Kate walked into Martin's room the next morning to find him rummaging through his photo album.

"Whatcha doin' Uncle Martin?" Kate asked.

Martin spun around.

"Oh Katherine! It's you. I thought it was someone else."

"Nope, just me."

"I just heard you moving around a lot in here...What's that?" she asked, pointing to the small book.

"I'm trying to find any other pictures of Chris I might have."

"Why?"

"So I can show..." Martin cut himself off.

"Show them to who?"

"Nobody, forget I mentioned it." Martin replied a little uneasy. "What did you come in for?" he asked, trying to steer the question away from himself.

"I'm worried about Dad." she said.

"Why?"

"You haven't noticed? He's been really jumpy, and he keeps looking at records from some kind of hospital."

"Which hospital is that?" Martin asked alarmed, wondering if Zach was hiding some illness that he had.

"I don't know. Not one from around here, that's for sure. The hospital picture showed the building had the words..Runnells...on the side."

Martin nearly choked. He went right back to frantically turning the pictures over in the box.

"What are you looking for now?"

Martin pulled out an old photo, and showed it to Kate.

"Is that the hospital that you saw?"

"Yeah...almost, except there's more parking lot there now."

"That's the hospital Chris was born at!" Martin replied.

"What? But why would dad be snooping around there, it makes no sense." Kate said, furrowing her brow.

"Did you see which records he was looking at?" Martin asked.

Kate shook her head.

"He turned the computer off before I could get a good look. almost as if..."

"...As if he's hiding something." Martin finished.

Martin stood abruptly. He was thinking. "C'mon, Kate. I think we need to go talk to your dad. I think he'll know something we don't. Maybe he's trying to find out the same thing I am now"

Martin and Kate made their way down the hall. Kate knocked on her day's bedroom door.

"Hello? Dad, it's us. Can we come in?"

They waited, but there was no answer.

"That's weird. Dad!" she tried a little louder, knocking.

"I'm not sure he's in there." Martin told her, pushing the door a bit to confirm his assumption.

It was true. Zach was nowhere to be found in his huge bedroom.

Kate frowned and started down the stairs. Martin followed her down. She looked into the kitchen first before searching around the living room and the rest of the first floor of the mansion. "He's not here! I can't find him anywhere"

Martin came in from checking a few other places including the bathrooms and closets (just in case). "Me neither. How long ago did you say you saw him?"

Kate was only half listening to him. "Right before I came to talk to you! Really, he was just in his room"

"I do believe you. I'm just trying to figure out where he could have disappeared to so fast without either of us hearing him leave or something"

Kate shrugged. "We searched this entire place..."

Then suddenly she seemed to remember something, but was unsure if she should voice it. "Well...maybe not the WHOLE house. You see...um...there are places even in this house I haven't been to."

Martin cocked his head. "Like...secret rooms? Well, I actually wouldn't be surprised considering how old this place is..."

Kate nodded. "When I was little, I found a sort of secret part of the house, like you said...I think. It's always been sort of an unclear memory. I dunno if I just dreamed it, but one night while it was storming, I couldn't sleep, so I went downstairs just to get out of my room and found this door down to a huge basement under the house."

She had Martin's full interest now. "Really? Where?"

Kate shifted a bit. "We'll, I don't remember how I found it. When I still remembered it, I was too scared to go see it again. It wasn't exactly a well lit, friendly-looking place. I tried to years later, but I couldn't. I'm pretty sure I dreamed it-" Kate stopped and stared at Martin, who had walked away.

Martin was feeling along the walls of the living room with his hands.

"What are you doing?!" Kate asked him.

"Looking for a door" Martin answered simply, not stopping.

"Uh, I'm pretty sure there's no door there"

"In those old detective and spy movies, there are tons of them in the walls. Maybe there's one in here and that's why you can't find it"

"I'm pretty sure I can't because it was really dark that night..." Kate told him. "And besides, wouldn't..."

"Found one!"

"What?!"

Kate ran to Martin's side as the wall opened to a block of old, cracked, stone stairway.

"...Whoa." Kate exclaimed, then quickly hid behind Martin.

"Um...you go first." She said shyly. Even though she was almost a teen, she still freaked out in some situations.

Martin nodded, leading the way carefully, following the wall. The light from the room only went so far down and he couldn't feel a light switch, not that he expected one. Martin wished he'd brought his flashlight. He kept his hands out and walked slowly, making sure there were steps where he thought there were.

Kate followed blindly, hopping Martin wasn't leading them into something bad. She squinted, though it didn't help, and she kept within arm's distance of him. When there was absolutely no light., she held onto his shirt.

"Martin...we've been walking awhile. Was this really such a good idea, to, you know, walk down some creepy, dark, s- AAAHHH!"

Kate jumped a foot in the air when she felt something crawling on her arm. She bumped into Martin and made them both fall forward into air and a possibly painful fall. Martin braced himself, though he did try to grab something.

His hand knocked some type of large switch on the wall and he fell onto the stairs landing several steps down with Kate on top of him. There was a clink sound and suddenly there was a bit of light lighting up the thin passage with dim lantern lights every few feet down.

"Ouch..."

"Sorry."

Martin stood up after Kate. "No, I'm good. Nothing's broken..."

The Kratt then looked down . "Hey, at least we can see. Weird light switch though..." he stated, looking at the old turning secret statue that worked as a switch.

Kate nodded as her eyes adjusted. Then she pointed down. "Hey, they end right there. We're close. But...it's just another wall!"

"Are you so sure about that?" Martin asked with a sly smile. Kate just gave a confused look.

Martin walked down to the fall, and noticed some rocks that were out more than the others, and the had numbers on them!

"Oh great. Now, how are we gonna get to the other side." But then Martin noticed one number. He smiled slyly at Kate.

"What's Zach's favorite number?" He asked.

Kate gave the same smile back.

"Twenty-two!" They said together as Martin pushed in the rock with the 22 on it. The whole wall moved back, and inside revealed...a high tech lab?!

Kate was astonished, but not as much as Martin.

"Whoa..." Kate exclaimed, it was about all she could say at the moment.

"You're dad must have a LOT of free time." Martin replied as he walked up to the biggest screen, but there was still background light to it. It wasn't turned off, it was only sleeping!

"Hmm... looks like somebody got here before we did." Martin told Kate, who was examining the many vials and jars on the nearby self.

Martin knew she wasn't listening, and simply moved the mouse to wake the computer up, and when he did... he gasped at what he saw. Many tabs were open. Most of them were documents and pictures labeled with the SAME hospital they had been thinking about all afternoon!

Old photos and documents with dates from so many years ago. It...it was no coincidence. Martin really needed to find Zach.

He walked further into the lab and noticed a table with many papers and notes laid out on it, many of them crumpled and randomly placed. He walked up and picked one up that caught his eye, reading over the heading.

Martin...sort of screamed.

"What?!" Kate asked, running to his side.

"Z-Z-Zach got a copy of my...my brother's BIRTH CERTIFICATE!" Martin nearly screamed again.

"WHAT?!" Kate couldn't believe her eyes. she also noticed the date.

"Wait a minute..." Kate said, walking over to the computer, and looking up on of the tabs, which was an old news article on a history website.

"Does this look familiar to you at all?" Kate asked.

Martin looked up at the screen. "The date says July 23, 1969." Kate added.

"Yeah, my brother was stolen the day before."

"The article reads:

Yesterday in Warren Township, an infant kidnapping took place near Runnels Medical Clinic. A man smashed the nursery window and stole a newborn boy, and ran into the street. Police have filed this child as Christopher Kratt."

Kate read on, even though Martin looked away. "Since this took place at near 4:30 in the morning, not many people were around to see the perpetrator, but some that saw a suspicious man running into the alleys say he was..." Kate lost all her breath.

"W-wearing a black thin turtle neck with jet black hair, and very pale skin."

Kate looked down from the skin. That...that was impossible...it couldn't be...

Martin went ashen. "All the evidence is pointing at him" he murmured, not taking his eyes off of the certificate.

Kate turned to look at the desk and picked up a notebook. She skimmed through the pages before deciding to take it with them.

"Martin, you might want to read this. We don't want Zach to find out we were down here, though, and that we know. Not right now, it...wouldn't be a good time." she added, noticing how tense he'd become.

She tugged him gently towards the doorway. Martin slowly obliged, letting her lead them back up the long staircase. He was too busy with his thoughts to focus on much else. "Chris...he knows...I...I think he did something...t-to change...everything"

Kate sighed with a nod walking steadily. She'd came to that conclusion as well. But the real question was just what had her father done?


REVIEW XD