spent dwelling on the past was relatively short. For through his unlocked goggle lenses, a white flash of light began to blink on the wall across from him. Both the Innovator and Duke noticed the flash against the wall in question, but it was Duke who seemed to react first.
“Abbot…”
“I see it,” the Innovator informed in a stern tone. He fixed his gaze so that the area of the wall was within his immediate line of sight, but it caused the flash to disappear in the process. Instead, a white outline of the area replaced the flash, giving the mysterious area of the wall the shape of an average door. He placed a gloved hand within the area his goggles sectioned off, slowly gliding his fingers across the brick and mortar that at first glance gave no reason for suspicion.
“Trap door?” Duke asked.
“Possibly,” answered the Innovator. “But I’m not seeing any cuts in the brick or the mortar that would display any subtle hints. No loose air pressure coming from the other side of the wall from what I can feel or from the sectioned area sectioned off from the goggles. There doesn’t even seem to be a pressure point to push from what I can tell…”
“…So a well-made trap door, then,” Duke assumed.
The Innovator shrugged his shoulders. “Sure,” he lazily said to his assistant with a huff. “Let’s go with that…”
“I’m just saying you should take more time to think it through, Abbot,” Duke informed. “It’s obviously a trap door; otherwise the sensors on your goggles wouldn’t have picked it up. Maybe the reason it doesn’t seem like it is probably because it…?”
The Innovator smiled.
“…Only opens from the other side,” the two said simultaneously. The goggled guardian bit his bottom lip in the midst of his smile, giving an amused shake of his head as he continued to look at the sectioned off area of the wall.
“Oh, you can be rather brilliant when you want to be, Industrial Forest…” the Innovator praised.
Duke gave a nonchalant scoff and raised an eyebrow. “That’s why I only do it on special occasions,” he said. “What with you having the Skeleton Key and all, if I did it all the time you’d stop thinking all-together…”
The Innovator gave a small chuckle as he flicked his left wrist to summon his Skeleton Key from underneath the sleeve of his overcoat. Grasping it with his left hand, he gave the wall another feel with his right. “You wanna keep Skyping or are you gonna call it a night?”
Duke sighed. “…Abbot, I’m at your headquarters located in a previously unoccupied pocket dimension, with the only way of getting out of here and back to the one I belong in is with your Skeleton Key. Where the hell do you think I’m going?”
“…Right,” the Innovator stated, taking a few awkward moments to dwell on Duke’s logic. “I’ll just be, uh…unlocking this trap door, then…”
The Innovator raised his Skeleton Key, and placed it against one of the bricks within the highlighted proximity of his goggles. With a twist of the key, the suspicious section of the wall began to radiate with a golden glow. Once it receded, the outline the Innovator saw through the goggles disappeared. The mortar that held the section together began to lower itself into the bricks it surrounded, allowing a damp blue light on the other end of the wall to pour into the office area. Once all of the surrounding mortar retreated into the evenly layered brick, the newly created door began to slowly lower itself into the floor, revealing to the Innovator a sloped passageway.
“…Abbot?” Duke began. “Something tells me this wasn’t part of the building’s original schematics…”
About The Author
La’Ron Readus started writing at the age of three and has been a fan of science-fiction and fantasy for just as long, introduced to the genres through the world of superheroes. Since he began perfecting the art of writing fiction, La’Ron has penned numerous manuscripts within different genres other than the aforementioned, such as dramas, thrillers, romance and supernatural horror; each he plans on releasing to the public in one way or another. He currently lives in Detroit, Michigan, constantly working on and bettering his craft.
The Innovator: In Plain Sight -- Free Preview Page 5
