FINALLY! I'm not happy with this chapter! AT ALL! In fact, I hate it! So you might too. I made up my own science. The concepts listed in this chapter probably don't apply to physical earth science, but I thought they sounded believable enough, so….whatever. Don't kill me if you're an engineer/physicist! Actually, if you are, tell me what could make it MORE believable! I tried researching a bit…and using my own brain….but….yeah.

A lot of dialogue, but you'll find that out.

A big thank you to those anonymous reviewers who are keeping up with the story. I wish you'd make a username so I can answer your questions and reply to comments! :(

I'm finishing up the next chapter. Should be up soon….

Feeding the squash vine borers inadvertently,

Kelsey

CHAPTER 36: THE DRILL

"What in the world were you thinking?!"

"Not my father."

Hat removed, face flushed pink, the Professor looked on incredulously at Laura. She lay on her stomach, in his bed (which made him more incensed), arms shoved beneath a pillow and her face smashed into it. Carbite had been sitting on top of the young woman's back, nuzzling his multi-colored beak underneath a wing.

"Laura," he growled bitterly after he'd entered; only then did the girl turn her neck enough to face him. His loafers were still on his feet as he tread across the carpet.

'He must really be mad,' Laura thought, inwardly chuckling (and childishly proud of herself). 'Didn't even take off his—'

"Did you really need to react that way?"

"Whatever do you mean." Her tone was hardly interested, the apathetic half-question intended to kill any subsequent conversation.

"Back there," he said as he flung his arm behind him, supposedly in the direction of whatever he was speaking about (yet Laura knew very well what he was referring to). "At the station. You know what I'm talking about. It was rude to behave that way to someone you'd just met, don't you think?"

She turned back to the pillow, pushing her face into it. "Hmm. I suppose my tolerance for arrogance has waned. I wasn't that rude, was I? A bit of sarcasm," she managed to proclaim, muffled and quiet against the fabric and fluff. "Anyway, you're not my father."

"That still…" He clenched his fingers around the top hat's brim, his knuckles as white as his barred teeth. "Still wasn't appropriate. Your sarcasm is sometimes lost on some people, and they treat it as rudeness. What in the world were you thinking?!"

"Not my father."

And that was where he now stood, her words grating against his ears.

His eyes rolled as a hand flew to his forehead. "Yes, yes, I know…" he mumbled, massaging the tension above his eyes.

"Aren't you a little bit more…irritable than usual?" she drawled on. "The great Hershel Layton is supposed to be this patient, gentle soul. Who talks about old things. And rocks."

"Yes, I understand—"

"And dirt."

"Okay, I get it," came his strained croak (which sounded a lot like Carbite), a feeble attempt to end her babble.

"And," she pressed, "…hmm, yes. And he isn't so snappish." Her eyes closed lazily, her lips still mouthing inaudible words.

Topping his brown head with his hat, he sat heavily on a corner of the bed—which made the bird let out a grumble and lift himself to the top of a bureau across the room—and rubbed his eyes. "I don't know why. I'm just…stressed."

"Hmm. You don't carry yourself well while stressed," she droned. "Was that too rude for you as well?"

He answered with a burdened sigh, the release not making his chest any lighter. "Do you want to know what I found out?"

"I did wonder…why you were at Chelmey's hangout. Hee hee."

"I found out that I can't have two very headstrong women cross paths."

Sitting up, Laura cackled. "I don't want to cross paths with anybody, man or woman. And I expect they wouldn't want to cross mine either… Now really, what did you find out?"

There was no attempting to be brief: his findings were mediocre and quick to recall as they were. He told her about the dank basement, the file, and the missing person report.

"It was filed by 'Maybe Chancey'? What in hell does that even mean?" the girl whined, hoping for a better story. "That's all…?" He nodded. He rubbed his eyes again. "Well, that doesn't tell us much, other than I'm guessing Edward Chancey senior was found. Otherwise, why would they call off the search?"

"We can't assume that, but it seems that way. Laura, I…" There was a pregnant pause, Laura looking at him with bated breath as he shook his head. "I don't know where this is all going. Where else can we look?"

"W-What?"

"I'm honestly at a loss. I'm…just not sure what to do, what more I can do…to help you. There's so much on my mind that… Well, sometimes it feels like there's nothing really that we should be worrying about."

In that moment, Laura felt her stomach drop. A stone—all her worries, misgivings, and fears condensed—fell from her heart to her toes as realization of his words hit her with the force of a tidal wave: he was giving up.

"How…how dare you." Tiredly, his eyes rose to meet with hers. She walked across the bed on her knees and half-staggered, half-fell off the side to stand in front of him. "You're giving up?"

"No, I…not exactly, it's just I don't know where else to go. Each path is a dead end."

"You of all people! You said you'd help me!" Her face was red and her eyes were hot coals. They burned through him, despite instantly feeling her judgment washing over his conscience.

"Laura, I'm not—"

"Just because you hit dead ends! Do you even know what could be going on here?!"

"Please, Laura… For a moment, think: there's no physical evidence of anything illegal. As far as Leopold's actions go, couldn't you possibly be overacting?"

That word… She worried about that herself, misjudging due to paranoia. Would anyone else go this far to prove something so intangible as perked intuition, flared suspicion? It seemed she was all alone now in her questioning.

Overreacting.

Overreacting. Chelmey had said it, but was seemingly starting to listen a little more than the first time she approached him. With the Professor also inquiring about Leopold's background, however, she hoped the Inspector would have a little more reason to believe what she was saying. Yet now the Professor was having doubts…

…but Laura knew better.

"I want you to see it."

"W-What?" He was still waiting for an answer to his question. "Didn't you hear me, I asked—"

"I want…you to see it," she repeated, more urgently, almost begging.

"See what?" his voice grumbled. He was becoming impatient.

She gesticulated with her hands held out, as if offering him a gift, then widened the gap between them, as if measuring an invisible object in midair. "When you see the size and scope of this drill, maybe then you'll see that there's something else going on here. We're beyond archaeology and oil, Hershel." Suddenly, her gaze changed as her already dark eyes became twin abysses, void and cold. Her voice threatened to break, and became more brittle as she spoke. "This is beyond eccentric fancy, the dreams of a rich boy with more money than he knows what to do with. You'd first stoop to wiping your ass with gold leaf before investing in a machine like this. There're more practical things to blow money on, more reasonable things the mind would come up with. That is what I'm saying."

It was a route not yet approached. Indeed, she had never shown anyone the drill. Only her, Leopold, and a few maintenance personnel had delved as deep into the earth as the giant mechanism itself had. The Professor realized this, and immediately the torch of curiosity was again lit.

"I suppose…that's the only thing we haven't done!" he exclaimed with a smile. "How…how very foolish of me…"

He looked at her and grinned. Genuine. It was genuine. Mere seconds ago, he secretly wanted to be done with it. Abandon the search, forget all he'd learned from the places they'd visited, throw away-no, burn that blasted page that had revealed so much to him, and tormented his thoughts longer than what was welcome.

…yes, it had tormented. He'd found out more than he wanted to know from a page that was seemingly empty. And yet there was so much more to learn…so many connections and bridges between people, parallels between events. The page was a constant temptation, and was extremely time consuming.

If only time allowed. Keeping track of investigations and research and classroom agendas was beginning to wear on him, not to mention the emotional upkeep of his own relationships. Or—he briefly flashed his eyes towards Laura—lack thereof.

When he fully came back to his senses, Laura was gaping at him, as if a spell had been cast and made her nerves slack, her mind numb.

"What?" he asked with a laugh.

"Foolish is an understatement," was all she had for him, and she left the room without another word.

Three and a half miles from the English coast, amidst salty North Sea waves, rose two structures, side by side. One resembled an airport observation tower; the other, an oil rig of atypical design. Against the azure sky and gray sea, they seemed to have been placed haphazardly. Indeed, it was as if a giant child had decided to use the city for his own amusement—picking up and moving buildings wherever he pleased—and left his toys jutting out of the choppy water.

To the naked, untrained eye, the rig was a messy collection of platforms, pipes, and staircases that sat atop a cylindrical base; it was a city built on a poisonous barrel. Its neighboring structure was a resort at sea, originally used to house the workers that would spend weeks, months out on the platform. A single deck circled around the tower-like structure near the top, far enough above the ocean to avoid the brunt of the sea spray. Surrounded by railings, it was an observation platform of sorts, and beyond the metal bars were windows with a height taller than the average man. They started at the floor of the deck and went to the very top of the building. Just beyond the tinted glass was an opulent office, reserved for one man; to the owner of the place, it was the throne of a king. And Leopold considered himself just that.

He often split his time equally between this office overlooking the ocean—complete with a clear view of coastal cities (he swore if he squinted hard enough, he could see London)—and his London office. Lately, as Laura had noticed, he was spending more time in his place out in the middle of the water—conveniently (as he most likely saw it), away from prying eyes and anxious ears.

However, Laura was always listening. And always watching.

The growl of the Laytonmobile turned to a sputter and then to silence as the Professor pulled the key from the ignition. He parked in an unkempt lot near the shore. Little patches of weeds and broad-blade grasses creeped through cracks and broken patchwork across the gray concrete; it looked like a badly graphed map, the twisted, green pathways running this way and that until the parking lot blended into equally uncared-for lawn.

"This place looks deserted," Luke observed, jumping out from the back of the car after Laura and the Professor had already exited. Flora followed suit.

"Hmm, but the ocean breeze is so calming," she sighed, closing her eyes. "I wish we'd go to the coast more often…" It wasn't often they came near the coast, and this place looked inviting. "I've always wanted to go to Southend-on-Sea!"

Not hearing a word, Laura started walking, expecting all to follow her lead. She beelined towards a small dock; it stretched its single limb out far enough to allow a motorboat to be safely moored. As they walked towards it, the salty mist gathered on their faces, giving them shiny cheeks and noses.

"Okay, so let me inform you of how this works, what you can expect." Her throat grunted as she cleared it, and she crossed her arms with an air of haughtiness as thick as the breathable saline. Her role was now knowledgeable informant. "I'm going to show you the drill chamber, but to get there we're first taking a boat." She jabbed a thumb towards the ocean. "I'd like to use the helicopter, but…that's much too obvious."

"You can manage a boat?" the Professor asked warily, his smile more sarcastic than supportive.

"No, I thought I'd just hop in and give it a go without any sense of what I'm doing," she scoffed, beginning to prepare the vessel. "Would you give me some credit? Thanks. Now let's get a move on!"

Their seats were only taken briefly as the ride only lasted around fifteen minutes. Laura made sure to seat the children in the safest of spots, and the Professor in the dampest. She took extra care to hit the choppy waves just so, the water spurting up at the signature top hat as if it was marked with a bulls-eye.

'If I had half a mind, I'd think she was doing it on purpose,' he thought grimly to himself, avoiding another splash of brine. 'My hat's going to pickle if this keeps up!'

They arrived at the observation tower, and the little boat bobbed gently after Laura secured it to the base of a staircase. It was their only way up to the main platform, so they began their ascent, leaving the motorboat behind.

"I hope the boat doesn't float away," Flora whispered to Luke, who grimaced when he realized they'd be 'shipwrecked' should that happen.

"Professor," he hissed, clutching the tail of Layton's coat. "The boat's going to float away. Look at it being tossed around like that…!"

Before the Professor had a chance to analyze the sense of foreboding that nipped and clawed in the back of his head, Laura had entered a code on a rusty, metallic keypad and was already opening a beat up metal door. Salt and wind had dulled the shine, and crust had developed around the frame. The group entered a cramped space, a narrow room lined with more metal, this time, untouched by salt. The floor was grated (metal) tiles, and the walls were lined with hammered gray (metal) sheets. On the (more metal!) ceiling, a single bar of florescent light cast a dull glow that reflected gently off the surfaces.

Along the walls were three points of access: two elevators, each with a different destination, and one door that led to a hallway. Small, simple maps were nailed to the right of each elevator, indicating where the lift would eventually lead.

"So we're going…all the way down?" Luke questioned, disbelief drowning his trust. "I just don't see how…"

"Well, not as far as the thing could go, but we're going down a rather decent amount," Laura corrected, walking to one of the elevators.

Finally, the lift arrived, and all piled in. It wasn't like a normal elevator, as the other one was. The door was not two metal rectangles meeting in the middle, but instead was a lattice-like fence that squeaked and protested as it was stretched shut; the walls of the thing were similar, but were unable to be moved as the door. There was just enough room, and if any one of them were to move—risking a poked hand or a knee through the gate—they'd easily find themselves grated like cheese against the chute.

"Keep close, Flora," Professor Layton murmured to the girl, who clung absentmindedly to his jacket. Luke eyed the walls with a childish apprehension, trying his best to hold his body towards the center without crowding. With a jolt, the elevator began its descent.

"Yes, mind your limbs and extremities," Laura chortled, her voice vibrating as the vessel buzzed against the shaft. "This is the workers' elevator. There's a nicer one, but it's not big enough for all of us."

"This one's hardly big enough!" the Professor said loudly, above the din of scraping metal. "I can't imagine a smaller one!"

"Stop your whinging. We'll stop once we reach a specific depth. We need to adjust to the pressure, so…"

"Adjust to the pressure?" Layton repeated as a question. The girl merely smirked at his ignorance, her cocky grin barely visible as she snuck a giggle behind her hand.

"Well, you can't expect to just dive right in, do you? We're going pretty far down into the earth. The pressure down here is immense. We aren't going down too far this time, but if we were, we'd have to wait in quite a few chambers at certain intervals so that our bodies can adjust. It's the same coming back up. Otherwise…well, you don't want to know what happens when the gases in your blood expand too quickly." She flashed her teeth and chuckled. Flora's face was tinged a pale green as she thought more and more about what expanding gases in her veins would look like.

'I'd rather not know,' she ended the thought, nauseating herself too much.

"To put it simply," Laura continued, "the closer you get to the earth's core, the hotter the air becomes. So, for us to be comfortable down here, we have to cool the air, right? Cooler air is considerably denser than warm air, thus, there's more pressure down here. But that's not the only reason there's more pressure. The further we descend, the more the surrounding earth is pushing on the walls, the hallways…everything. So we have to keep the internal pressure high enough to keep the walls from crumbling in."

"Hmm, that makes sense, I think," Luke muttered, trying to scratch his head.

Flora arched an eyebrow. "Really? I thought it was quite complicated…"

"Well, okay, maybe not much sense, but…," the boy grumbled testily. "Geez, Flora…"

"It's okay, Luke. It's a bit complicated, especially for young minds," the Professor chimed in, salvaging the tattered remains of the boy's pride.

"All you need to know," Laura began again, "is that air is pumped in constantly to ventilate—there's no air flow otherwise—and to apply a force that helps hold up the walls. The caliber of this system is the first of its kind. It's a spar platform that extends to the ocean floor…and beyond. Who do you think came up with the design? Heh heh…"

Professor Layton nodded. He really wasn't all that surprised, truth be told. But agreeing wasn't enough for her intellectual ego, as Laura continued to spew out a lengthy lecture about petroleum engineering (it became apparent after a few minutes that she designed close to 90% of the entire structure). Several minutes and thousands of feet later, her explanation ended, the elevator stopped as if on cue, and Laura opened the gate. They entered a sterile-white room with simple chairs and a low coffee table in the middle. Outdated magazines and a yellowed newspaper served as a makeshift tablecloth. The space felt like any other ordinary room, except that the air was noticeably heavier than the air accompanying them in the chute (or had they merely neglected the change of pressure?). Then all of a sudden, the room sealed itself off as an automatic door slid across the entrance with a sucking sound.

"Good thing we're not claustrophobic," Flora said feebly, wringing her hands. "It's harder to breathe than out there. And my ears are popping…"

"That's natural. And for ten minutes, just sit and wait," Laura said, motioning to the seats. "It'll start to feel a bit cooler, and you'll be able to breathe better as you adjust. I promise."

"How far down have we travelled?" the Professor asked, rummaging through the papers on the table.

"About 10,000 meters."

"Honestly!" Layton exclaimed, his interest piqued. He didn't mean to react so exuberantly, but such matters drove his curiosity. While his field dealt with digging on the land, the ocean was still new to him. The mechanics of it…perhaps he could make an appointment out of it and hear all Laura had to say. All for another day, he decided.

Laura nodded, giving him a scowl. "Honestly. We'll have to do this one more time before we can stop…"

The air easier on their lungs, they exited into another elevator and continued the routine once more. The ride ended, they acclimated again, and then emerged into a long hallway. As soon as they stepped foot onto the gray tiles, the lighting sprang to life, and electricity raced along the ceiling. The flooring wasn't gray after all, and the cream tiling and sealed concrete walls shimmered as the group moved.

Several doors dotted the walls on both sides, but Laura led them through the one closest to them on the right.

"And here's the fun part," she said with an airy sigh, as if recalling some enchanting memory. If she were the romantic sort, perhaps a first love?

'Unlikely,'Layton muttered internally, answering his own ignorance as he snorted at her dramatic expression. Laura ignored him and proceeded to laugh lightly.

"Kids, this is my lifework…"

"Yes, because you've been alive and engineering for so long," Layton scoffed quietly to himself as she threw open the double doors with a shove of her hands. Her jargon throwing and constant yammering were beginning to find their way beneath his already thin skin, and for what it was worth, he was starting to feel under-qualified.

Perhaps it was all justified. What he saw shoved the words right back into his mouth and down his dry throat.

The chamber was vast—a large cylindrical space about 200 meters in diameter with a narrow pathway (only two extremely lean people could walk abreast) lining the circumference. In the middle of the giant circular room was the dark pit, a black emptiness that challenged midnight. Somewhere below—hundreds and hundreds (in reality thousands and thousands) of meters below—was the drill itself, already having completed a portion of its route during testing months prior. It sat still now, but was preparing to further its path, ready and at attention to crack open uncharted territory.

At the top of the barreled space was the ceiling, a behemoth of a dome, cold concrete molded perfectly into a spherical cap. A wide pipe came down from the apex and continued down into the hole beyond sight; not much could be seen anyway. Save for softly glowing LED lights caged in wire-frame boxes along the perimeter, it was very dim and bleak. Sound also seemed to be swallowed up by the cavernous mouth. Only little creaks of metal and ticks of pipes could be heard, but they were suffocated by the deafening silence.

Luke and Flora broke first. They walked up to Laura's side as she held onto the railing, looking fondly down into the abyss as if she longed to be down there instead of on the platform.

"This is amazing!" the boy called out first, hardly able to contain himself; he desperately wanted to hear his voice echo. It bounced around briefly with the energy of a flat basketball and fell down with the drill. "It's enormous!"

"If I were to fall…" Flora mused somewhat gravely as she looked over the bar, clammy hands gripping for support. Her mind raced as vertigo began swirling her vision. The Professor broke from his stunned reverie and took notice, pulling her back.

"That's quite enough, Flora," he croaked, forgetting how to speak. Speech failed him as he gaped and gazed, switching from admiration to fascination—and somehow ending with realization of something dire. "Laura, this…"

She turned, her eyes wide and catching what little light was cast. "This is the drill. The 'little, petty' drill that hungers for petrol. Nothing too fancy, is it? Digs down deep, siphons the oil through the pipe…we're reaching depths no one ever has! This is officially the deepest reaching advanced spar platform in the world. Fascinating?"

"'Devastating' is more like it," said the Professor. It only took him a moment's gloss over. He didn't need any more confirmation on whether or not to proceed with investigating, although he dared to step forward and peer into the black anyway.

"Don't you want to walk around the perimeter? Or…are you afraid of heights?" she cackled dryly.

"I'm afraid we're out of time," he said pointedly, arching his thin eyebrows. "Don't forget that I have classes to prepare for."

"Aw, come on, Professor!" Luke pleaded, clasping his hands together as if in mock prayer. "Let's walk around!"

"Let's go see the actual drill!" Flora squeaked from behind the boy. It surprised the Professor, and Laura took up the chorus as well.

"Well, the drill is encapsulated by a path-guiding structure, so you won't actually see it. But I can take you as far down as its gone so far." She nudged her teacher with a firm hand. "You know you want to. Heh heh…"

She knew she was triumphant, her will done, when Layton sighed and shook his head. "I'm going to be so behind with my schedule. I don't want you to ever say that I never do anything for you, Laura," he grumbled under his breath.

With a wry smile she collected the children with loosely outstretched arms, corralling them towards the door. "Let's proceed! I haven't really had a chance to show my pal off."

Confused at her choice of pet name for the machine, Layton trailed behind the rest of them as they made their way to another elevator. Another decompression chamber. And yet another elevator.

After they reached a depth of around 30 kilometers (and the Professor began to feel that he might scream if he had to sit in another room with his ears popping), Laura led them down a dim hallway, the last path to their final destination. One of the ceiling lights flickered eerily near the middle.

"Meant to get that fixed…" the young woman said as she suddenly turned to the right and shoved open another set of double doors. When they were at the top of the drill's cylindrical pipe, there was no notable scent, but this time a pungent smell burned their nostrils. It was both chemical and organic, like an emulsion of rotten eggs, lighter fluid, and wet dirt.

"What is that smell?" Flora wretched, her dress sleeve pulled over her hand, both of which flew to her nose. "It's already giving me a headache…"

"That is sour crude oil—the unfiltered and unprocessed kind of petroleum in the earth—and the actual burned petrol needed to run the drill," Laura explained. "A bit of molten rock and maybe some dirt too. Mostly rock, but…I digress."

The glow of the hall faded away behind them as they continued through the gray doors and into darkness. Tiny floor lights sleepily sparked along the grated walkway with the energy of dying embers, ensuring them that electrical power still could guide even at such a distance from civilization. Now they stood in a chamber similar in shape to the one they were in before, except this time they weren't staring down at nothing; this time they were confronted with a cavernous room. They only knew this by the echo of their footsteps as it clattered past their ears and never hit a ceiling, only continuing to rattle onward into nothingness. There was also a massive something in the middle of the area that seemed to begin at the black floor and rise to an undeterminable height; its shape was discernible only by the lit-up buttons and computer panels that curved around the surface, which resembled a can.

The Professor, his eyes wide open in hopes of allowing in any extra beam of light possible, held tightly onto Luke and Flora's shoulders. He kept them walking straight along the path behind their only guide.

"My word…" he whispered. Whatever he was looking at was beautiful in its own right, the darkness that shrouded the room both stifling and alluring. Little whirring sounds cranked from the giant tower, becoming louder as they approached. Metallic clinks and the purring of gears echoed around the chamber, unlike the deadened sounds up at the top of the chamber, which seemed to be swallowed as soon as they started. Maybe it was the aura of the place… Something dark and powerful oozed through the black.

His thoughts were cast aside as Laura began speaking.

"And this…is who we really came to see."

A flick of a switch on the wall, and hundreds of boxes buzzed to life with a burst of electricity, the glow broadening, the light racing up the column until it reached a height beyond what was comfortable to view properly. Their vision now clear, the gift of light revealed a gargantuan machine—presumably, the drill—surrounded by circular platforms and metal step ladders that helixed up, up, up and into the beyond.

Laura stepped forward and turned towards the Professor and the children, the machine behind her. She lifted up her arms, palms up, as if presenting the feat of engineering to a potential business partner willing to invest in her product. "Let me introduce you to my greatest creation, painstakingly named 'PERSEUS': The 'Petroleum Extraction and Removal from Subterranean Earth Utilization System'."

"The…what?"

"Yes, Leopold is a bit dramatic… Wishes to turn the opposition to stone, much like Perseus did to various creatures with the Gorgon head of Medusa. So. It's name is Perseus. Try making a better acronym out of that, and I'll eat my knickers."

Layton looked from her to the machine, his eyes roving over every inch of metal, every button, every screen and keyboard unit mounted into the giant cylinder. It was expertly manufactured, enough to make his knowledge-seeking mind hungry for how it worked, yet its sheer size and mysterious function…it was foreign enough to make him wary. A power exuded from the thing as if it possessed a soul, as if it were a living being with a conscious mind—greedy and hungry, willing to get what it wanted, no matter the cost. He wasn't usually the emotional sort, but he imagined some powerful conductor orchestrating an appropriate theme for the sinister contraption.

Surely, he thought, it deserved it.

'Just what are you, Laura…?'

Luke's mouth was dropped, and Flora's jaw was nervously approaching the same dumbstruck gawk. "It's…it's…both awesome and incredible…isn't it, Professor?" the boy whispered.

Flora countered with, "I think it's a bit monstrous." She didn't care much for gears and metal and oiled up parts, despite the fact she'd unknowingly cared for machines all her life.

Letting her arms fall to her sides, Laura managed a shy smile. "Well, Professor? What do you think? I can explain how it works. If you want." Her tone changed. She said it all so sheepishly, so modestly; as if she were both proud and ashamed, fighting for which one she was supposed to feel. It was a response typical of a Laura ten years ago, an honest sight the Professor hadn't seen in some time.

"I…don't' think that's necessary at the moment. Later would be more appropriate. But this is—truly—amazing." He looked up again, feeling himself go cross-eyed and dizzy, then back down to the petite girl dwarfed by her own invention.

'It's an unwritten rule that teachers shouldn't favor any one of their students, but...I think her genius is rather—'

"Thank you," she exhaled suddenly, and she walked past all of them as if embarrassed. "That's all I have to show now."

Layton eyed her briefly through a scrutinizing lens, but let the moment pass with a nod.

They returned through the door almost as quickly as they had entered, the children running ahead towards the pressurizing chamber. Luke kept looking behind at the two adults, a curious expression on his face. Laura was unsure what the child was thinking, but she could tell he wanted to say something. However, she used her fortune of a tête-à-tête and turned towards the Professor.

She started softly, "Since you seem to believe me now…"

He frowned. "It's not that I didn't believe—"

"—Leopold's making an announcement on the 22nd," she said hurriedly. "At some annual petroleum and engineering expo. Something like that. A bunch of business moguls, engineers, and a scattering of environmentalists show up, I believe. I blew off the details because I was preoccupied with Leopold's motives." She paused and made sure he was paying full attention. "I'm supposed to show up, but…I don't feel good about it."

Layton looked ahead to make sure Luke and Flora were occupied with something other than their conversation. "What do you expect him to announce?"

"Well, if you didn't suspect him of anything and only knew his personality, you'd at the very least expect it to be something egotistical; claiming my work, perhaps? I wouldn't doubt it, but since we suspect more than him being a big jerk…I'm not expecting it to be anything good. He was very vague about it. And since the time up until this little event is the only time I know he won't be here in his office, as he'll be preparing a speech, I'm going to sneak in and try to find something. It's my last opportunity."

The Professor showed a calm exterior, but frustration surged in harsh undertones when he spoke. "We should have done that sooner."

"I had no chance," she hissed, speeding the conversation along. "You never thought to come here either. Look, I don't know why either of us isn't on top of our game, but early in the morning of the 22nd, I'm coming back here to search. I would…appreciate any help you could offer."

"Well," he laughed, "isn't that what I promised to do?"

"Yes, but…" She stopped as they began their ascent to normal air and pressure.

By the time they found themselves back at the car, evening had arrived in a surly mood (Laura wasn't surprised, as she often felt the weather seemed to be influenced by her own mood, as theatrical as that was to believe). Dust-colored clouds churned as they rolled in, and the air had become heavy with humidity. The ride home started out with mild conversation, Luke asking about Laura's expertise, how she could invent such things; Flora adding in comments here and there, asking how she got to be so smart (and Laura encouraging Flora that she could amount to the same end, if only she'd study). Layton expected his former student—whom he knew better than anyone—to be haughtier after showcasing the fruits of her intellect, but Laura was too mentally busy to even feign arrogance.

Then the children in the back seat became quiet; Flora drifted off first, then Luke. The boy snored lightly after a few minutes.

"So you'll help me then," Laura said, looking for final confirmation. The Professor cleared his throat. He clearly wasn't expecting any conversation, Laura decided.

"Yes, Laura, I'm sorry for having any doubts." He removed his eyes from the road briefly to turn and flash a smile. "I know how you feel about trusting me, but you have my word. We'll finish this off properly. That's what a gentleman does."

"Mm." She'd almost forgotten those words. "I feel we're close to something. I intend to expose whatever it is soon. But with you along for the ride… Two heads are better than one, after all." She smirked, drumming her fingers against a throbbing knee.

"Even," she sighed, "if one of them is brainless."

END.

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