by Katrina Cope
There was another loud noise from inside the room, accompanied by the sounds of hurried movements.
Hayley asked, “Can you see anything, Brendan?”
Still watching, he answered, “Actually, I can see a little. Dr. Ernest is inside, and he appears to be grabbing a ton of equipment and chemicals and stashing them in a bag.”
“Really?” Liam sounded doubtful. “That’s odd.”
“That can’t be right!” Hayley shook her head. “Where do you see this? Let me have a look.” She barged her way into Brendan’s spot and tried her best to look through the tiny gap with her human eyes. After a minute of doing her best to see inside the room, she pulled away in frustration. “I can’t see a thing. How the heck do you see anything? You’ve gotta be making this up.”
“You don’t have to believe me. I just happen to have excellent vision,” Aaron said, shrugging. Aaron understood, though, that because Brendan had been acting weird over the last week, it gave them more reason to doubt him.
They continued to wait outside the lab for their teacher to arrive and class to begin. More students made their way over, ready for class, and waited outside.
Facing away from the door of the lab, Hayley jumped when it suddenly opened from the inside. She turned around and was startled to find herself looking straight at the face of Dr. Ernest. He had a large black insulated bag strung over his shoulder, and a lab coat covered his clothes. The bag was tightly zipped to hold the contents inside. He had a strange look on his face, but it quickly disintegrated into a friendly expression when he realized he faced students.
“Morning, Dr. Ernest,” Hayley greeted him as she threw a side-glance at Brendan in a shocked acknowledgment that he was right.
“Good morning, Hayley.” He nodded at the three boys in acknowledgment.
“Good morning, Dr. Ernest,” the three greeted him in unison.
Dr. Ernest turned to the remainder of the class and greeted them also.
“Excuse me please, Hayley.” The doctor nudged her to the side.
“Oh, of course, sorry,” she said, moving out of the way and seemingly embarrassed over her lack of practicality in this instance.
“Thank you.” He smiled at her reaction.
As he passed, the bag managed to knock against the side of the door entry, and a clank resembling glasses hitting together sounded. Pretending not to notice the noise, he pushed past the students.
“Have a good class,” he said as he left.
Instantly, Hayley whispered to the other three, “What was that all about?”
“See, I was right,” Brendan whispered.
Hayley gave him an exasperated look. “So. This one time you were right. Don’t ever expect a girl to say that more than once.” She huffed and then finished with a chuckle. “But seriously, what was he doing, I wonder?”
“No idea.” Liam’s voice was slightly louder than a whisper. “Though he did look a little peculiar when he saw us out here, and his bag made that sound. They were odd looks to have if he wasn’t hiding something.”
“Why would he hide things?” Dryden asked. “He’s the principal. He can do what he likes at the school.”
“The government still runs the college, so he still has to answer to someone,” Hayley said.
“Maybe we should try to find him on our break and see if we can figure out what he’s up to.” Brendan looked thoughtfully in the direction that the doctor had disappeared.
“Seems odd to spy on your own principal.” A guilty look spread across Hayley’s face. “But I’m up for it.” A mischievous grin replaced the guilt, expanding from ear to ear.
Back in the real-time room at the Sanctum, Aaron turned off his microphone for the voice of Brendan and turned to Jayden, who was still in the same room and not far away. He half spoke and half whispered, “Psst. Jayden.” He spotted others in the room, who glanced at him as they operated their surrogates. Jayden, however, remained indifferent and seemingly in deep concentration. “Jayden,” he called a little louder.
Jayden looked his way this time with a questioning look. He turned his microphone off and asked, “What’s up?”
“Are you close to the science buildings?”
“Not too far away. Why do you ask?”
“Dr. Ernest is acting a little weird. He left the science lab with a black bag full of chemicals and equipment, acting kind of secretive about it. Can you find him and follow him?”
Without a second thought, Jayden responded, “I’m on it.”
~~~~~
JAYDEN TOOK HIS surrogate to the nearest tall tree with enough foliage to cover his location, although not so much to block his sight. It was a very tall tree. He climbed up halfway with little effort due to his robot strength and peered back over the college, looking for any sign of the doctor.
He spotted him scurrying quickly across the school grounds with the black bag still hanging from his shoulder. He greeted every student he passed as though nothing was amiss.
Since he had a good idea of which direction the doctor was going, he scaled down the tree and started to follow him on land. He did his best to keep out of sight. When he couldn’t, he would pretend to be one of the students. He had observed this school for about a year now, and it had been long enough to know the areas and the mannerisms to adopt if caught within the school, although he preferred to stay in the background and out of sight.
He followed Dr. Ernest until he came to the building he knew as the administration offices, which the doctor entered. Jayden was relieved that he had adapted his camouflage skills to that of a student. He followed the doctor inside and down a hallway then watched as the man turned and entered a pin into an electric pin pad.
“Eva?” Jayden called her softly after adding her to his transmitting circle and turning off his surrogate voice.
Her response was quick. “I’m here. What’s up?”
“I need to get through this door. Can you help me with this lock?”
“Sure. That’s why I’m here.”
“Robert?” Jayden said.
“Yep.” Robert’s voice filled the earpiece.
“Do you know from your ladybeetle travels what’s behind this door?” Jayden asked.
“Give me a minute to see where you are.” Jayden could hear Robert typing away on his keyboard. He patiently waited while Eva worked on the code and Robert searched his computer for his location. He kept an eye on the hallway for anyone who might be watching his actions and thinking that they were strange.
“Sorry, not a clue what is behind that door,” Robert informed him.
Eva came back. “Got it. The code is nine-seven-three-five-one. Be careful.”
Jayden entered the code and turned the handle, cautiously pushing the door open. When he entered the room, he was surprised to see that it was an indoor garden with a large glass wall on the far side. There appeared to be no way out of the place but through the door Jayden had entered. Two things seemed strange about the room. One was that an indoor garden had a lock on the door leading to it, and two, where had the doctor gone? He felt alone, so he entered the room, looking vigilantly in every corner for any movement, and at the same time he tried to find an exit. He couldn’t see any.
Perplexed, he took in his surroundings. The garden looked very tropical. It consisted of many palms from small to over an adult human height. The palm fronds were reaching up, out and over the other plants of various colors. There were no flowers, only colorful plants in many shapes and sizes. The far corner featured a large indoor waterfall with water flowing down the rocks.
It wasn’t as good as the one outside his bedroom window at the Sanctum, but it was still nice.
On the outside of the room’s center, a few park benches bordered the garden. He walked around the room, trying to see if there was a door hiding behind some of the plants, but he couldn’t find anything that resembled an exit. He trekked through the garden bed, searching to see if there was any dirt disturbed—maybe someone had pu
shed it aside to go through a trap door. Still, he couldn’t find another entrance. After coming up empty, he then searched for a button or lever among the plants, in the waterfall, or on the walls. Still nothing.
Baffled, he contacted Eva. She was always good at puzzle solving. “I can’t find where he has gone, Eva. Any ideas on a secret entrance to anything?”
“Hang on. I’ll have a look. Can you scan the room again with your eyes so that I can see everything?”
Jayden looked around the room again for Eva’s sake, but it also let him have another look.
“Try behind or on the side of the waterfall,” she suggested.
“I’ve looked already, but another look won’t hurt.” When he arrived at the waterfall, he made sure that his eyes scanned the whole external surface.
“Nope. Nothing there,” Eva said. “Have you searched all the gardens and walls, including under the plants?”
“Yep.” He stood facing the middle of the room, looking at the one door that was available and fully visible for entry and exit. There was no other door in sight.
“Have you tried the seats?” she asked.
“No.” Jayden hesitated and frowned.
“Well, try them, don’t just stand there,” she snapped when he didn’t move.
“The seats? Really?” Shrugging, he went over and sat on the closest one. “See, nothing happens.”
“Oh, and sitting still on a seat makes you the expert, does it?” She mocked him. “Feel around under the seat as well, dimwit!”
“Aren’t we in a good mood today?” Jayden rolled his eyes but did as instructed.
“As always.” Robert added sarcastically, chuckling.
He felt around. “I can’t feel anything, Eva.”
“Then try another seat, wise guy.” Her suggestion was sardonic.
Jayden stood up, went to the next seat, and followed the same procedure. That time, he thought he felt a knob. “I’ve found something.”
“Well, press it!” Eva spoke in a condescending tone.
“Jeez! Just wait, girly. I want to take a look at it first.”
“Don’t you ‘girly’ me, boy,” Eva snapped.
Jayden was about to stand up and have a look underneath the chair, but then the floor space opposite his chair opened up. His heart raced. He wasn’t about to wait around any longer to see what or who was going to come up from that hole, so he sat down again and pressed the button. Instantly, the chair started dropping into the floor under the ground. His head was under ground level, and the floor above him had closed up before whoever was coming up through the other opening had made it to the garden.
“Phew! That was close,” he said out loud.
“What was?” Eva asked.
“I nearly got caught in the locked-up garden. Trying to explain my way out of that one would have been interesting.”
“Where are you now?” she asked him. “All I can see is dark.”
“I appear to be going down in some sort of elevator with no sides but the external walls and no buttons. So I hope it doesn’t break down.”
Remaining seated for safety, Jayden spent the time looking at the moving walls. He did not know what to expect next. The ride seemed to take forever. It finally came to a stop. He stood nervously, not knowing what to anticipate when the doors opened. It opened to reveal a large corridor lined with many doors that had glass up the top half to look through, and also long glass windows in the hallway, which seemed like observation windows. Some of the doors had locks, and some were left open.
Jayden grabbed a white lab coat, which was hanging on the wall to the right side of him, and slipped it on.
He cautiously made his way down the corridor, peering in each window as he went along, careful to stay out of sight. He noticed that there were security cameras strategically placed along the corridor, so he pulled out an electromagnetic radiation device, which was a cell-phone-looking object. He pointed it at each security camera so that it would distort the image long enough for him to pass quickly.
All of the rooms appeared to have three or four older students inside, wearing lab coats and working on something in front of them. Each room looked like a science lab or computer room. He watched as a student in one of the rooms he was peering in let go of an owl and watched it fly around the room. It looked just like the owl he had seen in the test simulator he had participated in the week before when he and Aaron ended up blasted onto the floor. Thinking the owl was a pet, Jayden was flabbergasted when he saw a remote control in one of the older student’s hands and had trouble believing that the remote was operating the bird.
“Ah, Robert. You should see this.” He spoke with his surrogate voice turned off.
“What?” Robert gazed over Jayden’s shoulder at his screen. “Whoa! That’s epic.”
“Isn’t it? I mean your inventions are epic also, but that is one gorgeous, realistic-looking bird. I thought they only did metal-looking things.”
“Yeah. That’s all we have seen so far up on earth, in the college. What is this place? Have you worked it out yet?”
“No, I haven’t. But it is obviously a secret place. I wonder what they’re up to.” Jayden felt his eyes widening as he continued down the corridor. He peered in the next room and saw a student with a pen in his hand. The student looked like a typical nerd stereotype. Others stood cautiously to his side or behind him, looking as though the pen could be dangerous. He watched as the student clicked on the end of the pen and a bullet fired into a target in front of him. Jayden chuckled. “Do they actually make those?”
“Make what?” Eva asked, returning to the conversation after helping Aaron.
“Shooting pens, like in the movies,” Jayden said.
“Really? They have those?” Eva giggled, sounding as though she was also having trouble believing that they would make one.
Jayden continued to look at everything he could, amazed that this place was actually under a government-run school for geniuses. “Who would have thought that this was hidden under the school?” he thought out loud.
There were so many amazing things there to look at and take in, but he had to focus to see if he could find Dr. Ernest. He had peered into every window and had still not seen him. It wasn’t long before the corridor veered off in another direction, showing more labs and amazing experiments being played with and tested. “I guess a remote control train with several carriages is easy work for this school. I thought that was one of the senior students’ work, but compared to these experiments and inventions, it was child’s play,” he said into his headset.
A movement caught his eye. Someone was coming out of the lab and heading down the corridor in his direction. With his heart thumping against his ribcage, he quickly ducked around a corner in a small alcove he was lucky enough to have near him at that moment, and he prayed that the person wasn’t heading for that alcove. He watched as a female in her late teens passed him. She was thin, wearing a white lab coat, and had her blond hair pulled back into a bun and glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose. She looked like a serious stereotype of a lab worker. She walked hastily in her flat, non-slip, enclosed shoes and held a clipboard in her hands as she headed toward another lab.
“Phew. That was close.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “I still haven’t found Dr. Ernest.”
After checking to be sure that it was safe to walk the corridor again, he ventured out and progressed on toward the end, continually pointing his electromagnetic radiation device at the security cameras.
When he reached the end, he overheard talking. He was not sure, but it sounded similar to what he remembered Dr. Ernest’s voice sounding like. He hadn’t had that much contact with Dr. Ernest, as Jayden was always floating around in the background. He peeked around the corner as discreetly as possible to have a look. There, in the middle of the well-lit room, he saw the dark figure of Dr. Ernest. He was pacing the floor and looking intensely at something lying on a flat bench. The bench reminded Jayden of a gurney tab
le, similar to what was on the medical examiner shows.
What was on the table was a bit of a metallic puzzle at first, although after seeing Robert at work, he was piecing together what it was. It also helped that in the corner, one was mostly put together. It appeared to be the internal structure of a surrogate. This one had arms, legs, and head all attached, with eyes placed in their sockets. The unskinned surrogate was plugged into a computer, and they were testing its visual function. The eyes of the robot scanned the room and showed successfully on the computer screen.
Jayden couldn’t believe it. They were setting up surrogates too. What are they up to?
“That seems to be working perfectly, William,” Dr. Ernest stated, observing the work. “How are the arm and leg functions going?”
He said this to a male who looked to be the age of a senior student. He had dark-brown hair, and a pair of glasses sat on the end of his nose, which he pushed back into place when he lifted his head to look up at the doctor. A proud grin spread across his pale face. “They’re working smoothly. Watch this!” He grabbed the headset and placed it on his head. He then clicked a few buttons on the keypad and took a seat on an adjustable chair with footrests. The robot’s arms and legs started to move, and it appeared that they were moving on their own. They weren’t all hooked up to William’s arms and legs.
“Wow! That’s cool! They are moving that by brain senses only. That’s more advanced than ours,” Jayden said. “Robert?”
“Yep?”
“Have a look at this.”
Robert viewed Jayden’s eyesight through his computer. “Wow! That’s really advanced. I’ll have to tell Niles about this so that we can work on it. Are you still in that hidden place? I thought this school wasn’t as advanced as we are.”
“Yeah, I’m still down here, but I’ve found Dr. Ernest now, and this is what I found with him.”
