1.
I knew he was going to follow me. It was inevitable. As I extended my hand to press the elevator button, another beat me to it. The boy I'd been told to follow today.
"Hey," he nodded, pressing the button.
"Hi," I smiled, pressing the button again. When the elevator came, we both stepped into it quietly, him leaning on the railings at the back, me facing the stainless steel doors in the corner.
I knew nothing about this boy, except that I had to tail him. I had also been told that he was a civilian, an innocent bystander Solomon had picked out.
"So," he started, pointing at the crest on my grey blazer. "The Guggenheim Academy-"
"Gallagher Academy," I corrected.
"I've never heard of it," he shrugged. Well, I'm not surprised, to be honest. Gallagher was very selective about who knew of it.
"Well, it's my school," I said, hearing the familiar sound of Bex talking in my comms.
As I pulled out my cell, I heard the boy ask; "You in a hurry or something? That's like the 2nd time you've checked your phone in the space of 3 minutes."
"I'm supposed to meet my teacher at the ruby slipper exhibit in 20 minutes, and if I'm late, he'll kill me." Not an over exaggeration, I hope. Though he'll probably make me do laps around campus, or something.
The doors dinged open and I walked out, hearing the boy's footsteps echoing behind me. I spun around. "Where are you going?"
"I thought we were going to meet your teacher at the wonderful world of Oz?" he said, confused. "It's dark, you're by yourself, and this is DC. Anyway, it's only a bit up here."
I shrugged. "If you want to, you don't have to."
He smiled. "You're right, I don't have to, but I want to."
We walked through the doors of the museum and headed for the stairs. The boy let me go first, considering the staircase was incredibly small. One flight of stairs later and we were facing the ruby slipper exhibit. I looked around for Solomon. There was no sign of him. In the distance, I could hear the bell tower ding, signifying 5pm. He still wasn't here. As I walked around, I noticed him hidden in the shadows. He gestured to the boy.
"Hey, are you sure you have the right place?" the boy beside me asked, looking down at me worriedly.
I nodded. Then I understood. I needed to get rid of the boy. A group of tourists came in and I easily blended in, being the Chameleon and all. I watched as the boy spun around and around, confused as to where I could have gone, before he shrugged and walked off towards the elevator.
As soon as those elevator doors closed, an arm was around my shoulder, dragging me away. "What do you think you were doing?" he hissed in my ear as we melted into the shadows.
"My mission."
"No, your mission was to tail him, not bring him to the rendezvous point. You could have blown us!"
"But I didn't, did I? I managed to get away from him, and I tailed him without his knowledge."
"Okay, what was his name?"
A thousand images flashed through my head as I searched through everything I had seen earlier. "Zach. It was written on his inside left forearm, which means he was right handed."
"What else can you tell me about him?"
"He liked to draw. I noticed a piece of paper stuffed inside his pocket with a drawing of a crest on it, presumably Blackthorne Crest, seeing as that's the school he goes too. He had a small scar on his left cheek, as if he'd been in a knife fight. Recently as well, considering the calluses on his hands."
"Age?"
"Well, judging by his height – 5'11'' – and his weight – about 150lbs – I'm guessing he's 16/17 and that he was a Summer baby, by his natural tan, bright eyes and thin hair."
He looked slightly impressed, but I knew he wasn't going to let me off that easily.
"Get back to the van."
The finality in his tone was enough to tell me not to push it. He gripped my arm and led me towards the stairs, allowing me to go first, but still holding my bicep harshly.
"Damn, he's there," Solomon muttered behind me as we neared the end of the stairwell. I peaked around the corner and saw the boy, Zach, stood there leaning against the desk, reading a pamphlet.
I cursed under my breath, before pulling out a black wig from my backpack and pulling it on my head, tucking my natural blonde hair underneath it. I turned to Solomon and bent my head towards him, silently asking him to tuck any loose strands under the black locks. He did so, before gripping my arm again, obviously not trusting me to not run away.
As we walked past Zach, I noticed him look at me, before looking back to the pamphlet. I guess he didn't put two and two together. We walked out of the museum and I felt as Solomon ripped the wig off my head, still angry with me.
He pushed me towards the parked van at the other end of the Smithsonian and sat me in the back with the other girls. They looked questioningly at me, but I just smiled as Solomon leaned down to my ear.
"This is not over, Cameron."
And then we were plunged into darkness.
[NOW I'M HERE IN A STICKY SITUATION]
As we stepped out of the van onto the familiar tarmac of the Gallagher Campus, I breathed in the fresh air I had grown so accustomed to. I didn't like the atmosphere in Washington, it was clingy and humid, but out here it was a lot cleaner, despite what the actual School was doing.
Again, I felt the tight arm on bicep, dragging me to the other side of the van. I couldn't help it, I snapped.
"Jesus, Solomon, can you stop grabbing my arm? I'm not a ragdoll!" I glared, pulling my arm out of his grip. He looked slightly shocked at my outburst, but that quickly turned into anger.
"You are to go into the Tombs," he started. My eyes widened at that one line as it registered in my mind. The Tombs were forbidden to students to go inside unaccompanied by a teacher. And there were many reasons for that rule. "Find the log book from winter 1989 by Matthew Morgan and bring it back to me. Don't come out until you have it."
He spoke with authority, as if he was writing my death wish out. He pushed me off in the direction of the Tombs. I was still in shock.
I knew I was going to get punished, it was inevitable, but I never, in a million years, would've thought that he'd send me off into the Tombs, of all places. And alone, at that. I knew I deserved it; I was stupid, reckless and only thinking of my reputation. It's a maze of booby traps, dead ends, hidden ends, even a bottomless pit. It was home to many animals, from rats to spiders and snakes to stray dogs.
You'd have to be an idiot to go in there unprepared, but that's the thing, I'm not a hundred percent unprepared. I'd been in there a thousand times before. I basically knew that place like the back of my hand, but that didn't mean I was still scared out of my mind. This is the first time I'd been summoned to go in there on my own. Yet, I knew I had to. If I didn't, then Solomon would just tell my father and who knew where that would lead to.
As I neared the group of trees that concealed the entrance to the Tombs, I immediately started searching for the lever – my eyes roaming around every square inch of the place. The quicker in, the quicker out.
I located it within seconds and swiftly pulled it, jumping back as I did, hearing the familiar mechanical whirring of the Tombs opening. Inside, it was dark, gloomy and extremely humid. My hand instinctively went to my hair, tying it in a tight bun on the top of my head – my mind working on autopilot.
About a half kilometre in, I turned to my left, there was a dark dusty hallway that I knew led to the waterfall and to my right, there was a small passageway that I immediately took, squeezing through the small gap.
"Goddammit, where's that journal?"
I froze at the exit of the passageway. My eyes snapped from the ground to the auditorium in front of me, and then to the stipes libro locus where I noticed the door wide open. There was a silhouette of a woman in the doorway, hands on hips, staring into the small archive room.
She was tall, curvy, thin, athletic. She looked like a model, but then again, I could only see her outline, due to the poor lightening.
She groaned and moved back inside the room, out of sight. I silently slipped from the passageway, running to take cover behind the auditorium chairs. My senses were on high alert, my eyes roaming around the larger room, checking for anything unusual. My brain was running on over time. But for reasons I'm still not entirely sure on, I wasn't scared. I was, kind of, excited. In a totally sick way.
"You said it would be here!" the same voice screeched, obviously furious.
There was a second voice. "It was, Ma'am, it was! I saw it with my own eyes, for heaven's sake!"
The second voice sounded distraught, scared. I cautiously walked up the stairs between the two aisles of chairs, careful to make sure my feet were silent on the cold limestone.
The first person sighed, and I could imagine her rubbing her temples. "Is there any chance someone could have – oh, I don't know – come in and moved it?"
"No!" the second person gasped out, seemingly in pain. "No student is allowed in here without supervision, and many don't even know how to get in here."
"Teachers?" the first woman asked.
There was a scream of pain. "N- no, the staff avoid coming in here, it's too dangerous and unpredictable now since the s- security's been improved. You'd have to be a genius to get in through Gallagher."
My eyebrows furrowed as I neared the stipes libro locus. There was another entrance into here? One that's not inside Gallagher?
I quickly hid behind a row of seats at the very back of the auditorium, my ears alert for anyone nearing the door. I pushed a crack in the wall, effectively opening up the wall behind the cabinet that I knew held the 1980's log books. I'd read a lot of journals in the stipes libro locus, amazed at some of the events recorded. I quickly dropped to the floor, where the 1989 log books were and started searching.
Within seconds, I located the journal, and as I was about to duck back out of the cabinet, the doors flew open.
"Well, what do we have here then?" the woman asked, a smirk on her lips. I cursed in Latin, my mind working for an escape route. The woman laughed as I felt two sets of beefy hands grab my upper arms. "Stercore, all right."
I had a new found hatred for Joe Solomon and his cruel punishments.