good chance no one would see us. The four of us cautiously made our way to the back of the school, stopping at each intersection to make sure there was no one around. In a few minutes we were in front of the door that led to Top Floor.
Brent’s little unlocking gizmo worked just like he said it would. He stuck the wire probe into the lock and pulled the trigger, and the door opened in about three seconds. We were in.
Inside the door a stairway led up to the top floor of the school. At the top, Alex volunteered to go in and make sure no one was there. He slowly pushed open the door and then slipped through. The door clicked shut. It was nerve-racking. If anyone came in the door below us, we were toast. Brent went back down the stairs to keep watch while we waited for Alex to come back.
Little beads of sweat started to form on my forehead. When Alex popped back through the door, I jumped because I was so nervous.
“There’s no one here. You aren’t going to believe this,” he said.
None of us were really prepared for what we found through the door.
The entire floor looked like a set for a movie or the backstage of some Hollywood studio lot. Most of the interior walls were missing, and the ceiling was very high. You felt like you were standing in a giant warehouse. Off to our right was a set of rooms that looked like the inside of a house. There was a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room, all completely furnished with couches and chairs and pillows and stuff. Farther down on the right, we came to another area where a bank lobby had been set up. It had a row of teller windows, a safe in the back, desks, and chairs around it that made it look like a real bank.
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