Jenkins:

Colonel Baird walked to the desk in charge of the Catacombs tours and flashed her military credentials, telling them that all of the tours were to be evacuated immediately. Surprisingly enough, they didn't question her American credentials and thought it best to be safe even if it was some kind of American trick. I desperately wanted Cassandra and the other young librarians to show up after having been evacuated wondering why we had ruined their tour, but group after group came by without a trace of them. About 20 minutes passed and the manager of the tours approached and informed us that everyone had been accounted for except for 3 people who had disappeared from their group a while ago. My heart sank, she was still inside. "We have a picture of the three people who aren't accounted for from our security tapes up front." Maybe it isn't them, maybe it someone else, I thought, trying to stay calm. The man handed Colonel Baird a picture and she looked at it and nodded, "They're with us, we'll handle it. Thank you."

"Come on, we better hurry," Mr. Carsen said and headed for the entrance. We descended the stairs deeper and deeper underground until we made it to a sort of crossroads. "This place is like a maze, how are we going to find them?" Colonel Baird looked at me. I sighed, the moment had come. "Well, I was hoping not to have to resort to this, but it seems we have no choice," I responded reaching into my pocket. I stopped for a moment. "No judgements from either of you, the spell works best with items that are the most… intimate." They raised their eyebrows and I sighed, knowing I was never going to hear the end of this. "Before we left, I grabbed these from my chambers just in case I needed to resort to this particular spell and it seems that I do." I pulled the small scrap of purple lace cloth out of my pocket and they gasped. "Are those—" Colonel Baird began. "Cassandra's unmentionables, yes," I cut her off, trying to end this conversation as quickly as possible. Mr. Carsen was grinning, "From your chambers, did you say?" I felt my face turn red, shit, I did say. "We don't have time for this! We need to find them and fast, you're welcome to pester me about it when we bring them all back safely to the Library, deal?" I barked at them. They nodded but didn't do a very good job hiding their grins.

I cast the spell and then a trail of shadow footsteps the size of Cassandra's petite feet began to appear on the floor. I pocketed the undergarment and we followed the path until it led us to a wall. "Maybe it didn't work," the Colonel offered after we stared at the wall for a moment. "No, it works, they went this way though I don't quite understand why there is a wall in the way." Just as I was done with my sentence I heard a scream in the distance, I was positive it was Cassandra. What little ounce of reservation I had melted away when I heard her voice, I had to get to her. And we were running out of time. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a vial of green liquid. I placed a drop of the liquid onto the wall in the center. The rock began to start smoking as the potion burned through the center and eventually through the whole wall.

We stepped through and continued to follow the shadowy footsteps. As we ran down the very narrow hallway, we all noticed the crowbar shoved between the wall and the floor. The catacombs themselves must be causing this. The wall I burned through must've appeared and trapped the librarians after they passed through it and this wall must have been trying to close in on them. We reached the end of the hallway and saw that the footsteps went through the door on the left and we followed. The room was filled with gold, lots of gold. Colonel Baird and I knew better than to touch anything, but she reminded Mr. Carsen just to be safe. We followed the shadow prints across the room until we reached the other side and the prints just stopped. There was a ladder across the floor and we looked up. About 2000 plus feet above us was a small hole in the ceiling. "Cassandra?" I yelled up to the hole.

"Jenkins?" I heard a faint voice from above me. My heart stopped. Then 3 Librarian heads popped around the hole. "Jenkins!" they all yelled and just as I began to respond to them and tell them that we were going to get them down from there the hole sealed itself off. "No! Cassandra!" I yelled but there was no response. We were so close. "Ideas?" Colonel Baird's ever-present voice of reason pulled me from my thoughts. "Jenkins, can we use that green stuff to burn another hole where that one was?" Mr. Carsen asked. I wish. "No, it isn't controllable, it would burn through the whole floor and they're up much too high to fall safely." "Okay, new plan, we try to find another way out of here. Let's go try the other door back there," Colonel Baird offered. That was basically our only option, so we followed her quickly. As we entered the other room, it looked the exact same as the one before it, but the ladder was still up and there was still a hole in the ceiling about the same distance up. We didn't even discuss it, we immediately started to climb, me first. I emerged on the other side and helped up the Colonel and Mr. Carsen. We looked around the room for doors or the young librarians but could see none of either. The hole below us closed itself just as it had done to them, and we were just as trapped.

"Can we use the bottle on this wall?" Mr. Carsen asked. I glanced at the wall he was referring to, this would potentially be the only thing between us and the others based on the size of the rooms beneath us. "I believe so but if I am mistaken, we could all end up dead… even me." The two young people looked at each other, having an entire conversation through the one glance. "Worth the risk," Colonel Baird said. If it meant possibly getting to Cassandra, I would do anything, so that was all the confirmation I required of them. I pulled the vial out and placed a drop of the green liquid on the center of the wall and it began to smoke. So far, so good. As it began to melt away, I could see through the hole. "Cassandra!" Before it had even dissipated completely, I ran through the hole to her. She jumped into my arms and I held onto her a little too tightly, but she didn't seem to mind. "I knew you'd find me," she said hoarsely as if through tears. "Don't you ever scare me like that again," I whispered into her ear. Our moment ended quickly as I remembered that the others were watching. I held her hand tightly and stood closer than I usually did because I wasn't letting her out of my sight. We would properly celebrate later, for now we needed to focus on the matter at hand.

"Okay, so, now that we're together again, how do we get out of here?" Mr. Jones asked the question that plagued us all. No one answered. "Great," he huffed. We all began coming up with plans and trying to talk through them, but nobody really had any answers that were going to work. All of a sudden, sparks flew from the other side of the room, we had been so concerned with our plan, we had not seen the lightning rod appear out of thin air. "Shit!" shouted Jacob Stone, "What the hell is that thing?" "That's it!" Mr. Carsen yelled. The others look confused. "I imagined it being bigger," Ezekiel said and then the rod shot a bolt of electricity at his feet. "Oh, I didn't mean that!" he screamed at the rod. The rod was no longer than a foot, but it was powerful enough to kill us all, easily. I looked around but didn't see anyone. Who the hell was controlling this thing? "Cassandra," I began, and she glanced up at me. "How long has it been since the original lightning rod experiment?" She did the math in her head and her eyes widened. "250 years," she said, "possibly to the day." He had programmed the rod to be found today. How, I had no clue, but he had to have.

"I don't think anyone is controlling it, I think Ben wanted it to be found on this day, that's why no one has found it until now." Just as I finished my sentence, the rod glowed a little less bright. Hmm, maybe it needs to be found by someone who knew what Ben intended with it. "May I test a theory?" I asked the others. They all looked confused but nodded. I slipped my hand from Cassandra's and took a step toward the rod. It didn't try to electrocute me so that's a start. "Ben made you to test a theory he already knew worked, he just needed to prove it." The rod dimmed even more. "You actually used to be a church steeple, the lightning transmogrified you into a rod." The rod stopped its electricity and dropped to the floor. I walked to it and picked it up. The others just looked at me amazed. Ezekiel was the first to speak, "So Franklin put security questions on his greatest invention to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands?" I hadn't thought of it that way but, "Essentially, yes, he did." Just as I spoke, a small hole opened above our heads. It was natural light. The catacombs had done their job, they had protected the rod for 250 years.

"Let's go home," Colonel Baird said. We all began to climb through the hole onto the streets of Paris. We stopped by the hotel to get the young librarians' things and then I opened the back door in an alleyway not far from their room. We emerged in the Library and everyone took to their rooms. Well, everyone except Cassandra… and we didn't even bother trying to hide it from the others.

Sorry for the long wait on this one and the cliffhangers! I wanted to make sure my research was as accurate as possible! Hope you enjoy!