Dan went down to HQ and when he returned, he was carrying a large bag. Sighing, he dumped it on the ground and placed his hands on his lower back, stretching out the sore muscles.
"Are you getting a bit old there, Dan?" Zoe asked, grinning.
Dan cast her a mockingly cold look. "Keep talking and I'll throw you in the river."
"There is no river." Zoe replied, laughing. Dan rolled his eyes as Tom pulled laser cutters out of the bag and used them to open the hatch.
"Careful. It might still be hot." Tom said, pushing his welding mask off and placing it beside him. Aneisha, being careful with the hot metal like he'd told her, pulled the lid up and all three teens peered down into the darkness.
"Wow." Dan said, listening to his voice echo down as Aneisha switched on her flashlight, shining it down the chasm. "I can't see the bottom. Who's going in first?"
"Frank told us to wait." Dan said.
Zoe sighed and grabbed the torch from Aneisha's hands. "Fine. I'll go in then, shall I?"
Zoe climbed inside the hatch and started down the ladder, carefully placing her feet on the rungs. Finally, when she landed on solid ground, she shined the torch around her surroundings, trying to get a feel for where she was. Zoe felt fingers brush against her back and she stopped herself from screaming as she turned, barely making out the outline of Dan's face in the near darkness.
Then the lights were switched on and Dan stepped back to avoid arousing suspicions. Even so, Aneisha cast Dan a curious glance and Dan cursed under his breath.
"Is anyone else totally freaked out by this?" Aneisha asked, looking around.
"Not really." Zoe replied, shrugging. "It looks kind of like the SKUL base I was living in when I was five."
"That's fair." Dan told her from across the room. "How many SKUL bases were you at all up, by the way?"
"At least thirteen." Zoe replied easily. "Trust me, living in SKUL was worse than living in a military family."
"How do you know that?" Dan asked.
"Even if he was in the military, would you own father hit you when you misbehave?" Zoe asked. "But then again, I wouldn't turn around and shove my own father into a wall."
"That's m –" Dan started, before he cut himself off. Both he and Zoe both knew what he was about to say; That's my girl, but, as far as Tom and Aneisha knew, Zoe wasn't his girl.
"That's great, Zo." Dan corrected himself.
"Can you two focus please?" Tom asked. He walked over to the bench and picked up a piece of paper, his eyes widening as he read the date; "January the sixth, 1941!"
Aneisha walked over to the desk in the corner, picking up a piece of paper sitting on a tape recorder. She took note of the logo at the top of the yellowing page – a red triangle with a fox head inside. Aneisha turned the page over and printed on the back in bold, black lettering, was 'STERNUM'.
"Look. STERNUM." Aneisha said, passing the paper to Zoe as she and the boys joined her.
"The same people who want to turn Keri and Libi and Zoe, once upon a time, into the Mastermind." Dan said quietly. A hand landed heavily on his shoulder and Dan whirled, forcing his heart to stop trying to jump out of his chest when he saw that it was only Frank.
"I told you to wait for me." Frank said.
"Sorry. Look what we found." Aneisha said quietly, passing him the paper.
"STERNUM." Frank said. He took his glasses off. "Look around. I'll call Stella. But don't touch anything – that hatch was sealed for a reason."
He walked off to call Stella and Zoe moved into the machine in the middle of the room, looking at the photos clipped onto it. "What's with all the photos?"
"I don't know. But it is very violent, isn't it?" Dan said, leaning against the side. It was very stuffy inside this lab. Groaning as his resolve slipped, Dan peeled his school jumper off and hung it on a lever on the side of the machine. He stepped inside the machine, leaning against the side of it, so he was facing Zoe's side. "I slipped up before."
"I know." Zoe said quietly.
"I'm sorry." Dan said. Zoe glanced over at him, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "You don't need . . . to be sorry, Dan. You slipped up. So? Everyone makes mistakes."
"But that mistake could mean us getting fired if it had been in front of Stella." Dan said in an urgent whisper.
"But it wasn't." Zoe said gently. "Dan, they're Tom and Aneisha. They're our friends. They won't sell us out."
"Yeah, but . . . I just . . . I don't want to let you down." Dan said softly. "I've wanted to be with you for so long and now . . . I'm so scared that I'm going to screw it up and I figure that if I am going to mess everything up, it may as well be something memorable, over something as small as a slip of the tongue." Dan said.
Zoe smiled up at him. "And what do you mean by 'memorable'?"
Dan shrugged. "Something like being caught naked in bed together."
Zoe rolled his eyes. "You can be really predictable sometimes, you know that?"
Dan cocked his head to the side. "You love me for it."
"And you're very lucky that I do."
"Frank, if I knew anything about the lab, I would tell you."
"But a KORPS lab under the school, I mean . . . it can't just be a coincidence."
"Agreed. I'll find out what I can."
"Oh, and Stella . . . I know now's hardly the time, but maybe we could talk sometime . . . about us?" Frank said hopefully.
"You're right. Now's not the time." Stella said harshly, hanging up. Frank sighed, pushing his phone into his pocket as he walked towards the centre of the room. Zoe was still studying the photos in the machine, while Dan was inspecting the tape recorder sitting in the opposite corner. "What is this thing?"
"No idea." Tom said, fiddling with the at least seventy-year-old controls. "It's World War II technology. Chances of syncing it with my spy pod are remote."
Dan picked up a piece of paper from underneath the table the tape recorder was sitting on. He opened it up and called Frank over. "Frank, come check this out. It's stuff about the cage."
"Frank, we have class to get to." Aneisha said.
"Alright. Well let's take this for now, we'll come back ASAP." Frank said.
Dan gathered up the tape recorder and diagram of the machine. "They were up to something in 1941." He said, glancing over his shoulder at Frank before following Zoe out. "The question is what."
Frank looked back to see if they'd left anything, noticing Dan's jumper hanging on the side of the machine. Sighing at the blonde's uncharacteristic forgetfulness, he walked over and yanked it off, ignoring the loud click! that followed. As Frank walked through the machine to the door, the lights changed to a red colour and Frank's body started twitching uncontrollably, as if he were suffering from a seizure, as what felt like a thousand volts of electricity was shot into his body.