Cragbridge Hall, Volume 2: The Avatar Battle (13 page)

13

The Council of the Keys

Once his visor was on, it was as though Derick sat in a completely different room—not the virtual booth he was actually in, but a conference room with a large mahogany table and black leather seats surrounding it. Derick sat in one chair and, as he surveyed the rest of the room, saw faces he recognized—Abby, Coach Horne, Coach Adonavich, and Grandpa. Each sat around the same virtual table. But there were two unfamiliar faces—a black couple. The man had broad shoulders and a beard. The woman was thin with short cropped hair.

Grandpa stood at the head of the table, wearing his usual blazer with the Cragbridge crest. His brow was furrowed, his beard and what white hair he had left looked more haggard than usual. “Thank you all for coming. I usually prefer to meet in person, but this may prove to be more suitable under the circumstances.” Derick didn’t know what that meant. “I don’t think we can be too careful when Muns may be involved.”

“This meeting has been called as a precaution, but it is quite historic.” Grandpa gazed at each person in the room. “Throughout your lives, every one of you has gained my trust.” Derick looked from face to face imagining what the situations might have been that led to Grandpa’s trust. “All of you know my secret, and carry a key to the Bridge, and have the power to manipulate time if accompanied by two others with keys.” He introduced everyone. The black man and woman were a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Trinhouse. He thought he had heard Abby mention that Mrs. Trinhouse was one of her teachers.

Wait. Mom and Dad. They had keys. Why weren’t they here?

Mr. Trinhouse raised his hand and interrupted. “I thought there would be more of us, and I definitely didn’t expect your grandchildren.”

“I admit,” Grandpa said. “There are more who know my secret and have keys, but I have decided to let you know only some of the others. It at least partially protects the identities of those with keys, and therefore protects them from our enemies.” Derick thought he saw the wisdom in that. Grandpa explained how Muns had tried to gain the keys last semester, but had only succeeded in gaining one.

“I’m fine with not knowing everyone with keys,” Mrs. Trinhouse said. “But have we given much thought to removing the need for protection? I know it may sound drastic, but perhaps we should destroy all the keys. Wouldn’t that stop Muns and eliminate this danger?”

Derick liked Mrs. Trinhouse’s style. She was quite animated as she spoke, but not overbearing, pretending to know it all. She was simply presenting a possibility.

“That is an interesting hypothesis,” Grandpa said. “And if we could do it thoroughly, it would be a good solution. The danger lies in the fact that if just one person asked to return their key presents a counterfeit, or if one or two others refuse or depart without returning their keys, then we potentially leave Muns with all of the power. I’m not willing to risk that. I purposefully left keys to those I trust and there, I believe, lies our best safety.”

“But Muns has a key,” Coach Horne said. “Isn’t there a chance that he can copy the key he has?”

“No,” Grandpa said. “I won’t bore you with the details, but each is unique, like a snowflake. The keys rearrange their internal codes continually. There is no way the code can be cracked or copied. If someone tries to open a key to see how it is configured inside, the key will self-destruct. There’s not an explosion, but the key will no longer work.”

Derick appreciated that the key he always carried in a secret compartment in the bottom of his pocket was not explosive.

Grandpa paused for a moment. When no other questions immediately surfaced, he continued. “For lack of a better name, I think I will call you the Council of the Keys. I must stress that you must keep each other’s identities a secret. If Muns has any other traitors working at Cragbridge Hall somehow, he would desperately want that information. He needs the keys we hold. This was why we did not meet in person. If a mole suspected any of you, it would have been easier for them to tail you and discover the others.”

Grandpa had thought of everything.

“Muns already knows some of us that oppose him from the incident at the beginning of the year. In a bold move, he has contacted Abby and Derick as well as Carol Reese and Rafa Da Silva, four students instrumental in saving me and keeping my secret safe several months ago.” Grandpa played part of Muns’s message warning that something was going to happen and urging the kids to not get involved.

“Then, as some of you know, we recently had quite an incident.” Derick listened as his grandfather described sending Dr. Mackleprank back into time to remove those who had intruded to try to change it. Every member of the Council had been there except for the Trinhouses. He must be bringing them up to date.

“But why would Muns tip us off by contacting the four students?” Coach Adonavich asked.

“We don’t know,” Grandpa admitted.

“I motion that we should actually do as Muns said,” Mrs. Trinhouse proposed, “and not have students involved. Based on what little I know, it is too dangerous.”

The two coaches both agreed.

No way. After all they had done? Besides, Derick wasn’t too young to help. He hated it when adults thought he was too young. They underestimated him just because of his age. Unfair. He should at least get a shot.

“Though I agree that we should take care to protect them, they have proven themselves. Without them, my secret would be lost and Muns would already have the Bridge and the keys.” Grandpa leaned forward across the table. “This school is founded on the idea of giving young people the very best—the Bridge, the Chair, avatars, you as teachers; the list could go on. We do it because we trust them to rise to the occasion. There are no four students I trust to rise more than Abby, Derick, Rafa, and Carol.”

Mr. Trinhouse spoke, “I still agree with my wife that it may be in their best interest to—”

“No!” Grandpa banged his cane on the ground. Even in the virtual world it was loud enough to quiet everyone. “I am certain I want them and their talents as part of this council.”

Derick’s mouth curled up at the edge.
You tell ’em, Grandpa.
He saw Abby blink away a tear.

“We need all of us, including the students among us, to be ready at any hour,” Grandpa said. “And we may just need all of us to defeat Muns.” Though there wasn’t open acceptance of the idea, no one opposed Grandpa.

“In fact, after this last incident, Muns contacted the four students again.” Derick thought back on the message. Could it all have been a gambit?

“That message was one of the driving reasons for this meeting.”

Grandpa showed part of that last message, showing Muns confidently teaching about chess and proposing that his last move had simply been a sacrifice for him to gain the upper hand. Derick knew that he, Abby, Carol, and Rafa had all alerted Grandpa about the messages they’d received.

“But how could that have given Muns the upper hand?” Coach Horne asked. “Those men didn’t change the past and Dr. Mackleprank kicked their trash. Now they’re locked up downstairs and bored to death.”

“I’m not sure,” Grandpa said. “But I want us to consider all the angles. It is possible that the briefcase is a piece to this puzzle.” Grandpa gestured toward the Trinhouses.

Mrs. Trinhouse popped out of her seat. She used her rings to access something. “Oscar asked me and my husband to inspect the case.” After moving her forefinger, an image of the brown leather briefcase appeared on the screen behind her. “We used Shandler imaging to see inside.” The image on the screen changed to show the case, slightly transparent, criscrossed with overlapping lines—the outlines of what was inside. The colors of the various objects also overlapped. “Oscar was right to be cautious. There was a failsafe linked to the lock. You see there are a group of sensors on the case underneath the handle here. If we had tried to open it without putting in the right code, something in that container would release. It could be gas. It could be an acid that would destroy what was inside.”

Derick squinted, trying to better make sense of all the lines. He thought he could make out the sensors under the handle and some sort of container attached to it, but he still couldn’t tell what was inside the main body of the case.

Mr. Trinhouse took over. “Inside the case is a simple handheld device, about the size of your hand. From our imaging, I can’t be certain what it does. Even if we could open the case and inspect it, I’m not sure I’d be able to deduce more. But I
am
sure that it is heavily password protected and coded.”

He pointed to the bottom of the briefcase. “There is also another container here with some sort of solution inside, a series of small darts, and a long pipe or straw.”

“Like blowdarts?” Derick asked, remembering them from movies where natives tranquilized explorers or other trespassers.

“Could be,” Mr. Trinhouse said. “Perhaps they were going to tranquilize members of the
Hindenburg
crew.”

“And then do something with the handheld device?” Coach Adonavich asked.

“That’s our best guess,” Mrs. Trinhouse admitted. “It’s quite the mystery, but I’m glad we stopped them. We will continue to study the case. Perhaps with more concentrated image analysis, we could work out what the handheld device does.”

“Thank you,” Grandpa said. “Please let us know if you discover anything else.” He turned to the entire group. “And, everyone, please ponder how Muns could use the position he is in now to strike against us.”

14

Spheres

The Council of the Keys—Abby liked the sound of it. Even more, she liked the feel of it. Important. Historic. Also, she wasn’t alone. She was one of them. Maybe sometime in the future, if all of this turned out well, someone would write a story about the Council of the Keys, and she would be in it. And she was the youngest member . . . by five minutes, but the youngest still the same.

As she walked down the hall with Derick and Carol, she was still trying to process everything she had just heard—the need to keep the Council’s identity safe, the strange briefcase, and of course, Muns’s message. If she was going to have a chance at making a contribution to something historic, she would have to do her best thinking.

Thinking. She wasn’t as good at that as most everyone else here. In fact, she was number five hundred. Everyone was better at it than her. “I still don’t know how Muns could use what he’s done against us.”

“Me neither,” Derick admitted. “And I’ve thought it through a million times. He sent men in to change the past and we stopped them. They’re in a cell in the basement.”

Abby wanted to mention how she thought the briefcase had something to do with it, but she didn’t know what Carol knew about that. She couldn’t share too much information. And the Trinhouses seemed to be qualified to take care of it.

“All I know is that Rafa isn’t that fun to talk to when he’s a gorilla,” Carol said. “It’s mostly because gorillas can’t speak. I do think we made an emotional connection, though. When I was telling him my theory about what causes a boy to break the threshold between being merely attractive to becoming the full package of hotness, he grunted a few times. Now those could have been I’m-bored-and-I-want-you-to-be-quiet grunts, but
I
think they were this-is-a-very-insightful-conversation-and-I-want-to-understand-you-better grunts. I’m pretty sure I can tell the difference.”

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” Derick said, looking at Abby.

“Me neither,” she responded. “But I still can’t figure out how Grandpa knew where in time they were. Do you think that gizmo he made that senses an energy burst tells him?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Carol said. “Those seem like two very different things.”

“Agreed,” Derick said.

“Couldn’t he just use the Bridge?” Carol asked.

“How?” Abby asked. “How would he know where to look?”

“That’s a good question,” Derick said. “Maybe he has a spy in Muns’s shop.”

“That would be cool, but so dangerous,” Carol said.

Abby pulled out her sphere from her pocket. “Grandpa prepared a way for us to find out. We’ve got to try these out.”

• • •

Derick rubbed his sphere, admiring its dim light one more time before placing it in the virtual booth’s mechanical arm. He had no idea what he was about to see. He wondered if Abby would see the same thing in her booth. Probably not. Since each of the spheres only lit when they touched a certain person, that meant the spheres were meant only for them and whatever he was about to see was individualized.

At first, all he saw was the wrinkled face, bald head, and whispy white beard of his grandpa. “Hello, Derick,” he said. “As you know, I have personalized this sphere for you. It glows with your touch. I’m glad you are searching for an answer, and I need you to find it. But when you find that answer, I need you to be prepared to know how to use it. And for that purpose, I designed this place for you.”

Grandpa faded and a bustling city crowd appeared. Beneath skyscrapers, towers, and apartment buildings, swarms of people walked in every direction. A fountain stood at the center of many walkways, a park surrounding it. “As you probably know,” Grandpa’s voice entered, “when someone makes a world they can decide what rules to follow. At Cragbridge Hall this technology is typically used to study a variety of subjects using the rules that exist in our world. But what if I changed one of the rules? In this world, I have. Derick, what if you could turn invisible? What would you do?”