by Katrina Cope
“That was quite a performance you put on out there,” Avando said, gazing at him with his face expressionless.
Jayden responded with remorse. “Yeah—sorry, Avando. I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my friend.”
“Protecting your friend…hmmm, that’s one way of putting it. I now know what we’re going to have to do with you,” Avando said, while looking deep in thought.
“What, Avando?” Jayden asked, worrying that he was in deep trouble.
“You’re going to be our first roving surrogate.”
“What? I mean, excuse me?”
“Yes. Yes. That’s it,” Avando said, sounding excited. “You’ll be a surrogate—free to hide and watch or spy without interacting with others at the suspect school.”
“Ahhh… Is that my punishment?” Jayden, asked confused.
“Punishment?” Avando frowned. “What do you mean, punishment? You did an outstanding job today. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“But I thought I was going to be punished for the fight I had with Taylor.”
“Oh, that.” Avando waved his hand in the air. “You weren’t fighting—you were just defending your friend. Taylor was the only one fighting. And you did an awesome job defending him, I might add,” he said with a smile.
Jayden breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Thanks.”
- Chapter Thirteen -
Tragedy Strikes
“Oh, sparking wires! Have you seen this?”
Eva had just run out of the level one common room and bumped into Aaron and Jayden coming up the stairs from the main common room. The boys had finished their evening meal and were looking forward to a relaxing night. After all, they’d been excused from dish duties because of their win that day.
Eva already guessed the answer by the blank look on their faces. She grabbed them by the sleeves of their shirts and dragged them into the common room. Once inside, they could see only a couple of people in the room—including Robert, who was in his usual place on the couch.
The TV was showing what appeared to be the news. On the screen was a busy train station during an early-morning rush hour. The station was packed with people. The security camera footage on the TV wasn’t perfect, but it was clear enough to see what was going on at the station.
At first, it appeared to be a normal start to the day, with people rushing to and from the trains until the screen showed a quick, messy flash and the screen went blank. The next picture shown was of a large hole in the ground and a news reporter stating that this hole was where the train station had once been.
“Wh…what happened to all those people?” Jayden stammered, although he knew that he’d understood what the TV reporter had told them.
“They’re gone.” Aaron’s face was like stone. “I…I used to seek refuge in a train station when I was homeless.”
“How could someone do this?” asked Jayden.
“This can’t be true.” Jessica had come in behind them with Taylor, Ben, and Declan.
“It’s on the news!” Eva stated, the shock still clear on her face. “It has to be true.”
“Don’t you remember what we saw on TV on the first day here?” Jayden asked Jessica. He couldn’t believe what she’d just said about it not being true.
Jessica’s face clouded over in confusion. “It’s gotta be just a movie. No one would do that to other people.”
Aaron shook his head.
“Let them believe what they wanna believe,” Taylor glowered. “Them idiots would believe anything.” Ben gestured to Jayden and his group. Declan sniggered in the background.
“Now, Taylor—no need to be so nasty.” Jessica turned to look at him. “Let me show ya around some more, away from this group before ya start another fight.” She grabbed Taylor by the arm and led the group out of the room.
“We have to go and find Avando to see if he knows who did this, and whether we can help,” Eva said. “After all, he hates this kind of behavior, and that’s why he has us keeping an eye on that other school—to see if they’re up to anything like this.”
“Where is he now? Do any of you know?” Aaron asked the other kids. They all shook their heads.
“Why don’t you ask Scarlet?” Robert suggested.
“Hmmh! Trust you to think of the best option. Smart thinking—as usual,” Eva said, praising him, before going over to the communication point in the room. “Scarlet.”
Scarlet’s face flickered on the screen.
“Where’s Avando?”
“Avando is currently in his private quarters upstairs—where students shouldn’t be disturbing him,” Scarlet replied.
“Well, this is an important,” Eva told her turning to leave.
“I still wouldn’t go and disturb him,” Scarlet warned her.
“Yeah, right.” Eva walked away, with the boys following closely behind.
“Children.” Scarlet muttered disapprovingly before her screen went dark.
“I heard you, Scarlet,” Eva yelled back.
They climbed the stairs to level two, which was mostly occupied by the rooms for teachers and the most productive senior students. Avando’s luxury quarters were also there.
They moved quickly down the long hallway that overlooked the common room two stories below. It was the first time that Jayden had been up on this level. He marveled at the glass ceiling.
Gazing at the glass side that faced in the opposite direction of the dining room, he asked, “What do they see out of their common room?”
Eva answered, “They have a gorgeous view of the fields and mountains.”
“And all these doors down this corridor—whose rooms are they?”
“They’re the teachers’ rooms,” Aaron said.
They reached Avando’s door and were surprised to hear yelling coming from inside the room. This didn’t sound like the Avando whom Jayden knew.
“What do you mean, you don’t know who did it?” they heard him yell.
Aaron knocked timidly on the door.
“I need to find out who’s responsible for this—now!” With the knock going unanswered, the yelling continued from inside. “Then find out.” They heard a loud bang on the desk inside the room, followed by cursing.
Eva turned to Aaron. “Seriously Aaron, for a third dan black belt you can be pretty gutless at times.” She stepped forward and knocked loudly on the door.
“But it’s Avando—and he sounds really mad.” He pointed toward the door and looked worried.
They heard footsteps coming toward the door.
“Oh, hello,” Avando said, looking surprised to see them. “What’re you all doing here?” His voice was curt and his hair was disheveled, and deep lines of stress were clearly evident on his face. The students were shocked. This didn’t look like the Avando they’d seen only a few hours before.
Eva spoke. “Sorry to disturb you Avando, but we were wondering if you’d heard the news?” she asked.
“Hmm?” He had a puzzled expression on his face.
“About the train station,” Robert added.
“Oh yes. Yes, of course. So tragic,” he said. “I’ve been trying to examine the disaster to find out exactly what happened and what went so terribly wrong.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?” asked Aaron.
“Oh, I doubt it.” He waved a hand dismissively. “I have my senior students working on an answer.” After a small pause he said, “Actually…” His face lit up. “I could use you all to have a look at that school we should’ve been watching today—if you had had your proper lesson instead of laser skirmish. It wouldn’t surprise me if the other school had something to do with this. Yes…yes, that’s how you could help.” His face glowed.
“But won’t Professor Showden still be in the room, fixing that major technical problem?” asked Robert.
“No…no. He finished not long after your game. What’s even better is that I allocated one of Professor Showden’s surrogates to you and had it fl
own in to the school this afternoon, Jayden, straight after I told you about your new role,” he added, looking at Jayden with a smile. “So now you’re about to go on your first field mission at the school.”
“Didn’t someone see you dropping off a surrogate at the other school?” Jayden asked.
“Well, it wasn’t right at the school. It was to an concealed area nearby.”
Jayden felt the blood drain from his face at the thought of being on the field so quickly.
“Ahhh, okay then,” Jayden agreed. “Let’s first work on finding out who’s responsible for this bombing.”
“Perfect,” Avando said, sounding upbeat. “I’ll just knock on Professor Showden’s door to get him to set it up for us.”
They followed Avando a couple of doors farther down the hall on the teachers’ side and waited as he knocked on the door. A few moments later, the friendly face of Professor Anna appeared in the doorway.
“Ah. Professor Anna, is your husband around?” Avando asked.
“No, Avando. I’m afraid Eric is working on trying to find the cause of that horrible explosion at the train station. He’s gone down to the video rooms.”
“Wonderful. That’s exactly where we wanted to meet him. Such a good, honest spirit he is—always working for a good cause.”
“That he is, Avando,” Professor Anna said, beaming. “That he is.” Then she noticed the children behind Avando. “Oh, hi guys.”
They nodded back in acknowledgement.
“Which reminds me, Avando,” she continued. “Did you hear the latest?”
Avando frowned. “No, I don’t think so.”
“They discovered the cause of the blast.”
“Oh. What was it?”
“Would you believe that it was a bomb packed into a remote-controlled toy train? Each carriage was packed full of explosives. Imagine that. Set off by a child’s toy. A train station brought down by a train.” She shook her head in disbelief while closing the door.
“That makes me think that the other school is even more likely to be a suspect,” Avando said to the students. “It’s hardly likely that a toy train would be used by an adult—don’t you agree?”
The students nodded. The group set off back down to the video combat rooms.
When they reached the door to the rooms it was closed, so Avando knocked and called through the door, “Professor Showden. I have some of our students here to help with our investigation.”
While they waited at the door, they heard hurried movements and banging sounds coming from the two rooms. After a few moments, the door opened, and Professor Showden stuck his head out to see who was there. A huge smile—showing off those oversize teeth—crossed his face in an overly pleased manner when he saw the teens.
“Oh, good! Welcome. Come on in, students. How nice of you to come and help. We need all the assistance we can get.” He stood back, opening the door wider for them to enter and gesturing with an open arm to welcome them into the room.
The group walked in and were quickly taken aback by how many computers and screens he already had running.
“I made sure I turned on a few extra devices for you to work on just before I opened the door,” Professor Showden explained. “I wanted to be certain they were warmed up and ready to go as soon as possible.” His gaze fell on Jayden. “Oh, Jayden—congratulations on your game today. I hear you were more than spectacular.” His expression was curious as his beady, brown eyes peered at Jayden over the top of his large glasses.
“Thanks,” Jayden responded, not wanting to make a big deal about winning.
“Luckily we were organized and had your surrogate dropped off near the school earlier’” the professor told him. “You’ll get to put your skills to the test right away.”
“Hopefully I’ll figure out how to operate it quickly,” Jayden said, not feeling confident.
“You’ll be fine,” Avando said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Eva, I want you to help Jayden break into the school grounds and also help with any codes that he and Aaron need broken. In addition, we need you to keep your eye out for anything unusual,” Professor Showden told her. “Robert, you can operate your ladybug to spy on anything you find suspicious.”
Eva and Robert went straight to the video game room while Aaron and Jayden remained in the video combat room. Aaron attached all the sensors to the correct positions on his body while Avando and Professor Showden helped Jayden to get set up. Once he was ready, they did a few tests.
“Now—to see if you’ve been set up correctly and that you understand how the surrogate moves, I need you to move your arms forward into your vision, one at a time.” Professor Showden told Jayden.
Jayden moved his physical arms back and forth, around and across, and in front of himself while looking at the screen in front of him at the same time. He saw the hands and arms of a dark-complexioned male move around on the screen. It was almost as if the camera were attached to the head, because it was filming these movements at the same distance that the eyes would be from his real arms.
“What a strange sensation.” He knitted brows as he observed the brilliant technology.
“Very good,” Avando encouraged him. “Now try your legs.”
Jayden made a similar movement with his legs in front of him. “Ha!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “Would you look at that?”
“Down to the right here we’ve got a screen with your location, which is controlled by the inbuilt tracking device on your surrogate. If you lose track of where you are, you can view this so that you’ll know which way to move. This map is created by satellite and is currently on satellite view, but can be changed to a normal map view instead,” Professor Showden explained and at the same time showed him the different settings.
Jayden glanced down and saw that there was an outlined plan of the school he was about to enter. The main layout was dark on satellite, because it was nighttime. The school was still outlined faintly, and a bright dot appeared outside the school grounds and off to the right. This must be the location of my surrogate, he thought When the professor changed the view, what was on the screen looked almost like a plan of the school, with a road map around the area.
“Do you see where you have to go?” Professor Showden asked.
Jayden nodded and started to walk in the direction of the school, glancing at the map and making sure he was heading in the right direction. He came to a large wire fence and noticed that the ground was wet and had small patches of almost-melted snow. According to the electronic map, this was part of the back area of the college, and was closed to the outside public. Jayden remained behind the trees while he assessed the area and made a mental note of all the monitoring.
“Before now, we haven’t had anyone else operate the way you’re about to operate at this school. We want you to be like a ghost, moving unseen around the school grounds, Jayden—just like you did in laser tag,” Avando instructed him. “Try not to leave any evidence to show that you’ve entered the school or have been sneaking around.”
Jayden nodded. He noticed that there were surveillance cameras focused on different areas of the back part of the school.
“There’s an electromagnetic radiation device in the top pocket of your shirt,” Avando told him.
“What’s that?” Jayden asked while feeling inside the top pocket of the surrogate’s shirt. To his surprise, he pulled out something that looked like a cell phone.
“It contains an electromagnetic radiation field,” said the professor. “If you point it at a particular electronic gadget that is transmitting information, it will distort that information and render it unrecognizable to the viewer or listener,” said the professor.
“Wow! That’s impressive. How’d you come by that, and how do I use it?”
“One of the senior students invented it. All you need to do is to point the top of it at the electronic device you wish to distort. This should give you the chance to pass those security cameras without your i
mage being picked up or seen—but you’ll still need to be quick so that you don’t alarm the person watching the camera,” Avando said.
“That’s awesome!” He remained crouched, using the zoom on his vision to see up close if there were any cameras detecting movement along the outside perimeter of the campus. He spotted a couple of cameras surveying the area in front of him. He concentrated on those and watched the timing of their rotations while figuring out the exact area that they were surveying. Once he’d figured out their rotations and distances, he focused on a good access point for entry that would only disturb one camera—and only for a very short time.
Found one, he thought. Off to the right, there was only one camera focused on the area. The fence also appeared to have enough slack in it so that a person who was very strong would be able to lift it and slide underneath it. With his heart now beating strongly in his chest, he could hear his pulse in his ears. He waited for the first break in the rotation of the cameras, which would allow him to crawl forward and get close enough for the electromagnetic radiation device to work efficiently. He managed to get close enough to point it at the camera before the camera rotated back to spot him. He slipped his arm through the fence and propped the device against a rock just inside the fence, aiming it at the camera. With his blanket of electronic invisibility now in place, he lifted the fence up far enough to slide under it. He was lucky the robot was much stronger than he himself was, as it was quite a tough lift.
Once through, he quickly brushed the damp grass off his clothes and then picked up the electromagnetic radiation device, being careful to keep it aimed at the camera until he was safely out of sight. He leaned against the closest wall and waited until he had calmed his wildly beating heart. After a few minutes, his heart had settled and—feeling relief—he had better control over his thoughts and bodily actions.
“Looks like you’ve got the hang of it,” Avando commented while putting a caring hand on Jayden’s shoulder. “I’ll leave Professor Showden in charge of your progress while I see how the other students are doing with exposing the culprits. Let me know if you discover anything interesting.”
