The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages, page 25
“That did go without saying” was Kate’s reply.
Constance, Reynie, and Tai hurried to the end of the corridor, where they waited by the barracks entrance. Tai tapped Reynie on the shoulder and pointed happily at the gap in the ceiling. Yes, up there was the barrier that would save them from their pursuers… but only if Sticky had properly understood the schematics, and Kate rewired the panel properly, and Kate managed to get from there to here before McCracken’s fastest men caught up to them.
“Yep,” Reynie said. He found he could say nothing more.
Something clicked inside the wall. From a distance came the sound of rapid, pounding footsteps. Reynie watched Sticky at the other door, eager for a sign of Kate’s appearance.
“Uh-oh,” said Constance. She was looking down the corridor at the security door through which they had just come. It was closed, and it looked just as it had before she spoke, but Reynie’s stomach flopped.
He listened to Kate’s footsteps growing louder by the second, made a quick mental calculation, and entered the code. A bell began to clang. The recorded voice issued its repetitive warning. Sticky let go of the door he was holding open and ran toward the others. An instant later Kate flew through the closing door, her bucket once again securely fastened at her hip.
An instant after that, a glowing red spot appeared near the handle of the security door at the other end of the corridor. The door handle clattered to the floor. The door opened.
Reynie was reaching for the door in front of him when suddenly Kate was beside him smashing it open, shoving him and Tai through it, reaching back to grab Sticky and Constance and yanking them forward, too, faster than they could have moved on their own, and finally leaping through the door herself just as the barrier came down.
No sooner had it dropped into place than two razor-sharp pencils cracked against it and fell in pieces to the floor. In the open doorway at the end of the corridor, the Katz brothers shrugged, exchanged looks of mutual regret, and retreated from view.
“Hooray!” Tai shouted as he climbed to his feet (for Kate’s push had sent him and Reynie sprawling to the floor), and he skipped from person to person, giving hugs. The others, in various states of agitation and excitement from their close call, hugged him back fiercely.
They were in a large, dimly lit place with very high ceilings, rather like a gymnasium missing its bleachers, at the center of which appeared to be a small garden of flowering plants. The gurgle of a fountain could be heard from the direction of the garden. Reynie, wondering about the plants’ need for sunlight, looked up at the high ceiling and discovered three skylights—no doubt made of glastanium, and currently reflecting the soft artificial lights from below.
As the others stood taking it all in, Tai moved toward the garden. After two steps there was a clonking sound, and he staggered backward rubbing his face. He giggled. He had walked directly into a transparent wall.
“I think it’s a kind of exercise space,” Reynie said. He pointed toward the garden. “You can just make out our reflections there, see?” (Everyone stared, and sure enough, barely visible, ghostly versions of themselves were assembled among the plants.) “The garden’s surrounded by glastanium, too. Between that wall and this one there’s a lot of room for walking around. Did you see this on the blueprints, Sticky?”
“Yes, though they didn’t identify the nature of the room. We’re in a protected passage that runs around the perimeter.” Sticky pointed to the far right corner of the huge room. “There’s a door back there that leads to the main control room. And on the opposite side, to the left of the garden, is a hallway that leads to the security suites—the empty ones, that is. There’s almost certainly a barrier blocking it off now.”
Everyone squinted in that direction, and sure enough, they could all see the opening of the far-off hallway, but the dim light and distance prevented all but Kate from spotting the barrier.
“What can I tell you?” Kate said. “I have good eyes. So, George, you said the empty security suites are down that hallway. What about Mr. Curtain’s?”
“His is separated from all the others,” Sticky replied. “It’s on the right side, beyond the control room.”
“Mr. Curtain gets his own special space?” Tai asked.
“It’s the most secure,” Sticky replied. “Not that it’s likely anybody could break out of the other security suites, but Mr. Curtain’s is that much harder. There’s one more thing from the gold key that we’ll have to figure out to reach Mr. Benedict. I’ll share it when we get there.”
“Why are they called security suites?” Tai asked. “That sounds really nice—like sweets that you eat—but if you’re in one, aren’t you a prisoner? Which isn’t nice.”
Sticky smiled and tapped his nose. “Exactly. It’s kind of a joke. When this place was the Institute, there were lots of things that sounded nice but actually weren’t.”
“Everyone rested up?” said Kate, who didn’t seem very well rested herself. In fact, she appeared to be trembling. Her race to the electrical panel had taken a toll on her. “We should get moving. Who knows how long we have?”
“I do,” Constance said flatly. She was digging something out of a pocket in her flight suit. A granola bar. She handed it to Kate. “Here, eat this. I think you need it.”
Kate accepted it gratefully. “Why in the world do you have a granola bar?”
Constance shrugged. “Number Two offered it to me back at Mr. Cole’s house. I only accepted because I thought it was a candy bar.”
“Constance, did you just say that you know how long we have?” Reynie asked.
“Yep,” said Constance tersely. “And the reason I know is because I read McCracken’s mind. They only had three laser pointers and two calculator bombs left. They’ve used them all up, which means they can’t get through this barrier. It won’t lift for twenty-four hours, right? So, yeah, I know how long we have.”
Tai lifted his hands as if to cheer, but sensing that the mood was not quite right for cheering, he lowered his hands again and said nothing.
“Well done,” said Reynie, though he could tell from Constance’s look and tone that she would just as soon bite him as accept any compliment from him. “I thought you might be trying to find that out. That’s one reason I mentioned the calculator bombs to him—to make him think specifically about them.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t need your help,” Constance snapped. “Any more than I needed you to tell me to get out of that room. I’m done with you deciding things for me without asking.”
“What? Constance, of all times—”
“How about we move this conversation into the control room?” Sticky interrupted. He pointed through the barrier. “I’d rather not be standing here when they show up. I don’t want to have to look at them looking at me.”
They all knew what Sticky meant. Few things were as unnerving as having a Ten Man stare at you, so casually sure of his power over you, so certain that he could crush you under his heel—and so happy to do just that if the opportunity arose.
“Let’s do,” said Kate, leading the way. She took a small canteen from inside her jacket, sipped from it, and handed it to Tai. “And how about everybody has a drink of water? Maybe that will help us calm down.”
“It’s full!” Tai declared. “Didn’t you drink any after you ran?”
“I was too tired to unscrew the cap,” Kate said.
By the time they entered the control room, everyone had had a drink of water. But not everyone had calmed down. Constance stalked to an empty bench against the rear wall (the bench was the only noticeable difference between the main control room and the secondary one), pulled her hair over her eyes, and sat down in a huff. Tai climbed onto the bench beside her, swinging his legs and watching with interest to see what the others would do.
“They aren’t just going to give up,” Reynie said.
“No,” Sticky agreed, taking a seat at the computer. “I’ll see if I can figure out what they might try.”
The two monitors on the wall currently displayed the empty front plaza and the entrance to the barracks. Reynie went to the control board and began flipping switches. “The secondary control room only had access to the security cameras in the outer section. This one connects to all of them. We can see out there, but they can’t see in here, so that’s something, anyway.”
“Can we see what they’re up to?” Kate asked.
Reynie quickly ran through all the views of the classroom building corridors. All of them empty. “They must still be in that control room,” he said. “Probably sitting at the computer, doing exactly what we’re doing—trying to figure out how they might get in here.”
“That would be a tight fit!” Tai said. “The whole Baker’s Dozen?”
“Good point,” Reynie said. “Some are probably still out in the passage.”
He began flicking through displays of the barracks. There weren’t a great many: There was the exercise space; a few long, curving corridors; an empty room of no obvious purpose; the open doorways of the dozen or so unoccupied security suites (“They look cozy!” Tai remarked); various maintenance closets, storage rooms, and a staff lounge; part of a long hallway whose walls, curiously enough, were painted in a green plaid pattern; and, finally, a large, mysterious-looking space with an extremely wide gap in the floor and, beyond the gap, another security door.
“George,” said Reynie, “can you give us some explanations about what we’re seeing here?” He flipped the views back to the empty room.
Sticky looked up from the computer. “That’s a safe room,” he said. “If there’s a breakout or some other kind of threat, any guards or staff in this section can run in there and drop a barrier over the doorway. It can also be dropped from here in the control room. It isn’t on the same system as the other barriers—it doesn’t get triggered by override codes or anything like that—but it works the same way. If you drop the safe-room barrier, a distress signal goes out, and it won’t open for twenty-four hours. Well, unless the people in the safe room push the button again, in which case the clock resets for another twenty-four hours. That way they can stay safe for as long as necessary.”
“What if you had to go to the bathroom?” Tai asked.
“There’s a toilet in there,” Sticky said. “The camera just doesn’t show it.”
Tai wrinkled his nose.
“Could a person inside the safe room raise the barrier if everything seemed okay?” Reynie asked.
“Evidently not. I think it’s to prevent a hostage situation. If you were in the safe room, but I wasn’t, and a prisoner was threatening to hurt me if you didn’t raise the barrier—well, you might raise it. But what if the prisoner was lying? I think the system was designed to avoid that kind of scenario.”
“Okay, and what about the last two places?” Kate asked. “I’m curious about the green plaid hallway. I mean, I think I can guess where it leads.”
Reynie changed the displays accordingly. Sticky glanced at the computer screen, then back at the displays. “You’re right—the green plaid hallway leads back to Mr. Curtain’s security suite. It takes you to that giant, weird-looking room with part of the floor missing. The door on the other side of the gap is the entrance to his security suite.”
“Which is where my dad is!” Constance cried, leaping to her feet. “If it’s that simple, we should go straight there! He needs the serum!”
“And so does Mr. Curtain!” Tai said, likewise leaping.
Constance shot him a look. “Like I care.”
Tai shrugged. “It’s true, though.”
“There’s a problem,” Reynie said, pointing to the display of the green plaid hallway. “I didn’t see it at first, but I knew something looked odd. See that small shiny spot in the air? That’s light reflecting off something.”
“A barrier?” Kate said.
“He’s right,” said Sticky, furiously typing at the computer again. “It dropped when we entered the override code.”
“Are you kidding me?” Constance shouted. “That means we’re cut off from my dad! Why didn’t you think about that before?”
“Because I didn’t know before!” Sticky snapped. “I haven’t had complete information, Constance! I’m doing the best I can!”
Reynie cut in, speaking softly. “If you want to blame someone, Constance, blame me. I figured it would happen. This was the only way—”
“You what?” Constance snarled. She grabbed Reynie’s arm and shook it. “You what?”
“Okay, okay,” Kate interjected, making “calm down” gestures with her hands. “Let’s all take deep breaths here. We—oh, very good, Tai, you can let it out now—we have time to work on the problem. Mr. Benedict’s going to be okay. The rest of us know this, Constance, and if you concentrate, you’ll see that. He’s not suffering or sick or anything like that, all right? He’s fine, and we have time to figure out how to reach him.”
“Um,” Sticky said. He pointed at the computer screen. “That actually might be… changing. Someone’s in the system. He’s altered something.”
“Probably Sharpe,” Kate said. “He’s a computer expert.”
“It is Sharpe,” growled Constance, who had released Reynie’s arm and covered her eyes.
“Give me a minute,” Sticky said. He paged through a few screens of computer code. He lingered on the last screen for several seconds. “Okay, not good.” He turned in his chair to face them. “He found a loophole.”
“What is it with all these loopholes?” Constance cried. She crossed her arms and began to pace.
Sticky cleared his throat. “Here’s the thing: Sharpe couldn’t just give a command to raise the barriers. They don’t work that way. It’s impossible. But what he figured out he could do, with some clever reprogramming, was change the time interval.”
“Can you override it?” Kate asked.
“Not until the cycle’s complete. Once the barriers go up, I can change it back and fix the loophole. And I can enter the command to drop them again right away—but there’s that ten-second delay.”
“Right,” said Reynie. “And we can be sure they’ll be gathered at the entrance to this section, ready to hurry through the moment the barrier goes up. Okay, what sort of deadline are we looking at? How much time?”
Sticky rubbed his head. “He changed the interval from hours to minutes. So, well… twenty-four minutes.”
“Twenty-four minutes?” Constance cried.
“Is that bad?” asked Tai, looking from face to face. “I feel like that’s bad.”
“Not necessarily,” said Reynie.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“In fact,” Reynie said, “I think it’s exactly what we need.”
They solved our problem for us,” Reynie said, speaking quickly. “When that barrier at the entrance goes up, so will the ones over the doors that lead to the security suites—both the empty ones and Mr. Curtain’s—and we’ll be ready. Constance, you and Tai and Sticky will be waiting at the barrier that leads to Mr. Benedict. Kate, you’ll be waiting at the one that leads to the other security suites. I know, I know, just give me a second,” he said when everyone began to speak at once. The others fell silent.
“The reason you’ll be over there, Kate,” Reynie explained, “is because we need McCracken to see someone going in that direction. We need to lure them that way, and you’re the obvious choice. If you can draw them deep into that section, you can seal yourself off from them in the safe room. And then from here I can seal them off by dropping the barriers again. George can show me the command sequences. The Ten Men will be stuck—they won’t be able to get to anyone. We can have a whole army of law enforcement waiting here when the barriers go up in twenty-four hours.
“In the meantime,” Reynie went on, “the rest of you will be safe on the other side of your own barrier, figuring out how to get to Mr. Benedict—and you’ll have plenty of time, without McCracken breathing down your necks.”
“I kind of like it,” said Kate. “I also kind of hate it. What happens if I don’t manage to get them to follow me? Or what if they split up? You’d be a sitting duck in here.”
Reynie turned to Sticky. “Do you think Kate’s bucket would hold up under a barrier?”
Sticky looked dubious. “It… might? You’re thinking I could place it so that the barrier wouldn’t go all the way to the floor.”
“Right, and I could follow you and squeeze under the barrier if I had to make a run for it.”
“First of all, it’s risky,” Sticky said. “Second of all, shouldn’t you be the one going to Mr. Benedict? I already know what to do on the computer here, and you’re our best problem solver. I told you there was one more thing to figure out by using the gold key.”
“Yes, but we have walkie-talkies,” Reynie argued. “I could still help you from here—”
Kate huffed with exasperation. “That works both ways, Reynie Muldoon! Why couldn’t Sticky use the walkie-talkies to help you? You should be there. You might notice something the rest of us would miss.”
“Well, but Sticky has the serum—”
“That’s ridiculous!” Constance barked. “As if Sticky can’t just give you his backpack? What in the world are you thinking?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Tai. “He’s thinking that because he’s suggesting a risky plan, he should be the one who takes the risk!”
Reynie grimaced.
“Thank you!” Kate said. “Finally something that makes sense! Also, Reynie, you have got to stop doing this.”
“Doing what?” Reynie asked, though he knew the answer. He crossed his arms, feeling strangely upset. It was because the uncomfortable truth was all coming out, he realized. Of all times and places, here it came.
“Trying to do things your own way!” Kate cried. “I mean, it’s fine to do things your own way, but not when we’re working together as a team. Think about it—what would have happened if I’d done what you said, and skipped the electrical panel? What kind of mess would we be in then?”
